Tag: various
Macho meh
A couple of years ago, I wore a chin goatee on the norm… Sorta liked it. Sorta got annoyed trying to keep it at a good length and not let it end up becoming a goat/troll thing (I do not want to do the Lou Albano thing).
As things have been lately, I just get lazy and had let my face fill up with hair and then decide to shave… repeat x times and flirt with various ideas.
Well, the other day I started going through one of my Beatles Anthology CD cases and came across some of the Sgt. Pepper era John Lennon photos (specifically from the Strawberry Fields Forever video shoot). I realized my hair was a comparable length and my stubble was growing in once again. I decided to take a chance… I decided to risk it all….
I shaved under my lip and my chin and started growing handlebars.
And I’ve actually been out in public with this thing. Can you believe it?
Fortunatley I don’t have a picture to show you, but to be honest — it’s probably not going to be around long enough to turn into Paul Teutul’s massive handlebars.
Stumbleupon Stonegauge…
Seeing I’ve been running Stonegauge in various forms for almost a decade and have blog posts from the last five years to go through… You may or may not want to simply check out the random Stonegauge page tool. That link (and the URL http://www.stonegauge.com/?random will wisk you away to a random post on the blog.
Losing a room mate
Many of you don’t know this but about 19 months ago or so I contact a guy who was using blogspot to post his items for his Tampa based blog, about me hosting his blog and upgrading things for him.
It’s been a long, strange trip but in the 14 months I’ve been officially hostingSticks of Fire, it’s gone from blogspot hotspot to dot-com phenom. I knew at the time I approached Tommy about upgrading things that he had something great going on… Little did I know how much it would grow.
Tommy Duncan is probably the Bay area’s most unheralded media star. He gets invites to speak in various capacities (round table discussions, conferences, TV spots) and pretty much has Tampa covered with himself and his cast of supporting writers.
And now, Tommy has taken the next step by getting into a business alliance with Tampa Gold. When that officially kicks off, Tommy will be departing from my server space at Dreamhost and going to the land of far-far-away… Or on shared hosting package with Tampa Gold, take your pick.
I haven’t seen profit from hosting Tommy’s site and I haven’t requested payment for doing so. I never stuck in some personal reference (“Hosted by Dreamhost” etc) or anything like that… It made me feel good to be doing this.
But to just make a long story short, I want to wish my buddy well with his new venture and I hope it takes him where I couldn’t take him — to his rightful place at the to of local pop culture and beyond.
Poped Out
You know, I’m a Catholic. Non practicing mind you — sorta Agniostic, but someoen who respects the Church at times and ridicules it at others….
Pope John Paul II’s passing is sad mostly because this is a very famous person who has been in the spotlight, at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, for 26 years. I’m not saying that to ridicule the Pontiff, nor am I trying to insult or ridicule anyone by thsi regard. It’s just the first immediate observation of the Pope’s passing.
That being said, I’m getting sick of some of the covnersation on TV and have chosen to turn it off instead of watching news coverage of the Pope’s final hours.
“Father, What are Catholics feeling right now?” was asked a few dozen times by various news sources and it just seemed like the most ignorant, stupid quesiton that could be asked. Someone’s getting ready to die – someone famous, and they are askign what people – because that’s what catholics are, not some alien race – are feeling?
I wanted to hear the clergyman reply, “They’re upset — someone’s fucking died for heavens sake! Someone they may not have been that close too but someone who was famous died. But guess whatt!?!? Life goes on! They’re grieving but they’re living their lives, having weddings, working, etc…. Now please ask me something RELEVANT to the passing of a Pope! Something that leaves you with a shred of journalistic integrity… please?!”
Thanksgiving
It’s occured to me a lot the last few days that it’s been almost exactly a year since I went under the knife… The difference a year makes is immense in so many ways and yet the more things have improved, the more they stay the same with various faccets of my life.
Today we had somewhere around 20 people over for dinner… well, 20 people would be a few too many but it fluctuated in the teens all afternoon. Uncle’s, my aunt, my cousin and her daughter, my younger brother (while Mike skipped out on things) and other family friends. It was a great get-together for the most part and I had a lot of fun with things.
I brought up what I am thankful for (“That I’m not lying in a hospital bed this year.” ) to a round of applause and through the liquor and the laughter I easily forgot where I was a year ago today or what I suffered through at the time (no, not surgery — watching George W. Bush and his faux visit to Iraq).
But someone had to ruin the day for me.
It wasn’t family – though their reaction did indeed bother me. It wasn’t friends of the family – though I notably started acting strange when some people showed up. No, it was the fact certain people turned up with both their kids in tote that I had problems with. I mean MAJOR problems. It basically ruined the evening for me….
The family pretty much embraced them and that made me further angry — as someone who has opened his arms after being stepped on and then gotten stepped on again, I couldn’t stand to watch this train wreck in action.
Speaking of train wrecks, I was happy to see Kylie was walking. Kylie being my cousin Amber’s daughter. I had gotten very upset during her first birthday party when I saw not only was she not walking but she looked like she wasn’t nearly ready for it. I’m glad I’ve been proved wrong on that one.
So… To summarize — a year later I am in good spiriits. I’m not wasting away in a hospital bed with only a friend at my side and a Subway sandwitch to eat. I’m happy I am spending time with my family and out and about… I’m thankful that I’m not having nightmares of someone’s blog or having Christmas Cards thrown out…
I’m thankful….
Time for the final sprint….
Polls closing in various places on the East Coast….
Plenty of time left elsewhere in America….
There will be rain if God wills it… Rain, baby, rain….
Talk
I usually start off my posts with titles — sometimes they come to me immediately and set the tone for posts, sometimes they are terrible titles for posts because they have nothing to do with them, and other times they are dead on. Right now I have no title at all in mind or every title I think of contradicts what I was going to talk about.
I was going over the site web logs – just sometime I do from time to time to see who is linked to Der Stonegauge or other sites I am in control of. I’ve been catching a lot of people who’ve been siphoning graphics lately, for example. I also check those logs for search phrases that are used on the Internet that leads people to this site. Sometimes they are strange terms, sometimes they are relevant because I have posts using those titles, sometimes they are explicitly (because I use 4 letter words in posts and other posts just happen to have the matching second keyword that some pervert typed into a Search Engine) and then some terms come out of the blue.
Here’s the one that made me do a double take:
he doesn’t want to talk to me
It got me thinking… It got me wondering…. Of course, I have no phrase use on the site that even comes close to that, and of course I have no clue who went on the Internet, typed that key-phrase on a certain Search Engine and got this site as a result, but it just jarred me a bit.
So I’ll humor myself here by just typing out why it may seem like “he doesn’t want to talk to me” to this person… And what the truth may be on why “he” seems the way he is.
Read More
White Chicks
I started looking at my Summer Movie Preview edition of Entertainment Weekly (at newsstands everywhere starting today) and came across a picture I just couldn’t believe… I mean it REALLY had floored me…
On page 52 there is a preview for White Chicks and it’s Shawn “SW1” Waynes and Marlon Waynes done up as white girls… and the thing is — before I saw the trailer, I honestly couldn’t tell these were people in make up… let alone African-American…. Let alone the Waynes Brothers who I have known from various entertainment endeavors for close to 15 years now.
This isn’t the picture in the magazine (which takes place in a dance club) but it gives you a ghist of the two guys in drag… Quite a transformation, no? Not just gender but color too…
Apathy and Other Musings
I spent a couple of hours at Target and Boot Ranch trying to occupy myself and forget about certain things and certain people today, it worked for the most part but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth because I want to stay out and when I got back I found everything I had been thinking / planning fell through.
I met someone who lives near me two days ago on here — typical goth chick and all that jazz. We were having some pretty good conversation up until yesterday afternoon when I asked her what she prides herself in and she told me “Apathy”. She also ended up telling me how much she didn’t care and how she was proud of it… And then telling me how she didn’t even care for the conversation we were having…
That was a quick way to kill conversation with me and tell me you aren’t serious at all about relationships with anyone except yourself and whatever you do as your hobby — be apathetic about things. I mean, the girl was looking for someone to talk to and you get going with things and having an intelligent conversation is such a challenge with people you meet online and then you meet someone who actually talks with an IQ over 80 and you come to the conclusion you don’t care??? Great going, nice attitude and it was a real pleasure talking to you until you contradicted yourself by searching for conversation and not caring who or what you were talking to, or anything else for that matter.
Meanwhile I’m continuing to have the romantic thought of a small business or a business where everyone knows you and you know who you deal with… Like a small coffee shop in downtown Tampa where there is a market for places like that. As of right now, being in the suburbs, you don’t get that or don’t feel comfortable with the places you have. I had one place — the Java Jungle — where I used to hang out where I was comfortable with everyone and the atmosphere was great – just the location sucked for them. My dad’s cousin Linda and her husband Morgan have a place like that near San Francisco (small coffee shop) and it’s right around the corner from a Starbucks but they still have a loyal following.
I’d be content with something like that – but then again that takes money and that’s something I do not have any of right now.
Speaking of Downtown, I’m trying to explore ways to get my ass downtown and back… I never get a chance to just wander around down there and see the sights, it’s always zip-to-and-zip-back when I’m with people. Time for me to do stuff on my own if everyone is not going to take part in exploring
