Because Nobody Asked

After an absurd level of paperwork and forms, I finally succeeded in changing my car's registration and my license from Texas. Gee, it only took me four hours of standing in line.

I am still in low-key mode after the move. This is time where I am learning how Midwestern Funky Town works. Many people have complained about the streets being confusing in MFT, but after Boston it seems downright straightforward. Plus, I have determined that I could (if needed) basically walk everywhere in MFT.

Most importantly, though, I found that my local market sells TaB by the case. I have not actually seen the case o’ TaB before moving to MFT. Usually I always had to buy it in six-packs. To be honest, I figured the FDA wanted to limit the amount of toxins yummy goodness that any single individual could purchase.



With all the plugging I do for the product on this blog, you would think that Coca Cola would hook me up with some TaB swag. Maybe some of those “hour-glass” tumblers? Or they could just pay for my chemo for TaB-related cancer.

Since I am still on low-key mode, I am going to refrain again from a more lengthy entry. Instead, I’ll answer a question meme that I found at UnCool.

1. What Do You Say Most When You’re Trying Not To Swear?

Fuck (I am not good at censoring myself).

2. Do You Own An iPod?

Yes, though it is getting old. It was one of the first “minis.” I couldn't even contemplate the gym without one.

3. Which Person(s) In Your Top Friends Do You Talk To The Most?

Um – I am not sure that I organize my friends into a hierarchy that would suggest a select “Top.” Does this mean that others have people whom they consider “Loser Friends?”

Whatever the case, right now I probably talk with one of my sisters most often.

4. What Time Is Your Alarm Clock Set To?

It goes off at eight o’clock. As you can tell, going back to teaching in the fall is going to be tough for me.

5. Do You Want To Fall In Love?

Yes, of course. Do people actually answer “No?” What do they say? “No, man – I want my life to be an emotional void. That’s cool with me.”

In terms of falling in love, though, I would like to have more sense about it than my previous ventures. No cowards -- No liars -- No zombies.

6. Do You Wear Flip-Flops When It’s Cold?

I never wear Flip-Flops – ever. Indeed, I would probably go barefoot first.

7. Would You Rather Take The Picture Or Be In The Picture?

I would like to take the picture with my super archaic 35mm SLR camera. Why go digital when, in just three short weeks, you can have prints from actual film?

Still, I also like pictures of myself. Mostly, though, I want editorial control over all the pictures of me that exist in the world.

8. What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Probably that was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It has been a very Harry Potter summer for GayProf.

As an aside, Daniel Radcliff certainly turned into quite the looker. Just in time for him to be legal, too!

9. Do Any Of Your Friends Have Children?

Yes.

10. Has Anyone Ever Called You Lazy?

My father always called me lazy when I was growing up.

11. Do You Ever Take Medication To Help You Fall Asleep?

I do when I really need sleep and am too stressed out to fall asleep. Most of the time, though, I avoid over-the-counter sleep aides. They leave me feeling really groggy the next day (and Tylenol PM seems to dehydrate me for whatever reason).

12. What CD Is Currently In Your CD Player?

Scissor Sisters’ self-titled debut album.

13. Do You Prefer Regular Or Chocolate Milk?

I only use milk in cereal or for cooking. Most times I buy 2%.

14. Has Anyone Told You A Secret This Week?

Nope. Do you have one to share?

15. When Was The Last Time You Had Starbucks?

Hmmm – It has been sometime. I almost always make my coffee in the morning at my house. When I was in Texas last month, I think that I stopped by a Starbucks for a Mocha.

16. Can You Whistle?

Sure, I know how to whistle. You just put your lips together and blow.



17. Do You Have A Trampoline In Your Back Yard?

Who wrote this meme? Clearly not the gays.

No -- I avoid eyesores in my garden. Trampolines only belong in sex dungeons.

18. Do You Think People Talk About You Behind Your Back?

Only the tabloids.

19. Did You Watch Cartoons As A Child?

Oh, goddess, yes! I was recently really excited to find the almost totally forgotten 1980s Zorro cartoon on DVD.



20. What Movie Do You Know Every Line To?

It’s been a bit of time, but I could probably mouth all the words to Star Trek II, III, IV, and VI ("Ship -- Out of danger?"). The same with Star Wars IV and V .

21. What Is The Last Thing You Purchased?

A parking permit for my new job ($500! They are mighty proud of their parking spaces at Big Midwestern University.)

22. Is There Anything Wrong With Girls Kissing Girls?

How could something so right be wrong? Indeed, I think that there should be more same-sex kissing across the nation.

23. Do You Own Any Band T-Shirts?

No, but I do own a Mr. Clean t-shirt.



24. What Is Your Favorite Salad Dressing?

Though it means losing blog readers, I really like Ranch. Most often, though, I just eat salad dry (to avoid extra calories and fat).

25. Is anyone in love with you?

Not to my knowledge.

26. Do You Do Your Own Dishes?

Despite my Dish Mania, doing dishes is my least favorite chore. Everything goes in the dishwasher. EVERYTHING.

27. Ever Cry In Public?

I can’t think of the last time that this occurred. I cry very rarely overall. Still, if I need to cry, being in public wouldn’t stop me.

28. Do You Like Anyone?

Just in general? Or like – like? Or like as in "tolerate"? Is this a question about being a misanthrope? I am confused.

29. Are You Currently Wanting Any Piercings Or Tattoo?

I go back and forth on the tattoo thing. If I were to get one, I know what and where. Still, it all just seems too permanent for me.

Piercings are a turn-off for me (not a judging thing – they just don’t turn my personal crank). Since you have to dress like what you want to sleep with, I have no plans for piercing.

30. Who Was The Last Person To Make You Mad?

My movers.

31. Would You Ever Date Anyone Covered In Tattoos?

What are the images in the tattoos?

32. What Did You Do Before This?

I was working on the never ending research project of doom. Then I answered a couple of e-mails.

33. When Was The Last Time You Slept On The Floor?

That would have been last Saturday before my furniture arrived (See #30).

34. How Many Hours Of Sleep Do You Need To Function?

After careful self-evaluation, I truly need eight hours. If given the opportunity, I will take more. When I have less, though, I will not quite process information right. If I go for two or more days with less than eight hours, it is almost guaranteed that I will get a cold.

35. Do You Eat Breakfast Daily?

Mom always said it was the most important meal of the day.



36. Are Your Days Full And Fast Paced?

They are full, but not fast paced at the moment.

37. What are you doing right now?

I am taking a shortcut to write a blog entry.

38. Do you use sarcasm?

Only as a pedagogical tool.

39. Have You Ever Been In A Fight?

Yes, but not since middle school.

40. Are You Picky About Spelling And Grammar?

No. I can’t spell to save my life. When I grade my students’ papers, I do make many comments on grammar, but it does not affect their grades. I am more concerned about content and the quality of their thinking (but to make that thinking clear often requires good grammar).

41. Have You Ever Been To Six Flags?

No, and I have no plans. Didn't some poor girl just lose her legs on a Six Flags roller coaster?

42. Have You Ever Gotten Beat up?

Yes, but not since middle school (see #39).

43. Do You Get Along Better With The Same Sex Or The Opposite?

I don’t think there is a clear divide. As long as they worship me, I really don’t care about their gender.

44. Do you like mustard?

Yes - Dijon, in particular.

45. Do You Sleep On Your Side, Stomach, Or Back?

I sleep on my side or stomach. Before falling asleep, though, I toss and turn a lot. It takes me a good hour before I fall asleep. Perhaps I should rethink #11.

46. Do You Watch The News?

Yes, on occasion I watch the news, but most of the network news is crap today. I depend more on the internet and the New York Times (when I have the time to read it).

47. How Did You Get Three Of Your Scars?

Have I stumbled into the movie Jaws? I am not sure that I even have three scars. There is one on my forehead from the previously discussed childhood hairstyling accident. The only other one that I know about is a minor scar on my penis (It’s true!), but that, my friends, is a tragic tale for a different day.

Tagged

Moving and traveling has made me neglectful of memes. CoG has been tagged several times for an assortment of them, but I have not had a chance to respond. Thus, this entry will address two memes.

First, let me extend my appreciation to those who selected CoG for the Thinking Blog meme (Ragnell, Tenured Radical, Atari Age, Diary of a Goldfish, and Slaves of Academe). You all make me blush. Plus, you left me with a problem of not being able to decide which five blogs from my blogroll to choose in return. They all make me think in some way or another. If I were forced to choose, it would probably just mean that I would crush on my usual suspects who get the most mention on my blog already (You know who you are).

I am, therefore, taking the lame way out and changing the Thinking Blog meme to my own rules. Yeah, I am a rebel like that. Rather than choosing blogs that already have tons of readers, here are five blogs that I think should have more readers/commentators. They all have GayProf’s Magical Seal of Approval^©:

1. Un-Cool – I only recently found this blog, but I adore it already. Lina, a British woman currently at work on a MA thesis, takes a distinctive and irreverent view of everything, but especially towards sex and gender. Hate it or love it. Either way, she should be having hundreds of comments on her provocative entries.

2. Mercy O. Warren – Truth in advertising, I knew Mercy when neither of us had a blog. Still, she is bringing sexy back to the eighteenth century. Looking for arcane knowledge about the drafters of the Constitution? Have you ever wondered what an elite Massachusetts woman would do with a blog if such things existed in 1789? Mercy is your gal (though she should update – ahem).

3. Earl Cootie – When I think of a gay 1950s gas-station attendant crossed with an imaginary childhood aliment, I think Earl Cootie. Sure, he has a peculiar obsession with the Aves world. What gay man doesn’t? Well, okay, I don’t. And, come to think of it, none of my friends do either. Still, Earl has a sense of humor that I adore, even if he is a birder (which always sounds more dirty than it should).

4. All Things Bitter – Have you wondered what gay life is like in Nebraska? Neither did I –- until I read All Things Bitter. It turns out that gay life in Nebraska leaves one, well, rancorous on pop-culture issues.

5. V.U.B.O.Q. To my mind, VUBOQ updates his blog at an ideal level. Usually he posts more than once a day, which means that you can count on him as a return-visit blog when you are “working.” His real-life cousin will soon be my neighbor, as well.

Finally, this man clearly has good taste as he won the CoG prize for knowing a [disturbing] amount about me:

DykeWife and Screw Bronze! (Maybe others?) Also tagged me for the “Eight Facts” meme. The rules for it are pretty straightforward:

* each player lists 8 facts about themselves
* the rules of the game appear before the facts do
* the player ends by tagging 8 people

So, here are eight things that you might or might not know about little GayProf:

1. I am color blind. This realization first came when I was in third grade and was tested in school. The nurse gave me one of those books with multicolored dots and told me to trace the maze or name the shape/image on each page. I thought that she was nuts. All the pages were just a jumble of dots. She seemed so adamant, though, and I was eager to please. So I just made up a path through the dots in order to placate her her. She then told me to inform my parents that I was color blind.

Funny thing when you tell an eight-year old that they are color blind, they only hear the operative word “blind.” I therefore concluded that I would soon be as feeble as Mary Ingalls from t.v. Out of bravery, I decided to conceal this information from my parents lest they worry. I was resigned that I would slowly lose my sight, but do it quietly and without complaint.



The nurse exposed my lie of omission when she phoned later in the week as a follow up (I guess to make sure that my parents weren’t enrolling me in flight school). My mother was fairly confused as to why I burst into tears over it.

My form of color blindness is not the most severe version. I can tell the difference between primary red and primary green. If, however, red or green are mixed with any other color, they “disappear” from my vision and I only see the other color. Therefore, the color purple is more of a theoretical than a reality to me. For my eyes, it just looks blue. Take note: If I say anything about pink, turquoise, or purple, I am just bluffing.

2. I have never gotten tired of the view from the Red Line when it crosses the Longfellow Bridge. Indeed, it is my favorite part of the whole T system. There is something great about seeing the Charles River and the Boston skyline after you emerge from the subway tunnel that always makes me smile. It could be sunny, raining, foggy, or snowing, but the effect has been the same.

Now that I am moving, alas, I will have to watch the reruns of Spenser for Hire to remember these good times (Though the actually journey from Kendall Station to Park Station is oddly much longer in the intro than it really is in life. Inexplicably, the train also skips the Charles/M.G.H. Station in Spenser's version of Boston).



3. I use clothes dryers very sparsely. For one, clothes dryers take up lots of energy and are, therefore, bad for the environment. Two, they are also rough on your clothes. I much prefer to allow things to dry on their own. The exception would be sheets, towels, and underwear.

4. I have a list of cities in North America that I consider my ideal places to live. Currently, the top four are Boston, Chicago, Montréal, and Albuquerque. I have applied for jobs in all of those cities at one point or another, but nothing permanent has panned out.

5. My credit rating is in the crapper right now. I probably wouldn’t even qualify for financing on a Vespa. Eighteen months of trying to pay both rent and my part of a mortgage meant that I often missed payments on other things. Though I am starting to get things under control again, it will take some time to fully fix everything.



6. I am very allergic to juniper (a coniferous plant). Because junipers require less water than many other plants of their size, they are frequently used in New Mexico for landscaping. This meant that Spring was hell (HELL) for me when I was growing up. It also took a significant amount of time before I figured out why gin made me instantly ill. Gin’s flavor comes from juniper berries.

7. During my undergraduate years, I took one semester of Russian. It was a heady time. The Soviet Union was collapsing and I thought it would be a diplomatic gesture for me to learn more about our former national enemy.



It turns out that I have zero (o) talent for learning foreign languages. All that I remember from that class was how to say, "Excuse me, please, where is the Bolshoi theater?" On the plus side, though, learning to write with a different alphabet improved my handwriting in English (true story).

8. I have surprisingly strong feelings that Michael Gambon should be fired from the Harry Potter movies. I don’t begrudge him his distinguished acting career, but he has made a terrible Dumbledore.

I know that Richard Harris died. It would be unseemly, and possibly illegal, to dig up his corpse and reanimate it using robotic technology. Still, that would be preferable than watching the abysmal Gambon, who has ruined every scene in which he has appeared in the Potter movies. Luckily, he had very little screen time in the most recent film (though still did a terrible job).



At first, I was confused about why Gambon portrayed the wizard as a hippie or a bizarre beach comber when that was not, in any way, implied in the books. Then I learned that he didn’t really work very hard at the role. "I don't have to play anyone really,” the actor told the press, “I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat.”

By his own admission, Gambon is simply not doing his job. Acting requires work and dedication in learning a character. His attitude about not needing to bother with that for Dumbledore has shown in his wretched performances. Warner Brothers should fire him immediately and replace him with Ian McKellen.

Given my slowness in responding to tags, it would seem hypocritical to tag other bloggers. You will know if these memes are right for you.