Cleaning

Today is a holiday for the California State University system, so Rene has the day off. And since I'm treading the fine freelance line between self-employed and unemployed, I worked a little bit this morning and I'm going to spend the day with him. He's leaving for Hawai'i on Thursday, so I won't see him for almost two weeks. Anywho, after I got done writing one of the articles I did this morning, I looked around and had a little tiny freakout.

Enough is enough, I thought. It is time. Time to clean.

People who know me know that I'm not an extraordinarily clean person. I mean, I shower daily and wash my face and teeth, but that's about the extent of my grooming. And I take my philosophy on cleaning my apartment from Angels in America (badly paraphrased): This is messy, not dirty. Messy is papers and clothes strewn about. Messy is a pile of books about to topple over. Dirty is a plate with stuff growing on or food decomposing on the ground. Messy is fine. Dirty is not.

So, anywho, I was looking around Rene's room, and he is even messier than I am. So, I started cleaning. And, although I've never seen it, I'm told that it's a beautiful, somewhat scary sight to see me clean. I attack cleaning with the attitude of a bulimic with her eye on the prom: the more I purge, the closer I am to the prize. I just finished doing his desk and the corner it sits in and I have a trashbag full. And, to top it off, I dusted. Catie and Dot, please don't pass out.

My penchant for throwing things away comes from moving a lot as a child. If you don't want to haul it several hundred miles, throw it away. It's not worth keeping. But also (and this isn't true today), I love cleaning when I'm angry or stressed. It gives me an iota of control when I'm feeling helpless. Other times, though, a switch just gets hit in my head. And it's time.

Time to clean.

New Movies

For those of you who know me pretty well, you can probably count on one hand the number of times we've been to a movie theatre together. It's because I rarely go. In fact, the last movie I went and saw was Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I saw it with Catie in February. Not only is that the last movie I saw (nearly four months ago now), but it is the only movie that I have seen in a theatre in Los Angeles.

It's not that I don't like movies. I actually love movies. But, I grew up in Tifton. It has one movie theatre that has six screens. It showed movies that would appeal to children, Southerners, and mainstream America. Thus, Rachel Getting Married was never shown there. Nor was Rent. Or Brokeback Mountain. Or I would say the majority of the Academy Award winners of the last decade. Because it wouldn't have sold tickets. And since I'm not a teen comedy kinda guy, I just didn't go.

Plus, there was another reason I didn't go to the movies: in a one Starbucks town like Tifton, the place to go to be seen when I was in school was the movie theatre. It was always packed on Friday and Saturday nights with every preppy kid or scene kid or anyone who needed to be seen from middle school to the point in high school when those kids moved on to house parties and cheap beer. Anyway, even though I was school friends with a lot of these people, I never felt like I belonged there. I didn't understand the main principle of belonging to a group: acting like you belong is 80%. If you get that far, you're practically in. But I didn't know that then, so I stayed away. Hung by myself. It was safer that way.

Anywho, this means that I always see movies at home. Which is great, because I can pause them, make them as loud as I want them to be, and walk away if I don't want to see it anymore. It's a good deal cheaper, and I get to see exactly what I want to see. In pretty much every category for me, watching a movie at home beats watching a movie at a theatre (did I mention that there are strangers in movie theatres? Gross.). Except one big one:

It's hard to talk about movies.

Not cinema. Or film. Talking about the concept is kind of universal if you've seen enough of the right kind of movies. But, I can't talk about popular movies. Because I don't see them in theatres when everybody else does, I'm behind the curve on it. And when I finally do see it, the movie is old news and nobody wants to talk it. Like, I watched Zombieland earlier tonight. I remember when everybody saw it for the first time and was talking about it. They were totally right; it was fantastic. But, my viewpoint is neither timely nor relevant right now. So, I'm just going to keep it to myself.

I do that a lot with movies I see by myself. But it's okay. It's got to be better than sitting through a lot of crap waiting to see something mildly interesting. And I think that Netflix and I will continue to get along famously.

Edit: I was so excited to go see The Last Airbender this weekend. Rene and I checked Rotten Tomatoes before going...it had an 8% positive rating. See, yet another reason not to go...I don't want to waste the time and money if the movie is just going to suck.

Tales of a Wayward Classicist: Latin Tattoos

Tales of a Wayward Classicist: Latin Tattoos

Sometimes when I'm writing, I run across stuff I obviously can't use, but that I love too much not to share. I'm writing a guide for Latin tattoos. Here are some Latin tattoo fails. Much thanks to J. Harker for compiling this.

Miss Loosha

So, this year, I had the pleasure of serving on a team with one Miss Lucia M.  She was the model team leader this year in the way that she never let on to those of us she was leading what was going on in her personal life.  She played her cards very close to her chest, and, even when we did catch wind of things, she still maintained her distance.  As a leader should and must.  So, I respect her for that.

But, now that the year is done, it's time to tell secrets.  Well, not secrets, but it is certainly time to hang out.

Lucia (or as I affectionately call her, Loosha) went to LACMA today where we did the tour of the American and Latin American art wings.  Now, those are not my typical areas, but I'm glad she made me go.  In the Latin American wing, there's this huge mural based off of the 1965 Watts riots that is both amazing and full of this beautiful rage and violence.  Gah, it was wonderful.  I was so excited to be there.  I felt inspired just walking through there...got me re-excited about life and starting new projects.

Then, we went to one of my new favorite places in Los Angeles:  Psychobabble, this coffee shop in Los Feliz near Rene's favorite restaurant.  So, reclining in our matching red wingback chair, I sipping a cafe cocoa while she nibbled a cookie, I was regaled with stories from the life of an aloof team leader.  It was fascinating, but in the interest of privacy and not telling everything I know, you'll have to wait for the book version before this story gets told.

Suffice it to say, I had a good evening.  I called Rene and woke him up, we chatted for a bit and he went to bed.

My style guide for one of my websites is against the Oxford comma.  I am personally for it but now I fear that I'm going to start leaving it out because I'm used to ignoring it, much to the shame of Ms. Carter, my fifth grade English Language Arts teacher.

Sour Patch Kids are my crack.

Getting up and going to the gym is rocking my world this week.  I should have done it all year.  Granted, that would have required getting up at 4:30 AM.  Maybe it wouldn't have been worth it after all.

Catie has called me three times in two days.  It's like the old days in communication about everything, and I'm loving it.  Communication with the outside LA world is an unexpected boon of the self-employed life.

Gems TV

Gems TV filed for bankruptcy in April and no one told me!

I will never play the game again.  Today, is truly a day of sadness.

See previous postings for how much I loved Gems TV.

Happiness

I was talking to Catie on the phone today, and she said that she recently realized that we are never going to be happier at any time in our lives than when we are five years old.  I thought about it for an instant, and she started providing me with a litany of reasons (which sadly, I cannot remember all of).  I thought that today I would share a few reasons why everyone is happier at 5 than later on in life:

-A popsicle is the most epically awesome thing in your life.

-If someone isn't being nice to you, an adult will step in and mediate.

-Everyone has to be everyone's friend.  If they're not, once again, an adult will step in and mediate.

-You can take a nap every afternoon.

-You still think that you can grow up to be a dinosaur and an astronaut.  At the same time.

-You still think that you can grow up and someone will love you without you having to change anything about yourself.

-The only people's who love you need is your parents.

I mean, let's face it, there are probably a ton more reasons (and I support your contributions in the comment section of this post).  However, I will add a Rene corollary:  Just because five years old is the happiest time of your life doesn't mean that there isn't happiness at other times.  It is just that happiness is highest and most concentrated over the longest period when you're small.

After Father's Day

Bless me father, for I have sinned.  It has been over a month since my last blog entry.  In that time, I have lived life.  I have kissed a boy and fallen more in love.  I have been to Disneyland, and I rode the Small World ride, much to my chagrin. I have finished a year of service.  I have cried when I realized I would never see any of my children again, and I truly regret that I don't have more pictures.

Enough with that.  So, I've started freelancing again now that I'm done working with City Year.  It was a...run...but I'm glad to be done with it for now.  I don't really have negative feelings about the year, but I do know that it is WAY too close right now for me to think anything honest and serious about it.  So, instead of talking about that, I'm going to talk about something else.

(Insert obligatory promise that I will post a lot more often on here.  I'm not going to make any promises.  We'll just see how it goes.)

I just wanted to jot something really quick that I've been thinking for a while.  This must have happened a month ago now, though it could have been just a few weeks ago.  Anywho, I was talking to my dad, and he asked after my boyfriend, Rene, and I told him about some small thing that had happened, and he expressed his interest and we moved on to something else.

I know that this is such a small moment, but, really, it was hugely important to me.  See, I realized in that moment that, for possibly years, I had been lying to people.  People ask me how my parents deal with me being gay, I tell them that my mom is totally okay with it and that we're really close friends.  And I tell them that my dad is totally in my corner and just wants me to be happy, but that he doesn't want to talk about it.  I mean, he's a good-ol'-boy, and that's just not something that's a part of that world.

I haven't dated anyone that I've really cared for in a while.  And I just never bring it up to my dad.  I thought that he would be too uncomfortable to talk about it.  But, I guess that it's really that I was too scared to bring it up.  Not that he would say anything...he would never be negative, but maybe it would be cold or awkward or put distance between us.  But that was stupidity on my part.  He really, truly and honestly, just wants the best for me.  And that's totally awesome.  He likes me completely for who I am from his reclined perch in his recliner, absorbing vast quantities of the History Channel and ESPN.

You see, my dad's amazing.  And it doesn't matter if my dad can beat up your dad.  If you or your dad say anything about either of us, I'll poison your food.  A vague disclaimer is no one's friend.  So, until next time.