So, I had an unpleasant experience tonight on Facebook (yes, I admit it, I'm a Facebooker... Although, to my credit, I joined a long time ago, before it was full of 16-year-olds and stalkers, and really, I'm just in it for the Scrabulous). Anyway, on Facebook, you have this news feed on the main page which tells you what your friends have been up to. Tonight, way down at the bottom, I got an update that informed me that this guy I sort of knew in high school had just posted a new blog entry entitled "An Exposé on Homosexuality". Since this is the same guy whose updates on the feed are normally 700 new pictures of his ugly swedish girlfriend, or status updates that say things like "Raymond (name changed to protect the ignorant) sure loves his girlfriend", I kind of figured this wasn't going to be a good exposé.
So, I clicked the link, and tried to read it. Except that I couldn't - it wasn't there, which means one of two things: 1) It was so offensive, that Facebook deleted it, or 2) He actually went out of his way to block me from viewing it, and therefore commenting on it (which one can do on Facebook - you now get to choose who can see what on your page, so if you're friends with your grandma, say, she doesn't necessarily have access to those pictures of you smoking crack from last Spring Break in Tijuana while she thought you were at bible camp). The only blog post of his that I could read was one about how everyone should vote for McCain, because he doesn't support gay marriage (which none of the candidates do, but whatever), and will protect us from something that is so fundamentally wrong (gays getting married) that it's ruining the country and, nay, the world, for all the other red-blooded vagina-loving Americans.
Needless to say, I deleted him from my friend list, so I wouldn't have to read anymore of that bullshit. I had to think about it for awhile, actually. I would just LOVE to know what could possibly be in that exposé - undoubtedly a bunch of crap about how gays are promiscuous and how they created AIDS, and how they're all drug addicts - you know, all that stuff you think if you've never actually known a real, live gay person and don't get that there is no difference to get. I really wanted to launch into a debate with this guy, and attempt to enlighten him, but it looked like some other people had already attempted to do that - one guy who was clearly from another country (possibly friends of the ugly swedish girlfriend) and therefore an outside observer to the American Right movement, had posted a lengthy comment deriding how all of Raymond's reasons for wanting McCain in office were so that he could continue to restrict the rights of some people over others (which was BRILLIANTLY written, and I actually wish I'dve copied it down somewhere), which was basically roundly dismissed. In the end I realized that really probably nothing I could say would change anything, knowing that this is not some simple minded hick who is just acting out of pure, blissful ignorance (he's actually a scientist, and works for NASA, which is mind-boggling...for someone that learned to be so ignorant is quite a trick), and because, well, what is most likely in this case from knowing him, and from my experience with the world in general, the one who puts up the most fuss is usually the one with the most to hide (right, Senator Craig???). The fact that every single status update I ever got from him was about how awesome his girlfriend is throws up that "thou dost protest too much" flag - dude was seriously trying hard to prove something. I should also note that on the same page where he was blasting gays, defending Bush and the Iraq war, and other such retarded nonsense, there was a pro-life icon he'd put there stating "Respect ALL human life." So apparently, unborn babies are worth fighting for, but once you're out of the womb, you're kind of screwed if you don't believe what I believe. Sheesh...
At any rate, the point of all this is... why are we still even debating this issue in fucking 2008, for the love of criminy? It always throws me for a loop when I encounter situations like this. Living in a place like NYC, I'm pretty well insulated from homophobia, so I can almost forget that it exists in my daily existence (which is not to say that there is no predjudice in New York, it's just that most people either don't even notice my gayosity, or they do and they accept it, or they don't care one way or another). In the end, people are people, and really no one should give a crap about what anyone else does as long as it doesn't affect you - just live your fucking life, and stay out of other peoples business! 'Cuz guess what? I don't care who you're married to, and my opinion on whom you should marry doesn't mean jack squat when it's your turn to walk down the aisle (and seriously, if it does, then you are a sad, sad person).
I'm not the kind of fella who's really all about the gay pride. I mean, I am gay, and yes, I feel no shame, and I love the person I am and all that crap... What I mean is, me gayness is pretty low on my radar - it's just not something that I think about often, until something like this happens that reminds me that I'm different. Frankly, I'm tired of being reminded. I'm tired of the gay debate in this country. If you're not gay, none of our affairs are any of your business, and we're not hurting you in the least. The end. Bigotry is bigotry, no matter how you justify it or sugar coat it. Can we learn from history already, and just stop now? Please? I'll be your best friend on Facebook...
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Spring has Sprung!
Well, it's 70 degrees out, sunny, and everything is green and new! Hazzah! Just look at the trees lining our new street! You just don't get that kind of greenery in NYC. You will also note the new bike lane they painted on the street the other day. It connects to the bike path that runs through the garden district all the way out to Flushing Meadows park (home of the Mets and the U.S. Open, but also just a nice park), and also over the bridge to the greenway that runs around the perimeter of Manhattan island. So now there is ample opportunity for me to get on my bike and ride safely all around the city! Almost makes me want to get the bike out of storage! Almost...
I'm feeling particularly spring-y today.
Besides the glorious weather, I feel like many burdens have been lifted and a somewhat more restful summer is just around the corner. I will be done with church, lessons, etc in a couple weeks, and have the summer off to sleep in on the weekends and just recover from a shitty couple of months...
Working backwards, Thursday I had this gig that went pretty terribly. I was kind of excited about it, because it was a gig premiering new choral works at a local college, which I thought could lead to some great connections, not only with the other singers, but with some of the composers. I would love to have the opportunity to sing more new works, and getting in with that crowd would have been so great. But..... The rehearsals were awful. I was pretty intimidated by the group of singers I was working with - these were your typical "professional choir singers" (read: jerks), who spent the whole time making snide comments when other people made mistakes (and ignoring their own, of course, that's how it works). The ego was flying around that room, and I was just not feeling it.
At any rate, I left all of the rehearsals feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and angry at having to listen to the obnoxious comments of some of the other singers (to be fair, it was only about 3 of them). We got all the way to the day of the concert, and it was clear at the final pre-concert rehearsal that there were still some spots the tenors didn't have down yet, which led to some great embarrassing angry outbursts from the conductor. We ended up having to have the conductor's girlfriend sing with us to help us out. Nice! Made me feel really good about myself... At any rate, I was pretty depressed about it for awhile, but I've decided that I can just let this go and move on now... Really, I knew the music better than I gave myself credit for, it was more about me holding back b/c I felt so out of place amongst this group of people who sight-read for a living. I shall chalk it up to a learning experience and remind myself that I don't really want to do choral singing anyway (unless it's being the soloist)...
The past month or so at work has been kind of a mess as well, which added to my general suckitudiness. All of the work my team does is through this one application, and we recently upgraded to a new version of it. My company is designing this program themselves, and as one can imagine, that doesn't go so well for a corporation whose job is to sell groceries, not design software. There are yards and yards of red tape to go through to get any tiny little change made to the application, and there is a co-op of people from all the different regions of the company (all of whom use different business processes) that have to approve any changes we need, even if it doesn't affect them whatsoever.
So, basically, we ended up with some big bugs that we couldn't get fixed, and it became the task of me and one of my coworkers to do most of the testing and figure out work-arounds for the stuff that didn't work correctly. This isn't really my job, but my boss is fairly new, and doesn't really know the ins and outs of the application well enough to determine these things, so I end up sort of being the defacto Team Leader guiding my co-workers through testing and adapting to the new release. As a result, I'm ridiculously behind in everything, and getting more and more fed up with have to do things that aren't my job.
I've been starting to think it's time to move on, and that may well end up being the case. I had a lunch meeting with the Sr. Coordinator the other day and got a lot of this crap off my chest, which helps, but doesn't really solve the problem. Not to mention the fact that it sucks commuting to New Jersey. Like, a lot. And, our office is moving soon, and the front-runner in terms of location will be very inconvenient for me. I know that all of this sounds like I should just get out, and I know that I probably should, but I do like my job for the most part, and the prospect of looking for something else that I'm qualified to do makes me want to hurl. I think I've decided to just stay put for the summer, start thinking about what's next, and maybe start honing my skills to go in another direction, and go from there. For one thing, the summer is always much, much quieter around the office, plus I have some big blocks of time off coming up, so I'm afraid to leave and not be able to take that time off somewhere else. Eh...
So then the other obvious suckosity right now is that my closest friend, Jessica, just moved back to St. Louis to settle down and get married and start popping out kids. Which is great, and I'm all "yay for marriage!" and such, but it sucks and it makes me realize that I don't have a lot of people in my life up here that I'm really close to, other than Nate. You may be aware of my phone-phobia, and she apparently has an internet-phobia, as I haven't gotten any emails from her since she left, other than a couple forwards. I can only hope we'll find some kind of way to keep in touch. In the meantime, there's always the wedding to look forward too! I am the best maid of honor man bridesdude or something, afterall!
At any rate, today I'm feeling like the worst is behind me, and I have the weekend free to just relax and prepare for a better week (I hope). I'm still loving our new place, and I think Nate is finally starting to feel at home here. It really is so much better. I haven't been kept awake by any raging parties on the street so far, and the "garden" part of Sunnyside Gardens is truly spectacular right now. We have a bakery/coffee shop, french bistro, two great bars, an excellent Thai restaurant, a diner, laundromat, a vintage clothing store, an excellent gourmet market, and lots of other crap right by or in our building. Whatever else may go wrong, I feel like we finally have a real home in New York that I can be proud of.
Anyway, enough of that crap! I'm off to make some peanut butter ice cream.
I'm feeling particularly spring-y today.
Besides the glorious weather, I feel like many burdens have been lifted and a somewhat more restful summer is just around the corner. I will be done with church, lessons, etc in a couple weeks, and have the summer off to sleep in on the weekends and just recover from a shitty couple of months...Working backwards, Thursday I had this gig that went pretty terribly. I was kind of excited about it, because it was a gig premiering new choral works at a local college, which I thought could lead to some great connections, not only with the other singers, but with some of the composers. I would love to have the opportunity to sing more new works, and getting in with that crowd would have been so great. But..... The rehearsals were awful. I was pretty intimidated by the group of singers I was working with - these were your typical "professional choir singers" (read: jerks), who spent the whole time making snide comments when other people made mistakes (and ignoring their own, of course, that's how it works). The ego was flying around that room, and I was just not feeling it.
At any rate, I left all of the rehearsals feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and angry at having to listen to the obnoxious comments of some of the other singers (to be fair, it was only about 3 of them). We got all the way to the day of the concert, and it was clear at the final pre-concert rehearsal that there were still some spots the tenors didn't have down yet, which led to some great embarrassing angry outbursts from the conductor. We ended up having to have the conductor's girlfriend sing with us to help us out. Nice! Made me feel really good about myself... At any rate, I was pretty depressed about it for awhile, but I've decided that I can just let this go and move on now... Really, I knew the music better than I gave myself credit for, it was more about me holding back b/c I felt so out of place amongst this group of people who sight-read for a living. I shall chalk it up to a learning experience and remind myself that I don't really want to do choral singing anyway (unless it's being the soloist)...
The past month or so at work has been kind of a mess as well, which added to my general suckitudiness. All of the work my team does is through this one application, and we recently upgraded to a new version of it. My company is designing this program themselves, and as one can imagine, that doesn't go so well for a corporation whose job is to sell groceries, not design software. There are yards and yards of red tape to go through to get any tiny little change made to the application, and there is a co-op of people from all the different regions of the company (all of whom use different business processes) that have to approve any changes we need, even if it doesn't affect them whatsoever.
So, basically, we ended up with some big bugs that we couldn't get fixed, and it became the task of me and one of my coworkers to do most of the testing and figure out work-arounds for the stuff that didn't work correctly. This isn't really my job, but my boss is fairly new, and doesn't really know the ins and outs of the application well enough to determine these things, so I end up sort of being the defacto Team Leader guiding my co-workers through testing and adapting to the new release. As a result, I'm ridiculously behind in everything, and getting more and more fed up with have to do things that aren't my job.
I've been starting to think it's time to move on, and that may well end up being the case. I had a lunch meeting with the Sr. Coordinator the other day and got a lot of this crap off my chest, which helps, but doesn't really solve the problem. Not to mention the fact that it sucks commuting to New Jersey. Like, a lot. And, our office is moving soon, and the front-runner in terms of location will be very inconvenient for me. I know that all of this sounds like I should just get out, and I know that I probably should, but I do like my job for the most part, and the prospect of looking for something else that I'm qualified to do makes me want to hurl. I think I've decided to just stay put for the summer, start thinking about what's next, and maybe start honing my skills to go in another direction, and go from there. For one thing, the summer is always much, much quieter around the office, plus I have some big blocks of time off coming up, so I'm afraid to leave and not be able to take that time off somewhere else. Eh...
So then the other obvious suckosity right now is that my closest friend, Jessica, just moved back to St. Louis to settle down and get married and start popping out kids. Which is great, and I'm all "yay for marriage!" and such, but it sucks and it makes me realize that I don't have a lot of people in my life up here that I'm really close to, other than Nate. You may be aware of my phone-phobia, and she apparently has an internet-phobia, as I haven't gotten any emails from her since she left, other than a couple forwards. I can only hope we'll find some kind of way to keep in touch. In the meantime, there's always the wedding to look forward too! I am the best maid of honor man bridesdude or something, afterall!
At any rate, today I'm feeling like the worst is behind me, and I have the weekend free to just relax and prepare for a better week (I hope). I'm still loving our new place, and I think Nate is finally starting to feel at home here. It really is so much better. I haven't been kept awake by any raging parties on the street so far, and the "garden" part of Sunnyside Gardens is truly spectacular right now. We have a bakery/coffee shop, french bistro, two great bars, an excellent Thai restaurant, a diner, laundromat, a vintage clothing store, an excellent gourmet market, and lots of other crap right by or in our building. Whatever else may go wrong, I feel like we finally have a real home in New York that I can be proud of.
Anyway, enough of that crap! I'm off to make some peanut butter ice cream.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
I'm baaaaaack!
It has been awhile, hasn't it? It's been an insane couple of months, what with getting married, moving, lots of gigs, spending a weekend in Albany, Jessica moving, etc., I've been too busy and too tired to post anything here for awhile. This weekend is literally the first weekend in a good month or two that I've had any time to just relax, and I'm taking full advantage of that time to do absolutely nothing. Nate and I were originally going to go camping this weekend, but we got rained out, and honestly, I'm enjoying spending some down time together and just unwinding. More about the past 6 months later...
Here's some pics from our recent housewarming party, and my friend Jeff's 30th birthday party (Warning: the latter album contains images of erotic confections. Proceed with caution)!
Here's some pics from our recent housewarming party, and my friend Jeff's 30th birthday party (Warning: the latter album contains images of erotic confections. Proceed with caution)!
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