I just saw this video posted over at Joe.My.God. AMAZING is all I can say about this video. First off his voice is remarkable. Rufus Wainwright immediately comes to mind, but Matt's voice has so much more soul. The song, End of the World is from the his debut Hide Nothing. The lyrics to this song are so eloquently written that they pull at your heart. The emotions of this song are definitely (and sadly) the same emotions I have been dealing with for the past year.
According to Matt's blog, he wrote this song 5 years ago while riding the bus on his way to work. He says he wrote this because the biggest love of his life had fallen out of love with him because he thought Matt had fallen out of love with him.
This video has been playing on Logo (a gay cable channel) but since I don't have cable, I haven't seen it until now. I am very impressed with this video and some of the other videos I have found online.
Lyrics after the jump End Of The World I don’t want to ride this roller coaster I think I want to get off But they buckled me down Like it’s the end of the world If you don’t want to have this conversation Then you better get out Cause we’re climbing to our death At least that’s what they want you to think Just in case we jump the track I have a confession to make It’s something like a cork screw
I don’t wanna fall, I don’t wanna fly I don’t wanna be dangled over The edge of a dying romance But I don’t wanna stop I don’t wanna lie I don’t wanna believe it’s over I just wanna stay with you tonight
I didn’t mean to scream out quite so loudly When we screeched to a halt I’m just never prepared For the end of the ride Maybe we should get on something simpler Like a giant balloon But I’ve got two tickets left, and so do you Instead of giving them away to some stranger Let’s make them count, come on Let’s get back in line again and ride the big one
Don’t you want to fall, don’t you want to fly Don’t you want to be dangled over The edge of this aching romance If it’s gonna end, then I wanna know That we squeezed out every moment But if there’s nothing left can you tell me why That it is you’re holding onto me Like it’s the end of the world lyrics thanks to Andrew Sanders
This week has been crazy. Work is getting very interesting (more on this later) and will only get worse next week. My car is still acting up. So I have been walking a lot lately and today I used the bus *GASP* for the first time since I moved here in 1992. On Tuesday, I got to watch quite a bit of the inauguration....until I was in Obama Overload. But I did get a chance to check out Aretha and her wind turbine hat. I think she was the high point of the day....well, besides Obama replacing Curious George as president.
There is an entire flickr group devoted to pictures that have had Aretha's hat photoshopped on to them. I love this one of Dick Cheney. The caption reads "No wonder he had back trouble." Classic!
Here are some things you can be doing today during the commercial breaks or the downtimes of the inaugural events. Please note, I was having problems getting on to some of these websites today. With all of the events going on, I bet these sites are very popular.
I tried this but it didn't turn out very well. It definitely takes the right type of picture for this to work. But you use your own image to make your version of the Shepard Fairey poster made for the Obama campaign.
There is a rise in STDs. I read where they thought the rise in STDs was because of more HIV positive men having unprotected sex. Even though you are already HIV positive, you are still able to be infected with any other STD. Wrap that willie! Here are a couple of videos about safe sex. The first gives a whole new meaning to Balloon Animals.
The second video is after the jump. It is a bit more graphic and deals more with gay sex. It is also probably NSFW. This video by Eric Leven (knucklecrack) is probably NSFW (Not Safe For Work)!
Becky (Random Musings of a Deco Lady) posted this photo mosaic meme on her blog. Just like her, I have seen this one before, but I have never done it. So after seeing hers, I thought I would give it a try.
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. b. Using only the first page, pick an image. c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.
The Questions: 1. What is your first name? 2. What is your favorite food? 3. What high school did you go to? 4. What is your favorite colour? 5. Who is your celebrity crush? 6. Favorite drink? 7. Dream vacation? 8. Favorite dessert? 9. What you want to be when you grow up? 10. What do you love most in life? 11. One word to describe you. 12. Your flickr name.
UPDATE: The current temp is now -14° (even though the forecast was for a low of -10°) with a wind chill of -36°. SUCH FUN!!!
Current temp: 0°. The low temp tonight: -7°. The high temp tomorrow: 0°. The low temp tomorrow: -10°. And the predicted wind chill tomorrow: -19°.
Doesn't that sound like perfect weather to have car problems. I am glad my car decided that. So tomorrow in the very arctic weather, I get to change the fan belt on my car. I am so looking forward to that. Please be advised, there was a ton of sarcasm used in this post!
Every Wednesday and Sunday night, a group of people from the Collectible Medium Green (CMG) message board meet in the chat room. There is a core group that pops in most of the time with a few others that pop in from time to time. While CMG is a message board about Homer Laughlin's dishes, the topic in the chat room is usually another story. Yes, we do discuss our favorite dishes, but the topics also have been known to include dead parakeets, bad neighbors, our individual blogs, the Chippies (don't ask, we won't tell), jobs, pets, kids and of course pretty anything sexually related. *meow* The best thing about the chat room, it gives us a chance to sit and talk with people who understand our dish obsession. And we all get along very well.
Last week, after discussing another blogger who is frequenting the blogs of one of the chatters, we noticed the blogger writes all of her posts in haiku. So we decided to have a haiku challenge. Below are the two haiku that finally got finished during our bi-weekly chat.
Elaine wrote this one. I really love it and it reminds me of when I used to be in a dish buying frenzy!
Men in brown shorts,
spreading joy and dish love,
my money is gone!
This one was directed towards M, who was wanting to post these on her blog. M spent a bit of time looking for a lid for a green marmalade dish. I believe that this completed her collection of the vintage mustards and marmalades. So I wrote this to her:
Oh green marmy lid,
It took forever to find,
But now you are mine!
Let me start this off by saying I am glad to have a job. I don't talk much about my job in my blog, I do like to keep somethings more private. My last job, which I was fired from (for no reason), I was the assistant manager of a grocery store here in town. The company (under the bad direction of a vice president) decided that they need to cut back on expenses. The first expense that they cut was labor. Within a 30 day period, they fired (or talked them into quitting) anybody who made more than minimum wage. The problem with this is, in order to run a store properly, you do need some key people that can run the different departments and/or the store. When you only have 1 person with the experience to run the store, things go down hill very fast. Needless to say, the store manager was new and had almost no experience. I was in the process of training him when his boss made him fire me. This new store manager, didn't do the schedules, had never ordered anything, was just learning all of the paperwork and was clueless about the day-to-day operations of the store. There isn't a day that goes by that one of the customers from that store doesn't come into my new store and complain about how dirty and understocked the old store is. They keep saying that I need to go back. I just smile and let them know that I am very happy where I am now.
So back to the original topic, my new job. Even though my pay is the same, I am in a much lesser role at my new job. Instead of being in charge most of the time, let's just say I don't have anybody who works under me now. It is a nice change of pace without losing any pay. The biggest problem I have is that my boss is always wanting me to be in charge over the other workers. The problem I have with that (and I have told him a few times) is that 1) I am not above them and 2) They know that. I am still the newest employee in the department. So these people don't look at me as somebody in authority. Plus, it really isn't my place to be over them. So after the fiasco last night, I am going to have to sit down and have another talk with my boss. I am not trying to cause any problems, but something needs to be done about this. Of course, another problem is that my boss is a nice buy and a big talker, but he often doesn't follow through on his plans. And I can always tell when his bosses are coming down on him for not following through, he will then open up and start telling me things he shouldn't be telling me and he will also usually be a little more authoritative with me (which he needs to be doing all the time!)
I am glad I decided to leave early for work today, I had no idea that we had a thick coating of ice over everything this morning. So I started the car and let it run for a few minutes and no more ice! I put the car into 4wheel drive and off I went. Work was a madhouse when I got there. It turns out that a good-sized portion of the town was without electricity because of the ice. Our biggest competitor, Wal-Mart, was in that good-sized portion without electricity, so they were closed down. It was nuts at work. Wal-Mart was opened up again sometime in the afternoon. But until they were reopened, I was kept running around like crazy. Needless to say, sales today will be very good.
In 2 weeks, on January 21st, season 5 begins for Lost. Season 4 ended with an unbelievable but captivating ending. But as with all Lost episodes, it left more questions than answers. And for the "Oceanic 6" that fought so hard to make it off of the island, they now have to fight to get back to the island. These previews make season 5 look like it will be even better than season 4. I can't wait!
I am sad to say, I am deleting the Classified Ads website. It isn't that it takes a lot of time to run it, but I just don't have the time to do the upgrades and advertising that the site needs. So I am pulling the plug for now. In the future, I would like to incorporate something like the classified ads into a website. They even offer a website that is classified ads and an auction site in one. Of course that one costs money and since I have no plans on charging people to use it, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
The wintry theme I had created was starting to look BLAH to me. And as I am sure MsVal will point out, I love to tinker with my layout. So goodbye to the frost and penguins! I also want to say goodbye to the use of the red and yellow. Last June, I totally redid the layout of the blog. I went from the 2 column layout to the 3 column layout. But I really liked this layout because the right column is actually 1 column that is then split into 2 separate columns. The original colors were going to be dark red and red. Somewhere along the way, yellow ended up in the mix. I have no idea why I added yellow, but it stuck. And since red and yellow (actually Maroon and Gold) were my high school colors, the colors looked good to me. Well, the colors are now moving on, so I thought I would like to do some blues. Of course these blues would have looked better with the wintry theme I had been using. And I am afraid after a bit of use, these colors will start to look BLAH to me too.
And I brought the fish back, so please don't forget to feed them....they are always hungry!
I met my first "true" boyfriend when I was 21. My mother had just passed away, and I was continually going to the local gay bar with my friends even though the bar was 45 miles away. My friend Brandon had met Doug at the bar and ended up letting Doug move in with him shortly after that. Doug was the type of guy that could and would talk to anybody and would become instant friends with them. Doug was also famous for dating many, many guys. If they were still dating after 3 weeks, you knew they would be broken up within the following week. And of course, Doug would be on to the next guy.
Brandon and I went a drag show at the bar (so it was on a Sunday night, the only night they had drag shows) and were going to meet Doug and his new guy. For whatever reason, we ended standing behind the bar next to the dance floor. I remember thinking that Mark, Doug's current fling, was actually pretty hot. Nice body and nice smile. Plus he seemed to be very friendly. A few cocktails (or maybe 10 or more) later, I was standing behind Doug and Mark (arms around each other) and I was grabbing Mark's ass. That is very out-of-character for me. At one point, Mark turned around and smiled.
A few weeks later, Doug announced that him and Mark were through, he had found a new man. BLAH BLAH BLAH...YADDA YADDA YADDA. Same story, different day. I ran into Mark a few months after that, we chatted for a little bit and exchanged phone numbers. We ran into each other a few times at the bar (after all, there was nothing else to do in this town for gay men besides the adult bookstores). After 6 months of just meeting at the bar, we finally started dating. Unlike Doug, I was with Mark for 7 years. That is until he dumped me for somebody much younger than me. The sad fact is that Mark is 9 years older than me and his new guy is 9 years younger than me. 18 years is a big gap. But Mark and I broke up 11 years ago and they are still "together".
Now let's get down to the bitch part of this post. I used "together" in quotes for a reason. I talk to Mark about once every 6 months (if even that). It is usually just a quick hello and then we are on our way. But lately, Mark has taken to posting on Craigslist's personal ads. And not only is he posting his ad, he is posting naked pics of himself with his face pic. But my biggest gripe is that he says he is 37. 37????? He just turned 49 in 2008. He will be 50 this year. The one thing I cannot stand is LIARHEADS (sorry Carol, I am still stealing that word!)
Of course, if I was Mark, the thing I would be worried about is his boyfriend. The boyfriend hates gay people (must hate himself too) and used to be an officer of the local NRA chapter. Yeah, the gun people. I am just glad that I am out of that mess. But honestly Mark, STOP POSTING YOUR NAKED BUTT AND FACE PIC AND FAKE AGE at least 4 times a week on Craigslist. It just makes you look very desperate!
One of my favorite comic strips of all time is Calvin & Hobbes. For those not familiar with the strip, it is about a 6 year-old Calvin and his tiger named Hobbes (who to everybody but Calvin is just a stuffed animal). The other people (and often nemesis) in the comic strip are his parents, Susie Derkins (the 6 year old next-door girl), Miss Wormwood (his school teacher), the school principal, and Rosalyn (the babysitter). Calvin is often very philosophical about life but other times he can be daydreaming up new worlds, dinosaurs or space aliens. The palette of his worlds and creativity often consisted of snowmen, snowballs (often targeted at Susie), sports (croquet or baseball will never be the same) and toy cars. Cleverly written by Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes was only around from 1985 to 1995. Sadly, on December 31, 1995, this last comic appeared for Calvin & Hobbes.
