buy nothing day

I'm going to rise above it all. And buy nothing today.



Adbusters does some amazing anti-capitalist work over the last few years. And I'm glad that the movement is taking shape. They've had santas chanting outside Tokyo department stores, anti-consumerist fairs on college campuses and postering campaigns in London. Good for adbusters.

They might just wake a few consumer zombies up to the uselessness of it all. Such waste! And for what? To sublimate our true desires for happiness by buying into the dominant consumer paradigm? Well, I don't buy that at all.

So I'm not buying anything today. Join me, won't you?

[soundtrack: The sound of a cash register not going "cha-ching."]

the night I danced with Andrew Sullivan

DC was a gray ghost town yesterday at 4. The sun set just as I popped in some local alternative. Reflective pop and reality collided while I sang along to the district sleeps alone tonight. The streets were nearly abandoned. Just a handful of cars scuttled through the discomfiting, silent landscape. "Everybody's escaped. We're the only ones left here." That was the emotional landscape. Fifty mile per hour winds gusted and the traffic lights were swinging like trapezes. It was a dramatic tableaux, offset by the princess parking that I got as I pulled up to the Columbia Heights party venue.

Got to Tasty's place a little early (as I didn't require 15 minutes of parking-hunter/seeker-time) and stirred up the mad delish soup while he was downstairs in kitchen number two.


The main floor housed a kitchen right out of Star Trek.
I felt like Kes, cookin' up a special dish for Captain Janeway.

Everyone soon arrived and I broke bread with Tasty and a delightful crowd.

Phil and Ted were there, the A-list power couple who take busloads of guys up for rafting, gay Disney and paintball. Phil had just come back from his appearance at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. (Kinda cool.) Tasty also invited Sarah, Derek and Doug, charming area marketing/advertising gliteratti. There was a token straight couple with Mom in tow. (The Mom was adorable and reminded me of Madeline, Henry's New Yawkese-accented mother.)

Snapshot of the socializing just before dinner: I was chatting with Phil and noticed the Mom's red wind had little dark lumps floating in it. I thought that she had some megalodon-sized dregs in it and I wanted to make sure she didn't choke on them. I asked her if she saw the mysterious chunks and she told me it was not a beverage malfunction at all -- she simply preferred her red wine a little chilled. "You should have been with me when my husband and I went to Italy. When I asked for ice for my wine there, the waiter refused. I pleaded and pleaded, but he wouldn't do it. Finally, he got so upset that he threw the ice at me!"

We sat down at the beautifully arranged table and got served.

The menu:
Starter:
- Carrot Soup

Main Course:
- Ginger Rum Glazed Ham
- Duck with Honey Glaze
- Cranberry Compote with Ginger and Molasses
- Ginger Pear Relish
- Scalloped Sweet Potatoes and Apples
- Garlicky Mashed Potatoes
- Braised Baby Bok Choy

Dessert:
-Brownies
-Key Lime Pie
-Pumpkin Bread"

During the meal, Cute Straight Mom spoke of maggots and menstruation. Michael, a cute writer from New York, spoke of sticking his fingers up stripper's orifices. (He also let loose this shocker about the beauty industry: "These people are selling a perfume that they said smells like complete shit!" Let's hope that the mainstream media doesn't hear about this. Mark, if you're reading this, you CANNOT mention this on the radio show.)

Doug schooled us on how to make an indoor waterslide in your fraternity and get away with it. I also enjoyed his stories about the Bright Lights, Big City glamour of the 80s.

I sat back, mellow and chillaxified, just high on my full belly, Buddha like, except for the hooch.

We might have conversed on topics of great import with philosphical and humanistic reprecussions beyond the immediate sphere of human understanding, but I was a little too hammered to care or recall all of that. So I'm just going to assume that we did. Maybe.

After dinner, we watched a firetruck, an ambulance and two police cars race down the street. I wonder if there was a gangsta shooting down the block? I mean, there could've been a disagreement over how many helpings somebody got of chitlins and gravy. These things can and do escalate sometimes.

Just look at the Vibe awards and that basketball game in the news last week. (Thank God that I passed on that pair of tickets to the Vibe awards! I mean, Dre-Dre was disappointed and all, but he knew that I had to get that paper done for my linguistics class. I think he'll let it slide.)

So we sat around, basically "keepin' it real" while we digested our food. The party thinned out and Tasty took Doug, Derek and me to 9:30 for a night of gay punk fun. The rock and roll wasn't really my thing, but I enjoyed watch Tasty get hasty with random hottie Geoff. And Tasty's lock-and-load performance showed that his skill at the club matched his skill in the kitchen. So I have to give my annual Thanksgiving tip of the hat to honorary player Tasty. (God, I love the word player. How funny!)

I got to stay and watch people snort cocaine (frightening and very Bright Lights, Big City). But it was worth it to visit with Derek. Derek has generous sized (almost Carter-like) grin. He graced me with it while we sobered up and enjoyed the eclectic mix of alt house and intelligent dance music. Very enjoyable.

When he left, I stole a dance with conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan. He has the best shoulders. They were about the size of the ham that Tasty served us. Massive. And he'd obviously just shaved them recently, because they were mostly smooth. Shout out to you, Andrew, for transforming my Thanksgiving night out into a celebrity dance party. I enjoyed dancing with you and you were the highlight of the evening... until Janet Reno showed up and made it into a real dance party!



All in all, it was just THE BEST THANKSGIVING EVER because of the company, the convo, the food, the music and the "just wear flannel" X-treme casual attitude. Seriously.

So... thanks and much love to Tasty for being such a great host.

red vs. blue

Still can't really find words. So I'm using other people's. I found an old soundbyte from the library of congress. And I set it to music because that's all I'm really in the mood for these days. It's a song about the pointlessness of war. It's also about being in a house divided, red vs. blue, and about how that feels. (That's mostly implied by the mood of the synth pads: brooding, listless and a little sour.)

Enjoy.

strange fruit

This has been a strange time for me. Emotionally. I'm not sure exactly what I'm feeling right now. Hard to say... It's a mix of feelings that make my heart feel dry and worn out. Like a scarecrow.

And maybe I'm seeing things through a mournful lens. I just can't seem to be my usual self.

I'm doing fine, going through the routines of my day...

I'm eating an apple or reading a book...

in a cheerfully indifferent state...

until it hits me again what has happened.

And then the bitter taste in my mouth returns; how dark, my piece of sky! Darkness surrounds and abounds and my thoughts tumble over me like the chill of a winter wind.

And I curse the South and the poor choices that they've made for us.

The hours and hours that I spent in Florida seem like the wingflaps of a butterfly caught in a hurricane. And the outcome of hurricanes, as Florida well knows, is complete devastation.

You'd think that they'd learned that lesson well enough.

But what am I kidding myself about? I'm not special; I'm just one of a million depressed liberals right now. And I'm only a liberal because I'm a hyper-sensitive, overly compassionate idiot who cares too much. I should just get over it. Just get out of my head and live a little.

I've already started rebelling in little ways. I played paintball and revelled in shooting people. I whooped and hollered and ran around like a ten-year-old. I felt blood lust after every single one of my "kills."

(Granted, there were only, like, 4 of them, but I savored them all....)

I also jay-walked twice one day. Oh, and I stole a pack of bubble gum from the CVS pharmacy, shot a homeless guy just to watch him die and even watched a movie without paying! OMG! I'm a bad-ass! I totally rock so hard that I may injure myself and others. I'm PG-13, these days, I tell ya.

Jim sent me an adorable teddy bear.



It was very sweet of him. Little Teddy McFuzzykins (TM) keeps me company at night with his soft, fuzzy self. When I shut myself down at night.

And then the dreams of blood inhabit my sleep.

And I let them tie me up into a knot.

And hang me from a tree.

And dangle, left to die.

And I just think about this strange tree that America has planted in its front yard. And I have to ask myself: What strange fruit will it bear during the next four years? Time will tell. And history will judge her harshly for what she's done.

drunk poster

I've never done this, but I'm gonna drunk-post tonight. (You know; you've heard of drunk-dialing. This is the net equivalent of that...) After 5 drinks, I'm just going to let it all out.

If I've officially become the next group of people to be forced to wear pink triangles on my shoulder, I'm going to let out one last scream before the storm troopers arrive.

Yeah, yeah... You know what I mean; it's the next logical step in the Culture War. I'm THE ENEMY and it makes since that I'm going to lose a few more of my rights before the Right is satisfied. Yes, I'm a living, breathing example of why you need a theocracy. After all, God hates fags. Everybody knows that. So why not just take a few of their special rights away? I mean, the fags don't need to own guns. (Like they're going to hunt!) And their very existence sealed the election, so let's just yank a few more rights from them. Like their right to form legally recognized unions, for example. I mean, it's not like they're real citizens or anything!

Tonight, the air of Washington, D.C. is cool and breezy. It puts me in the mind of a my time in Ireland when the nights would be crisp and cool. Not coincidentally, Tower (a.k.a. Will) and I just had a pair of a drink by that very same name.

Tower and I spent a great afternoon playing video games, sipping on screwdrivers and visiting with friendly folks at the Washington Post Inside Source social event to celebrate the new video game, Halo II.

It was a blast. I even came in #2 in a multi-player version of King of the Hill. (I thought it was going to be an homage to the cartoon; apparently it was just a reference to the Lord of the Flies!)

But you know what? Todd and I are busy planning a trip to Toronto (he wants to get a job there) so he can visit with his pal Michelle. So I have to go. Please excuse me.

Hugs and kisses,
J

election blues

I'm exhausted and depressed. I told everybody at work that I was emotionally hungover from watching the election results. This is going to be a difficult four years for me. Maybe I should join the Log Cabin Republicans and see what happens. Maybe I can jumpstart a movement to focus on the real evils in this country: mainly ignorance and prejudice. Those are the most important moral issues worth confronting, if you ask me.

It makes me very sad to think that half the people of this country simply can't understand that things are going terribly, horribly wrong with a country.

They don't realize that "Yee-haa!" is not a viable foreign policy.

They don't know that tens of thousands of lives have been lost on a whim. (And a changing whim at that. Who knows what reasons he'll concoct next week about why we went into Iraq. I've heard more answers for this than I can count.)

They can't wrap their minds around the concept of that church and state should simply not overlap. (Amen!)

They can't comprehend the terrible wrongs committed in the name of "freedom." They cannot see what the rest of the planet sees: a leader who constantly makes the wrong choices.

And if they can't understand these issues, then they certainly cannot understand why I'm so passionate about them. I've got a big job to do over the next four years while the president continues to bungle his!

morning on Monday

My head aches. My eyes feel like they're made of sandpaper. I feel like dehydrated astronaut ice cream on a bad day.

Sorting it all together, I vaguely remember what I did last night.

I recall climbing a palm tree, flirting with a girl in a cat costume, getting in a bar room brawl with some repugnicans, losing the rental van, keying some one else's car and dancing on top of a South Beach cabaret bar with Geordi LaForge. I also remember meeting a billion-heiress and chatting about that wonderful weekend in Monaco that we spent together. Wait. I have pictures of that. So it must be true. I also have a pic of being interviewed by a girl in a bunny suit for a pair of TV cameras. What's up with that? I need an automatic captioning function for my digital camera for times like this!

To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what happened last night, but it involved some or all of the above.

I'm going to go get some aspirin, two gallons of water and hope that only the happy memories emerge from the clouds in my head.

At least there's good news. I'm not the only volunteer getting things done in Florida. There are plenty more.