April 2008
April 23, 2008
Yesterday at the drug store I saw this king-sized candy bar:
It was delicious.
I mean, come on, what else is there to say? It's all already there.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:51 PM | Comments (11)
April 21, 2008
Undoubtedly, everyone on the web has already seen this (which I learned about from him) and by posting it now I am doing nothing but confirming my inadequacy as a human being.
Nonetheless:
Posted by Faustus, MD at 05:54 PM | Comments (16)
April 20, 2008
Someone sent this to me and I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why. I mean, I can't think of any two people at all in this kind of relationship. Can you?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:01 AM | Comments (8)
April 18, 2008
Man Faces Charges for Having Sex With Picnic Table.
I mean, I've done some kinky stuff in my time. But patio furniture?
Four times?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:46 PM | Comments (10)
April 16, 2008
Today I went to the high school where my friend N.F. teaches a class in American cultural studies. They've just finished a unit on gender and identity; I was there essentially to talk about things with them that they can't talk about with their friends/relatives/teachers. (To talk about intellectual, gender things. Mostly. I mean, I kept the explicit descriptions of orgies to a minimum. At least until the principal left the room.)
So at the beginning of the two-hour class, I talked about myself. Then N.F. asked me questions about myself, which was terrific, because of course the only thing I like more than talking about myself is listening to other people talk about me. Then I read the class part of Swish, and then there was a question-and-answer session.
I understood before this last began that there would not be a great deal of intellectual heavy lifting going on here. First of all, while it's true that the students were seniors and had therefore passed the age at which children are at their most loathsome, really what can one expect from people to whom "We're here, we're queer, and we can spell potato" is meaningless? Second, with so many positive gay role models around like Larry Craig Ted Haggard Charlie Crist oh whatever, these kids' basic questions had almost certainly been answered. Nonetheless, I was glad to be able to offer them the perspective of a very slightly older person, and I looked forward to enlightening them in whatever way I could, whether about how being gay isn't really a choice, or about how the common stereotypes aren't universally true, or--well, you get the picture.
So the first question was, "Is acceptance something you've found or something you've created?"
Um.
After a few moments of shock I started stumbling through an answer about being drawn to certain communities but also having to function in communities that I haven't chosen and--
"Well, what I actually mean is self-acceptance."
Um.
It went on and on like this, question after question. "Do you feel pressured to conform to binary gender norms?" "What's the relationship between sexual attraction and other parts of gay identity?" "How do you feel different when you're the only gay person in a group from how you feel when there are others?"
And I was like, binary gender norms?
Eventually I recovered some of my equilibrium, more or less: I feigned long-standing familiarity with the concept of binary gender norms (a phrase I had never encountered in my life, much less uttered, before this afternoon), I spluttered something that I think sounded moderately convincing about sexual attraction and gay identity. When I was really desperate I drew some Venn diagrams. I'm just glad nobody started talking about signifiers without signs because then I would really have been fucked.
What kind of high school is this? What is N.F. teaching them? I began to worry that I was actually on the episode of the new Doctor Who where Giles from Buffy is both the school principal and a giant bat and he and the other giant bats had somehow arranged for the students all to become super-geniuses before they ate them.
Political climate aside, it is inconceivable to think that in my high school anybody would have been able even to frame ideas like these, much less ask the questions.
So now I'm thinking that it's possible—just possible—that there's hope for the young after all.
Binary gender norms. I mean, come on.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:44 PM | Comments (14)
April 14, 2008
It's taken me a week to write this entry. Or, rather, it's taken me a week to write a version of this entry that I can post without fear of shooting myself in the foot in some horrible way that will ruin my life and make me want to kill myself.
Because last week my [long and fascinating but dangerous-in-the-wrong-hands passage redacted] never go to Iceland again, or else.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:01 PM | Comments (9)
April 13, 2008
I spent a significant amount of time today at the first birthday party of a child whose parents are Republicans. There was no chocolate.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:15 PM | Comments (7)
April 10, 2008
Can somebody please explain to me the appeal of lolcats? Because I don't get it at all. Like, not one tiny bit.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:33 PM | Comments (19)
April 08, 2008
Today a friend alerted me to the fact that there is for sale, on amazon.co.uk, a book called Penetrating Wagner's Ring.
The reader comments are all like this:
With great trepidation but with an insatiable curiosity I endeavoured to plunge to the very depths of Wagner's cavernous and archaic ring. Donning my hardest literary helmet I trusted myself aggressively through its hard exterior and endeavoured to wallow in its soft core. It was a stubborn, yet ultimately fulfilling transition, which reaped a teeth grinding crescendo, the like of which only Wagner could truly facilitate. A deeply personal work and at times I felt that I had violated him but the relief I felt after annihilating his ring left me deeply satisfied. On the surface it may seem unreceptive, arduous even unyielding but with positive literate lubrication, Wagner's ring can be successfully penetrated.
There are sixty of them.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:40 PM | Comments (9)
April 06, 2008
All right, so here's the deal.
I'm using the imminent release of Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever as a spur to develop an e-mailing list, in order to keep people informed about future projects*. In the lower left corner of your computer screen you will notice the means to sign up. I intend to send out updates only when there's a very good reason to do so (I have another book coming out, I have a show going up, I've been abducted by aliens). I can't imagine this will be more than once a month or so; probably less often.
As an incentive, I'll be drawing three names at random from the list in a week or so (April 14 or just after). The bearers of those three names will be doomed to receive signed copies of the galleys of Swish. (Galleys are the low-rent paperback version of the book that gets sent out to reviewers long before I've finished editing.)
This means that, if you sign up, then when the actual book is released you have the chance to be able to compare the two and mock me for 1) having made idiotic choices before fixing them and/or 2) making idiotic fixes when something was better in the first place. I will hate you for mocking me, but that hatred will be trumped by my intense desire for approval, so I won't say anything to you about it.
Now come on, with a setup like that, how can you not join the list?
*(For "to keep people informed about future projects," read "to get an exact count of how many people like me so that I can both fill the gaping maw of need that is the core of my being and want to kill myself because it's not more.")
Posted by Faustus, MD at 08:45 AM | Comments (9)
April 05, 2008
You know, it used to be that I knew where I was going, I knew exactly how to get there, I had complete confidence in myself to make the right choices in any number of situations.
But it's been a long time since I was seven.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:17 AM | Comments (9)
April 04, 2008
Also, am I the only one who thinks David Archuleta is giving mediocre performances on purpose so that he can explode as a star in the final weeks of American Idol, since the people who are consistently brilliant throughout never win Melinda Doolittle?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:17 PM | Comments (8)
April 03, 2008
I need help.
(Yes, yes, ha ha ha.)
In preparation for the release of Swish, I'm updating my website, with the generous aid of this gorgeous gentleman (and while I'm at it I should mention that she valorously rescued me from a horrible web-host disaster that I was about to bring down upon my own head).
The problem is that now I am confronted with the dilemma out of which I found my way, when last confronted with it, by cheating. It was all well and good labeling individual pages "Books" and "Music" and "Blog," but the man who has never been seen in the same room with me was utterly helpless to think of what to label the home page itself. Working in concert, he and I decided to fill the page with reviews of the book to correspond with the release of which he had timed the launch of the site; it could then very easily be labeled "Gay Haiku Reviews."
But the imminent release of a second book renders that title inappropriate. Unfortunately, neither he nor I has any better ideas this time around. The two we've come up with so far are Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ("abandon all hope, ye who enter here," inscribed on the gates of Dante's Hell), and Mene mene tekel upharsin (when a spectral hand wrote these words on the wall in the court of Babylon, the prophet Daniel interpreted them for King Belshazzar as "You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting"; neither Belshazzar nor the Babylonian empire lived to see morning, and we got "the writing on the wall").
Somehow these seem a bit . . . I don't know, frivolous.
One friend suggested "Gay Gay Giddy Gay Gay," but, while it's accurate, I feel that this title lacks sufficient gravitas.
Another offered "Raconteur," which I actually like very much, except that the kind of guy who labels his home page "raconteur" is the kind of guy I dread running into at parties.
Anybody?
Addendum: I see from tinman's comment and from a couple e-mails that I haven't been clear. All I mean is that, for the sake of consistency and aesthetic felicity, there has to be something at the top, since there's something at the top of every other page. It can't be my name, since that's already there, above the photo.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:23 PM | Comments (12)
April 02, 2008
I'm taking down my amazon.com wish list. This is all I want anybody ever to give me.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:15 PM | Comments (8)
April 01, 2008
It happened again today. This time, though, I thought quickly enough to write down what I'd said to wake myself up:
"Well, I could, if they weren't a restaurant and didn't undoubtedly weigh several hundred tons."
I have no idea to whom I was speaking or what I was speaking about. When I told E.S., we had the following conversation:
E.S.: That sounds just like what you say in your sleep at home.
FAUSTUS: How do you mean?
E.S.: You say things that don't make any sense but I can always tell you're angry.
FAUSTUS: ...
E.S.: I mean, really it's no different from what you say when you're awake.
FAUSTUS: I hate you.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:39 PM | Comments (5)
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