tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76850660644498109952023-11-15T12:37:15.501-05:00This Car Is My PantsBecause "Guns and Bacon" was taken...Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-79731050485083323902010-10-14T01:38:00.001-04:002010-10-14T01:38:59.201-04:00This car isn't my pants.I've not done much with this blog, but I'm done with it.<br /><br />Goodnight sweet prince and all that.Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886840566840776811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-1791764238182908792010-08-15T21:26:00.003-04:002010-08-15T21:36:41.755-04:00Angels With Monster Feet<span style="font-weight:bold;">Angels With Monster Feet, Monsters With Angel Wings</span><br /><br />The day had gone and it was night.<br />The little girl, she hid from sight,<br />Not in her closet or under her bed,<br />She found a place inside her head.<br />Where she lived was not her home. <br />Where she lived she was alone:<br />There were no walls, there was no roof.<br />The Truth was a Lie, a Lie was the Truth.<br />Look up, look in,<br />Don't be afraid,<br />No absolutes, <br />The world had grayed:<br />Angels with Monster feet,<br />Monsters with Angel wings,<br />Nothing is ever quite so bad<br />Or as scary as it seems.<br /><br />The poem is from Marvel's <span style="font-style:italic;">Secret Warriors</span> #4 written by Jonathan Hickman (plot by he and Brian Michael Bendis). It will eventually become a tapestry or blanket or similar gift for Christian (Steve's idea).Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-5898474492069889082010-08-14T21:45:00.003-04:002010-08-15T02:04:57.077-04:00Pack It Out: The Idaho StoryWe went to Idaho this weekend to see our adorable son Christian and his lovely adoptive family, and to get some serious camping in. Steve and I both love to camp, and we don't do it nearly enough. It's easy to let the daily routine take over and then all of a sudden you've camped one weekend in the last year. And when you're living in Washington, which is easily one of the most beautiful states in the union, this may as well be a capital offense.*<br /><br />By what feels like freak chance and poor planning, we ended up doing no camping whatsoever. The first night, after driving all day (11+ hours) we discovered that all the campsites I'd scoped out the night before on the internets were completely full. We drove an extra sixty miles between the godforsaken tourist town of Ketchum and the campgrounds, checking hotel/motel prices ($134 at the lowest with a AAA discount) and eating a late dinner. We ended up driving out to the middle of fucking nowhere past the campgrounds and just parking off the side of the road for the night. It was late, we were totally exhausted, and we were both driven to tears at different points from the stress of having nowhere to stay legally. We slept in the car. You'll notice this as a trend.<br /><br />The next day we got up, hung out at a coffeeshop for most of the morning, and in the end (after counting our remaining camping fund money and some debate) decided to get the hell out that tourist trap as soon as possible so that we'd have money left for...well, anything. We had found out last weeked that the camping around Mount Rainier was plentiful and cheap, so we figured we'd try that. It would put us closer to home so that Steve could make D&D on Sunday and so that we could enjoy taking our time on the way back. We conferred with the Hubers and met at Frenchman's Bend Hot Springs, which was awesome. <br /><br />Having now met all of the Hubers, I have to say I wish we lived closer together because I love hanging out with them. I thought it would be more awkward to try to interact with their older kids, but Christian makes a great icebreaker. He's adorable. He makes funny noises, has learned to bite people, and crawls at record-breaking speed. He looks a lot like baby pictures of me. Steve and I really enjoyed our quality time with everybody. <br /><br />We left Hellhole Ketchum(tm) about an hour and a half before sundown -- exactly the time of day when the sun shines directly in your eyes when you're driving west. (We were. It went down over the horizon when we got gas, just in time for my turn to drive.) We made it about halfway across the great state of Oregon before we decided to turn in for the night. We stopped at a rest stop under the darkest part we could find and slept in the car. <br /><br />That brings us to today, and the final nail in our camping coffin. We woke up and started out before seven o'clock and reached the Mount Rainier area at about two. Which is when we found out that every single campground that's accessible by car was completely full up. We're not kitted out at the moment for hiking campsites, and it seems insane to keep driving around at random looking for camping spots. We came home, a day early and without any actual camping having taken place. The driving was delightful. I love long car rides and road trips and driving. I'm getting better at listening to Steve's car and anticipating its needs, even if I still mess it up regularly. We got home, deposited our stuff, took a nap, bought a fan, watched <span style="font-style:italic;">Fearless,</span> and have generally had a pretty good night despite everything. And there's still enough money left to get both our driver's licenses renewed ($45 each in the great state of Washington) and buy me a new tattoo.<br /><br />*"Capital" in this sense comes from the Latin word "capita," which means "head" (also seen in "per capita"). It's literally about execution by beheading.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-74653873546990337272010-08-01T00:48:00.002-04:002010-08-01T01:08:32.142-04:00District 9I know it's been out of theaters for around a year now, but I just saw <span style="font-style:italic;">District 9</span> for the first time. I wanted to see it in the theater, but missed it. While I occasionally remembered I wanted to see it, only now have I gotten around to actually acquiring it. (Yay, Seattle Public Library!)<br /><br />So, let me tell you: <a href="http://blairhippo.livejournal.com/63214.html">everything Pete said about it a year ago is true.</a> It is amazing. I forgot for most of the movie that the alien star Christopher was a cgi effect. I hate and love Wikas because he is so well characterized and acted, and his character is pitiable and contemptible and courageous like a cornered tiger. The world is believable, the storytelling beautiful, and the aliens feel like a real people stuck in an impossible situation. While the abundant humor at the beginning is racist (alienist?) and quirky, most of the movie is very, very humorless. And it pulls it off without becoming too heavy...mostly. The action <span style="font-style:italic;">rocks,</span> but it's not why I'll probably buy this movie. I love Christopher, and his son. He, not Wikas, portrays the noble, brave warrior-hero. Wikas wouldn't get a paragraph in a history book if it weren't for Christopher. To draw a jarring analogy, Wikas is like Eddie Riggs from <span style="font-style:italic;">Brutal Legend</span>: the roadie, who moves things in the background so that the star can do what he has to. Wikas is just a bit more...well, generally useless, than Eddie. <br /><br />I also really like the last tiny shot of the movie that -- not to spoil it for anyone else who hasn't seen it yet -- alludes to what happened to Wikas after the end of the movie. I think that shot is the most likely, considering the way the aliens were reacting to him at the very end, which was new and different and made perfect sense considering the state of the man at that point. While any of the other possibilities could be it too, primarily the "conspiracy theory" one, I think his wife is right. <br /><br />I love this one. It's excellent, amazing, and looks and feels better by an order of magnitude than the latest big-budget SF I've seen. Fuck Hollywood. :)Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-42722448917086969842010-07-29T02:23:00.004-04:002010-07-29T03:02:20.138-04:00Zoe and the BoogiemanYou know already that I've been reading a lot about stripping. Well, let me tell you about <span style="font-style:italic;">Bare</span> and my mindspace these days. <br /><br />I finished <span style="font-style:italic;">Bare</span> yesterday. It is not a yay-happy stripping book. It doesn't paint the whole industry as evil, it doesn't preach to you, it doesn't even draw many conclusions. It's a biography, a combination of the author's autobiography and the stories of women she knew as a stripper. It's about success in the industry and what the might really mean, about what you would do for money, about an insane situation twisting your thoughts and ideas of yourself, about sketchy boundaries and hard limits and seduction into a system that you think you can master without letting it master you. I am not very good at portraying in words the things I feel from books, the soup of thought-emotions roiling in my mind. There comes a time in stripping when you have to take a hard look at what you're doing and determine who's using whom, and whether you're okay with that. Are you using stripping to get something you want or is the system consuming you, masticating your soul and preparing to spit out an aging whore who bears no resemblance to the young woman who first grabbed that pole?<br /><br />Elisabeth Eaves, the author, tells the story of one of her friends, whose name is Zoe. Zoe started stripping at bachelor parties when she was about 20 and later added a few shifts a week at the Lusty Lady, a local Seattle peep show that closed down a couple of months ago. She started because she loved to travel and didn't want to be tied down to a boss and a paycheck at a regular 9-5, and wanted the ability to move around whenever she chose. It should surprise no one that I felt with her on all of these points. As of the pubication of the book, ten years on, Zoe was still doing it, still mainly parties. Many of her boundaries had erode over time: she did toy shows regularly even though they used to bother her and sometimes still did, and she was actively considering an offer from one of her regulars to have sex with him for money. She didn't know how to handle new people when she wasn't acting in her stripper persona; she became mousy where she normally was bold. She had no plans to get out of stripping; she'd decided to wring every last dime she could out of it, for however long it made her money. It was the axis around which her life turned, the lifestyle that made the rest of her lifestyle possible. She couldn't get out and didn't see why she should want to. She still advocated that young, smart women get into it.<br /><br />Everything in the above paragraph makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me ill inside to think that I could end up like that, oblivious to everything that is eating me alive. I tell myself that I couldn't do that, that it's not possible anymore, that I'm too habitually suspicious of myself, of my ability to acquire noxious bullshit like this, to let it stick around so long. I have Steve, who is just as good if not better at sniffing out bullshit and who is strongly invested in my continued sanity and well-being. We wouldn't let it happen. We wouldn't let it happen. Not to me.<br /><br />I have told myself too many huge, pretty lies over the years to believe myself anymore. I have no idea where the truth lies or if it exists. I know, in my intellectual brain, that it cannot exist and that we're all operating without a map -- off the edge of any map we can try to paste together from mutually agreed-upon nonsense -- but it doesn't help when I feel soulsick seeing myself dancing spaced-out for customers, grinding without looking at them, checked out. Not there. No one home. Dead.<br /><br />I tell myself I wouldn't let myself get that far, that I'd check myself and run for the door long before that. But fears -- well, hell, if fear were always rational the stock market would be a perfect system and we wouldn't be at war in Iraq right now. I've survived getting knocked up without ending up in the horror story I used to weave for myself about how badly that could go, and now I guess my brain wants to fill the gap with a new boogieman. The same boogieman: identity-death.<br /><br />And that surprises me. It shouldn't but it does nonetheless. I already feel as my identity is a small, fragile, cherished, and loathed thing, something I can't live with and can't live without. It's intriguing that something so absurd and about which I feel so ambivalently is the leading edge of my worst-case-scenario fear. But then fears do need an emotional charge to leech energy off of. Time, experience, and contrasting experiences will take the edge off the fear. When I eventually do amateur nights at Deja Vu, when I start dancing at Extasy*, when I start doing capoeira here and belly-dancing, when I learn to connect to the goddess and explode life-energy like a human prism -- all of these things will dull the edge of that baseless fear. I know what I'm getting into it for, and I know when to get out. I'll take the money (and the sexuality/sensuality/spirituality training) and <span style="font-style:italic;">run.</span><br /><br />*The only club in the area that doesn't do lap dances. Ask me about the weird enforcement of anti-prostitution laws that makes this the case. It's worth the two-and-a-half-hour roundtrip commute each day not to have to stop creepy men from pawing at me and trying to pay me to grind on them.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-31573045262084151872010-07-21T17:45:00.003-04:002010-07-21T17:51:30.522-04:00Getting Hotter!My clothes are getting looser! I'm losing weight! IT'S WORKING! Bwahahahahahhaaaa...<br /><br />I'm going to do some Pilates today. It's time to make sure I gain some muscle tone. :)Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-34870548811271184012010-07-21T16:52:00.000-04:002010-07-21T17:41:27.141-04:00A Slut's Reading CornerPart of my stripper training has been devouring everything I can find to read on the subject, mainly first-hand accounts. They have been uniformly interesting and largely well-written. The women who write about their stripping experiences are universally fascinating, self-aware, introspective people, and reading their books is a joy. Here are some recommendations if you want to get an idea of what this business is like.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power</span> by Elisabeth Eaves. I'm still in the middle of this one, but I already know that it belongs on the list. The author has a wonderful grasp of the absurd play of social mores regarding female sexuality, starting from when she was about eleven and continuing through her time stripping. She also starts her career in Seattle, which is of some practical help to me personally.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper</span> by Diablo Cody. This lady has an incredibly distictive writing style, a mix of indie-rocker arrogance and poignant sarcasm. She's nerdy, intellectualist, and bitingly humorous. Her story runs through strip clubs, a peep show, and a long-term supportive relationship. It's well worth reading.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The S Factor: Strip Workouts for Every Woman</span> by Sheila Kelley (Dad, if you're reading this, you'll be interested to know that this author is an actress married to the man who played Toby on <span style="font-style:italic;">The West Wing</span>.) This workout book has, to start with, some of the best stretches I've ever seen. They and the workouts themselves focus on moving your body in different ways, which leaves me feeling rejuvenated, light on my feet, and invincible. There's even a section on giving a good lap dance. :)<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale</span> by Jenna Jameson. Jenna started as a stripper, then moved to nude modeling and then porn. The book is huge, and I've only read the first third -- the stripper years. It's fascinating. There are tips on how to maximize your earnings and a two-page spread in comic form of common stripper ailments and long-term physical problems.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Ethical Slut</span> by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt. This isn't directly about stripping, but it is about sexuality and it's been indispensible to me for untangling my sexual desires and social bullshit and all the weird, absurd hypocrisy and mores involved therein. It is, essentially, a handbook for owning yourself so that you don't need to own anyone else and can go play with as many lovers as you'd like.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-40030408358773854632010-07-13T14:04:00.004-04:002010-07-13T14:46:20.982-04:00This Pole Is My PantsI'm becoming a stripper.<br /><br />No joke. I've been telling people as I see/talk to them and I figured that since I've told my mom I'm safe to post it now. I'm becoming a stripper. By Halloween. Right now I'm in training. I'm doing a lot of working out, reading up on the business and working through the bullshit I have in the way of letting my sexuality flow openly and freely. It's tough work, but it's already paying off. I'm doing a combination of running most days, Pilates, and a strip workout from "The S Factor" by Sheila Kelley. I'm excited and trepidacious* (which only means I'm heading in the right direction); I feel like I'm rolling down a hill, gaining momentum, like everything is inevitable. It's satisfying and scary and majestic. And I'm going to be in the middle of it. I know I can earn at least a thousand dollars a night with practice and dedication, probably after a month or so. (That's what the training is for.) I'm going to develop my sexuality and get comfortable with my body completely while relearning how to relate to people and saving money for a house in New Orleans and an architecture degree from Tulane. <br /><br /><br />*May or may not be a word.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-17954770043668111272009-07-07T15:39:00.005-04:002009-07-07T17:04:06.299-04:00Adopting to MormonsI mentioned in passing a couple of posts ago that I'm pregnant. Let's get a little more specific about that. <br /><br />I'm 26 weeks preggers at this point and the pregnancy itself has been free of nearly everything that usually makes pregnant women miserable: no morning sickness, no weird cravings (although eggs are not my friends at the moment), no swelling or just about anything else. I just have a baby in me. (I do have some uterine fibroids that may become a problem at some point, but they've been behaving so far.) Pregnancy is fucking weird and I'll be glad when I can go a whole four hours without needing to pee, but that's really not what I logged on to talk about today.<br /><br />Instead I logged on for Mormonism.<br /><br />See, Steve and I are adopting out our unborn son, and the family we chose happens to be Mormon. We've met them, we really like them, they're fantastic people. We wouldn't be giving them our kid if we didn't think they were the best family possible for him. But damn, this has given rise to a lot of discussion in the house. Our roommate Varina used to be Mormon; now she's trying to decide where to get her "Daughter of Perdition" tattoo and all but filling out paperwork to officially leave the church. She's been trying to explain the theological and social aspects of Mormonism that we'll want to know about for our kid. She thinks we're a little mad for adopting to Mormons, but not nearly so much as a friend of hers who actually <i>was</i> adopted by Mormons and made a long, wrenching post about how much the religion fucked her up, no matter how much she loves her family. It's been around my brainpan a bit of late. Oh, and the local Mormon church is right across the street, anytime you look out the kitchen window or leave the house, <i>there it is.</i> (It's actually pretty scenic; a lot of our weather comes over the church and the clouds look very cool against its spire. But it is weird to have around.)<br /><br />I guess what's bothering me is that I don't know why this discussion is happening. I know I want this family to raise my child. Maybe this is just part of that looking into the unknown of the future that's inherent in adoption. I have no idea. I don't want my son to get fucked up by his religion, but I also know that if he does he will still be okay. The couple in question are sane, understanding, emotionally competent people and I believe they'll help him deal with the religion in a way that makes sense for him. And if the religion itself becomes a problem, then hell, his birthparents are heathens and we can help him figure his shit out. The support structure is good. He'll have all the people around the he needs. I mean, if Steve and I for some reason raised him we'd teach him to be a nihilist in a beautiful world, and possibly a Thelemite. Thelema is one of the best religions out there for getting your head on straight and looking at the world, but in all honesty 90% of all religion is identical. That's why I'm not a Thelemite on my own or a member of any other religious institution. <br /><br />I know my kid's going to be okay because while that identical 90% can be damaging and the remaining 10% is necessarily crazy-looking, religion is a system that you can grow with and that can grow with you if you deal with it as something that <i>should</i> grow. A stagnant system is useless to everyone inside and outside of it. But if you look at your faith as an organic process, as something that ought to change over time as you explore it, then I think it can be positive. I didn't. My religion (Episcopalian) was just this thing I did on occasion without much interest, so when my disinterested fakery became a serious emotional sinkhole that kept me from respecting myself as a person, I just left the church. Leaving is easier when you don't believe. I spent awhile half-heartedly trying to find a replacement before I admitted I didn't need or want one, that they all felt just as fake as the institution I'd left, and that I wanted to go it alone. My worldview has grown up since then as a fairly cohesive universe that does everything I need it to and nothing else. I don't understand doctrinal belief; why do you need all these precepts that you didn't invent, that somebody else came up for you, that often get in your way or become points of strife between your desires and your prepackaged morals? That seems like a lot of unnecessary hassle just to get a lens through which to understand the world. (I know a lot of the sociological reasons people join religions. They make sense, in a way. But it's such a bizarre, narrow, fear-based way of dealing with a welcoming, expansive, free reality.)<br /><br />Perhaps what I'm getting at is that this whole discussion about whether it's a good idea to send a kid into Mormonism isn't part of my reality anymore. There is no possible manner in which this child's life could not turn out in the best way possible. Bickering over details like where one religion falls on a scale of 1 to Crazyballs is moot -- beyond moot, it's meaningless. They are all Crazyballs and they are all perfectly reasonable and they are all useful only to the degree you use them instead of vice versa. It's a meaningless discussion. The universe wants me to give this baby to this couple, and the universe knows what it's doing. Everything else is idle chatter.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-56427701383159604302009-07-01T02:10:00.004-04:002009-07-02T01:00:38.144-04:00Melville and Ellis on breaking out of the worldThere's a book you should read that you very well may hate. A lot of people who read it do, although I'm not one of them. It's called <i>Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment</i>, the second in Jed McKenna's three-book series about enlightenment and other things that are bad for your sanity.<br /><br /><i>Incorrect</i> has a lot to do with <i>Moby-Dick</i>, and that's the level on which I bring it up. You see, Jed came up with a way of reading that book so it actually made perfect goddamn sense, which is more than any Melville scholar has managed. It's actually been well established in academia that <i>Moby-Dick</i> is essentially ineffable. But Jed proved otherwise by establishing a whole new archetype in the character of Ahab. He calls it the Break-Out Archetype: someone bent on breaking reality, on burning it to ground to see what's left because they can't do otherwise. <br /><br />I'm posting because I've just realized that Doktor Sleepless, the title character in a comics series by Warren Ellis, also fits the definition of the Break-Out Archetype. He is driven, amoral, monomaniacal, and unswerving. He doesn't reflect on the sacrifices he makes constantly because he is certain of his path.* There is no Plan B. He is alone and self-sovreign. Emotional attachments are meaningless, including the Doktor's first love and Ahab's toddler son.<br /><br />One thing and one thing only matters: the destruction of that which is between him and his ultimate goal. For Ahab, that was the white whale; for the Doktor, it's the total destruction of Heavenside (and assumedly the world afterward). He's hell-bent in more ways than one, yet he embraces his madness as a new and more coherent form of sanity. <br /><br />Ahab and Doktor Sleepless are lies. Their personas are pure invention, devised purely to manipulate everyone they know into helping them succeed. Ahab manages to fake it as a sane, sea-worthy Nantucket whale-captain for weeks before the <i>Pequod</i> is safely out to sea and he lets Crazy Ahab out of the box -- and even then, he convinces his men to support his insane chase for Moby-Dick. Likewise, on the first page of the first issue of <i>Doktor Sleepless</i>, our title character deliberately takes on the persona of a cartoon mad scientist so that he can get the attention he needs without anyone taking him too seriously. They are finely crafted masks that the characters wear with specific intent and not a drop of self-deceit. Both, however, reflect on an actual transformation and an actual loss of some tangible part of the characters' earlier persons. Ahab lost his leg in Moby-Dick's maw and spent weeks raving and sick aboard the <i>Pequod</i> till he emerged permanently changed, no longer the same man, yet pretending he was. And the Doktor -- hell, where to begin? When he saw his parents killed he stopped sleeping (a first transformation, possibly from being Oblivious to the Mass of Men stage**) and then over a decade later he had a "breakdown" when he unlocked <i>The Darkening Sky</i>, the cryptic book his parents had been reading from/using when they died (a second transformation). It was only after the breakdown that he was able to become Doktor Sleepless, the mad scientist bent on world devastation, because that transformatino was the one that made him the break-out archetype.<br /><br />Like their persons, the good Doktor's and Ahab's goals wear masks. Doktor Sleepless' agenda is not the end of the world. It's the end of himself. Just as Ahab kills off a shipful of whalemen to succeed in destroying everything he is, so does Doktor Sleepless drive Heavenside to utter, stark-raving chaos designed to eat itself just as the Doktor devours his own self. These may sound like acts of callous or vindictive sadism unrelated to the true goal at hand, but they're not. The true goal -- self-immolation -- cannot be accomplished without this outside destruction. It is certainly callous, but that's it. It's wholly necessary to the characters' paths.<br /><br />Interestingly, Doktor Sleepless displays one point of the archetype that Ahab doesn't. The Doktor is filled with "Elation. Lunatic joy. Stark, raving happiness. Transcendental exultation." He's got that mad scientist maniacal laughter in droves. Ahab, on the other hand, just doesn't, which is interesting in and of itself. To quote Jed twice in one paragraph, "all the uncertainty, fear, doubt, mediocrity, pettiness, striving, ambiguity and myriad other chains that bind us and weigh us down have been sliced away. His fate is known, his success certain. He is hurtling at thrilling velocity into perfect freedom. He knows it, and he would be unspeakably happy about it." Setting the world on fire brings him a manic, unceasing, defiant, impregnable job satisfaction. That is what the break-out archetype is all about.<br /><br /><br />*Jed explains this well: "It's not that he's unaware of the cost, but that he knows it to be irrelevant; a non-issue."<br /><br />**This references another of Jed's concepts that's outlined very well in <i>Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment</i> (a book I usually just call "Incorrect").Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-88203588995106960102009-06-17T19:36:00.002-04:002009-06-17T19:50:02.886-04:00Free Boat!WE HAVE A BOAT! It's a little 12' Snark sailboat, very basic and beginner -- but hell, I'm a beginner at small boats anyway, so that's fine. Her hull is styrofoam with a hard plastic outer layer, totally unsinkable. The wooden pieces (rudder and seat mainly) need to be replaced soon, but they're still functional. The sail has a rip too, but the boat was <i>free</I> after all. You take on a bit of repair work for a free boat. She'll seat two (possibly more, the previous owner said she held him and three kids), and I'll have to see about getting some marine-quality paint for her hull. You don't even want to know the kind of orange her outside is now. <br /><br />We're going to take her out on the nearby lake this weekend. Like whoa and holy God in sprinkles and orange juice. I cannot fucking wait. I HAVE A BOAT! A boat, motherfucker, a boat, motherfucker!Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-30338079577401507522009-05-29T12:48:00.002-04:002009-05-30T01:55:38.069-04:00Target Acquired: SeattleWe're in Seattle! After all the moving, the three days of straight driving with all our worldly possessions in the car, the stress, the everything, <i>we are living in the beautiful house we've wanted all this time, perfectly situated in a gorgeous city, ready to take on our lives like rabid wolverines, and <b>the hot tub works!</b></i><br /><br />I cannot properly explain how right all this is. The place needs some cleaning -- particularly the grill, which has probably never been cleaned in its life. We have some very nice beef tenderloins (sold to me off the back of a truck by a man at a gas station in Spokane) that desperately need to be barbecued. It's a beautiful thing.<br /><br />There are all sorts of strange things that were left here, like a pool table in the garage and a fully stocked spice rack and <i>two</i> big-screen TVs...and a live fish in an aquarium over the fireplace. The fish is alive, somehow, despite this house being empty for months and no one feeding it. Perhaps it's a zombie fish.<br /><br />Today we're unpacking and getting oriented. I've got some calls to make to set up doctor's appointments and things. I'm on Medicaid in Pennsylvania, so I need to figure out how to get on it in Washington without stepping on any legal toes. You see, I am also pregnant. We found out about six weeks ago but didn't want to post it here until we'd made sure to tell everyone who ought to hear it in person. It's a boy, due in October, and we're going to adopt it out. So one of the calls I have to make is to the lady running the Seattle branch of one of the adoption agencies we're thinking of using. <br /><br />Tonight we took advantage of the enormous stack of free movie tickets Cassidy gets as an assistant kitchen manager at the local upscale yuppie theater (called Cinebarre) on the theater's opening day. We saw <i>Star Trek</I>, which Steve and I had seen already but liked. It requires even more suspension of disbelief than most Star Trek, but the acting and writing are way above par. Everyone nailed their roles, especially Bones. Spock and Kirk were impressive too, but dammit, Jim, Bones was <i>perfect.</i> And they worked in a whole slew of classic lines, like "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!" and "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" I'll probably acquire it when it comes out on DVD, and I can't wait to see where they go with this new alternate Trek.<br /><br />And now I've got to get to work. I've got a bunch of jobs to apply to and all that other stuff I mentioned already. Good night, guys.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-87336489798196848972009-05-14T15:48:00.004-04:002009-05-14T16:07:52.691-04:00Go West, Young Man!It's been awhile. I know. You feel neglected, uncared-for, desperate for attention and cuddles. It's okay. I'm going to try to post more often.<br /><br />At present, Steve and I are in Pennsylvania visiting our various family and friends. This is lovely, although we're ready for the next thing. The next thing is Seattle.<br /><br />My friend Cassidy is moving to Seattle for his work, and he found <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4-orZiNWp4">a gorgeous, six-bedroom house for cheap just north of the city.</a> We're moving out there right after Memorial Day weekend. A lot of people have asked what on earth we want to move to the other side of the country for; the answers are simple.<br /><br />1. Neither of us has lived out West before. We'd really like to investigate this whole left coast thing and see what it's all about.<br /><br />2. Seattle is a town well-stocked with stuff we're interested in doing. There's a large Gnostic temple, a ton of BDSM groups, lots of art museums and other museums (I am a museum addict), a place called the <a href="http://www.sexpositiveculture.org/">Center for Sex Positive Culture,</a> a huge lesbian/queer population, loads of camping and hiking, the sea, and a lot of potential for really cool jobs. <br /><br />3. We were planning to go there anyway when we ended up in New Orleans.<br /><br />4. I <i>know</i> it's going to be fantastic.<br /><br />So it makes perfect sense for us to go out there. My mum is advocating more conservative choices, but hell, that's just not who I am. So expect some gearing-up-for-Seattle posts, possibly a couple of holy-crap-we're-on-the-road posts, and then a bunch of I-found-a-cool-new-thing-here, settling-in sort of posts. As always, it'll be an adventure. Watch this space.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-47904194211080586452009-03-31T10:57:00.003-04:002009-03-31T11:04:11.410-04:00A Patch for LazinessIt seems I'm not much better at keeping this blog updated than the one I had before Steve and I started This Blog Is My Pants. It isn't that either of us lack ideas of things to post; we just...don't post them. So I am going to fix this. <br /><br />Maureen Johnson, who is a very cool YA author I love, has just announced that she will be blogging every day for the month of April because she has similar problems with posting. I am going to: <br /><br />1. Keep up with Maureen's posts, and<br />2. Post something here after every time I read hers. This does not mean posting a reply to Maureen's post, just that this way, I'll have a trigger to make me get my ass on Blogger and write something.<br /><br />So hopefully, there will be a whole lot more content here soon for your perusal. We are interesting people, Steve and I, and we want to make the world think more deeply about cool shit.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-28141577101634183532009-03-01T21:23:00.005-05:002009-03-01T23:19:59.881-05:00Holy Thelemites, Batman!So last night we went to a Gnostic Mass. And it rocked both our socks. <br /><br />There's a very good, somewhat annotated script for the Mass <a href="http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/gnostic_mass.htm">here.</a> It's very, very balanced and sexy. Every motion in one direction is followed by one in the complementary direction. The shrine has alternating black and white tile steps and supporting pillars. It's kept dark but with well-placed candles to bring in light.<br /><br />The best part of the Mass' symbolism is the masculine and feminine. There are five players (besides the congregation as a group): the Priest, the Priestess, the Deacon, and two Children (female and male). The Children act as attendents, like altar boys combined with sacrament bearers in a Catholic/Anglican service. The Deacon leads the congregation, like conducting a symphony, and reads from the Holy Book of Whatever. They support the drama of the Priest and Priestess. <br /><br />The Priest and Priestess are not intermediaries between anyone and the divine. The divine is everywhere and everyone has perfect access to it constantly, so there's no point to having someone in that position. Their role is to draw everyone else into feeling the divine, to embody it as an ideal and show the rest of us how it's done. Our Priest and Priestess are dating, which helps get the right open, hot, sultry, directive, glorious force of energy whooshing around like cognac swirled in a glass. <br /><br />If you read over the Mass, you'll notice the Priestess empowers the Priest, who re-empowers the Priestess. She comes in doing sacred dance, and dances the Priest out of his little sacred cubby-hole in the western end of the temple. She invests him with his ceremonial robes and symbol of power (a big phallic spear). And then he leads her to the other end of the temple, installs her on the shrine itself as a living goddess, and worships her as she continues to worship him. After her installation, nearly all of the ritual is done with the two of them facing each other, eyes locked. The Priest conducts most of the ritual movements and vocalizations, all in reverence to the Priestess, who remains silent but communicates a world of magic and wonder and pleasure and mutilation with her eyes and body. If my description of this scene doesn't make it sound hot, then either my prose skills are deficient or you're not letting yourself feel it. If you doubt me, find a Mass near you and prove me wrong.<br /><br />The Mass ends with communion, and the five players remain in the temple after the congregation files out. They finished their duties, and then everybody grabbed a glass and we finished off the sacramental wine. And then went for more. And then more. For eleven of us. Of what I remember, there were two bottles of merlot (possibly three), one of pinot grigio, three of champagne, and some really excellent Jack's Pumpkin Spice beer, which unfortunately I was too smashed by then to drink much of. They had an Egyptian-style hookah with cinnamon-flavored tobacco, which tasted great, although I still can't smoke that shit without coughing like a noob. The Priestess really liked us -- partly because I was the only woman in the congregation that night, and she often has to do the women's parts in the call-and-response section because no one else is there carrying a vagina and/or uterus to do them. It was a hell of a lot of fun. I have never been so drunk on sacred grounds. Because we were doing all that in the temple, and it fucking rocked. With all the energy already going around, it was like being a little high or stoned even before the booze. And she gave us roses! Very, very cool. I have never had an actual spiritual experience in a religious ceremony before. I'm hooked. Years from now when I'm selling matches on the street to pay my initiation fees into new cults, you can look back to this event as the start of it all.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-23634235376979508732009-02-26T21:56:00.003-05:002009-02-26T22:41:15.753-05:00Why I Left College.<p>It would be simplistic to say I was unhappy last fall when I threw away 12 credits last semester and ran off to join my now girlfriend in Florida.<br /><br />The truth is I was happy- mostly.Most of my life was going well enough, and quite a bit of it was going great. All this ignores one important detail. <br /><br />I was half-assing my life. I was taking the easy road because I was afraid of screwing up and somehow ruining everything. So I took the easy path, like so many of my peers, and went to college as a way of escaping the question "what do I do with myself?" <br /><br />Since the end of high school and the culmination of my decade or so of depression with a nervous breakdown, I have sought to take responsibility for who I am in a moment and who I will become in the future. While at school I was able to avoid that responsibility by filling my time with friends, classes, and other stuff.<br /><br />There is probably also some question as to the exact circumstances of my leaving. <br /><br />A few weeks before I left I emailed my now girlfriend and co-blogger, Slade Powell. She had recently started traveling the country looking for places to live and grow. At the time she was 100% off the grid at an organic farm in Salamander Springs, Georgia. The Wednesday before I left, she left Salamander Springs and got to some place with wireless Internet. <br /><br />She emailed me. She told me if I was in Florida to look her up. I emailed her back, deciding I'd drive down to Florida for a long-awaited hook up and then return to PA. In retrospect, I was lying to myself. So I left. I have not been back to Indiana, PA since.<br /><br />I'm sure someone is wondering if I think I made a mistake. I do not. Every step I've taken on the long road to growing up has been the right one. Even the mistakes. Especially the mistakes.<br /><br />I left college because I let myself stay more mediocre than I could be. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make freelancing work. I don't know much of anything about my future except my own intent to grow and become the best man I can be.<br /><br />So now we're in New Orleans trying to make it big. Hah!<br /><br /></p>Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886840566840776811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-41628503817513290562009-02-26T19:53:00.007-05:002009-02-26T21:34:23.829-05:00Tales of Bourbon St. ShotgirlMardi Gras in New Orleans is a thing to behold. Thanks to a last-minute call from a job I'd given up on earlier in the month, I saw it from Ground Zero: a bar on Bourbon St. I was hired as a shotgirl, which means I had a little refillable tray of high-octane shooters in test tubes, which I hawked to the public at large. The more shots I sold, the more money I made. And honey, I made a <i>mint.</i> And lost my voice completely by the end of Fat Tuesday itself. <br /><br />The bar I was at was part of a chain with three locations along Bourbon. I worked at one location on Sunday and Tuesday, and another one on Monday. This variation in geography allows me to make some fairly well-informed statements about tits.<br /><br />There was a lot of flashing. A lot. It made my bisexual brain happy, I can tell you that much. What was sad were the people (almost all male) who completely failed at getting flashed. Case in point: On the second-floor balcony across the street from my lookout spot on Mardi Gras itself, there was a private party of 30-something guys in matching costumey pirate hats. They tried to get girls to flash them by chanting "Show us your tits!" repetitively and rating them from 1 to 10 with little construction paper score cards labelled "Boob Olympics." This was not terribly successful. There were moments when a throng of chicks would succumb to these guys' obvious charm and wit, but for the truly staggering numbers of drunks (and many of their number did stagger) on the street that day, their results were pitiful.<br /><br />Now, I compare that to the other location I was at, which was directly underneath another balcony with another private party. (This was standard; lots of places rented second-floor rooms for the holiday, and lots of those people took the opportunity to strew the streets with beads.) Since I was right underneath, I couldn't see the people on the balcony itself, but damn could I ever see their results. Again, <i>so many boobs.</i> A lot of their success came with viewing flashing as an exchange, instead of a one-way exploitation:* these guys threw beads. And they had some really, really good beads, including really big ones, ones with little plushies attached, and ones with branded or funny-shaped beads, all of which are among the most sought after in Carnival. These second guys didn't stinge or discriminate, either; they threw beads to men, to kids, to chicks who didn't flash them, as long as somebody did something distinctive or cute or whatever it was that appealed to the thrower. And they kept it up for hours. I was there for about 7 hours, and so were they. They kept throwing as long as there was a crowd underneath them. Hell, several times their crowd was so engrossed in getting beads that it got in the way of me selling them more booze. Now, <i>that</i> is success.<br /><br />The non-Bourbon applications of this apparent dichotomy are interesting and wide-reaching. Steve's gotten on The Social Networking Sites of Dooooooom recently, and maybe there's something similar going on there: to make a friend, be a friend. Give people something for their time and bother, like worthwhile content or eye-candy design. Don't just expect the internet to flash you because it has nothing better to do with itself -- although sometimes it will, mostly if you head off to the spamming-with-porn-sites districts. So remember, Citizens of the Tubes, play nice and share.<br /><br />*To clarify: I spent these three days selling my sexuality on a street corner for $3 a pop. I'm not saying all girls flashing guys on Mardi Gras because it's a cultural expectation is exploitation; most of them seemed to get a real kick out of it, and plenty of girls refused or drew a hard line at how much skin they would show. I'm calling the first party of guys exploitative much the way I would say it of colonial Britain: they engaged in a one-way delivery of goods without expectation of payment. End of lecture.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-16175032978928789472009-02-12T23:31:00.004-05:002009-02-12T23:46:45.248-05:00Three weeks in New Orleans: Status reportWell, we've been here three weeks, and here's how it's been.<br /><br />After a few days at the hostel, we found a great little studio apartment on Carrollton Ave., which is ironically in the neighborhood of Carrollton. (Very clever.) You can expect more on Our Place to come. I'm planning a video tour of it.<br /><br />Still no jobs for either of us, despite applying all over the neighborhood and elsewhere. We had some excellent prospects that just didn't pan out. The problem is that both of us want to freelance in writing (Steve), art (me), and comics (both of us), but our bank balances want us to get "real jobs." We're working on it. In the meantime, we're both scheduling our time to balance doing what we love with making money.<br /><br />We'll also be posting a lot more often in the past. Steve and I let ourselves get distracted from the work of blogging, even though we found loads of things worth posting, but that will be fixed soon. <br /><br />In conclusion, the internet is my blog. This blog is my pants. What are you doing in my pants?Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-60553181586575638062009-01-24T21:50:00.005-05:002009-01-24T22:43:23.823-05:00Nashville's architectural penis makes me want whiskeyThis post comes to you in two parts, both of them elaborating on our time in Tennessee, birthplace of lots of people, including Steve.<br /><br />PART 1: THE PARTHENON...OF NASHVILLE.<br /><br />Nashville is a silly place. It claims a cultural heritage as the South and the West* and the downtown bar district is covered in bluegrass and Elvis souvenirs. Nevertheless, we found a dyke bar** (empty) called the Wild Beaver and a really, <i>really</i> nice queer bookshop called Out Loud with an attached coffeeshop called Revive. They had loads of queer movies I haven't seen, and I've devoured all of Netflix's GLBT section. And great sales. And cool people; both of the guys on duty were former Pittsburghers, which was cool. The barista said two days was about as much as you could spend in Nashville, and he'd been there 20 years. Ouch.<br /><br />But all of that is outclassed by the Parthenon. You may think we have a teleporter in the back of Steve's Civic and we clearly took an afternoon side trip to Greece, but such is not the case. Nashville has its own Parthenon, built out of cheap yellow pebbly stone I recall from the construction of part of my high school. It's columns are constructed out of three pieces, too, instead of the requisite six. <br /><br />It was also closed. Who closes the Parthenon? What about all the worshippers of Athena in this town who need to pray for deliverance from Elvis-based tourist shops?<br /><br />Nevertheless, the Parthenon led us to The Coolest Guy in Nashville. This man was just hanging out among the columns, enjoying the view and his magnificent suit. That enormous beaver-tail hair of his took 15 years to grow. Steve and I stand in awe of this man and someday hope to be half as cool as him.<br /><br />And then we left Nashville, which leads us to...<br /><br />PART 2: THE JACK DANIEL'S DISTILLERY.<br /><br />Despite our current desire to stay in New Orleans for awhile, this endeavor has been primarily a road trip. And what's a road trip without stops at absurd roadside tourist traps? So obviously, when we passed a sign directing us off I-65 to the Jack Daniel's Whiskey Distillery, we had to go. Neither of us is all that wedded to Jack, but we'd passed the Maker's Mark distillery too late in the night to get a tour and we didn't realize that the Jack Daniel's distillery was 40 miles off the highway. Steve's a whiskey snob, and he's been training me in the ways of such things. (I am more of a stout lover, myself.) We have plans to start properly training up our whiskey palates once we have a nice cushion of income. I can promise you we're not alcoholics because we're too damn poor to afford the stuff we'd like to pass across our taste buds.<br /><br />Nevertheless, we stopped to see the home of the corporate tool of the whiskey world. It's located in a dry county; Jack's successor spent Prohibition drafting local laws allowing whiskey to be made there, and for the employees' wages to come as part cash and part whiskey. (True fact: To this day, Jack Daniel's employees receive a bottle of Jack on the first Friday of every month with their paychecks.) Therefore, we weren't allowed any samples; they could only sell us "commemorative" bottles of regular Jack.<br /><br />One of the highlights of the tour was the statue of Jack Daniel himself outside the spring whose naturally purified water is why he settled the distillery there. The statue is called "Jack on the Rocks," but we saw something else. Jack's got a little Captain in him, too.<br /><br />Look again at that photo. Jack's statue may seem a little small, but it's actually 5 inches taller than life size. Jack Daniel stood 5'2" and weighed in at 120 pounds soaking wet. And he was killed by a safe! He couldn't get it open one morning, kicked it, broke his toe, got embarrassed, told no one until the gangrene set in, and died of infection. Seriously.<br /><br />What's even more impressive is that you can buy an entire barrel of Jack for approximately a year's income on the poverty line. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of, hopefully, a whole lot of friends to help take care of the burden of this much fine drink.<br /><br />And that's the Jack Daniel's distillery and the absurd Nashville architecture.<br /><br />*It is my personal belief that you can't call yourself "West" when you're due south of Ohio and Illinois. When Chicago starts peddling cowboy hats for $5, then you can start doing it too.<br /><br />**It's okay, guys. I'm bisexual, I'm allowed to say these things.Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-73707760453496577052009-01-24T20:53:00.005-05:002009-01-24T21:49:32.741-05:00From Nashville to NawlinsIt's a long way from Pittsburgh, where our journey started, to New Orleans, where we are now. Here's how we got here:<br /><br />Night 1 was spent in a lovely Temple Guest Room at the hospitable <a href="http://www.palaceofgold.com/brochure.htm">Palace of Gold,</a> a Hindu temple in Wheeling, WV. Gods bless the Hindus for allowing random strangers to crash in their places of worship, snag a guest key, sleep their fill, and leave totally on the honor system; we got there late and didn't see another human being till we were leaving the next morning.<br /><br />Then we got on the road for real. Day 2 was spent driving, constantly, and all of it Steve, since we put my stick-shift driving lessons on hold till we were out of range of the snow. I'd booked us a room for the night in Nashville, and goddammit we were going to make it. <br /><br />I love the road. There is nothing finer than rolling out of bed early in the morning, shaking the sleep out of my eyes, and getting out on the road. Breakfast is to be eaten immediately, followed by a snack after dawn (around 8am). Few things in life are so consistently fantastic -- in its literal, "fantasy-like," meaning -- as driving into the dawn. The world is blackness spiked by tail-lights and head-lights, then suddenly you look around and there's definition to the scenery. And then you look around a moment later, and there's further definition. It's like the world itself is waking up around you, getting a grasp on itself, rediscovering what it looks like. I imagine this is what the Dreamtime looked like, if there could be any modern equivalent to watching the Earth being sung into existence. Every moment reinvents the world, draws it out of obscurity, and it doesn't stop at full light; the world just keeps getting brighter all the way until noon. It is a magnificent sight, and one I scarcely ever miss when I have the chance.<br /><br />So when we got on the road that morning (albeit well after dawn), it was with great anticipation and a sense of coming home. We nearly died at least a dozen times on the tiny, curvy, hilly, icy, snowy, fatal road leading away from the temple. That's certainly one way to start your morning.<br /><br />By Night 3, we'd reached Nashville. This was the night of the Inauguration, which we didn't watch because we were exhausted. <a href="http://www.musiccityhostel.com">The Music City Hostel</a> was very nice, and we stayed three nights. Went out to B.B. King's Blues Bar, which had great live music and a terrible, sparse crowd of middle-aged white tourists that frustrated the guest singer's attempts to get a groove going.<br /><br />I should mention that until we got to Nashville, our intended next stop had been Houston. Then we thought to ourselves, "What cities between us and Houston would we like to see before continuing west?" And the single, unswerving answer was:<br /><br />[Master: I think this is the spot for the hostel pic of the "New Orleans 536 miles" sign.]<br /><br />Yep, New Orleans. It's Carnival, after all! <br /><br />So now we're on the Louisiana coast, and tomorrow we'll start looking for ways to stay here a couple of months. We need jobs and housing. Preferably a really nice apartment in an old house with great architecture and a balcony, with a landlord who appreciates young'uns in love out to make their fortune in the wide, beautiful world. And jobs at hostels or little specialty shops or something. It's Carnival; there must be a way!Sladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771082787334736784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-77151834129986356482009-01-24T20:44:00.003-05:002009-01-24T21:50:42.731-05:00Batman is the new Black<p>And so we've arived to what will be, for now, our home.</p><p>Carnival started on January 6th (my birthday), so we took that as a sign that we should head down to New Orleans. We're currently staying in a little hostel off Canal street called the <a href="http://www.indiahousehostel.com/">India House Hostel.</a> It's a pretty awesome funky place for freaks and degenerates. As one might expect, we feel quite at home here.</p><p>Later tonight Slade will be posting our exploits in Nashville and driving down here (Including a guest appearance by our dear Uncle Jack.)</p>Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886840566840776811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685066064449810995.post-81133998529130238722009-01-19T23:56:00.000-05:002009-01-20T00:21:31.814-05:00Something wicked this way comes...First, a quote from a book I'm reading:<br /> "In any area of life, you have a natural monopoly of the unique combination of traits that you possess. The only effective way to rule out competition is to find the market that wants your traits above all others. And you'll find it and keep it by having the courage to stand up for what you are."<br /><br />Next, a brief introduction:<br /> I'm Steve Fisher. At this moment I'm staring at my beautiful girlfriend Slade in a Hare Krishna Temple a few miles south of Wheeling, WV. This temple has cheap guest rooms. And free wireless internet. And great Indian food. I'm 22, a college drop out (for now at least). A few months ago I got sick of waiting till I was done with school to live the life I wanted. So here I am, laying on a single bed with my breaking laptop.<br /><br />Last, a story I heard a while ago:<br /> Once upon a time in China, A group of Confucians went into the mountains to teach an old Taoist the proper way of living. Once inside his one room hut, the confucians were shocked and revolted to find the Taoist was without shirt or pants on. With instant revulsion they exclaimed, "What are you doing in your hut without pants?!" Not being one to miss a beat, the wiley old Taoist replied, "The world is my hut, this hut is my pants. What are you doing in my pants?"<br /><br />The confucians left him alone after that.<br /><br />What possible relevance does this story have to anything? Well, we needed a title for our blog. And "Guns and Bacon" was taken. Slade and I are homeless except for my 1997 Honda Civic which contains all our worldly possessions. So, in a sense, like the Taoist the world is our home. Which makes my car our pants.Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886840566840776811noreply@blogger.com0