drinkin' buddies

Today I went to Tennessee Red's for the first time but more importantly, I went with my co-workers. I think that you can work alongside people eight hours a day for five days a week for quite a while and never get to know them as well as you do when you sit down with them for a drink. Unfortunately, it was a going-away party for one of my co-workers Megan. I wish I'd drank with her before now because she can tell stories that nearly had me in tears.

making bank

Today I cashed in my coins I have been saving up. I made over $70 for the first time. It was 12 quarters, 410 dimes, 342 quarters and 1451 pennies. I needed a haircut and I couldn't afford one otherwise. Plus my coin jug thing was full so I had to turn it in. I went to a coinstar at a Fred Meyers which sucks because they take 9% out but at least I didn't have to count it myself.

I needed a haircut because it was starting to poof out and I was afraid that, with my glasses and shaggy hair, I was starting to look emo-riffic. And I couldn't have that.

cage 'n food

Today I made lasagna for the first time but it’s really hard to get a good picture of lasagna so I’m using a picture from last Thursday. This is the dance floor at Embers, my favorite place to dance.

My housemate’s parents came over and I cooked for all of us. The lasagna turned out okay. I was pretty unsure about it. I had a coupon for pizza just in case. It probably could have used more salt/pepper and maybe some veggie sausage. But hey, it was edible, just not very pretty.

waiting for the night

This morning, there was a lunar eclipse. I got up at 3:30 am to see it. My housemates were already up and outside. It was fascinating only because it doesn’t happen very often. I’m not sure it was worth getting up at 3:30 am to see. I haven’t done that before and I’m not sure I’ll do it again.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I was hoping to see something a little shinier like a solar eclipse. Okay, that’s a lie. What I was hoping for was the sudden realization that I had super powers like those on Heroes. Is that too much to ask?

clark kent camouflage

I feel phony at work sometimes, like I am playing the part of someone who should be in my position. I think a lot of it has to do with my clothes. We have a 'casual' day at work on Fridays but every other day is business 'casual.' I usually wear short sleeve button up shirts and slacks which I feel do not represent me at all.

I was a little more dressed up today because I had to go to the YWCA (for the first time) for a quarterly provider meeting (whatever that's supposed to mean). With my glasses on, I really felt like I was wearing a disguise, like Clark Kent except I'm not Superman. When I left my meeting, I spent sometime looking for a phone booth to take a picture in but I didn't have any luck finding one. I need to start wearing tights underneath my clothes just in case I happen to stumble upon one.

rocking the horse

I went to a Laughing Horse Bookstore collective meeting today. There's a group that meet regularly at the bookstore and there was issue with one of their guest speakers earlier last week. The main issue was the the guy is an active member of a right-wing homophobic, pro-life political party and he did not allow for a safe space in this radically progressive bookstore. That, combined with the events of last Sunday, compelled me to go to the meeting. A lot of people were writing on Portland Indymedia about how they wanted to see Laughing Horse change their policies. Since it's an open collective (meaning anyone can go and join up) I decided to be the change I wanted to see.

After an hour or so, I wanted to run screaming from the place. Either that or I wanted a paintball gun with different paintballs assigned for each of the issues that arose their. 'You're a homophobe, you get a pink paint-cartridge. BAM! You're a holocaust denier. Black for you! BAM! Orange for the ageist! BAM! Multi-colored for the privileged older straight white male who puts himself in charge! BAM! BAM! BAM!'

I love some of the members there and I strongly feel for them for the shit that they have to put up with on what appears to be at least a weekly basis. But, wow, me and Mary Blige will stick together and walk away. No mo' drama!

muggling through the day

Today was one of those days where you just want to curl up with a book, drink some coffee and not much else. Especially when the book is the new Harry Potter!!! I am so excited to read it. I could have done just that today and called it a good day. It's like a superbly cooked meal when you're starving. As easy as it would be to do, I don't want to just rush through it. I want it to last and I want to savor it. It's the LAST ONE after all.

So in order to not just read it all in one sitting, I forced myself out of the house with the help of my roomies. We went to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood. The only other time I had been there it was snowing. We went right from the car and into the lodge to get some cocoa last time. This time, I was able to walk around the place and take in some of the sights. I went under the ski lift and checked it out. The view from the lodge was impressive but I didn't really fully appreciate it because I would have been more content with my nose in the Deathly Hallows. When we got back, I volunteered to be the sitter for the night so everyone else could go out and I could do what I had been waiting for...

no more contact

Today was another day where I did something new but I'm not going to say what it was because it would be stupid to do so over the internet. It was enjoyable though. The picture is from the Riot Cop show yesterday at Satyricon.

I can say that today was the last day I will wear contacts though. I've started on my two week period of wearing glasses. Before I can get laser eye surgery, they have to examine my eyes to see exactly what will need to be done. Before they can do that, they have to have my eyes reform their natural shape and to do that, I have to be contact-free for two weeks. I stopped wearing glasses when I started my junior year in high school so it's been a while since I've worn glasses full time. This is going to take some adjustment. I am not really comfortable wearing them in public right now so I will be hiding in my cave for the next two weeks.

i am a rhino

Tonight, we took our Chi Kung class outside. They are paving the road outside the dojo and the smell was wafting in through the windows and was almost choking us. We exited the building for a park upwind across the street. While we were doing our thing outside, I had two primary thoughts.

First, as we were doing our shaking exercise, I thought we must look like freaks. The shaking exercise consists of us standing in one spot and shaking our whole body like we are puppets suspended by a string with our feet secured to the ground and being bounced up and down. My friend Arturo has expressed concern about looking ridiculous doing this in particular exercise in public. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t at class today. On the other hand, I reveled in making people stop and stare. I love to let my freak flag fly.

My second thought was: “I am a rhino.” While doing the shaking exercise, I tend to go with whatever image pops into my head with my eyes closed. Usually the perceived shape of myself and those around me are distorted in my mind like they would be in a funhouse mirror. This time, with the tall grass tickling my bare calves, standing underneath a half moon, I thought of myself as sturdy and alive in the present and for some reason, I associated those ideas with a rhinoceros. The point of the exercise is to shake off any diseases or illnesses. I also let any bad mojo go. My thought drifted to my financial tightness right now and the fact that I may not have money when I get back from Europe. But I let those thoughts shake right off of me. The rhino doesn’t worry about money or the future. The rhino is the present, only concerned with what is here and what is now. Here and now, I was in a park, bouncing and loving every minute of it. That’s all I had to worry about. I will deal with the future when it is the present.

early to bed

My friends the Eclectic Bastards returned from their nation-wide tour tonight. To wrap up their tour, they played one more show at the Ash St Saloon here in Portland. It was originally announced that they would play at 9 pm. They later sent out an e-mail saying it would happen at 10 pm. When we got to the Saloon (for the first time), we found out that there was two opening acts before them.

I love the Bastards and I really wanted to go ape-shit dancing to them but it was a “school night.” I have to be up at 6:20 am to work tomorrow. I ended up leaving around 11:20 pm which is early and I didn’t even get to see them play. I did get to watch Renegade which is this multi-media performer who apparently makes his own videos that go along with the song that he plays next to the video being projected. It was…unique.

Seeing the Bastards right as they returned did make me a little more anxious to go back to touring Europe with Riot Cop. That’s another thing I did yesterday. I paid Justin for the plane tickets! We fly out October 2^nd and return on the 29^th! I’m very excited about it now that it’s set up! Soon, I will not be going to bed early. I will be up til 4 am about every night drinking and dancing. Ah Europa!

it's not easy eating green

When I cook, I still add a “meat” even though I’m a vegetarian. By “meat” I mean soy chicken, tempeh, tofu, veggie sausage or textured vegetable protein. It’s weird how we still cling to old habits like that.

Tonight, I made a pesto pasta with green beans and potatoes for the first time. It was okay but nothing spectacular. I had an excess of green beans and potatoes at the house and a hankering for pasta so that’s what I went with. The recipe didn’t call for any veggie meat and I didn’t have any that would taste good so I made it without any. There’s some protein in there with the cheese I put in the pasta but it’s wasn’t quite the same. It’s strange because it’s all vegetables anyway. I guess these are the concepts (meat for supper) that we’re raised with that are difficult to shake even though we have a completely different diet.

technophobe

I hate technology. It can be so convenient when it works but then you get used to it and it goes to shit on you and then you don't know what to do.

I am a technophobe. I resisted getting an I-pod for a while because I love my discman even though I would go through more than one a year. Well, one day it skipped on my excessively and that was the last straw so I went to craigslist and found an older I-pod with around 20 gigs of memory for $100. Then it became invaluable to me. I needed to have it with me wherever I went. Inevitably, I dropped it a time or two and it stopped being able to upload new songs. I figured that it was okay. At least I had my songs on my laptop. Well, then my laptop comes up with this error message of death and decided to not load up anymore.

I had over 1000 songs on my I-pod but my random selection kept playing the same stuff over and over and I started to download more songs onto my computer that I would rather be listening to. So I decided to go with a clean slate. It pulled up an error message when I plugged my I-pod into it for the first time and said that it could restore my original settings. I knew it'd erase all the songs I had but hey you've gotta move on sometime. However, it cleared all of my old songs out of my I-pod and refused to load up any new ones.

I may get a new I-pod sometime down the road but for now, it's back to the discman. You can't get too attached to these rotten technological devices. The stuff you own ends up owning you.

amerikkkan punx

When I was thinking about what I was going to write about earlier today, I thought about how much I can enjoy the punk crowd. While watching MDC play at a street fair today, I thought, “I really like this.” However, by the end of the night, I was back to my mantra of “F-ing punks!”

Riot Cop and MDC played at the Laughing Horse Bookstore block party today. It was a decent show and it was the first time I had sold merch outside (and incidentally sat behind the bands while they played. It was going great when Ohnny showed up. Ohnny is a little punk who has been around the scene for a couple years now and who has been ostracized for his fondness of saying, “faggot.” Ohnny is not queer but thinks that he can reclaim the word being used as a joke. Ohnny IS a joke. Anyway, Ohnny has been asked to leave the space before and was asked to leave again. Instead, he sat like Ghandi and refused to move. Yes, I did somehow manage to refer to Ohnny and Ghandi in the same sentence. A concerned person came over to me and asked for help with security because Ohnny has a history of not respecting the safer space policy. I stopped the show and we tried to get Ohnny to leave. Ohnny wasn’t so much the issue as his friends were who were so quick to defend the word ‘faggot.’ After a while, MDC said we should chill out and the show should continue. Riot Cop held off for a little bit, the drummer told Ohnny to get out and then they continued with their show. The Ohnny ordeal wasn’t huge but there was little in show of solidarity from the performers which was disheartening. Luckily, several awesome activists were up for confronting Ohnny. Dave from MDC is queer and he has been around the scene for quite some time. I know this is very small potatoes for him but I would've liked for the bands to be a little more confrontational with fucks like Ohnny.

After the show, there was a stand-off on the corner between Ohnny’s crew and a bunch of activists. One little punk who I thought was a girl and turned out to be a 13-14 year old boy asked me who he was hurting by just sitting there. I asked the punk if he would just let a Nazi sit there and he said yes, he would stand in front of a Nazi. “What’s one Nazi going to do?” The punk then said that he uses the word ‘faggot’ and wanted to know if I have a problem with him. I said, “Well, yeah I have a problem with you. You’re a Nazi sympathizer.” That’s when the little shit shoved me. I’m not a violent person but I could’ve broke him in two. However, assaulting a minor was not on my to-do list so I stood back and someone held him back.

I'm looking forward to going back to Europe simply for the punks. American punk as a culture can be so fucked.

lady-like?

Tonight, I went to see Storm & the Balls play at the Wonder Ballroom. I'm attracted to guys but there is nothing quite like a strong woman. Storm exudes so much force and energy, it was difficult not to fall at her feet. I don't know if I've ever seen someone with so much stage presence. And damn is she beautiful. If Eliza Dusku was 6'2" and blonde, she'd look like Storm. And I think Eliza is amazing so that's saying something.

The band Kleveland opened for Storm. They were okay but I'm glad they weren't the band I came to see. They kind of reminded me of the band off 'Better Off Dead.' The singer even had a fan blowing in her face so her hair was all flowing. When I was watching them, I was still complaining to Ashes about how much I had to spend on the tickets. But Storm & the Balls were worth the price and so much more.

Victory has Storm's song "What the fuck is lady-like?" as her cell phone ring. I'd heard a little of Storm but I wasn't convinced that they were great or anything but seeing her live was completely different. The drummer was fair, the keyboardist was amazing, the bassist was sexy like Wolverine but Storm's voice was amazing and her guest background vocalist Nicki had a sweet subtle sexy sound and Storm played really well off of her. And, to top it all off, as the last song of their set before the encore, they covered, "Where is My Mind?" and almost made me melt.

Afterwards, four of us hung out with Agni who handles their myspace page and her two friends who were fucking amazing funny. Love lesbians! Nicki came out and hung out with us and we all joked around until we closed down the bar. Awesome night.