THe year was 1997. I was on a 6 month contract in Atlanta only going home every 2 or 3 weeks for a weekend and spending way too much time in the office. Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar was the big hit with those misspending their youth so I of course had long black hair down to my shoulders and a couple labret piercings as was warranted by the anti-conformist conformity I found myself reveling in. I enjoyed just driving around different parts of this new city when bored on the weekends and not spending ridiculous amounts of time at Tower Records trying to find something, anything to waste time and money on.
My usually under control diet of Perrier and yogurt had waste laid upon it by all the greasy, fatty, wonderfully awful but good foods available in the south that a daily per diem budget could acquire. I was provided with a company car I nicknamed “the tank” since it was a ‘96 Mercury Sable station wagon that I had taken over a median or two making left hand turns at night in the rain, unable to see them as I tried to shoot into a drive through. It was like going over a small speed bump since the ride of the car was so smooth.
I had tried picking up art supplies - canvases and acrylic paints, brushes and textures but unfortunately could find no muse in this landlocked city. I started listening to Ani DiFranco and reading Poppy Z. Brite and somehow the combination of the two in the heat and humidity that this southern city gave off fit well together. Living in Clip and Drawing Blood became an almost nightly ritual as I consumed the pages of homoerotic horror and could feel my isolation in the south expanding. I was only on a contract, no need to try and seek out friends or acquaintances because I’d be out of there once the job was done.
All of this fed into an angst over spending so much time in the area and my ever growing feeling of “Fuck The World.”
There were many immigrants who had settled in the area from West African nations. Hard working men who drove taxis, stocked shelves and bagged groceries in the giant suburban grocery stores. My sweet tooth had developed quite the taste for red velvet cake, something I had discovered living there and the Saturday of Easter weekend found me making my usual grocery run to stock up on all the bad food I’d eat at “home.”
Just after checking out, a very nice African man who had bagged my groceries on many trips decided to single me out of the line to ask, probably being that I looked so different than all the white bread suburban ladies doing there shopping to ask me what was up with all the colored eggs that everyone was buying.
Emboldened by my sense of disgust with the suburban hell I was living in, I told him the most grotesque thing I could think of, quietly and to the side: The Easter Bunny goes out on Easter morning and rapes all the chickens. They lay colored eggs that he collects and then hides for the children to find. That’s what these people are celebrating.
He glanced back in horror at all the white ladies with their children, the carts filled with eggs, coloring kits, jelly beans and baskets and then turned back to me and in a weak and stuttering voice asked, “really?!?” To which I replied, “yes, sick isn’t it!?!” He shook his head in disbelief and you could see he was feeling sick to his stomach.
I walked off with my bags to my car. My work there was done.
“nicelooking inked pup like to collar u know u more like yur pup u collar good enjpy boy of u in many ways take contol once getting to know u both crobar”
I think @drunkhulk is easier to understand!
I’ve come to some conclusions, some based on how lethargic I’ve been over the past couple years while in crunch mode at work and others for deeply personal reasons I just don’t feel like going into. I’ve been drifting on the fringes of circles of friends, going through the motions of going to events and generally not really being satisfied with what I’m doing. It has nothing to do with the people and ultimately lies somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind.
I realize this because of the kinds of frustrations that have started to bubble at the surface, like the wet side of a pancake on the griddle as it cooks…but now it’s at that stage where that side has dried out and become crusty and the griddle side is blackened and charred. That’s me, burnt out and in desperate need of changes of scenery. Moving was a start, changing jobs not much of an option right now since there are things I must see through but choices of activities, that’s what I can really do this year.
What’s that really mean? I’ve pretty much cut off most of the usual things I used to do except for the events. This year, it’s time to put those away for a while. I’m heading on a real vacation and tried to line it up with a couple things that now, I just don’t really care about. I won’t be at IML this year and will most likely be looking to skip town when LPN, Folsom East, my birthday and Pride roll around. Come fall, I won’t be trying to angle my way out to San Francisco for Folsom and in October, the Mr. Eagle contest is definitely not happening for me. Then when winter hibernation rolls around again and those flurries of thoughts fill my head contemplating MAL again, maybe I’ll consider it or perhaps I’ll skip it to make it a perfect year of missing events.
All these things will be there still in a year. I’m sure I’ll cross paths with many people I know outside of these things. But this year, this is for me. This is for me to do the things I wouldn’t normally do because I’ve left myself caught up in some other event already going on that conflicts with it, or conflicts with the timing of paying for a trip or other nonsense like that.
2012 isn’t _that_ long away, but it is a good enough amount of time away to break up the routine and do some different things.
So in December when moving, I opted to snag a wireless modem on Clear’s 4G internet service. Tested it for a couple days and was getting reasonable speed in the 3Mbps range both at the old place in NYC and in the new one in Jersey and figured it was about as fast as the cable connection I’d had for years in the east village so I could live with it.
Then, in January there were a couple of outages on the network. And then, I noticed it’s been getting slower and slower. So bad that sometimes while trying to watch something on Netflix it stutters, stops and has to take up to a minute to rebuffer and reload video. I didn’t notice this so much during February since I was mainly working on the Spike.com relaunch and would get all kinds of problems accessing the dev and QA sites plus JIRA was really unstable and half the time wouldn’t load for anyone. Now that the new site has launched and I’ve had a week of not triaging the issues I’ve been able to notice EVERYTHING runs painfully slow. At that point I decided to visit Clear’s website and found many tales of horror from users who are in an uproar over Clear purposely throttling down the network speeds when you’re doing the very things they claimed you could do with their service (video streaming, etc.)
Yet still, they are out in force recruiting as many new users as they possibly can. In looking into it, I came across a gem on the Wall St. Journal that they were running out of money and were not going to have enough cash to continue operations through the entirety of this year without an additional infusion of funding because they’re not profitable yet. By December they had averted the crisis by issuing $1.1B (yes, that’s BILLON) in public debt (incidentally it’s pretty much junk rated) to continue operations and they’ve been on a spree to acquire new customers now that they’re starting to hemorrhage existing customers who are fed up with their service caps as bait and switch/false advertising.
Now, I’ve come across this nugget of goodness: http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2011/03/wimax-throttling-lawsuit-clearwire-cant-deliver-the-goods.ars
For the past week and a half I’ve been struggling with the speed of the connection and when I run speed tests at home I see around 300k of throughput during the best of times. Trying to get through an episode of Stargate SG1 on Netflix has become a joke because the video stutters at least every few minutes and the video quality keeps downgrading to try and deal with the connection speed.
So Saturday night I was fed up, pissed about them throttling me on a service they claimed had no throttling and no usage caps and decided to go with the devil I know, Verizon FIOS that should be installed and working by Wednesday afternoon. One thing I do know is at least Verizon is usually up front with their policies and what they’re doing…Clear on the other hand are just a bunch of scumbag, lying fuckers who deserve to go under for their scam.
I’ve heard read some horror stories of long hold times and the CSR’s being scripted to do anything it takes to get you off the phone without letting you cancel your service, even going so far as to hang up on people. Luckily I opted for buying the modem outright since it wasn’t that expensive (<$100) and went on a month to month service agreement with them in case I decided it wasn’t workable and needed to upgrade to FIOS. Well, here I am, it’s not workable and I’m upgrading to FIOS. I wonder what stunts their CSRs are going to try and pull when I call on Wednesday to cancel my service and whether I’ll have to get Amex involved in cutting them off since they direct bill to my card. In the meantime, if that lawsuit turns into a class action suit while it’s nice to think I could get in on the action, considering how in debt Clear is and on the verge of going under anyway I’m doubtful anyone could get much of anything back out of them for this bullshit.
FUCK YOU CLEAR! FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE EAR! MOTHERFUCKING SCUMBAG SCAMARTISTS!!!
Ah, I think I feel a little better now.
Imagine you wake up in some strange neighborhood not remembering what happened the night before or where you went. A quick test of where you are, go to the nearest convenience store and check the dairy case. If the milk expires in a couple days, you’re in a NYC bodega. If it expired last week, you’re in a Jersey City corner store. Speaking hypothetically of course, I woke up at home and ventured out to get cigarettes, juice and milk. I came home with 2 out of 3 things but will need to go to the grocery store later.
I just figured out that if I spent 10% of the time I do plotting travel, making checklists for packing, etc. and funnel that into getting some exercise, I’d probably not have the now 35 inch waist I do. So that said, between needing about 10 days worth of work clothes, 2 days worth of going out clothes, and any other crap I decide to take to keep myself entertained in the hotel room after work…I really need to remember to pack the uh, “gym” stuff. Ratty shorts and t-shirts, sneakers and comfy socks. Considering I’m shuttling between 3 different hotels over the course of the trip, including the side trip up to Seattle I’m wondering what would be better: wash the gym stuff after use in the bathroom or just hang it to dry and then pack it in a sealed bag so it doesn’t infest the rest of my stuff in the bag such that it smells like a dirty locker room?
I also need to scope out this whole laundry service in hotels. I’m sure I could cut the amount of stuff I would normally cram into a suitcase in half which would lighten the load. The weather in LA for the next couple weeks isn’t looking too promising so I’m not sure if I can do the usual method of reduction by packing lighter weight clothing. Oh well.
And say, what kind of lunatic starts planning and packing for a trip a week in advance??? This one apparently.
Today was going to be the day that I finally start that great new exercise and nutrition plan. That plan that would give me the next 12 weeks to get in better shape and then evaluate the progress before heading out on vacation. A week at home to start getting in the routine before I head out on the road next week to LA for a couple weeks with a weekend in Seattle during that time. A couple weeks to get a jump start so I might shed a little size quickly at the beginning since that’s usually how it works before I hit the more steady changes in size.
And what happened? Excuses. The bench and stands to go with the dumbbells and mat still hasn’t arrived. Last night I couldn’t get to sleep until almost 7 in the morning and ended up being thrust out of bed around 12:30 when all the construction noises started upstairs again. There’s no milk to go with the breakfast cereal that I should have eaten hours ago. A couple other things I ordered last weekend still have not arrived. My tax forms from work still haven’t arrived so I can knock those out of the way before leaving since the feds owe me a good chunk of change this year. The cable box from the old place still needs to go back to the cable company in Manhattan. I have work that needs to be done since I’m a little behind from not being able to sleep on Thursday night and then sitting lethargically poking at code on Friday not being very productive.
It’s difficult to focus with so many distractions that I can easily cling to. The weather this winter has been a significant factor in why so many things are still not done. Today it’s finally a little better (no rain, no snow, little bit warmer and the ice is finally melting) but it would appear that we’re potentially in for more nasty treats this week.
All this has left Ryan spending the bulk of his time either sleeping during the day or camped out on the bench downstairs in the living room whiling away the hours on his computer. Neither of us seem to be in the mood to go anywhere and it takes an act of god to get him out of the house for even a few hours lately just to do some food shopping. I’m amazed he finally left the house a few days ago to make the few blocks walk to the post office to get his passport application in.
On the whole, I realize I’ve been feeling kinda crappy since about the end of September. There are things in my life right now that make me feel like I’m just going through the motions. Those things seem to be spilling out in all directions and affecting my mood all around. So many things feel like they just have impediments in front of them toward progress. The more I look at things now though, the more I realize that I keep placing myself under greater amounts of stress for things that aren’t going according to plan for circumstances that I can’t control. So I latch onto other things and just drain the life out of them.
Bottom line, I don’t think I’ve been much fun to be around the past few months and as stresses have built up over the past couple years I’ve been increasingly isolating myself socially to keep as much of it contained and not spilling out in all directions. I’m trying to identify what happened that made so many things I used to enjoy just stop being fun and I’m beginning to recognize that I’ve turned a couple things in my life into full time jobs while cutting off the outlets.
So the attitude adjustment begins. I’m going on VACATION at the end of April. It should not be a stressed out job trying to arrange it such that I can fit into old gear while I’m over there that’s just going to be heavy to carry over anyway. I am who I am and there are things I’d like to improve but they don’t need to be on an artificial deadline. It’s got to be about priorities, properly placed:
- Finish the new site launch so I can go on the vacation and really relax
- Spend quality time with the boyfriend so I don’t end up shutting him out
- Reconnect with my friends in activities that are social and fun, not a chore
- Keep a watchful eye on the budget but not a paranoid eye that drains all the life out of me
- Cheer up world, it may never happen
The bench and dumbbell stands will get here when they get here. If not by the time I leave for LA, all the hotels I’m staying in have fitness centers that I can use to fiddle with getting into a routine. There are 2 big cuts in what I currently eat that I can do already: sugary soft drinks and mass quantities of chocolate. If i’m still too tubby when I get across the pond for vacation, it’s not the end of the world, it just means I pack lighter and focus more on having fun and less on stressing about what I may not be able to get to because I don’t have proper attire for the event. It shouldn’t be work to go to a party, it should be fun. I just need to keep reminding myself of that and to do the little things that can get done now. Everything will eventually fall into place.
As I prepare to hit the road and head into less than familiar territory or places I haven’t been in a long time, I chat with people online to find out what’s worth the bother of checking out. Seeing that I’m coming from the NYC area, I get hit with lines like, “it’s not what you’re used to” or “it doesn’t even come close to anything NY has to offer..”
The people who are saying this I tend to wonder if they’ve ever been to New York and if so, when was the last time they came out here? I hear much of the glory days of the night clubs, bars, etc. and yet when I’ve gone to the few that are still open, or have seen the space that the old ones used to be in that are so legendary, I find myself wondering what the hell people saw in the space/place that made it so amazing? I know it was another time, things rarely live up to the hype and many people survive off nostalgia that colors their version of the reality. Looking through that time driven lens and peering back at the claim that “everybody who was anybody was there…” translates more into “everybody who was anybody is now nobody or dead.”
I really should start asking what motivates people to say what they do. Are they imagining that every bar or club in New York City is palatial in size with thousands of amazing people in attendance at all times? Are they unfamiliar with the grim realities of how small most places really are and how insufferable the majority of people who go them can be? Are they misjudging me based on where I live geographically rather than on how I exist as a person?
The real question though is, what the fuck have all you other insufferable northeastern people done when encountering these people that has destroyed their understanding of this area???
Perhaps I should learn how to phrase the questions I ask people online more appropriately?
So it’s barely February and I’m already beginning to fill up my schedule with plans for the year. On deck this month, for the last half of the month I’ll be in LA for 4 days, then Seattle for 2, then back to LA for 7 and then home. Seattle only happened since I’m headed out for work and will be gone for 2 weekends and with hotels in LA being full President’s Day weekend, I had to find another arrangement. Since it’s a 3 day weekend and I don’t expect many people to be around the office out there it makes sense to just get away for a couple days in the middle of the trip. I was going to pick San Francisco but flights to there were more expensive than Seattle and I haven’t been up to the Pacific Northwest in about 15 years. The last time I was there I still wasn’t legal to get into the bars so I figure I’ll give it a go. I had considered just flying home for a couple days and then back out but I really don’t want to spend that much time in transit to only be home for such a short amount of time.
March and most of April it looks like I’ll be home though with one project supposed to finish by the end of the month and another starting up that’s working with the peeps out in LA again, I’m not sure if I’ll end up on a plane heading out there again in that time frame. After that, I’m dragging Ryan at the end of April over to Iceland for a day, then Amsterdam for 3 days, then London for a few days and finally Manchester. That’s almost all ticketed and booked, just haven’t dealt with the train tickets to Manchester yet or the hotel. I figure I can deal with that in the next couple weeks before I head to LA. Plus there’s a chance we could end up doing a stop off in Birmingham on the way to Manchester. I might also drag him on a day trip down to Brighton during the time in London since I’ve been down there once before and it reminded me of a British version of Santa Cruz in a lot of ways.
Then we’re home in May and given this side trip up to Seattle, I don’t think we’re going to swing even a couple days in Chicago for Memorial Day weekend and IML this year when I factor in that we’ll be getting Six Flags season passes and will more than likely be crashing the gay campground in Pennsylvania at least a couple times.
June, ugh, I hate that month. I turn a year older and it collides with Pride weekend this year. We’re probably going to have the backyard set up by then and will do some grilling. 4th of July if they do fireworks over the Hudson river again we might have a decent view of them from here, or at least with a walk down to the cliff. Then it’s doldrums of summer until Labor Day. Then, Fall should be semi-interesting but I need to figure out a short trip or two for that time of year. Winter, I think I’m going to plan some sort of getaway to finally see the Northern Lights and maybe hit Berlin. It’s been ages since I went.
Somewhere in all this, I need to plan in a trip or two to Philly to visit the friends down there, a trip to crash Baltimore and expend some vacation time and perhaps a jaunt over to Chicago but not for IML. Also on my list of places to go again are Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and then at some point Copenhagen and if I’m lucky, Greenland. I need a teleporter, sitting on planes for so much time is really annoying!
I’m working out the details of a vacation later this Spring with Ryan. The current plan is to hit Amsterdam for Queen’s Day with a couple other friends, London and Manchester. We’re going to opt out of flying from Amsterdam to London and instead plan on taking the channel tunnel but that leaves me in a bit of a pickle: 1 more city along the way to explore between Amsterdam and London. I’ve been to Paris twice and love the place, Ryan has never been. While I’ve technically been to Brussels before, the Thalys train stopping at the station and then continuing on to Paris doesn’t really count. Then there’s also Antwerp that I know virtually nothing about but given some of the party listings I’ve seen for the place in the past, it sounds like it has potential to be fun. We won’t have time to hit all 3 cities and Ryan is already groaning about hitting 4 places in about 12 days. So, any suggestions from the follow list? Antwerp, Brussels, Paris or some other suggestion that leaves us within decent distance of Brussels or Paris to catch the Eurostar?