The plays are almost done.
One more show tonight
(If you haven't seen it).
* * *
The little minx sleeps.
He says it's cold in our loft.
I say, wear socks, Mary.
* * *
We'll be in New York soon.
There'll be a party (Friday?).
Details to come.
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8:57 AM
9:35 PM
For your edification and amusement: The Archive of Endangered, Special or Fun Words. Personal favorites:
3:06 PM
Another snippet found floating aimlessly in the My Documents file. It's my favorite piece of bathroom graffiti ever, which I transcribed directly from the wall of the men's restroom at the Audubon Hotel:
11:16 AM
I was always fastidious as a child. My room was kept painfully neat and ordered--so much so that my friends used to delight in shifting around my bibelots ever-so-slightly just so they could watch me scurry around and straighten them again. As I've gotten older, though, I've found my anal-retentive tendencies slipping away like so much yak butter on a hot Mongolian day. Little mini-holidays like this when I have a few days to myself are practically the only time the old me can shine through. Not surprisingly, today I've decided to tidy up my computer a bit. During this sort-and-vet process, I've come across some old things I'd completely forgotten, including this lovely meditation on Circuit fags. Even if you've read it before (and I'm sure you have, dearie), why not sing along just for fun. Humor me for chrissake....
9:15 AM
Since my boyfriend has already written up an accurate chronicle of yesterday's fun-filled family events, I won't bother to re-hash--although he missed out on the near-agonizing round of shopping through A&F with my younger brothers (they're straight, so it's excusable). But just in case you're curious about what today holds in store, I found a much more graphic description of that regional holiday delicacy known as turducken. (Vegetarians beware.)    Happy day, folks!
11:00 AM
So, the boyfriend and I are off to breakfast and the Saints game with my dad and brothers. I know, it sounds kinda frightening (not unlike dove hunting with the bubbas)--at least it does to me. Personally, I can't stand sitting through football games. Baseball, tennis, even golf tournaments, yes. Football and basketball, no. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that I fairly suck at football or basketball... Still, I love spending time with my dad and brothers.... Well, most of my brothers: the Bible-thumping one right behind me (conceived at almost the very moment I was adopted), grates on my nerves, but the others are cool. Maybe if I saw them more often, that wouldn't be the case, but since we cross paths only a couple of times each year, it's a novelty. My mom, on the other hand.... She's one I just don't get. Her version of family visits--especially Christmas--really bugs me. I'm in her house for two minutes and she's already sobbing about how happy she is to see me and getting all smarmy and cranking up the Perry Como Christmas album. Imagine Sally Field in almost anything, and you get the picture. I'm sure that makes me sound like a monster in the first degree. All my friends who meet her think she's adorable. The problem is, I feel like I'm friends with my dad and most of my brothers. My mom, though...we have very little in common.
9:42 AM
Um, is it just me, or does this headline sound like it could have been lifted directly from the pages of The Onion?
7:22 AM
Note: there is no "x" in "espresso." Ergo, please refrain from mentioning "expresso" in my presence. Yes, I'm speaking to you--you, the aging jock holding the poorly lit cigar with the band still on it. Same goes for your acid wash-wearing "Omigod why the hell would anyone pay $15,000 for this Ansel Adams photo when they can walk right around the corner and get the poster for ten bucks" girlfriend.
12:33 PM
Hey, Timo! When did you start an online diary? Shame on you for not sharing, Mary. You get an "F" in citizenship for the day....
11:10 AM
Yes, it's true: our tree is up. The rotating color wheel is plugged in, too. It blows a breaker every time we turn it on.
8:35 AM
I cut my hair today. All by myself. In five minutes. It had been doing its own thing for the past four months, my hair. It was time. (Sorry. Gertrude Stein moment there. It's over now.)
2:03 PM
Okay, so did anyone else see this? I'm certainly friggin' jealous. Yes, it's a slow day around here. I'm finally getting the chance to catch up on my surfing. It's almost a vacation. Except I'm sitting in my office trying to look busy.
2:10 PM
Oh, I think I already mentioned this, but maybe not: we're in NYC from January 3rd through the 9th. I've put Jonno in charge of pulling together an event (i.e. happy hour at a dive bar), so ask him for details.
12:36 PM
Thanks you for the early x-mas prezzie, boyfriend. Since you're all-too familiar with my fascination for things bright and shiny, I can only assume you bought it to keep me out of your hair for the next three months. :-)
12:00 PM
11:39 AM
Um, is it just me, or is there a glaring omission in this article? I mean, jeez, how do you talk about sexual habits--let alone the sexual habits of horned-up, hyper-hormonal adolecent boys--without even mentioning "homosexuality? (I'm goddamn serious; ctrl+f search the page, Mary.) You'd think they might at least modify the title of the piece....
8:36 AM
(I apologize in advance if this gets maudlin.) In our living room, there's a cd playing that Jonno just received from a super-special secret satan admirer-type person. It's essentially a "best of" album, with Cocteau Twins songs spanning from the mid-80s (junior high/high school) to the late 90s (semi-grownup-hood): 15 weird, wonderful years, that have taken me places I'd never have thought I'd go. Now, my feelings on nostalgia are pretty clear: I'm uncomfortable/unwilling to go mucking around in my past just for the sake of feeling warm and fuzzy. But sometimes I can't help myself. Now's one of those times.
See, the problem with nostalgia is that it's addictive--once you start down that road, it's hard to turn back. You're listening to a cd like this, and one song plays through, dredging up all sorts of happy memories of a younger, possibly more carefree you, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle on a cold winter night on the shores of a moonlit lake, carousing like you never thought you'd grow older and own a house and begin to settle down (just a bit). Against your better judgement, you keep listening. The songs remind you of photos, images that make you think to yourself "Well, I haven't changed much, have I?" but when friends see them on your mantelpiece or in your photo album, they all comment on how adorable you were back then. Hmm. Maybe that's it in a nutshell. Maybe I'm just not willing to admit that my past is past. Or maybe this mushiness/revulsion is specifically related to the saccharine-sweet music of the Cocteau Twins. I mean, when a certain someone recently reminded me of a RevCo album I'd almost forgotten, it didn't have the same effect at all. 
4:09 PM
8:17 AM
Wow. I completely forgot about this one. It's not my best work, to be sure. But the thought of Jon Benet boo-ing like Marley's ghost and walking through walls still makes me giggle. Tee hee....
1:20 PM
Yet another day of writing things for other people. This time it's a piece on New Year's--perhaps the least interesting of all holidays to me. I'm not entirely pleased with it, although I think it paints a charming if none-too-realistic picture of my boyfriend. Read it if you like. P.S. I've consumed nothing but sugar today and I feel weird.
5:19 PM
Blech...ack...phew...sniffle...yack. I hate being sick. Of course, no one really enjoys being sick. Some people hate feeling bad; others feel a sense of obligation to their job and that they're somehow letting everyone in the office down by missing a day of work. But that's not me. No, I hate being sick because daytime TV sucks ass--not just any ass, mind you, but primadonna informercial Susan Lucci-style ass. Yeah, Sesame Street's okay, and I can kinda stomach Zoom (though not as well as when I was a kid), but the bulk of daytime TV is made up of soaps, talk shows, and courtroom crap. And frankly, I'd rather suffer through simultaneous bouts of malaria, dropsy, and rubella than sit through five minutes of Jenny Jones. You think I'm joking... I've always been like this. As a kid, I used to lie to my mother when I was sick just so I could go to school and hang with my friends--anything to avoid crappy reruns of Hodgepodge Lodge and Vegetable Soup. I'd be racked with chills, running a fever of 103, but I'd down some Tylenol and pretend nothing was wrong, then hop off to class. In my previous life, I must've been Typhoid Mary.... Now I'm just Mary.
8:23 AM
I'm liking Jason's monologue/play-in-progress. The name "Harold" just kills me--no offense to any of you who might be named Harold, of course.
8:38 AM
I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Popeye's has the best red beans in the world. Back when I was a vegetarian--back when I used to think I was health-conscious, smoking over a pack a day and listening to lots of wacky music with theoretically politically correct messages--I used to thrive on Popeye's red beans. They're cheap, filling, and, well, cheap. And they're tasty, too. I eventually started in with the meat again, and my eating habits totally changed--including my fast food habits. With my self-imposed dietary restrictions gone, I had no need to schlep all the way over to Popeye's. For me, the only draw was their red beans; you see, I'm one of those rare Southerners who doesn't particularly care for fried chicken (except livers, which, unfortunately, not many Popeye's carry anymore). These days I eat Popeye's once or twice a year. Today was one of those days. And something strange happened. As I was standing in line, the Popeye's DJ started playing a really old radio tune, and it dawned on me that the song in question was 13 friggin' years old. I know that because I remember riding to New Orleans with my then-girlfriend Margaret in the winter of 1987/88 with my old Mustang's top down, the weather a nippy 40-something degrees, the car's heater blasting from the floor panels, us laughing and smoking like crazy, listening to the be-turtlenecked hipster sing his little diddy. I particularly associate the song with a trip we made for New Years'--it was practically the only tune Meg wanted to hear. I recalled that when we came down that time, we stayed with my friend Alice and her mom--who, as luck would have it, lived right around the corner from the very Popeye's in which I stood today. I looked out the restaurant's window. It's located in a fairly poor neighborhood, so the cars and the buildings were relatively old--in all likelihood, nothing had changed much in 13 years.The clothes of the people on the street were generic cold weather things--cheap sweaters, nylon windbreakers. Almost 13 years ago, when I was a very different person, I could have been standing in the very same spot, listening to the very same music, looking at the very same cityscape. In situations like that, I like to fantasize that I've been knocked unconscious and I've just come to. What is there in my surroundings that can tell me where and when I am? And today the answer was "nothing." P.S. I posted the Secret Santa participants. Snoop around if you like.
4:04 PM
Um...could someone tell me what the HELL is going on? Sometime between last night and right now, some weasely little program decided to screw up all my ".jpg" extensions. For example, if I had a pic named "MyFatAss.jpg", it's now called "MyFatAss.jpgchange atleast now to LINUX". Not surprisingly, my PC ain't quite swift enough to figure out what in the dangnabbit's goin' on, so it's not recognizing the files for what they really are--simple little harmless ol' jpegs. Luckily it's just one folder on my work computer. If it'd been my home computer....ugh, let's not think about it.
11:09 AM
Yes, I'm alive. No, I'm not hiding from the mob--what makes you say that? Yes, I'm almost finished with the Secret Santa realness goodies...
8:47 AM
Oy, such a week I had. Between work and the plays and a couple of events I was coordinating, I thought I'd never make it through. I'm happy to report, however, that everything came to a screeching halt after Saturday's performance (which, fyi, went remarkably well). I was so exhausted I didn't even leave the house on Sunday. Many more details to follow...as soon as I catch up with everything. Meanwhile, don't forget: today's the last day to sign up for the Secret Santa sexyfunky holiday lovefest!
10:08 AM
8:29 AM
1981 was an eye-opener for me. It was my 7th grade year--my first year in public school. Between the quaint but ridiculously out of date elementary school I'd attended and my overprotective mother (she cringed at the thought of me playing football or riding my bike in the street), I quickly realized I'd missed out on a lot. I was particularly clueless about sex: although I discovered the joys of masturbation around that time, it took me at least a year to understand the real implications of what I was doing. 1981 was also the year AIDS appeared in the headlines. Over the next couple of years, the public learned more about it, and I learned more about sex. I began fooling around with men--not just the few curious boys in my class, but men, with wives and children and houses and stuff. I didn't yet identify as gay, but I slowly came to realize that I might have something in common with the gay men on 20/20 and 60 Minutes who spoke about their uncertainty and fear in the face of this new disease. So as I got older, I was dealing with two problems--my not-so-latent homosexuality and the fact that my dalliances could be dangerous. Of course, that didn't stop me. I kept having sex with men--in fact, if anything my escapades grew more frequent. I was a teenager filled with raging hormones. What could I do? As I came to accept my homosexuality over the remainder of that decade, I became fairly active in AIDS activism. Well, as active as any of us could be in Mississippi, where talk of sex--much less homosex--was not commonly a topic of dinner table conversation. There were no ACT UP chapters, but I did what I could. Today, though, I can't tell you the last time I attended an AIDS fundraiser. I feel kind of like an anomaly. Yes, I've had a few acquaintances die from AIDS, but no one very close to me. And I know a number of men who are living with HIV, but to the best of my knowledge, none have even become seriously ill. With advances in treatment, it feels like no one's dying anymore.
9:07 AM
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ppl.
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