Mission Accomplished

The new expandable system is up and seems to be running....

YEAH!!!!!

Let me know if you run into any problems with it. Though you do need to have JavaScript turned on for it to work. I know that it may not be backwards compatible, but hey, it's 2006 and some assumptions need to be made. If you don't have JavaScript on, you should be able to see everything, the usage will be just a bit below par. (Just ignore the Expand/Collapse post links under each message)

My undying thanks to ChuBlogga and his post of such excellent instructions.

Nighty night all, >>>Yawn

Quasi-Bitch #1

Well, the last few days have been both productive and annoying as all hell.

As you can tell, I now have these tags for reading all of my sometimes longwinded posts. Read an intro, and choose to read the rest or not. It came straight off the help found on Blogger, but it shows up at the end of each and every message--annoying and deserving of a severe thrashing with a 2x4...

I've been working on different ways to get around the problem, but to no avail so far. The best solution that I really liked was a simple little JavaScript to handle the printing, but one little problem, Blogger is not too interested in my inserting a JS snippet into the posts. We're looking into it and a couple more solutions. Vee veell sook-seed!!!!

I also made a friend happy by signing up on MySpace, God help me... Well, Hayley should be happy... (Girl, get your butt across the pond and back to LA soon!!!) She wants me to completely pimp out the page and make it totally hot. I must be getting old, to me, pimping something out means selling it for sex. ;-P Well, I guess I will when I get a chance but it will be after I get a few other things done first. BTW, Hayley, that song "Playgirl Central" by Tila Tequila is totally awesome.

Work is running a bit slow, which is helpful since I'm spending way too much time tinkering around here and still looking for an apartment. I actually found one and was accepted, but I think I've decided not to take it. My current roomie has 2 cats of which one thinks I'm it's human. Now, I don't usually believe in supporting such silly fantasies, but I have become attached to her as well. The last thing I want in my life is a pet, but I can't imagine coming home and not having her there either--what a conundrum I've gotten myself into.

About a week or so ago, I replaced my dying cell phone (funeral arrangements are pending but will probably involve a baseball bat and small thermonuclear devices) with a new one. I happen to be a fan of Motorola for radio equipment, so I got a deal on a Razr v3 from Cingular. Not nearly as cool as it used to be now that EVERYONE has them, but I like it.

Well enough whining, I'm sure you can tell that the morning has been a bit irritating and is getting to me a bit. Thank God, it will pass.

OK, it passed, the Blogger spell checker had to be taught the word Blogger. Ack!

Pride and Gay Pride pt 2 [Essay]

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that there are basically 3 types of homosexuals:

1. Biological
2. Selective
3. Psychological
   

Biological homosexuals came into the world the way that they are. Be it God or genetics, they were decided from day one what they would grow into.

Selective homosexuals are people who have honestly chosen to be Gay. I know many women who have followed this path after horrid relations with men where they were raped, molested, abused, etc. I have met very few men that seem to fall into this category.

Psychological homosexuals are living in a mistaken state. People in this state usually grew up being called such things as "mamma's boy," "queer," "girlie boy" and such and after a time, they began to believe it, hence they never find true happiness since they are accidentally living a lie. These are the people who programs like Exodus, amongst others, get their claimed successes. Though, like the founders of Exodus, some of their success has not lasted due to the fact the an unhappy person can make himself do nearly anything for a while, just like gay men who marry women and later come out.

I think I am from the first category, biological.

I always sensed that I was different, but didn't know exactly how until I was about six or seven years old. About that time, a group of friends and I were playing in a local park when we came across a box of Playboys. Being young boys, we immediately took them off to someplace to inspect the booty, a tree house.

I saw the pictures of the naked women and thought most of them were quite pretty, but that was all. My friends were completely enamored and it was obvious that they found it much more interesting than I did. I really did read the jokes page and part of some interview and maybe a bit of Xaviera Hollander's column, I remember the lipstick in the shape of a penis as well as the title "The Happy Hooker".

I didn't think that much about it at the time, as it wasn't the first time that I had reacted to something differently than my friends.

A few months later, we were in the same park and we found another box of magazines, only this time, there were some Hustler and other more graphic magazines than Playboy.

I was looking through a Hustler and saw a spread of a couple all done up in silver lamé in various poses and it was the first time I ever saw a naked man with an erection. Immediately, I knew what my friends had been going on about the last time we had found these and after hearing the word "faggot" thrown around, I knew it would be most prudent to keep this to myself. Peer pressure and cultural prejudices had already been planted within and were bearing fruit (pun intended).

Now is going to come a confession that I never would have expected to make, the man in the photo spread was Ron Jeremy. Now I have nothing against the man and in fact have heard that he is a totally cool dude and amazingly real, but he has NEVER been my type in any way shape or form, but he was my introduction to men en rampant.

I remember my early crushes on boys from school and I nearly failed gym a few times because I was terrified of showering after class for fear of sprouting wood. I have known many girls and women in my life, but I have never found myself sexually attracted to one.

When I was about 14 or 15, after my mother died and my dad remarried, I had a few issues with what was going on, so we entered family counseling, but I was the only one that went on a regular basis. The psychologist one day asked me if I was gay, or a homosexual. I said "No!" You see at this time, the only images of gay men I had other than kid insults were sick old men in Chicago who molested little boys and then, after killing them, buried under the house. I couldn't kill anyone, so there was no way I could be a homosexual. So when he followed the first question with an inquiry as to if I knew what a homosexual was, I had the same answer. He explained it to me and I realized that was the word that described me; as well as faggot and queer.

At one time I thought I might think I was gay since I had never slept with a woman. So, I made the decision that if the opportunity presented itself and she was someone I could care about, I'd try it. Well, it did and so did I and well (my female friends: please don't be offended or upset with me) but I could have more fun with a bowl of warm Jell-O. It was what it was, but it was quite obvious to both of us that while I could function, I wasn't going to be happy about it, even though in that moment in time, I wanted to be.

I can't help but laugh when people call it a choice. While it might be for a small minority, for most of us, we spend a fair amount of our lives kicking and screaming against this piece of self-discovery. Why would anyone "choose" to be a social pariah? I had someone tell me (actually, I've heard this on many occasions) that homosexuals are in the business of recruiting people since we cannot breed on our own as if we were a dying race, slated for extinction. Strange, even when people have had to live amazingly closeted lives and barely acknowledged it to themselves, they came across others of like orientation.

We are VERY familiar with the pains of trying to live being what we are not. We would have to be amazingly hateful people to convince others via recruitment to live a life that isn't what they were intended to be by their maker. Sure, there are some people who are selfish enough to try that, but contrary to the idea that I was taught, that mankind is inherently evil due to original sin, I see too much evidence that is not truly the case.

On September 11th, 2001 the world watched a small group of people do amazingly terrible acts in the name of God as they saw him. From the majority of the world's view this was an incredibly selfish and misguided act that would be expected from the original sin, man is evil crowd. If man truly was that way, then there would have been no heroes out of firemen and police, amongst others, to try and save anyone or thing other than their own skin. You have to be truly good at the core of your essence and being to do that kind of a job, little less after watching the aftermath. Sure, man has a tendency to be amazingly selfish in the day-to-day living of his life, but I think that is truly a learned behavior than his true nature. People consistently show their inherent goodness when it really counts. Maybe, it's time that we learned to make it the core of our day-to-day life as well...

I sometimes wonder why there is so much animosity from straight men toward gay. Maybe I am just simple-minded, but I always assumed that the problem was rooted in the nature of humans to judge, fear and hate that which they do not understand.

I remember a few years ago during the early years of the Clinton administration when he was addressing the issue of gays in the military, we won't get into what I think of the outcome ("Don't Ask, Don't Tell"). I was listening to some radio talk show and I have no idea who was being interviewed, but when asked why straight men seem to hate gay men so much, the person being interviewed said "Straight men are afraid that gay men will do to straight men what straight men have been doing to women for thousands of years." I loved that.

Earlier this evening, I was thinking about it and I had an interesting thought. It occurred to me that in nearly every culture that has such strong religious taboos are very much patriarchal societies that control property, power and inheritance through the men. Women may own some property, but the men are the ones endowed with the ability to control it. Cultural taboos and religious morality laws usually have some justifiable reason behind them and I was thinking that the union of 2 men would result in the creation of a very powerful business interest in an early culture. With 2 power yielding individuals, both able to make binding arrangements and work together collectively, you would definitely have a force to be reckoned with and that in time could quite easily become taboo for all the wrong reasons.

It's worth thinking about.

I think of it this way: most of us 'noids are so bad at loving anything other than ourselves (and some barely do that) that who are we to judge how others love. I tell people that when mankind in general learns to truly love everyone and everything, then and only then might God grant us the privilege to judge what forms it may take. Until then, we're making fools of ourselves, showing just how far from God we have become.

Pride and Gay Pride pt 1 [Essay]

Yesterday was the Christopher Street West (a.k.a. The West Hollywood Gay Pride) Parade and Festival. As usual, I went to the parade but skipped the festival itself this year. For those who have never been, it's a blast and definitely worth checking out at least once.

I could go into it's history and how it came to be, but if you are interested, they seem to do a pretty good job of recalling all that on their site.

Also as usual, I started my day with stumbling across the fundies (as I so nicely call them) a group of people who like to say they are there to love me by pounding home the idea that I am going to Hell for being gay. Well, as to that, I figure if God didn't want me to be gay, he shouldn't have made me that way. Just as heterosexuals never chose to be straight, I never chose to be gay either.

As is usual, they had the normal selection of Bible verses to quote from, though 2 come from Leviticus, they feel its fine to eat shellfish and their wives let them leave the house wearing cottons and wools and when was the last time ANY of them declared their wives unclean during her monthly visitor little less after childbirth. But though they have little to no interest in following the vast majority of rules and regulations of the book of Leviticus, they have absolutely no problem judging the guests and participants of the festival with them. People like that give Christians a bad name in my book and I find it such a shame that the majority of Christians don't do something about them.

I see the majority of these same people here every year and would have thought they might have had enough experience at the parades to at least ask some questions of the ideas and assumptions they made very clear in the conversations.

The first gentleman (I use that term loosely) would make some jack-ass statement and paint himself into a corner and instead of re-trying, he just got louder and louder. The second was more polite and we at least discussed the differences in our positions and made an effort at civility, if not courtesy. The third was as bad as the first except instead of getting loud, he would start throwing insults and really vile assumptions.

He would say that being gay meant that I was a drunkard and a lascivious sex pervert. I may have an occasional glass of wine with dinner and once in a while have a cocktail when I go out with friends, but I very rarely get plastered or even a bit tipsy, so drunkard is taking it a bit far. As far as being a sex pervert, I've been celibate (mainly) for the last 7 years. I have always been a bit old-fashioned in my dating in that I actually like knowing someone before I go to bed with them. Albeit, in West Hollywood, that makes dating a bit difficult but I don't spend much time there.

A friend had gone to the festivities with me and thought I was crazy for wasting my time in such a futile pursuit. I told him that I wasn't actually expecting any of them to become gay tolerant, little less friendly, but that you do it for the one single individual that later might actually look into the things I had said and have his heart, if not his mind, opened a bit more. Hence, why I get called a Spiritual Johnny Appleseed.

So what is being Gay? It's about being the person God made me and if that means being attracted to and loving those of the same gender as myself, so be it. For myself, Gay Pride is being just that and celebrating the diversity of God's creation by not letting simple and hateful people force me to be ashamed of something that I have little to no control over (I've decided to do a part 2 of this entry that will go into my personal history a bit on finding out about my being Gay).

To many people, being Gay is about going to bars and getting laid every day. That's a community activity that happens to most people when they come out of the closet. When you become aware that others are the same as you, that you are not a freak of nature and all alone, people have a tendency to over-compensate for the perceived loss of the experiences that most people get during adolescence. Though a hedonistic lifestyle has become a common and well publicized aspect of Gay life, these are nearly as prevalent in the heterosexual community, not a great idea for a central focus to a life beyond the crotch.

Though I am sure that many disagree with me, as far as I've been able to determine, the morality of nearly all activities is in the why, not the what. If I sleep with someone because I want to use them as a life-sized, 98.6 degree, breathing sex toy, I demean both them and myself. On the other hand, if I sleep with someone because I wish to share myself body and soul with them and they likewise with me, that's a beautiful thing and should be celebrated, not berated.

To Be With or To Be Without a Credit History

I have been trying to find a new place to move and have found out just how much the world depends upon credit and the history of it.

I have been checking out apartments all over the west-side of Los Angeles, such as Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista and Playa del Rey. Once I got over the sticker shock, I started to run into possible problems with the management companies. It used to be that there were many mom-and-pop buildings in this town and you were checked out, but you could get in by making a good impression on the manager; not any more. Now, most buildings are operated by these management companies that don't seem to care about anything but covering their corporate butts by making sure that applications are near perfect credit and as minimal risk as possible.

So what does someone do who actually carries no debt do? My pop instilled what seemed to be an excellent cash-flow philosophy that has since reeked havoc in my life.

Don't spend more than you have and only buy what you can afford,

Spirit Geek's Dad

hence I have never really used credit.

A short while ago, I started an investment into a piece of property in Tucson, AZ. I figured that when it was finished and I owned it outright, I would take out an equity loan and see about investing in some other property since I use a technique that allows me to acquire it for pennies on the dollar.

Since I live very simply, I never really worried about identity theft. Who in their right mind would want to be me financially? The closest to ID theft I ever came was a (suspected) slightly disreputable website that got a bit ticked when I managed to track him down in Toronto and ask for both a cancellation of my membership, but also a refund for a duplicate billing. But that's another story for another time.

I went to Annual Credit Report and managed to get a copy of my credit report from all 3 of the major agencies.

The only thing that actually showed up was an ancient Sprint bill. I had lost my cellphone and though reported to Sprint and promised that they would turn the phone off and I wouldn't be billed, they didn't and I was to the tune of $120. They had sold the collection account to some company (that never actually contacted me though my address was on the reports) but was kind enough to report every 3 months the overdue account. (Nice, huh?)

Anyhow, the point of all this is that my lack of credit history and the tendency of the management companies is not making my life easy. Fortunately, I am not in any hurry and I can take my time and both find a place I really like and the right place will not have a problem with my credit history or lack thereof.

The view of life and the universe that I have tells me that it will work in the right time and place. Worrying and fretting about it is not going to make it any better. Situations like this are not actually tests per se, but little dramas that make the universe an interesting place for the soul to visit. From our little localized perspective, it can seem pretty $%!&ed-up but if we open up to a wider view, it becomes a fairly fun experience if we will let it.