The Moby Files: v2.0

I figured since my finger is jacked I’d do a new video. Be warned I think the volume might be a little loud.

I was reminded today of how I still need to work on my temper at times. Granted, the incident wasn’t of my doing but I over reacted nonetheless.

I’m leaving the gym and this woman (obviously of the lesbian persuasion) slams into me as she is coming in. I was all prepared to be nice about it, expecting her apology, when I heard those two little words…”fucking faggot”.

Now in my mind, the southern black women welled up in me with, “oh no she dinnn’t!” However, the bastard in me¹ took over and before I had even ‘thunk’ it out flew the words, “what did you just call me you fucking fish-fry c*nt?” She was clearly not expecting it but it was already too late. She got two full minutes of Moby’s get-in-your-face, eyes slitted, make a sailor blush obscenities. Poor thing, before she even had a chance to counter, I had not only countered but also attacked and conquered. Needless to say, she stormed away in huff.

Looking back on it, I really don’t know why I got so upset. It was pointless and nothing was really solved by my behavior. I guess it was just so unexpected from one of my own, so to speak, I just reverted to defense mode. Irregardless, I’m a little embarrassed to admit I behaved so badly.

If anything, it shows I still have anger issues. I guess that will be one of my resolutions for the new year.

1. satan made me do it, I just know it! [↩]

Its that time again. Yours truly is a year older today. I was completely blown away by all the well wishes I got via Facebook, twitter, text, and voicemail today. The irony is I don’t feel 39. Oh sure, my body is finally beginning to show the signs of my age,¹ but my mind still feels many years younger.

I’ve often wondered if it is because I spent most of my 20’s focused on survival or I’m just young at heart. Either way, I’m glad. While wisdom and experience has certainly mellowed me a bit, I’m still very rambunctious and free-spirited. Both qualities I love in myself and others. Unlike many (especially in the gay world), I do not fear or resent getting older. I can see the allure of youth and being young, but I think its way overrated.

Apple guy stayed thru my birthday, which I was very grateful. He got some bad news this week so has been stressed. The rain kept us indoors for most of the day. We finally mad it out for some lite shopping and sushi for dinner. I’m sad he is leaving back to Dallas tomorrow. Its been so nice having him curled up next to me every night for the past month. The upside is he is coming back soon. Even better, the next time is when he moves here. So there is a little silver lining to be found.

1. I found my first grey chest hair just this week [↩]

I was blogrolling (finally) and catching up on the list when I was reminded by Jimbo of something I’d been meaning to rant about.

Jimbo was ranting on the do’s/don’ts of when to use grindr in social situations. This sort of got me on the general mistakes most folks make when joining/using social sites in general. Whether it be the hatchet-job of HTML and over-embedding on mySpace,¹ the constant barrage of friend/game requests on Facebook, and/or the minutia of irrelevant updates on twitter, it can quickly become unmanageable if you don’t start out with some ground rules.

Being someone who has been online since before the existence of AOL, let me take a moment to edify you on my hard-earned skills. lol With a few simple guidelines you can keep your online social interactions under control, enjoyable, and even useful.

When joining social sites like FB, MS, twitter, etc, you should first decide on your purpose.²  Are you joining to reconnect with friends/family, make new friends, be a social butterfly, and/or just ‘connect’ in general.

DO:

• Take the time to fill out your profile. You don’t have to necessarily reveal personal/private information but if your goal is to meet people then it makes sense to provide goals, interests, hobbies, etc. If you are gonna create multiple profiles, instead of constantly retyping everything, just create a master word or text file that you can copy and paste from. You also don’t have to list every minutia of your interests. Stick to things you are really passionate or interested in. You can always add more later.
• Be sincere and honest. People often sniff out a fake PDQ. Sure your responses might be less but they will be legit. And lets face it, if your goal is to actually meet people, they’ll eventually find out you lied.
• Use an up-to-date picture of yourself. It’s the freakin’ millennium already. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone not to have an up-to-date pic in this day when practically everything has a camera attached to it. I don’t care what you looked like 10 years ago or when you were 12.  Its ok to have those type of pics but not as your main profile pic. Its misleading and you’ll end up alienating people. And if you are so discreet, you can’t have a face shot, then maybe you shouldn’t be online?³
• Actually take the time to reply or interact. Again, if the goal is to be social, it won’t happen all by itself. Depending on the site, you don’t necessarily have to reply to everyone but the point here is to make an effort to interact.

Don’t

• Add any/every one who sends you a friend/follow request. If you do, you’ll soon find your profile becomes bloated and pointless. And there is nothing that says once you add someone you can’t remove them later.
• For adding media/links, don’t over do it. Less is definitely more in this instance. If you constantly fill your stream with drivel, people will get bored or overwhelmed and move on. Its ok to post things you really like but I don’t wanna know about every single song/movie/clip/article that you purchase/download/find from the web. And for the love of toast, for profiles like myspace, make sure the “auto-play” feature for your embedded content is turned off!
• Hide all of your data/info and then wonder why no one friends/follows you. This is a biggie folks. Especially on sites like twitter and FB, if I can’t see anything about you not only will I not add you, I’ll probably go one step further and block you. Demanding a lot and offering nothing in return rarely works. FB allows you a fine control of what is viewable or not. twitter is a bit trickier as it only allows full view or nothing. The trick is to accept the request but then review the person’s feed/stream. If you don’t like it or it doesn’t interest you, simply unfollow and/or block. You’re done.
• Add mean, disparaging, hateful, or otherwise negative statements. No one likes a whining negative-Nancy. Nothing turns me off to a person’s profile faster than negative comments.
• Log on and never log-off. That might work for chat services where you can set yourself to away or available but for most profiles, its just annoying trying to interact with someone who turns out not to be there but logged on.

See, that wasn’t so hard was it? lol Here are just a few more tips that might save you some grief.

Don’t join every site just because you can. Pick and choose the sites you really like and dump the rest.

If you are worried about privacy or work-related issues, don’t use your real name online. I’ve always used my nickname and to this day, I can’t find a single reference to my real name online. This is especially important if you are using profiles for work and ‘play’.

With the latter in mind, keep your work/play profiles separate. You can create multiple accounts for each and/or filter your contacts based on interest.

Ok, that’s it. Now go forth and be social!

1. which has become the trailer park of the web [↩]
2. Yes, this even applies to the more adult-oriented sites as well. [↩]
3. Anytime I see this, I just assume you are a liar or cheating on someone [↩]

I got a few very interesting emails from folks who disagreed with my last post. The overall theme was the same as my friend I referred to on FB. I must admit I just don’t understand. When has separate but equal ever worked? How are we ever going to get equal rights under the law when we can’t even demand equality from the ones who claim to love us most? Allowing them to hide behind their ‘religion’ is bullshit just like it was for slavery. And please explain to me how allowing your family to pick an choose the parts of your life they ‘approve’ of is not a form of control. As long as we allow our families to segregate us in their lives, they will continue to think separate but equal under the law is acceptable. I’m not saying you shouldn’t love your family, but you should have enough self-respect and integrity to make sure they treat you as an equal or not at all.

I learned the hard way, separate but equal doesn’t work. And for the record, after everything my father did to me as a kid, I still loved him. I didn’t exclude him, he chose to exclude me because I didn’t fit the norm.¹  He made the conscious choice to push me away. And by conscious, I mean being kicked out of the house at the ripe old age of 14 with a broken jaw and 2 broken ribs.

Ten years later, we tried to make amends but he still couldn’t accept me. He made it very clear he didn’t want me “flaunting my lifestyle” in his face. Meanwhile, I had survived being on my own at such an early age, not to mention almost taking my own life and being homeless. Even after all of that, deep down I still wanted his love. But after surviving some of the darkest moments of my life, I couldn’t just go back to his love knowing it was built on the condition I act or behave a certain way. So, I moved on with my life without him. I would call or visit only once or twice a year. And even then it was primarily to see my little brother.  Yeah, it hurt but I was stronger for it. I had finally accepted myself for who and what I was.

Ten more years later, on his deathbed, my father was finally able to admit his regret. I already knew as I had seen the pain in his face over the years. but, it was heartening (and very empowering) to finally hear him admit it out loud. It was also a little bit sad that it had taken him 20 years to finally realize his mistake(s).

So no, I don’t think allowing our families to love us with conditions is acceptable. Granted, my story is a bit extreme. My father never gave me a chance to try and educate him. That said, the point is the same. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We have no reason to bow to irrational demands/restrictions by our families of half-acceptance. Demands born out of fear, ignorance, or lies. And until more of us realize that, I honestly don’t think we’ll have equality under the law.

1. Granted my step-mother goaded him for almost 2-days before he finally lost it but still [↩]

I was reading recently about a buddy on FB who was lamenting that someone in his close family was “accepting” of his pending same-sex marriage but would not be attending the actual event.¹  Of course it was because of their “religious beliefs”. He was hurt obviously, but was still glad they were in his life. HUH?

Sadly, this is not the first time this scenario has played out, nor will it be the last. For my part, I thinks its time that we stop allowing people who claim to love us to treat us this way. If you can’t accept me then you have no business being in my life. And when you wake up one day and find yourself excluded from my life, you have no one to blame but yourself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, love with limits is not love but control. You can’t claim to love someone but only if they do or act a certain way. That is utter and total horseshit.

1. Oh you were so expecting something else weren’t you? [↩]

Well I guess it was inevitable. brettcajun has finally overtaken Large Tony in referrals to my blog. lol I know Brett will be happy as he has been scheming for years on how to overthrow Tony. And, for the first time in his life, Brett gets to finally say, “I’m on top!” heh heh

In other boring statistical analysis news, my poor blog has finally dropped below 20,000 unique hits in any given month. *sniffle*  I guess it was inevitable since I haven’t mentioned the words “porn” or “sex” in a while.¹ Well that and I haven’t really been blogging as much lately. ANY-way…

The blogging bug seems to be nagging at me again so expect to see more updates. I might even do a new video, who knows? lol

1. Seriously, even just mentioning either word spikes the hits [↩]

I’m still having issues with my shoulders. I guess I tweaked’em more than I thought originally. I haven’t been to the gym in almost 3 weeks now and I’m chomping at the bit (so much for my 200lb goal, for now anyway). I can still feel twinges of annoyance from my shoulders when I raise my arms into certain positions over my head that involves pulling or pushing. With Apple guy here I doubt I’d have a decent gym schedule anyway so the timing is pretty good I guess.

The other upside is I’ll miss the influx of noob’s getting their NY’s resolution on.¹  Whateva. I wish you mofo’s luck. If you want some advice, don’t overdo it, slow and steady is the key. And for the love of crackers, don’t hog the frackin’ benches while you’re talking on your phone. If you do, I can’t be held responsible for the trip to the ER to have said device removed from a random orifice on your body.

1. for all of a month before they burn out [↩]

My biggest worry for the new year so far is on how to refer to it. Will it be Two Thousand Ten, Two Thousand And Ten or just Twenty Ten? I think I like the last one best. Its easier and rolls off the tongue better. So from this day forward 2010 shall be referred to as twenty ten. There, I have spoken! lol

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I am so not excited about NYE. I had to work until 2:00am.¹  NYE is our busiest (and worst) day of the year. Ugh. Overall, it wasn’t too bad this year. The cold messes, the hot messes, and the just plain messes were out in force but the overall violent crimes were down. I was on fire side most of the night which meant managing the medical fleet. I feel good knowing I did an excellent job with the resources available.

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Apple guy is still here (yay!)  Sadly, I didn’t get to ring in the NY with him because I had to work. I did manage to send him a text at the midnight hour. I literally got the text out when the shit really hit the fan, so to speak. He went out with some friends so at least one of us had some fun. I was bummed that we had to spend it apart but there is always next year I guess.

*

I haven’t really worked on my resolutions for the new year yet. The wine is kicking in and my brain is kinda fuzzy at the moment.

1. originally 3:00am but I got lucky and was relieved an hour early [↩]

…to do something nice for a complete stranger. There are many this holiday season who don’t have it so well. Many more who are flat out hurting. It doesn’t have to be money or big, just make an effort. You’d be surprised what a little kindness can do for someone.

It isn’t the gifts but the idea that people are often a little bit nicer to each other. Call it mushy, sappy, or whatever but it catches on and spreads from person to person during the holiday season. I haven’t been able to really catch the spirit this season until now. Funny how that works ain’t it? lol

My little brother had me in tears last night. It took him being upset to reminded me of the thing I love about the holidays. He was sad because he still misses our dad and his mom. Even though he has two kids of his own now, he struggles on the holidays. They both passed while he was still living at home and I think he often feels lost and alone. He never developed the independence the rest of us had. 

While we were talking, I broke down and told him something I’d never mentioned before. He never knew as a kid that he was one of the only things that kept me sane. He knows full well there was never any love-loss between myself and his mom. But, I always wanted a little brother growing up. And as much as she hated me and I her, she did give me one. Granted, it had nothing to do with me but it didn’t matter. Having a little brother made me stronger and gave me something to focus on besides my own misery. I honestly don’t think I would have made it thru it w/o him. He was really touched by that and we both ended up bawling like school-girls.

Today I find that I’m all giddy and excited about the holiday again. I guess I finally caught the spirit. After I talk last night and today, I’m feeling it. Of course, apple guy arrives tonight so that might have something to do with it too. LOL  Ok, it has a lot to do with it but whatever.

Happy Hanna-Kwan-a-Xmas guys!