Why yes, my friends, our emo haircuts, and I do make a habit of scoping out men’s packages in our local used bookstores. Really. Yep. Sure.
For some reason, the “size matters” conversation has been coming up in multiple discussions with multiple friends lately, and it’s been driving me mad - because apparently I’m the only person on the face of the earth (and definitely the only man, gay or straight) who doesn’t think size matters. Call me fuckin’ loco, but I’ve got other things on my mind on a daily basis than the size of my dick, the size of your dick, and the size of the dick on that stranger I happened to pass in the grocery store.
Men are ridiculous size queens. We really are. We fixate on dick size and act as if it defines our worth as a person and our potential to succeed in society. I, frankly, don’t get it. As long as it stands up, lies down, functions properly, and feels good while doing it, then I don’t care if it’s two or twenty inches long as long as it works. That goes for mine, yours, his, and hers.
…well…uh…maybe not hers.
Although the size thing does get ridiculous when you’re catching instead of pitching. Here’s a news flash for those of you who don’t know about this little corner of reality: it. Hurts. And not in the good way. We’re talking in the “lasting physical damage” way. You ever read that horrible het fic where they talk about bumping a woman’s cervix with his massive love rod - and every woman within in a fifty mile radius closes her legs and screams “NO, DEAR GOD, NO!”? Yeah, well, we get that way, too. Show me a twelve-inch cock and I’ll show you a chastity belt with inch-thick steel plates over the ass. I’m very happy for you that you have a gargantuan schlong capable of clubbing baby seals to death. If you try to put that thing in me, I will promptly remove it from your person and give you a hands-on demonstration of exactly what that damn thing feels like.
I’d apologize for the crappy art on this one, make all kinds of excuses about one of those days where I have no hand-eye coordination and the pencil / stylus won’t cooperate, blah blah blah, but y’know, I’m just a mediocre artist, so let’s leave it at that. I have my good days and my bad days and my days in between. It gets the idea across.
What? You were expecting me to say something more? Go on, get outta here. Nothin’ to see here. I’ll snarl about something else tomorrow.
…stop looking at me like that. Seriously. I just saved a bunch of pictures from Undergear.com, not a single one of them naked, and I’ve been using them as references to draw various made-up characters based on the poses and body types. Not porn. I don’t look at porn.
…yeah, if you ever believe a man that tells you that, I’ve got some nice waterfront property in Arkansas for you to look at.
I’m working on getting used to drawing directly on screen like I’m drawing on paper again. So far I like the results, but after being so used to staring at the screen while drawing on the tablet separately, my standard hand-eye coordination is shot…and it shows in Red’s face. But I still think this came out better, smoother, than the old tablet drawings. It looks almost like pencil and ink, even though it was done in Photoshop (not even Manga Studio; there are issues with getting MS to recognize Wacom tablet drivers, and I’m tweaking it until it behaves properly). I really like being able to draw digitally but maintain some level of control; now I just need to work on retaining hand-eye coordination when doing comic art as opposed to realism. I trained myself and now I have to retrain myself. For the record, though, I was drawing this:
~grumbles~ Not porn. Character art from a story. Bah. My friends are assholes.
Moving on:
Caption Contest Winner
Wow, that caption contest kinda bombed, didn’t it? Not much participation. There were enough, though, to pick a winner; there were a few pretty funny ones in there (and man, Hikaru, you really wanted to win, didn’t you? Don’t I spend enough money on you already? Oh well, you’ve got a birthday coming up…), a few rather lame ones, and a few middle-grounders.
…okay, none of them were great, but out of the funny ones, the winner is Lala with “Hot legs, making your mark - Hot legs, keep my pencil sharp”. I’m sorry, but goofy Rod Stewart quotes are made of win (otherwise it wouldn’t be that funny - but c’mon, Rod Stewart?).
So Lala, shoot me an e-mail at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net and tell me which e-mail address to send your Amazon gift card to.
I dunno if we’ll be doing a caption contest again. That was a last-ditch “oh crap, busy, need to update” thing. If we do, next time I’ll pick a better picture.
For now, though, I’m out. See you tomorrow with a regular post. I may even try reading the news, gasp.
Yesterday was just a little heavy, a little angry, and a little overwhelmingly bitter; so, as I so often like to do after I go off on a rampage, it’s time for something a bit lighter and sillier. I swore I’d never stoop to these levels, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I still have about four hours of work left to do, so…
Caption Contest 04.09.08
Your mission: Come up with a humorous, ironic, witty, or in some other way interesting caption for the above picture. Post it as a comment to this entry, or if you want, you can Photoshop it in and post a link to your image. It’s up to you. Either way works. You can come up with as many as you like, but only one can win.
The deadline: Monday, April 14th, 12a CST. That means the second the clock rolls over from Sunday to Monday in my time zone, the contest is over. I’ll pick the best caption and post the winner when I post Monday’s comic.
The reward: A $30 Amazon gift card (we’ll even use the e-cards so you don’t have to wait for it to arrive via postal mail or give me your address). That’s enough for you to order enough junk to even get their renowned (and horribly slow) free Super Saver shipping.
The catch: Er…there’s no catch, I think; I’m just pressed for time and not above doing stupid internet-typical things to find something to post about. At least it’s not lolcats. Although if you’re an international reader and you don’t have access to Amazon or $30 would barely even cover shipping for you, if you win we’ll talk about getting you a gift card to some other place that’s better suited to your locale.
No, no the Cintiq is not working yet. Yes, I am getting extremely pissed that they keep saying they’ll service the display, yes the display’s the problem, but hey, why don’t we send you a new VGA cable first even though we’re 100% sure the old one’s fine? Or you could, you know, walk to a school full of little children and say “Hi, I’m a strange adult male of unknown intentions, and I’d like to slip into one of your classrooms with all your impressionable young children to use one of your DVI-capable computers to test this thing?” Oh, we’ll fix the display eventually, maybe. Sort of. Only we say we will but then find a way around it. Say, you don’t mind paying to mail it back to us, do you?
Idiots. Wacom customer support needs to be strung up.
I’d say I have my vengeance in mocking them, but considering that I’m aping people that I’m likely distantly related to (you know, I could have written that in real Japanese; I just didn’t feel like it), I’m kind of mocking myself too. Some victory.
Speaking of customer support: in case you missed it, yesterday was the third Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I ranted about my former work as a CSR (something any of you who’ve ever done that can probably completely understand) and said things that would make Don Imus keel over from shock but that George Carlin would probably think were weak, tame, and bland as dishwater. Either way, I have officially forfeited my right to ever be offended by anything anyone says, ever again.
It’s all for the sake of humor, right?
Anyway, if you care to listen and lose all respect for me (whether from my blatant disregard for political correctness or because the faster I start talking, the more I sound like my balls never dropped), follow the link up there. There’s an MP3 version of the webcast, and a log of the chat conversation.
That’s right, today marks one year that I’ve been writing for 451 Press - ever since this site was called “Pride and Opinions” (not my idea) until I said “oh hell no” and asked The Powers That Be at 451 Press to change the site name (even if they rather botched my intent, but no, we’re not going to go there…) It’s been fun, for the most part. Everything has its rocky points, and sometimes it was a pain in the arse, but I can’t ever really say it wasn’t worth it. Sure, it’s a lot of work for very little money, but I never did this for the money. I did this because I wanted to make a career out of something I love - writing - and I was happy to find even a small job that would let me do that. Since then I’ve moved on to much bigger things and become a full-time writer, but Darkside Rainbow is still something that I enjoy and that I’ll keep doing for as long as I can find something to say. In the past year the reader base here has grown; not by leaps and bounds, maybe, but by some pretty decent-sized bunny hops. Thanks to everyone who dropped by and decided to stick around.
Well. Sap out of the way, you’ll have to pardon that I didn’t bother hand-drawing this one. For some reason the computer is refusing to detect the pressure sensitivity on my old tablet (again, even after reinstalling the drivers and multiple reboots), and as far as the Cintiq…well, it’s currently a $1,000 paperweight sitting on the desk in my office while I wait for Wacom to “overnight” me a replacement converter box so we can test and see if that’s the faulty part. (They’ve been “overnighting” it since last bloody effin’ Tuesday, while I’ve been stuck waiting at home and unable to go to the library or bookstore to work - and although I keep asking them for the FedEx tracking number so I know what day it’ll come, they keep fencing around actually giving it to me. Adri is not happy.) Hopefully by next week the Cintiq will be working, and I’ll see about hand-drawing another comic.
…well, hand-drawing on screen.
Oh, you know what I mean.
Well, I’m out of things to say, so…see you tomorrow.
Yyyyeah, um…if you don’t get one, this boy ain’t gonna be the one to explain that particular fact of life. Just walk on.
You have no idea how close I came to either saying “screw it, I’ll do the comic late” or just doing one of the text-on-a-black-field lazy comics. My Cintiq 12WX is arriving tomorrow, and it entirely galled me to think of doing another comic on my cruddy old Adesso CyberTablet 12000. I think the only thing that saved it was the fact that I wanted to experiment with doing the line art in another program. I just acquired a copy of Manga Studio EX 3.0, and I think I’m in love. Manga Studio beats Photoshop for freestyle drawing by a landslide. It’s so bloody responsive that I almost forgot the hand-eye disconnection that comes from drawing on the tablet while looking at the screen; the way the different brushes respond to the tilt and pressure of the pen make them feel just like real art pens, sumi brushes, and pencils. It almost hurt to move back to Photoshop to do the color; Photoshop tends to drag my computer even with a dual-core 2.75Ghz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. Five quick strokes with the pressure sensitivity on and I have to stop and wait for Photoshop to catch up. To have Manga Studio be so light and clean, instantly responsive with no lag…holy hell. I can’t wait to see what I can do with it with the Cintiq, where I have a bit more fine control (but not necessarily more skill, there’s a limit to my talent).
Er…anyway. This isn’t a software review site (though amusingly, I reviewed two animation software packages for my other job over the weekend), so no more of that. But if you notice a subtle difference to the line art, that’s why. The ease of use even shaved an extra hour off my drawing time.
Moving on to something a bit more topical: I had a rather interesting experience in the store yesterday. I was in Wal-Mart picking up a DiGiorno for pizza night, and made the mistake of going at four in the afternoon on Easter Sunday. There I was stuck in the so-called “express” lane for 45 minutes, wanting nothing more than to pay for my beer and pizza and get out. (Yes, beer and pizza. Pick your jaw up off the floor. On the weekends I take my Captain Queer hat off and go about life as a normal guy. Now shhh, don’t give away my secret identity.) The checkout-rack tabloids and fashion magazines held my interest for roughly three milliseconds, if that, before I found myself people-watching. My eyes landed on a man one aisle over; he was about my age, maybe a few years older. I’d guess him to be six foot six or so, with somewhat swarthy skin that could have been Italian or Hispanic; the cast of his features made it hard to tell. He had long, dark brown hair, neatly pulled back in a tail; lovely dark eyes, and a handsome face that wore a beard well even though I normally don’t like facial hair. He was carrying a few extra pounds in the stomach, but he carried it well; he was casually dressed, but something about him, the cast of his features and his stance, caught my eye.
So I watched. I didn’t stare, but I did admire a little (Hikaru, get your hackles down, all I did was admire); I was bored, and not above surveying a little man-candy to pass the time. I didn’t think he noticed, since I looked away rather often or stared off elsewhere and zoned out. I figured from the Maxim he was reading that he wasn’t likely to take notice of another man paying undue attention to him, no matter how subtly (or unsubtly, as I soon found out).
He noticed.
We happened to leave our respective lines around the same time, and at the exit he ended up behind me in the interminable wait for one of the geriatric Wal-Mart greeters to check our receipts against the contents of our bags. By that point I’d stopped paying attention to him; I just wanted to get out the door and make the short walk home. So I wasn’t really expecting to hear a gritty, amused voice at my shoulder:
“You know, you might want to try being a bit more subtle about ogling a guy next time.”
I started in surprise and turned around to find him smiling at me rather dryly. I immediately blushed; I hadn’t thought I’d been that obvious, but several times I’d completely zoned out and might have done it while looking in his direction. “Sorry,” I said with a sheepish, apologetic smile. “It was either you or the irritated, bitter housewives. You were the better option.”
Despite answering with humor, I was expecting discomfort, scorn, any of the other typical reactions. Instead he laughed. “Well, just so you know, I’m straight. But I’m also flattered by the attention. Thank you.”
My jaw nearly unhinged. “Uh.” Ever so articulate, as always. I think I was red from my hairline to my collarbones. “You’re welcome,” I stammered, unable to help a rather stupid grin, mostly from raw surprise. He grinned back; then the greeter cleared her throat impatiently, so I let her check my receipt, walked out, and went home without looking back.
I’m so used to hearing snotty comments from straight people should any gay person dare to find them attractive or display passing, harmless interest that it really threw me to have someone be so casual about it, and handle the situation with such class. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. I wasn’t actually interested in flirting with him, but if I had been, it would have been a simple matter of “Thanks, but I’m straight” answered by an “Oh, no problem” without the slightest hint of conflict, nastiness, or resentment caused by crossed signals, misunderstanding, or prejudice.
I wish more people handled things with such aplomb - from our side of the spectrum, too, as we often react poorly to straight people flirting with us as well.
Maybe then we wouldn’t have to deal with attitudes like this guy.
Er. Remember when I said I’d never cut my hair again, down to the point of threatening Carlos with an electric purple weave if he came near me with a pair of scissors?
Yeah, well…”never” turned out to be “when I got so preoccupied that I let my hair go to hell and by the time it hit 18 inches long, 10 inches of it was a dry, broken, frizzy, dead mess that couldn’t be saved.”
So…yes. Rapunzel has been shorn. That’s not a good representation of it, but I’m still getting used to drawing it. It’s short, it’s punky, it’s sideswept, it sticks up everywhere, it saves me an hour a day, and I am discovering the wonders of gel (yes, I’ve become one of those guys). I don’t know if I’m going to keep it short or not; I like it more than I thought I would, but at the same time I keep having these moments in the mirror where I think “oh god, my hair!” and get all whimpery. It’s kind of pathetic. You should have seen me when I turned around in the stylist’s chair and just saw all these ropes of hair lying on the floor. She thought I was going to cry.
But it was worth it to see the looks on my friends’ faces. And it may be much easier to deal with after the Chicago move, as it’s much windier up there…so that’s incentive to keep it short.
I only wish I’d been able to give Carlos the pleasure of cutting it, as he’s been begging for a good two years now. But alas, Carlos has moved on to greener pastures in more upscale salons, and the rest of the people at that salon…well, they’re a bunch of rude, stuck up putas who get their ta-tas in a knot if you dare to call and ask when they might have an appointment open. So I had to call around, but eventually I found a place within walking distance, with reasonable prices and people experienced with dealing with highly mixed ethnic hair types, and got to spend two hours in a chair with a lovely woman named Freda. We alternated between comfortable silence while I worked (I brought my laptop and some writing assignments for New!Job, and had my mobile internet, thank you Verizon) and laughing our arses off while arguing over just how short it was going to be in the back (I was in a mood and wanted it gone so badly I would have let her shave it, but thankfully her cooler head prevailed and I’ve got layers anywhere from one to four inches long that I can spike all over the place). In the end she did a great job, and I’ll definitely be going back there until I move.
Aaaaanyway. That’s enough about my hair. I really don’t have much else to say; that’s been the most exciting thing in the past week, other than getting my first paycheck for my new job. Isn’t my life exhilarating?
Here. Have a practice sketch I did using a photo reference to try to work out how in hell I’ll be drawing my hair for the comics from now on.
See that? That is why I don’t post photos online; when I stop squinting and glaring at things, I look like a big-eyed waif-boy. And the short hair only makes it worse.
Oh, and sorry I half-assed the art on the comic. Busy weekend and I was in a bit of a rush. At the end of the month I’m finally buying my Cintiq as a birthday present to myself and to celebrate my one-year anniversary with 451, so the quality of the art should start improving on these things.
Shut up. It’s been a rough week. I consoled myself with Brahma calf-high police-swat-style black leather steel-toed boots. (Damn, that’s a lot of hyphens.) Better to spend $30 on boots that look as if they could quite happily kick your ass than waste $300 on a pair of tasseled loafers or something equally ridiculous.
So…I’m back. Quietly, inauspiciously, oh-god-do-I-have-a-headache-ly (spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically…?), but I’m back. Things aren’t quite going as I’d planned - or they are, but not on the time scale that I’d wanted, but that’s neither here nor there and things are sorting themselves out soon enough. Regardless, I should start updating again regularly. No idea if I’ll have the energy to rant and rave and rip people apart, but then I haven’t been reading the news this past week, either. I’m sure there are plenty of things to get caught up on that will leave me frothing at the mouth and ready to tear someone a new one.
I did, however, go vote in the Texas primary last week. That…was painful. I honestly couldn’t find a single candidate on the ballot who didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth regardless of their stance on gay issues…but voting is a civic duty, and one I wouldn’t have had a couple hundred years ago when my dark skin would have denied me that right. So I vote on principle, and because I really, really don’t want to hear another bloody four years of complaining that it’s the fault of low turnout from my generation that got us into the mess we’re in right now with a second term with W - only in this case, it’d be a mess with whomever made it onto the ballots after the primaries.
…I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. You think that’s bad, you should see what happens if anyone tries to touch one of my three computers.
I’ll be back next week with a hand-drawn comic for Monday and daily posts following, once my break is over. Haven’t stabbed anyone at work so far, but the week’s still young.
Look for a guest post tomorrow by our very own resident psycho sweetheart, Lessa (and just in case you didn’t think she did any work around here with all her crazy bouncing around, check out her blog at Big Brother Craze).
Sorry I’m late today, guys. Conference calls are the bane of my existence; conference calls that demand voluntary agreement to an illegal invasion of privacy and sacrifice of confidential personal information just leave me steaming and ready to tear someone’s head off. But since I can’t talk about that here because 1. it’s not topical, 2. it would violate confidentiality, and 3. I have to hurry and go finish some work for my new job (which is creating its own difficulties that I can’t discuss due to being gagged by an NDA), instead we’re going to indulge in a little frivolity with the end goal of inviting you to participate (you people have been way too quiet lately) and distracting me from shanking a b*tch.
I’ve mentioned before that I probably identify as a Kinsey 5, meaning it would take a female version of Vin Diesel to turn my head towards the fairer sex. People jokingly ask who straight people would go gay for all the time, though, so I have to wonder: if you’re gay, who would you go straight for? (Or if you’re straight, the age-old question of who you’d go gay for. If you’re bi, just pick the three people you’d like to get the horizontal monkey on with the most.)
My top three women:
1. Michelle Rodriguez.
She’s tough, she’s fierce, she’s tight, and she’s gorgeous. She plays hard, gritty characters rather well, with a bit of a wild side and definite hard-as-nails core. I have no idea what she’s like outside of the characters she’s often typecast as in various action flicks (The Fast and the Furious, Resident Evil, the atrocity of Bloodrayne that not even she could salvage with that horribly faked accent)…but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy looking.
2. Milla Jovovich.
I’m not sure what it is about Milla that gets me. Maybe it’s because she has the same air that Michelle Rodriguez does, only packed into a more graceful, elegant package: that mixture of ferocity and delicacy with a sharp dash of playfulness. (It probably helps that she looks like a young man sometimes and I love androgyny, although I find her beautiful in a way that transcends gender. Oddly, I didn’t like her when I saw her as Leeloo in The Fifth Element (I was paying more attention to Bruce Willis anyway), but after the Resident Evil films and a few others, I’d gladly switch teams if Milla offered - even if her eyes creep me out a little.
Not…that she’d even give me a second glance. But a boy can dream, can’t he?
3. Lucy…no…um…Drew…no…er…oh, damn. I really don’t have a third; I guess those two ladies are it for me. Anyone got any suggestions for a third?
Sorry if the art’s a little hinky on this one. Okay, let’s be honest, sorry if the art looks like it was ganked from the cover of a post-apocalyptic Lisa Frank spiral-bound notebook. I’m still losing my bloody effin’ mind trying to manage five jobs at once (sad thing is, I spend more time on this job than all but one other, and you don’t want to know how little I’m paid for this), so I’m kinda cutting corners on comic artwork and building things in Photoshop where I can, without much drawing involved (this one was mostly gradient fills with texture brushes painted on top). Two more weeks. ~crosses his fingers~ I can handle this for two more weeks without killing anyone, right?
…don’t answer that.
3,000 comments contest update
We’re teetering on the edge of 2,500 comments, with just a few over 500 to go to hit that magic mark of 3,000 cumulative comments - and I’ve finally decided on a prize. I keep forgetting not everyone’s a gadget-geek like me, and I don’t have to pick out some nifty little bit of tech every time. So for this contest’s prize, the person who posts the 3,000th comment will receive a DVD copy of Velvet Goldmine, all shiny and brand-new.
Just to be fair to our international readers, I won’t be ordering the DVD until we see who wins, as there are region issues to consider and I wouldn’t want to ship someone an NTSC-only DVD if they live in a PAL region, and vice versa. (Granted, a lot of DVDs come with multiple region encoding now, but better to be on the safe side…) Once a winner is determined, I’ll just put in the order and have it shipped directly to your door.
Gather now, unbelievers, for I shall tell you a tale of a power older than the deepest roots of human culture, a force of nature born of the beasts that we claim to have risen above - an instinct so primal, so raw, that it overpowers all else and summons the very earth to quiver before its almighty and terrifying grace.
Homosexuality.
You think you know divinity? You think you know truth? Blasphemers. Weak pawns following a false god. Hearken, then to the truth that even heathens feel burning in the very core of their damned souls: the truth subscribed to by men of all faith, men of Christian and Muslim roots and more, men of all walks of life united, despite their differences, in this belief.
Today is a day for humor, sweetnesses. Adri has had a bad few days and is not in the mood to rant, rave, spout doom and gloom, and otherwise froth over the ills of society, culture, politics, and the pathetic farce that is our upcoming presidential election. So today, kids, we are going to talk about a little Texas TMI that will probably make every woman, gay or straight, and quite a few gay guys breathe a heavy sigh of relief.
You see, my little petroleum-based lubrication products of love, up until very recently it has been illegal to sell sex toys in the state of Texas. It has also been illegal to carry more than six on your person, as carrying more than six is considered intent to distribute. Should the police raid the bamboo storage cube in my bedroom, they would likely find enough evidence to have me carted off to jail and then dealt a hefty fine probably worth ten times the value of the items confiscated as exhibits A through Z.
Now that you know a little too much about me, though, perhaps you wonder: how do people in the state of Texas obtain sex toys? One way is to order online. Another is to visit a variety of “education” shops, as the lovely Dildo Diaries so wonderfully demonstrate:
If you’re done giggling yourself silly, you may be asking yourself, “Where’s he going with this? Oh, sure, it’s a little bit of amusing trivia about the state that, not surprisingly, spawned George W. Bush, but where’s the news? What’s his point?”
…this was actually based on an entirely cracked-out conversation with one of my friends, after he listened to the second Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast and latched on to the “Queerzilla” silliness. You really don’t want to know about the rest of it…trust me. It makes the events during the 100/500 comments contest look tame by comparison.
Speaking of that, lovely Lessa was kind enough to send pictures of her wearing/using her prizes (well, one of her prizes, and one prize she snitched from Barbara):
It made me laugh far too much to see that. She apparently traumatized her kids, while reinforcing their friends’ idea that she’s the coolest mom ever. Hell, I’d kill to have a mother with that kind of sense of humor (but then we already know how I feel about my mum, don’t we, so no need to beat that deceased equine).
Still on the topic of comments, if you’ll recall, the next comments contest mark was set for 3,000 cumulative comments. I still have no idea what the hell I’m giving out as a prize this time (although I’m eyeing a cute little black and blue 2GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player, even nicer than the last one I gave away), but just for a progress update, we’re just over 2,420. (We ended the 500 comments contest with almost 2,150, I believe.) So we’re getting there, slowly but surely. I figure it’ll take another few months to eat up that last 600, unless we suddenly get a huge surge of traffic/new visitors or you guys lose your minds and pull off some unexpected, insane Herculean effort.
I’ll update you guys on the prize soon, and continue posting progress updates now and then.
Before I go, you may remember that I mentioned a LiveJournal friend, Vivian, whose slogan is “Keep Your God Off My Body.” Well, now she’s got a CafePress store where you can get the logo on a T-shirt; she’s also working on “Keep Your God Out of My Classroom/Government/Job Security”, but right now the default is the only one available. She’s not doing it for profit (who could, with CafePress’s outrageously high base prices?), but she just wants to get the word out about the undue influence of religion in decisions involving birth control, abortion, women’s rights, minority rights in general, government, and other areas that affect all our lives. So if you want to pick up a nifty t-shirt that’s not nearly as tasteless as mine, check her out:
That’s all from me, and I’m out. See you tomorrow. Ciao.
Okay, I’ve been saving this for a day when I was too brain-dead to write anything substantive, and today definitely fits that bill. You don’t want to know how late I was up last night working, but the timestamps on the cracked-out commentfest to yesterday’s post should give you an idea. A while ago Sandra over at Globally Green Living tagged me with a meme (aren’t we just the little scions of journalistic integrity?), something about posting seven fascinating things you may or may not know about me.
Er. I’m not good at being fascinating, but here’s me being a good little memesheep and posting seven things anyway.
1. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a neurologist. No, seriously. I was fascinated by the human brain, loved the term medulla oblongata, and thought I’d spend the rest of my life researching synaptic behavior. That was before I got sidetracked by a passion for jet propulsion and weeks spent studying breakdowns of jet engine parts and the progression of jet engine technology over decades. What? I was a dorky kid.
2. It’s not unlikely to find me talking to myself like a crazy street corner prophet while in the grocery store, walking down the street, or even cleaning the kitchen. This includes heated back-and-forth conversations muttered under my breath. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, and it generally only happens when I’m in the middle of working on a story. I often work out dialogue as I’m doing other things away from the computer, and I tend to mutter the speech of the various characters in a conversation to myself while working out natural-sounding dialogue…complete with mimicking their accents. (Sihaya, stop imagining me doing Sujit’s voice.)
3. I refuse to eat anything that comes from a pig. …except bacon and pepperoni. No idea why; I just hate pork and all pork-related products. ~shudders~ Ham makes me gag.
4. I can curse in fourteen different languages. Don’t ask for a demonstration. Cyrillic characters don’t carry over well in browsers anyway, and you can be damned sure I’d pick Russian; the curses are always strange, creative, and the language just sounds so deliciously vulgar. (Although Greek isn’t much better; the weird things they come up with as insults…)
5. Even though I’m almost 28 years old, I cannot sleep at night if I watch a scary movie just before bed. Which is disgusting, considering that in my cynicism I don’t believe in ghost, monsters, spooks, and various other things supernatural. It doesn’t change that I have a hyperactive imagination and just the right sort of battiness, peculiar to writers, that enables me to convince myself that yes, that lump under the covers really is the creepy chick from The Grudge rather than just my cat. Or my feet. I know, I need to grow the hell up and stop pulling the “I’m a speshul writerly snowflake with a speshul imagination!” card. Laurell K. Hamilton, I am not. (Gods, I hope I don’t write that badly.)
6. Despite the vituperative way that I express myself, my overall jaded nature, and a heaping ton of bitterness, I’m actually a much happier person than most people think. I may have certain stark beliefs and a rather coldly pragmatic outlook on life, and have no qualms about deadpanning a scathing retort to someone’s overly-chirpy syrupyness…but on a day-to-day basis, I’m generally cheerful, silly, playful, prone to laughing easily and smiling often. I still don’t talk much out loud if I can get away with it (shut up Hikaru, I know we’re over 9,000 minutes), but even when worked to the bone I’m too busy slogging towards the finish to let myself be unhappy. I’m still a grouch, but I’m a happy grouch. Hush. It works, somehow.
7. And, just to be a little vulgar…I am terrified of black men’s cocks. No, it’s not the purported size; nor is it a race thing. It had better not be; I’m part African-American (wholly, if you listen to the state of Louisiana and the idiotic Napoleonic code), and there are plenty of black men that I find unbearably attractive (Will Smith, Taye Diggs, one of my ex-boyfriends, this boy Jason Thomas that I had a completely lovelorn crush on in high school, Usher as long as he’s dancing and not trying to act)…as long as they keep their jockeys on. It’s the color. The penis is not a particularly attractively-hued thing no matter the ethnicity/skin tone of the male mammalian sporting it; I’m not even pretending that mine is the prettiest thing out there. But that dark, purple-brown, muddied slickness of African-American cock just frightens me silly, and I refuse to touch it unless the lights are out or my eyes are closed.
That’s it. I’m supposed to tag seven more people (half of whom have probably done this already), so I tag…um…
And…um…um…oh, to hell with it. I’m tagging all of you. Post your seven things in the comments, tagging optional (who are you going to tag around here, anyway?). I’m going to take a nap, then get back to work.
DarksideRainbow.net is 451 Press's look at the darker side of the
rainbow - where gay life takes a decided turn away from the happy, the
shiny, and the pink, complete with news, gossip, and a healthy dose of
caffeine-fueled cynicism from gay blogger Adrien-Luc Sanders. Check in
Monday through Friday for a decidedly tongue-in-cheek slant on current
events in the GLBTQ world, spiced with a few fun rants.
Just a little bit more. Okay, kids, this is my last post, so it's time to take this bitch out with a bang. If I'm leaving, I'm not leaving with some pussy parting gift like a DVD. I have just ordered a 4GB silver 3rd-gen [...]
Looks like it's time. I've been thinking this over for the past few days of not posting, not having anything to say, and honestly, not really caring...and I think I'm going to be leaving 451 Press soon. A fair number of [...]
Lance Bass wants you! He wants you to listen, that is, to his public service announcement. He used his good looks, the little twinkle in mesmerizing green eyes and his celebrity status to make a point.
And you know [...]
The million-dollar question. All right, no one's going to get a million dollars off this, but considering where our comment count is, someone could get that copy of Velvet Goldmine that's going for the 3,000th comment. The [...]
Love 'em and leave 'em. Last night, while stripping Linux off my new Eee PC and loading Windows XP from an ISO (as much as it hurt, I love open source but the portable apps I need only run under Windows and don't like [...]
Notable Lesbians This week's Notable Lesbian is:
Sarah Waters
1966 -
Sarah Waters is a British novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. [...]
The pregnant man I haven’t touched upon the “pregnant man” story as of yet. I think I was still trying to digest what it all really meant or stood for. I'm not really fond of the way it's paraded through the [...]
Ask Adri: How do I save my relationship with my lesbian sister? Sorry for a late-night update, everyone. Still working on this "What? I have to make my own schedule?" thing. That, and I'm still not quite back into the swing of things here. I'd hate to have to [...]
Drop it like it's hot "Snooooooop."
You have to hand it to the Doggy Dog, he knows how to make a club banger. And this little pearl of wisdom could be applied to other aspects of life, not just in the club.
When I [...]
Hot Off The Press
Tom Cruise to be President Of US Tom Cruise is going to be the President of the United States, but no not for real. Tom Cruise was rumored a while back to be running for presidency but it seems it was all for a movies.
I [...]
The View Schedule May 19-23 Here is The View schedule for May 19-23. I wonder what the "special announcement" is that they are going to make on Monday?
MONDAY, MAY 19 – A “Day of Hot Topics”; the co-hosts interview [...]
Cena Reminder, Cena on More Wishes -Tonight John Cena will be a guest on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien at 12:35 a.m. ET.
-The local chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation recently granted the wishes of two children. [...]
The View May 16th Recap: Teri Hatcher and Bernadette Peters Whoopi Goldberg said that she was watching television and heard about how Hugh Hefner said that when Miley Cyrus is 18, he is welcome to pose in Playboy. She wanted to clear up that he did not [...]
She Thinks His Tractor's Sexy For some reason, I'm still watching Farmer Wants a Wife. It must be an illness.
This week, the chicks decide to wash Matt's truck. Which is basically just an excuse for them to run around in [...]
Recap delay....
Hi folks, I'm having a bit of an internet problem (what timing! :P). But once this is fixed, I'm going to get right down to last night's episode. Mmmkay? [...]
The Office: "Goodbye, Toby" Well, that was fucking depressing. I suppose it's fitting that Amy Ryan, whom everything we've seen her in has been utterly tragic, makes her debut (cameo?) on the best comedy series on television, [...]
Cena on Opie and Anthony Show, Understanding WWE's Numbers
-5/16/2008 - FRIDAY OPIE AND ANTHONY LINKS: GREG GIRALDO, JOHN CENA, NEW O&A SHOW AUDIO, ANIMATION FESTIVAL AND TRAVELING VIRUS - TICKET LINKS, AWESOME HEATHER GRAHAM VIDEO, NEW VIDEOS ONLINE [...]
Communication in Adoptive Parenting
Lucas was given an assignment last year in school that required him to decorate a half-sheet of poster board with something about his life. Photos, drawings, writing, stickers, etc. were [...]
For some reason, the “size matters” conversation has been coming up in multiple discussions with multiple friends lately, and it’s been driving me mad - because apparently I’m the only person on the face of the earth (and definitely the only man, gay or straight) who doesn’t think size matters. Call me fuckin’ loco, but I’ve got other things on my mind on a daily basis than the size of my dick, the size of your dick, and the size of the dick on that stranger I happened to pass in the grocery store.
”Gargantuan schlong” is almost as fun to say as “giant anime hooters”.
