Ha Ha

I win.

At work, we competed for a Universal Gym that needs a new home and I won it. Ha ha. Everyone who entered but me is rich and I make teacher's salary. They lose. I get it. It's mine. I beat out even the rich business manager who complained, "What, just because B cecked his email first, he's gets it? Let's flip a coin." Fuck you, mothafuckaaaaa! PE teacher was all "You make more than anyone except the head of school, betchhhh, so chill." And I was all, "I've got a friend with a truck. It's as good as done." (Nun-chucks at the ready.)

It's going upstairs, and now everyone can laugh at how much like a frat boy I'm becoming for "Lifting." ("Sorry guys, I can't hang tonight, gotta go lift.") Or how much like a frat boy I'm becoming because I play video games all day instead of lifting. Shit, I guess either way I lose.

My New Nephew, a Childwen

Now play the line from American Movie/Coven over and over in your head: "It's allright/It's okay/There's Something to Live For..."

Is there? Dude, you are already as fat and only slightly more self-centered as I am, and have achieved ZIP! So why not just call it a day, eh?

Machine Elves Stole My Dissertation

Apparently DMT makes you see--I mean "communicate with"--little machine elves who represent alien life forms in disguise. Frustrated at the asburdity of this widely held belief, I googled "machine elves" and somehow stumbled upon "I see dead people" and then "ghost therapy," which led me to a link to my dissertation. What web page was I on now? Only amazon dot fucking com, who STOLE my diss from a database and are now selling it for $55 dollars (a lousy pdf file). Go to their homepage and type my full name. You'll see. Fuckin' machine elves at amazon. I was up all night drinking scotch and playing Burnout.

Hippie-Goddess

This is a blatant attempt to outdo Cait's discovery of beautifulagony.com, which challenges many conventions and even raises the question as to whether an orgasmic face is "porn." I offer hippiegoddess.com, which was linked from a site that was linked to beautifulagony. No one can deny that women are the true inheritors of the earth, that each woman embodies Gaia--in her groin area especially. Last summer's dealings with Hitler Fudd have taught me that I must be more tolerant of alternatives to the "norm" of shaved/bleached/siliconed porn, and this is it! Who among us wouldn't cherish their "old lady" if she were a hippie goddess? She would provide me, as a man, a timeless and spiritual link to all other women throughout time. She is the vessel through which I, the male principle, or "lingham," redeems, renews, and refreshes himself. We compliment each other like yin and yang, from time immemorial. See her dance! Heat the drums! She is calling me. What? What's that? I hear you! Yes, we shall dance with the wolves in the moon-shadow of your unshaved vagina! I hear...I hear...dumh...dumhn...DUHM....dum..ta-ta dumh...duhm....duhn....

As I approach middle-age (no protests, please: 35 x 2 = 70 years, at which point I will be retired), I'm more and more disheartened by how many of my friends rank (having a) family over art, politics, and venturing beyond their homes. (You folks who don't find these things mutually exclusive, good on ya!). I don't doubt that I've "settled" in here with my own version of the American Dream, and I still might someday visit the Land of Monogamous Coupledom. But it's not the relationship or the kids per se that bothers me the most: it's the all-consuming attention to these things as if they make one a "grown up." I flirted with the idea of wrapping my dissertation in a bonnet, putting it in a bassinet and sending it around at Christmas. "Ben and New Breed, Old Blood Wish You Happy Holidays!" I still might do that. But the literary-creation-as-birthing metaphor is troublesome for other reasons.

If it's my "choice" not to do these things, why should I think about it all the time? By think, I do not mean "wonder if I should propagate after all." I mean, how am I to continue "developing" as a person when there's little to nothing that I do that actually counts as development, other than my career (which, let's face it, becomes boring to talk about after fifteen minutes). Deep down, I must really believe that some day it will no longer be cool to mention marriage+kids at a party. I've decided to start saying to my breeding friends, "Good thing you had a baby now while it's still cool." This works a little bit better than Marla's "heternormativity is doomed," although I like her quote much better, personally.

I'm left with the tired old debate in queer theory over "choice." I'd like to say that not having a family is not a choice, it's who I am. I could try it, but it would seem violently wrong. There are two problems with this. First, I face no political danger and this makes my anxieties unlike those of GLBT's. Second, saying this means conceding that breeders didn't choose to breed either. So how can I criticize them?

Besides overpopulation and First World privilege, most of them are simply going to have to stop it--or else. They will have to fight against their "nature" or we're all doomed, not just heteronormativity. My hope is that breeding will simply cease to be cool. Breeding will be like littering.

Aha! As I typed this, I realized I had unconsciously equated having "a litter" with "littering."

Okay, now I'm not depressed. I'm fucking happy as all hell and am going to use "litter" much, much more. As in, "Pitch in! Put Your Gametes in the Trash," "Litter is Unsightly. It Attracts Vermin and Causes Disease," or

Danny Masterson was NEVER on Buffy

But somehow my brain thinks this dude from That 70s Show WAS on Buffy. You see, last night I had a dream that I had moved to LA and occcasionally found myself at celebrities' parties. One night we were at Danny Masterson's and I noticed he had done some similar work on his house that we had. I asked for the tour, but instead of showing me drywall he showed me his entire TV on DVD collection. Lame! It was all King of the Hill and Brady Bunch, nothing obscure like Red Dwarf or something. I then asked why he didn't have That 70s Show or Buffy, since he was on both of them. He replied, "I don't collect the shows that I'm on." (Which is a lie. I looked him up on imdb and he was on King of the Hill, and of course NEVER had even a bit part on Buffy). But gullible me ate it up and I started asking questions about what everyone was up to. I really wanted to know about Amber Benson, since she's a writer and continues to inhabit the role of Tara. He dismissed her and the rest of them but EPECIALLY Nicholas Brendan, whom I soon realized was his arch-enemy for being just as much of a lazy and shiftless dude, but never actually smoked pot and finally did something with his life. Masterson didn't know what anyone was up to and acted as if he'd been stuck with the job of speaking for the show after the rest had moved on with their lives. When I realized he was lying, I nevertheless continued to stop over to his house to say hello. He'd ask me Buffy questions, but I'd change the subject to renovation and talk about how his 70s-era shag carpet was cool for the show but not for real life, so get rid of it. Eventually I stopped visiting.

What does this dream mean? I wonder if it means that those of my friends who are occasionally stoners do not like Buffy as I do. That there's something fundamentally non-stoneresque about Buffy and Angel. Despite it's monsters and such, it's not a "trippy" show at all, but rather appeals to computery-booky nerds on the whole. I will generalize that rarely do the two crowds overlap. My love of Buffy is somehow connected to being at odds with my hippie roots.