Camping, Vegan Style

One of my favourite phood blogs, bigmouth strikes again, has a fun vegan camping menu - including the amazing Texas Chocolate cake to the right - take a gander here.

mage from textualbulldog, used without

permission but many thanks

PIGLFF14: Where I'll Be

Today, I'm managing at the Ritz East for :

7:15 PM
Mamma Mia!
Ritz East 1









This jawn is so sold out, I'd recommend getting there early even with all-access.

forgot how much I love "Best Cock on the Block"

PIGLFF14: Where I'll Be

Today I'm managing at the Prince Music Theater (1412 Chestnut) for the following movies:


5:00 PM
XXY


7:00 PM
Clapham Junction


9:30 PM
Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Leave the Closet: A Collection of Suspenseful Gay Shorts

Rough and Tough

Save the World, Look Like Hell

A lot of people really turn it out when it comes to party clothes - If I'm going to a bar (a place to drink with friends, not a swank cocktail hour), I'm a jeans and t-shirt fag. Witty, off-colour tshirts, sure, but t-shirt nonetheless. Perhaps it's because I have to dress in corporate stooge-wear every day - This is a constant struggle, as I have to find the balance between "business procasual" and trying to breathe life into the doldrums of grey cubicle land with some choice-coloured Italian fabrics or a highly textured belt and shoe combination.

Some of my best fashion exercises are completely wasted because I am unable to take a decent self-portrait while at work. Why?

I'll tell you why.

Fucking flourescent lighting.

It's a simple enough concept - when electrons get really excited, the shift in orbital can release energy in the form of a light photon. Sometimes, this happens by making things hot (sort of like incandenscent bulbs or this guy) - In flourescent tubes, there's some poison (mercury), some inert gas (like a slowly savoured Santa Fe burrito), some phosphor (like old urine in the Wesbury bathroom), and the electrode shit. When you flip the switch, electrons do this massive Conga line from one end of the tube to the other, getting some buttplay from mercury as they rub up against it - Much like you or I would be excited, these atoms get all frisky, escalating through energy levels - Once the, uh, action, is over, a light photon shoots off. You'd think this would be the money shot we're looking for, but nay, these photons are far too sophisitcated for you to see - they're ultraviolet (not at all like that Milla Jovovich disaster).

So these happy light photons whack off (heh) the phosphor in the tube -which in turn changes energy and emits some fucking odious light.

And this is where I get mad. I would never go to a bar where a bartender does not know how to make a proper Manhattan and order said improperly-made Manhattan over and over again - But these lights - these horrible, horrible lights - Every day, millions of us are forced into cuboidal hellzones where these argon/mercy/phosphorus gangbang tubes loom overhead, not just emitting their foul light that washes out skin and makes things even more boring than they already are, but they put them in DROP CEILINGS.

The whole thing is a fucking affront to the very delicacy of my fucking nature.

I walk out of my condo into the morning sunlight, catch my reflection in a car window, and think - yes, you have successfuly integrated the blue understriping of your shirt with the white pebbling of this tie, and the heathering on those pants - It all works, and you are a better person for it.

Then, I get in to my office and look at myself in a mirror, and I feel like I've been hit by a truck - a very, very ugly truck. Everything looks green, my pebble-texture has become a sort of muted flat design reminscent of a row of staples to be loaded in a Swingline, my carefully tanned skin no longer golden but rather sallow, any tinge of red from the night before now suddenly front and center in my eyes.

I ask you, lightbulb manufacturers of the world, what the fuck is wrong with you?

No one wants to feel like you are making us look. So just stop it, ok?

Thanks.

Today's Honest Tea Quote

This one's for Jawnny:
"Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm." - Malayan Proverb

Overheard

13th and Spruce, Philadelphia, 07/13/2008 2145 EDT:

homosexual holding metal thermos and gesturing towards it, "normal water is H2O. This water is like H40O. It's like I'm drinking electron juice."

Acquisitions: Torrid

Plus-size women's clothing stores in the Neshaminy Mall can sometimes yield great results...

Today's Honest Tea quote

"A lot of people run a race to see who is the fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts." - Steve Prefontaine

Today's Honest Tea quote

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." - Pablo Picasso

I drink too much.

IT, You See

I miss my gtalk.

Last week I received sequential emails from the IT department at my (MEGADEATHDESTRUCTORUMBRELLAFRAUD)corporation, telling me I had illegal applications installed on my 'company-owned laptop' - By illegal, they meant unauthourised by them - No, no, I didn't download limewire to take advantage of the office T3 connection. No, I wasn't porn surfing and downloaded some "video chat program" that skimmed every keystroke and compromised data security.

In 2005, I downloaded Google Earth and Google Talk.

Seriously, that's it - google talk and google earth.

I think the ability to interact with one's fellow office-drone friends while stuck in a cube for what often comes out to more than 8 hours per day is a fucking inalienable right. There should be a goddamn amendment to spell it out.

I'm still pissed about this. My colleague spends all day on the phone gabbing with the steno pool in our Pittsburgh and NYC offices, finding "funny" things from The Office to forward to me even though he knows I don't watch the show, and writing comedy scripts.

Corporate America is so appalling.

Come to bed! And shut off that SENSORY_INPUT_DEVICE

Gaytrix - \ˈgā\-trix - n.; portmanteau conjunction of Gay and Matrix

Gay - if you're here, I probably don't need to define this, do I?
Matrix - referencing the 1999 Wachowski siblings' The Matrix, a science-fiction action film;
The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. [wiki]

Gaytrix - a present-day reality construct wherein members of a geographically diversified subculture [1, 2, 3] experience sensations of collective conciousness and group-determined emotional lability. Internal reports indicate a perception of 'significant' correlation between positive and negative impacts of life events as spread among members.

No relation to:





I think our shits done be broken. This has been a terribly long weekend - In part due to the actual extra day off, but really as a result of high levels of drama that began their Space Invaders-esque descent sometime around 1600 EDT, Thursday. I seriously don't think that shit stopped for three straight days, multiplying across barbecues and house parties and barstools and SMS and Twitter. It's not just standard queer drama here, either - In a functional Gaytrix/friendverse disaffected Queer A is insulated from the Bastard_World by backup Queers B, C, and however many others it takes through combinations of drinking, poignant jukebox selections, shameless mockery of people within earshot, co-kvetching about similar life shittisms, etc.

None of that is happening right now Bitches be tryin', they do, but there is a fundamental flaw in our logic processing abilities - Essentially, no one is happy. Somehow everything got very scary for errybahdy all at once... I'm beginning to think I might be the de facto 'stable' one - history will serve as our litmus test for that particular notion, eh? Let's dial down the drama here for a second; No one will be offing themselves anytime soon. But it's a scary thing when life can be kicking so many tough bitches in the shins.

All of it is making me wonder what progress I've recently made - I'm tryin' on this job front, honest (that's a whole 'nother post) This Independence Day Weekend, I attended a party thrown by a handsome young attorney - In addition to the holiday weekend, the party was also to celebrate the end of the attorney's cohabitation with his ex-boyfriend. I know this brand of party well - I had one last year, on Bastille Day. Hell, I even invited my ex-boyfriend. It was a great party, one that I thought would clear my head and add some levity to the fact that my life as I knew it had essentially ended. It worked - and if you had asked me on that day 20 questions that required me to predict what I would be doing this July, I doubt a single one of the guesses would be correct.

Rule #1 of traveling via handbasket: Never ask where you're going.
Rule #2 of traveling via handbasket: Know that if you are in the handbasket, you need to get out.

Where the fuck am I going?

In case you didn't hear yet, I gave notice on my apartment.

August 31st is my last day here.

I have ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN.

I mean, none.


I can't get another roommate here - it's too much to deal with. This space isn't good for two people who aren't a couple, and I will only ever see this as the place where I thought I was making a home as a couple, and thus it will never be "ok" with someone else here.

So that leaves me with a couple options:

I've gotten a go-ahead from my job for telecommuting if I live in Southern NJ or Northeastern PA - Northeastern PA involves living with my parents again.

I don't know if that's the right choice - it would certainly be cheaper, and I can bank some money and telecommute my job for a bit, which would mean lots of time in a single room with Tank and my work, staring me in the face constantly, 2 hours from my friends, my bars, my support network, and 2 minutes from my absolutely fucking insane family. But 2 hours from all of that means $575 more rent in my pocket each month.

There's also the possibility of telling my job I'm telecommuting from Northeastern PA, letting them do the setup there, and finding a room for rent here in the city. Something around 300-400/month, from which I would also telecommute, taking away that daily stress of being in my insane fucking office.

I think I'm seeing a pattern here - all of these things close to me are "totally insane." My entire life is built around craziness - I have a job that drives me insane, for an insane corporation. I have a family that drives me insane, and they're completely enmeshed in each other's lives.

I am actively seeking a new job - at a new company - no more internal promotions where I get screwed on my raise and end up making 62% as much as the person in my same position who is, quite frankly, 3% as effective as me.

But the search is not going well - I don't have a graduate degree, as I quit those programs... I am, to quote a friend, running SPINNING_WHEELS.EXE right now... I have a monster profile with potential locations as Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York, Southern NJ, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Puerto Rico, even Kansas City, MO - just about anywhere I think I might be able to live.

If I found another job in Philly, one that paid a bit more, I would keep this apartment. But it would need to be a job that pleased me - I can't work for corporate evil anymore. I remember when I had a passion for medicine and healthcare and psychopharmacology and neuroscience and receptor sites and mechanisms of action and LD50 for phenothiazines and writing huge papers on MDMA's attenuation of diazepam's attenuation of fear potentiation of startle and how everything seemed big and bold and bright and I would be helping people and making something different happen for others.

Now I work for a company that is Fortune 50 because of its shady business practices, and do everything I can not to try to figure out how to open the 29th floor windows of my office tower because hey, they let me expense my cell phone, right?

Fuck.

I think if I have to sit in that grey cubicle with the beige desk and the flat panel and the stupidly designed Microsoft Infopath forms that I have to keep filling out over and over again to submit problems that never get fixed because correcting errors would make us lose money I'm going to just scream.

So, right, that's why all of this change, I suppose...

I have absolutely no direction, except to which happy hour I need to be at to mitigate the sense of emptiness I get every day starting from the time I take my first 0.5mg of Xanax with GMO-free orange juice so my boss shouting in my ear on the morning Charlie's Angels-esque conference call doesn't completely make me spaz out.

I know life isn't supposed to be easy and fun all the time.
I know life requires management.
I know I need to put some wheels in motion...

But I'm fucking tired. I have been fighting my loss of self for over a year now, and I am exhausted.

I'm sure one of you wise motherfuckers out there in cyberland will read this rant about my quarter-life crisis and decide that I need to find some inner peace or something.

You can blow your inner peace out your ass. I'm running out of time, and running out of options, and something really has to give soon.

Now that I've firmly established myself as crazy...

So, if anyone knows of anyone in any of your deliciously cosmopolitan locales looking for an incredibly efficient, often brilliant, generally punctual, creative, meticulous, analytically-gifted young man who is more than willing to move across the country or across the globe to facilitate a big life reset, maybe pass me their info. Or pass them mine. Get us in contact.

K.

Thanks for reading.

also for birfday: Is there a Warholized-Golden Girls image that someone can have transferred to a shower curtain? That would be swell, thanks.

birthday list: http://ping.fm/VpDvz

Strike that, my honesTea bottle just told me: 'Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist, but the ability to start over.' - F. Scott Fitz.

sending Betty White to deal with the Ladder of Inference.