Sick day at home. You might think I would have accomplished something. All I accomplished was sleep. Which was a good thing since I didn’t accomplish much of it the night before…
All the same, look for a brand new and radically different Planet SOMA tomorrow. Don’t miss the premiere!
Seven realizations upon hitting the ripe old age of 34 1/2:
Sometimes I think I’m letting life pass me by. Maybe it’s just a phase or maybe it’s the weather, but it seems like I don’t DO much of anything lately.
I work a lot. A big down side of working at home is that my work is always here with me, staring me in the face each time I walk into the living room. I guess the positives outweigh the negatives, though. I get to watch Pinky and the Brain while I work, and I’ve desigated my whole workplace a “smoking lounge”.
And I’ve been on a really scary domestic kick. The kitchen is spotless (or as much so as it can be). I’ve been cooking a lot. And I may actually do laundry one of these days.
Sex, of course, is but a vague memory…something I recall having done several months ago, in a different time zone. Even the thought of looking for someone with whom to copulate seems pretty boring.
But I’ve been watching a lot of TV…that’s always good thing. Right?
I heard a rumor that today was Super Bowl Sunday. Never having been much of a baseball fan, I wouldn’t know for sure.
I just never “got” professional sports. I can tolerate a little college basketball (which is, of course, a bit of a religion in North Carolina). I can sit through a soccer match if forced. Pro skateboarding has an entertaining aesthetic side. But the excitement of spending three-plus hours watching a good 15-20 minutes of actual activity just eludes me.
I shan’t even start on the politics of team owners who blackmail cities in search of new stadiums while making it damned near impossibe for most citizens to actually attend games. And don’t get me started on the annual salaries which are larger than the economies of some third world countries.
But some people might find some of my obsessions a little odd too. Who knows…
Anyway, I’m off to cook another pot of collards now.
I got a full, eight-hour good night’s sleep last night. I was starting to forget how nice that is. It’s been a long week…
Somehow during everything else that was going on this week, I managed to finish a big chunk of pruning and retooling on Planet SOMA. About 35 pages are no longer here, and several have been moved or consolidated. Most people won’t notice the difference. Also, just about all pages now have the blue background and the convenient “you are here” navaigation links at the top.
Still in progress: all those pages from US Tour 1997, and Planet SOMA in the 70’s, which is way overdue for some work.
If you run into any broken links or missing graphics, please let me know. I’m planning to have everything in order by Planet SOMA’s “official” third anniversary in a month or so.
Quote from yer humble host, fifteen years ago today: “I guess one never knows how depressed one is until extremely drunk.”
Many gay activists seem to believe that “gay marriage” is the single most important issue facing gay people today. I’m not inclined to agree. While I do believe that same-sex couples in committed relationships should have the same benefits as opposite-sex couples, I’m convinced that a far more important issue is the recognition of the freedom NOT to couple.
Here’s a bold statement: being paired off with a “life partner” or a “soulmate” ot whatever is not the end-all and be-all for everyone on the planet. Coupling is not the right option for everyone at evry phase of life. It’s not even the right option for some people at ANY phase of life.
I’m not sure why this is such a radical notion for some people. Our whole society seems to be designed for cute little pigeon-holed Noah’s Ark pairs, all the way from junior high dances to tandem burial plots. The tax laws favor married heterosexuals (preferably with children). The gay press is increasingly obsessed either with finding a mate or with what to do with one once you succeed. Singles are made to feel uncomfortable when they dine alone, go to movies alone, or when they just want to sit a home alone.
If the entire”gay movement” is about our right to choose our own partners, shouldn’t it naturally follow that we also have a right not to choose anyone? Is this not a valid viewpoint?
I want to make it clear that I’m not against coupling. I know many happy couples, and the happiest seem to be those where each partner has his or her own life. I’m not even averse to the idea of coupling myself at some point. But this notion that “finding the right mate” will somehow be the end of all one’s problems is just plain stupid.
Suppose, say, that my problem is that I’m trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be — not an uncommon problem, I might add. How will having a husband help? If I want emotional support, I go to my friends. Frankly, bringing somene else into this situation would only make things worse.
Once again, I may indeed “couple” at some point. It will obviously not be because I need 24-hour companionship, because I’m usually more happy by myself. It will not be for the tax breaks, because there aren’t any. It will not be beacuse I need a date for the movies or dinner or parties; I’m a big boy and I can do these things by myself. It will not be for sex; that’s why there are sex clubs. It will not be to please Mom and Dad, or (God forbid) to have children.
And it will most definitely not be because “I’m supposed to” or because “that’s what people do”. It will be because I’ve met someone I enjoy being with…someone who doesn’t want to spend every waking moment with me…someone who understands that the first person plural needn’t supercede the first person singular.
I’m not so cynical as to think that most people are in relationships for the aforementioned suspect reasons. I just wish all the “we” people would stop trying to get ME into one for those reasons.
I’m spending my Sunday morning cooking collard greens.
I remember when Sunday mornings used to be about hangovers and trying to get rid of whatever trash I’d picked up on Saturday night. Today, however, I got up at 9, went out for some breakfast, stopped by the bank (where I had to stand in LINE behind annoyingly perky yupsters in jogging drag), and came home to the pot, the greens, the salt pork (why can’t you buy fatback in California?), and “In the Heat of the Night” re-runs on TNT.
Yer humble host is feeling pretty damned domesticated this week, although there’s no danger of wedded bliss or a house in the suburbs. The thought of being coupled and having to spend every waking moment with someone else in close proximity is no more appealing now than it ever was, although the house part doesn’t sound too bad. But not in the suburbs, thank you. Maybe in Minnesota or Detroit.
Maybe this is all just leftovers from my trip home. Who knows?
The roomie left for New Orleans this morning. Of course, since I could now have a week of really noisy sex without bothering him, there are two factors working against me. The first is that I have this lingering nasty chest cold, which makes me sound like I’m dying (I’m not…)
The second, of course, is that I won’t be able to get anyone interested. Seems lately that I can only find willing partners when I’m not at all in the mood. Or else they’re two or three time zones away. Doesn’t really matter, I guess, as I have an awful lot of work to finish up this weekend in preparation for my annual holiday trek to North Carolina.
So far the most conclusive results of the survey are that you want more of me and more nastiness and negativity along the lines of The Idiot Factor. No promises on the former, but you’re assured of the latter…
I hate this week.
I think I started a message to a friend with those words earlier tonight as a slightly lame excuse for my glacial email response time of late. I guess I could use it as an excuse for the slow pace of my site updates too, particularly with respect to Road Trip 98.
I’ll spare you all the details, lest this become one of those increasingly ubiquitous “why I’m not updating” or “why my life sucks” rants. Suffice to say that my life doesn’t suck, that I’m not updating because I’m really busy right now, and that it will all get better in a few days. I may even get around to answering some mail. Then it will be time to go home for Christmas and it’ll all start over again.
I am dragging. I hate this; I’m not really sick, just worn out and feeling pretty unwilling and unable to do much of anything. I’m not sure if it makes me feel better or worse that my roomie says he just got over the same thing and that it’s “going around”.
I’m always amused by the way California food editors think Southern people eat. In this week’s paper, I read something about how to prepare a “traditional Southern Thanksgiving meal”. One of the most important dishes was something called a “beet and kumquat salad”. Yeah, right…
A congealed salad with canned pears, Cool-whip, and marshmallows maybe, but a “beet and kumquat salad”??? Give me a fucking break.
Road Trip 98 now includes the stretches from Detroit to Milwaukee and Milwaukee through my arrival in Minneapolis.
