Should auld aquaintence

New years eve, 2005. God, this has been a long, crappy year. Squidy's trial and incarceration, thousands of dollars in legal fees, the long monotony of Giant Robot, and a bachelorhood that weighs on me more and more.

I end this year far deeper in debt, with a more broken family, and more alone than ever.

I hope 2006 is better.

I spent my big New Year's Eve watching TV, then I went to go see Brokeback Mountain for the second time. I felt that I missed or misunderstood the ending the first time. I really wanted to figure out if Jack's wife knew about Ennis when they spoke on the phone. She did, I've decided, because she let out a long sigh when he said that they were good friends.

My entry for New Year's eve last year included a thank you to Andrew, the closest I had to a boyfriend in 2004, and whose gift to me (a rubber duck) still sits incongrously on the mantle, next to a toy van that Joel once gave me, and a needlepoint scene of the desert that my Mom made. This year I guess I'll thank JM from the ride. That one day with him was my love for this year. I hope you're doing well, wherever you are.

Emo?

Apparently I'm not emo. Pity. How can that be?

I am 35% Emo.

Hmm.. I should stop listening to Dashboard Confessional.... enough said... Now that I stopped looking at my shoes, I know how the real world looks.

Take the
Emo Test
@ FualiDotCom

Backpacker/Punk

Up at 4:30 am tomorrow to get to LAX, to catch my flight to Madrid.

It has been so long since I've had a chance to be this version of me, travel-punk me. I miss this me. I'm so tired of the day-to-day me. Sad that the people that see me most often will never get to see the version of me that I like best.

weblogs.com

Back in the day, when the net was young, there were newsgroups, or NNTP. It was the predecessor of the online message boards. But unlike message boards, where a centralized website held the information, newsgroup postings were fowarded from site to site.

It worked pretty well, but eventually became useless because of the lack of access controls: every newsgroup became just spam, trolls, porn, and hate.

It still exists, both as a protocol and as a system. (Check out heavily filtered versions at groups.google.com or news.gmane.org.) But, its raw form is useless. The good-info-to-crap ratio is too low.

It is sad to see that weblogs.com has suffered the same fate. Most new postings are to spamlogs. It, too, is drowning.

Spike's Law: "Any website that has a public API will become useless."

I used to enjoy the randomness of reading new blog entries. When I checked it out today, I had to click through forty entries before I finally found a good, old fashioned, blog with cat pictures.

New Bike

Gay Cowboys Eating Pudding

When Christian Tennis Guy finally showed up at my house in the South Central, we had to immediately race out again to get to the completely sold-out showing of Brokeback Mountain. The 5mph slog up La Brea to the Grove and the 15 minutes trying to make a left turn onto 3rd St reminded me why I ride my bike. The self-park lot a the Grove was completely full with cars swirling around like flies to poo. We had to valet park, which made us even later. The only two seats together were in the first row. I had trouble cocking my head back far enough to see the top of the screen.

Thankfully, Brokeback has very still cinematography, so I didn't get carsick and hurl in a popcorn bucket.

It was touching and tragic. There's so much chatter in our society, in our therapy-minded culture, that there was comfort in a movie that deals with the emotions of those that don't talk about emotions. America has lost something now that it seems to value talk over deeds.

I used to be so silent and observant, but, now I've learned to fill the silence with meaningless jokey chatter. Would teenage Spike respect the modern day Spike? Or would he think of me as a buffoon?

Christian Tennis Guy is something of an LA newbie, so we followed the movie up with some cliche spots: Mel's Drive in for food, Red Rocks for a beer, then back down the hill to north-western South Central.

He and I talked a lot about the business of dating, the process of it. Strategy and tactics. Funny how sometimes I sounded wise and sometimes I sounded so stupid.

Holidays

With Christmas party season in full swing, I've already seen a lot of my co-workers in their off-campus mode. We've had a big MegaTech party, a party for the Gay Roboticists of America, and next week is a little party for us that work on Giant Robot.

I'm always a bit humbug about the holiday season. There is a nagging suspicion that December is supposed to be better than this. More celebration; less obligation.

Last month's date, Geek Boy, has gone by the wayside. It is always the same thing: I go out with someone because it is fun to have someone to go out with. They fall in love and wonder why I keep them at a distance. I keep them at a distance because I still have this romantic notion that when it is truly meant to be, I'll know somehow.

Dating this month's guy, Skinhead Guy, has been different. I like this one a lot. I find myself drifting off, thinking about him. But I know what that means... Every guy that I fall for ends up dumping me. Lawyer Guy and San Diego Guy are case in point.

I dump them. They dump me. It continues without resolution.

I can't wait to put together my new Motobecane Messenger bike. It is all so shiny and blue.

The Germs

It was past midnight and I was belly-up to the stage, waiting for the Germs to start their set. I was already punked out by that point, having been through sets by Orange, the Muffs, and Mike Watt and the Secondmen.

The audience seemed strange to me. Too many different tribes; too much variation in age. Old men and high schoolers, punk, glam, rockabilly, corporate.It seemed unreal, like a Hollywood idea of what a crowd should look like.

This was the band that the crowd had been waiting for. Finally the subdued crowd engaged, gathering the energy from the Germs and reflecting it back. There was pushing and pogo and waves of human energy.

I felt the pressure from the crowd on all sides: S to my right, someone at my back and a boy to my left. When the crowd light illuminated the pit, I saw how babyfaced the boy to my left was. I looked at his arms and hands. He was probably just sixteen.

I was tired and had drawn detached and critical. I couldn't feel the music at all. I was annoyed that the lead singer didn't stick more to the songs, instead of chatter and theatrics.

I wished the Muffs were still playing. That set had been so solid, so tight. I thought I would like to be in a band like that. She always amazes me.

My feet hurt. We left at one in the morning, walking downhill to Beverly Hills were we parked the car.