the last hundred thousand years

dearest readers, first of all, my apologies for not getting to blogging until 1230. if i had been busy at my desk, as you all know, i would've blogged anyway. what's working at a job when you have hoards of (1) reader(s) visiting your website, expecting to be entertained or even touched in that special place? no, dear readers, i've been in the clinic all morning. a clinic visit that was supposed to take an hour ended up taking nearly three and a half. why? well, first it was the cab company--the kid, of course, was picked up 40 minutes late and, when he finally was picked up, the cab driver took the most alice-in-wonderland-down-the-rabbithole route to get here. why? because cabbies are crooked. and cabbies in baltimore are worse. so the kid gets here, finally, and i do my thing. i page the doctor on call. where does it turn out he is? bethesda. why? i don't know. did he not know he had a patient today? again, i don't know. he's still not here, in fact, but the other doctor got out of clinic in time for me to have a short lunchbreak before my next clinic visit.

whatever.

what i was really going to post about today was netflix. specifically, the fucked-up-as-they-come movies you can find on netflix. since i'm apparently on a crusade to watch the most gay cinema humanly possible without working at a year-round gay film festival, i've scoured netflix for gay movies. sometimes a gay movie is like brokeback mountain or the birdcage. classic. sometimes, i'm sad to say, they're like beverly kills (the sad, waste of life movie that i saw at NCGLFF last summer) or, even worse, like the movie we watched half of last night: the last year.

netflix the last year if:

1. you've ever wondered if a whole movie could be shot with a camcorder
2. you've ever watched a movie and thought, "hey, i could do that!"
3. you have an hour and forty-eight minutes you can't do anything better with, including clipping your toenails or banging your head against a brick wall
4. you've never seen a movie before and therefore have no basis for comparison
5. you need a lesson in how not to write a screenplay
6. you don't care if a movie lacks, say, editing and a score

there's probably a seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth reason, but i'm afraid that the movie's director, who i'm sure is finishing up his film degree somewhere, will google his movie's title and come up with this site. and i'm not out to hurt anyone's feelings. really. okay so maybe a couple peoples'.

bigmuscles: 1/30/06

i have no words. i know that a lot of you ladies don't like men that are overly muscular, but just imagine this guy on top of you. you're welcome. oh, and it's totally not safe for work.

i'm gay, remember?

hilary: be my guest
hilary: and if you can convince her to come to new york, i'll make out with you
robert: hahahaha
robert: oooh what a prize!
hilary: your reward in heaven
hilary: hahhah

morning bitchery

i don't want to be one of those displaced homos that hates his mother. i don't want to complain about my family tirelessly, insult oklahoma and all it's psycho small-town trappings. i want to get along with my mother as easily as i seem to get along with my father. since christmas, though, this doesn't seem in the cards. i don't know what the fuck the deal is, but the woman's been pissing me off for about a month. and so, here's a post where i sound like one of those displaced homos who hates his mother.

the deal about my dear, national review-reading mother is that out of nowhere--literally in the last year--she's more blindly conservative than pat robertson. gone is her live-and-let-live attitude, disdainful towards immigrants and faggots though she may have been. i don't know what happened, why the switch in her mind has turned. more and more i feel like i'm living in a 2005 remake of the glass menagerie. i just find it hard to listen to endless stories on the telephone when i haven't been able to talk to her about my personal life since my breakup with terry--and that was nearly a year ago. she shut down at the time (i mean, c'mon, that breakup was some fucked-up shit and i got barely a word of sympathy) and it's since become blatantly clear that she wants nothing to do with the side of my life that's gay--you know, that little part that's everything i do outside of work and singing. more and more i feel like, you know what, mom? if i can't talk to you about anything outside work--absolutely nothing about my personal life--i don't really care about your new principal at school.

if you'd asked me three years ago if i thought i'd be in this place--writing bitchy, complainy blogs about my dissolving relationship with my overbearing mother--i'd have said no way. but here i sit.

bigmuscles: 1/27/06

in the search for the perfect muscular hunk you come across both the weird and wonderful. but most of the time just the weird.

clearly

for those of you who don't know, the guy i'm dating (or not dating, if you're to believe my last column) is a dentist. ok so he'll be a dentist when he graduates in may, a fact he reminds me every time i try to brag that i'm dating a dentist. in my book if a guy checks your teeth and makes you free custom bleaching trays he's a dentist. then again, maybe that's why i'm wearing full dentures at age 25. those back-room chinese immigrant dentists'll fool ya every time.

anyway, he's a dentist. part of his final year at dental school is doing outreach at local schools. apparently he's going to some inner-city baltimore gradeschool today and teaching kindergartners how to brush their teeth. we all know, after all, that their parents aren't going to teach them. they usually just send them to bed with a chicken bone to gnaw on. he's going to give them the whole spiel about brushing in little soft circles, flossing every day, blah blah blah. you know, the same speech that he gave me about a month ago.

we were joking this morning about these little kids seeing him and screaming "oooh, a chinese man!" (he's chinese/vietnamese-american. did i mention that? well he is.) i said, "yeah, when you walk into the school office to check in the receptionist's going to say, 'but we didn't order any chinese food!'"

get this: phong told me that he once went to his boyfriend's apartment building and when he walked up to the reception desk the woman there said, "where are you from?"

"where am i from?" he asked. "um, baltimore city."

"no," she said. "which restaurant are you from?"

"oh. uh, i'm not a delivery person."

mind you, phong speaks with no hint of an accent. he's a preppyish, obviously american man who drives a nice car. but he has slanty eyes so he must be associated with a chinese restaurant. clearly.

begging, pleading.

just to alert all of you, the brokeback mountain episode of oprah is today. now you all know that i do not like that woman. but we're talking jake and heath's first on-camera interview together. it's a brokeback extravaganza. this movie was already popular, but after it's on today things are going to go batshitcrazy.

so, here's the begging part of this post: if any of you in the baltimore area are home at 4pm today, could you tape it for me? do tapes still exist anymore? they sure do in my world.

bigmuscles: 1/26/06

okay, you people have put up with enough 59 year olds claiming to have 0% bodyfat. today's bigmuscle stud is the reward for your patience.

old friends, new beginnings. or whatever.

the summer before i came to peabody, which now seems like a hundred thousand and one years ago but was actually about three and a half, i went to a pay-to-sing opera festival called, of all things, Opera in the Ozarks. if this wasn't enough, it was held at an artists compound called inspiration point, the very same compound to which i'd won a scholarship in 8th grade to go to a singing camp. a jazz singing camp, more specifically, where everyone except me knew each other because they went to the same high school. yep, i made some great friends during those two weeks. oh wait, i spent most of the time hiding in my top bunk, dreading when i'd have to shower in the communal showers and wishing that our dormitory building had doors so that vermin and spiders would stay out.

my summer at opera in the ozarks was different, though. first of all, i wasn't scared of the showers anymore. i suppose that i'd been naked in front of enough people in the preceeding eight years that i just didn't care anymore. the biggest difference, though, was the people i met. they were people i still think about even though i've lost contact with all of them. particular people made such an impact, in fact, that i think i'll never forget them. marybeth mccolloch, for instance, was among the craziest southern girls i've ever met. she grew up with lance from n'sync and crazy farrar in mississippi. the last i heard she was going to CCM. there was tae mee, a post-punk costumer who was half white, half korean and all hot. she had reproduction sailor tattoos all over her before they were hip and then passe. she'd grown her hot-pink mohawk into tit-length shiny black hair. she wore skimpy, too-small cowgirl tank tops. she was oversexed, over-cigaretted and we got along incredibly. when my phone got stolen i lost her number and any way to ever contact her again. jesus.

my reason for writing this whole thing is that, through the wonders of myspace, another of my friends from that summer, amanda, found me. her myspace page is dedicated to her clothing line, chintzy couture, and if i weren't such an approve-anyone myspace whore i wouldn't have ever known it was her. but since i wildly click "accept!" everytime anyone offers to be my myspace friend, we're back in contact after three years. maybe she has tae mee's number.

bigmuscles: 1/25/06

today's bigmuscle stud is mac9. we baltimore queens are very lucky, because apparently he's in dc! how late does the marc run again? (don't open this at work.)

moving and shaking

i usually try not to blog about work. you know, that whole thing about being canned really does kind of scare me. it's like, lose my job for my blog? i love each and every one of you, dearest readers, but i don't think so. not unless the five of you that check this blog can somehow scrape up 28 thousand bones a year to pay my salary. then i'll lose my job.

today, though, i just have to write about work. i just got out of lab meeting, which always promises to be exciting (if only because we're all trying to figure out how not to pass out from the 90-degree room we have the meeting in) and found out that we're all expected to help pack up boxes of data and office equipment for the impending renovation my floor's about to undergo. that's right. we have to pack boxes. i assume we have to carry these boxes filled with office equipment around. my office is filthy. i have visions of me and this lady my mother's age kneeling on the dusty ground, filling up boxes with reams of paper and rolls of tape and tiny boxes of paperclips. then we'll wave our arms in front of our faces, wipe the sweat off our foreheads with our forearms (we'll be wearing packing gloves, after all) and look at each other exasperatedly, a la laverne and shirley. our look will say "oh, laverne. can you believe the boss is making us do this? oh well, it's a living! schlamile...schlamozel!"

i told my coworker jean that the day we all have to start packing boxes we should wear bandanas on our heads. you know, because it'd be funny and a little bit of a protest. and anything's more fun with a bandana on your head.

A&F

i used to only hate abercrombie because it was what everyone at depauw wore. literally. everyone. after reading this article, there are plenty more reasons. here's a snippet:

"For many young men, to wear Abercrombie is to broadcast masculinity, athleticism and inclusion in the "cool boys club" without even having to open their mouths (that may be why the brand is so popular among some gay men who want desperately to announce their non-effeminacy). But because A&F's vision is so constructed and commodified (and because what A&F sells is not so much manhood but perennial boyhood), there is also something oddly emasculating about it. Compared to the 1950s ideal, A&F's version of maleness feels restrictive and claustrophobic. If becoming a man is about independence and growing up, then Abercrombie doesn't feel very masculine at all."

and

"As far as Jeffries is concerned, America's unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere. "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," he says. "Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either."

wow. (via towleroad)

bigmuscle

in the tradition of queerty's "morning goods," i've decided to do something similar (at least until i get bored with it or forget). at brian's suggestion, i'm going to start sharing with you all some choice profiles from a little gay cruising site called bigmuscle.com. no, i'm not on it, so don't bother looking (as if any of you cared).

sometimes the men will be hot, sometimes they'll be scary. some of them will be fakes (the hot ones) and some of them you'll wish never took their clothes off. it's up to you to decide which is which.

so, here's today's nearly-naked stud: "GunsNPecs!"

for something a tad more tantilizing, go here.

dozing

do any of you really care to read about my sleeping habits again? probably not. am i going to blog about it anyway? you betcha. yesterday while i was at work, phong was telling me about some muscle relaxer he took the night before. apparently it knocks you on your ass. of course i was like, "hmm...fun with pills that help you sleep..." so he brought me one to take last night.

lemme just say, we were sitting there watching medium (i have to have my patty arquette fix, even though she's so deadpan that's she's practically a corpse with a puppeteer's hand up her ass, making her eyes blink and her mouth move) and i literally couldn't keep my eyes open starting at 10:30. now, this shouldn't exactly be surprising since i popped the muscle relaxer at around 8:30. but to someone who hasn't been sleeping, it felt delicious.

i somehow willed myself to stay awake until the show ended (either i was in a drug haze or it was a kind of pointless episode) and then stumbled to my bed, where i immediately went to sleep and--get ready for this--actually slept til nearly 7am. and when i woke up it wasn't because i thought that there were strangers in my house, it was because i had to pee. and then i went right back to sleep until 7:30. which, of course, meant that i missed my shuttle this morning.

but who cares? i slept. oh, and speaking of the shuttle this morning:

you know last week when there was a lady eating a mcdonald's ice cream? well today she was back but instead of ice cream she was chomping on a cup of ice. i don't know what it is with a lot of baltimore's inner-city population, but they loves their cups of iceses. not content to merely chomp on ice, she had her wad of blue bubble gum precariously perched on the side of the styrofoam cup. and she was obviously, clearly on drugs. my best guess is heroin because she wasn't hyper-active enough for it to be crack. and she kept like dozing off and slurring her speech--and lemme tell you, she's a talkative one.

mind you, this isn't a city bus. it's the hopkins shuttle. i just keep wondering where this lady's going. my guess is to cure cancer.

better than picking cotton

robert: what am i currently getting paid to do?
robert: that's right, fold brochures
hilary: better than cleaning toilets!
robert: you haven't been cleaning toilets.
hilary: not here
hilary: but when i was a maid
hilary: yes
robert: oh well true
robert: but most things are better than cleaning toilets
robert: except picking cotton
hilary: i think i'd rather pick cotton
robert: haha
robert: yeah the first day
hilary: i'd have a nice tan
hilary: a great back
robert: well that's good, because i signed you up for hard manual labor
hilary: and i could sing on the job!
robert: yeah, you could sing SPIRITUALS
robert: "mammie, what's the problem here? you have a good tan and your back looks fantastic!"
jonez69: exactly
robert: "but massa"
hilary: hahahh
robert: that is AWFUL
robert: haha
hilary: but true

it's me berfday

i somehow missed this little blog's first birthday. as of last friday, i've been blogging a year. this blog has made me a few friends, entertained mainly myself (but, i hear, a few other people, too), and helped me get a weekly column in maryland's gay paper. it's been dirty, offensive, and has been in turn funny and quite sad. sounds like my life. happy birthday, little blog.

the little gay movie that could

i'm only about the millionth blogger to write about this, but apparently our dear brokeback mountain was number one at the box office this weekend. it beat the second-place movie, which was playing in twice as many theaters, by about $50,000. and to think we were worried that it wouldn't come to baltimore.

out of curiosity, i just did a yahoo movie search to see if this little gay flick had made it to ponca city yet. it hasn't. it is, however, playing all over oklahoma city and tulsa. if it makes it to ponca, where the only theaters are a thirty-year-old two-screen firetrap, a mid-80's 4-screen "megaplex," and a renovated vaudeville theater called the Poncan, it will have done what was impossible in my mind: it will be a gay movie that hollywood had enough faith in to push into very-small-town america.

i wish that a lot of people in oklahoma could see brokeback mountain. not just the gay people. i wish that all those people i went to high school with, the ones who now have six-year-old babies, the cowboys, the farm workers, the factory workers (most of the people who now make up ponca city since the bastards at conoco/phillips closed their corporate offices) could see it. what struck me so much about this movie was the isolation of the main characters. granted, i was lucky to live in oklahoma in the 80's and 90's instead of the 60's, but that feeling--that you're the only person with these feelings, that there's no way you're ever going to find your place or be happy--was definitely there; it is, in fact, still there when i go home. if i've been out to dinner in ponca with family and seen other gay people, they were of the ennis variety, not of the puma-and-tight-sweater-wearing variety and i certainly couldn't tell you who they were.

i want people down there to see brokeback and to understand, this. this is what we go through here. minus the horses and unprotected sex in a pup tent.

insomniac

dearest, darling readers, let me preface this blog entry by saying that it was a great weekend. of course it went too fast. but i ate a lot all weekend, and that always makes things better.

now on to the long-awaited bitching and moaning bit of this morning's post: for the last two weeks, i haven't been sleeping. it's not that i lie there awake, tossing and turning until 3am. i fall asleep as soon as my head hits my pillow (now extra-firm because i've gotten old and my neck's apparently too sensitive for anything else), but then--and this is what's strange, because it's happened every night for the last two weeks--i wake up between 4-6am and then can't go back to sleep until 7. and then my alarm goes off at 7:15 and i'm pissed off.

most of the time i wake up at 4 or 5 or 6 i'm absolutely convinced that there's an intruder in my apartment. every thud i hear, every drip of the faucet, becomes a baltimore street thug, perfectly happy to run off with my mac mini while i'm sleeping but who will shoot me the first noise i make. is this normal, sane behavior? not really. when you combine it with the fact that i also inevitably wake up singing a kelly clarkson song in my head while worrying about being mugged/robbed/attacked, it's a very strange situation indeed. "since you been gone, yeahhhh yeahhhh....A ROBBER!"

and so i suppose i write this post for suggestions from you. what do you think will help me sleep through the night (or at least til 7)? hilary suggested a glass of wine, but it's not that i have trouble falling asleep--i'm having trouble staying asleep. and tylenol pm isn't working. i suppose that i could invest in an alarm system and stop listening to kelly clarkson...

WOOT

i sent out a few emails today to different independent weeklies and gay papers around the country, just to see if they ran any syndicated columns. i emailed the stranger in seattle, and got the following response:

"dear robert,

i'm sorry, but we don't run syndicated columns—'cept mine...

dan"

FROM DAN SAVAGE.

fuck you, simon. and paula. and rodney or whatever your name is.

as if we needed another reason to fucking hate american idol. (via towleroad)

dirty birdy

it's getting more and more difficult to come up with fake names for people. it's only a matter of time before i resort to things like ronrico and thomasio. anyway, here's this week's column.
Playing with Fire

I’d said it so many times, to so many different people, that I’d nearly started to believe it myself: I don’t date. There were lots of reasons. First I’d just gotten out of a messy breakup; then I was taking time to get to know myself, to learn how to enjoy being single again. Most recently, it’s because I’m moving to New York. I don’t date. It had become my edict, the thing I automatically said when someone started to seem like they were interested in me. It was the easiest way I’d ever found to keep myself from having to get close to people. Then I met Paul.

Suddenly, “I don’t date” turned into “What time on Saturday?” It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still leaving Baltimore soon, though, and making the decision to date Paul wasn’t an easy one. I thought it was best to come clean with him from the beginning.

“So I always tell people I don’t date,” I started, “because I’m moving to New York. And, you know, I don’t want to get all attached to someone or have them get attached to me because I’m not good at long-distance relationships.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but I’m moving to California in May. So it’s not like I’m going to have my feelings hurt or anything. I know what I’m getting into.”

Yeah, I thought, but do I? I’ve never been someone who just dated people for fun; I tend to date people that I can see myself having a future with. Honestly, if I need someone to hang out with, I have plenty of friends. Friends with whom I don’t have the complication of a sexual relationship.

When I met Paul, though, something felt different. We just got along so well; we made the same sick joke during Scattergories (What’s something that you hide that starts with a J? We both wrote “Jews [Anne Frank].”). We share a borderline-unhealthy obseession with the Food Network. He’s got a great job, great friends. He’s smart and evil and funny. He’s marriage material. And so, of course, we’re moving to opposite coasts in a few months.

Until now we haven’t tried to define what it is we’re doing together. For instance, he’s always “my friend Paul” when he meets my friends. We’re not “boyfriends” and we don’t make big, romantic plans for the future. For once it seems like I’m in a relationship that just is what it is, which is maybe one of the reasons it’s going so well. Since we’ve already given our relationship a sort of shelf life, having decided to date while we’re here and then be friends on opposite coasts, there’s no pressure on either of us. It’s almost as if we’re able to just enjoy each other while it lasts, since we’re free from the rules we usually follow in relationships. I hate to say it, but this normalcy, this lack of urgency, feels strange. I’m not complaining.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be overanalyzing all this, that I should just go with the flow, let our friendship or relationship or non-relationship play out the way that it’s meant to. I can’t help but wonder, though: Am I going to be able to pull this off? Am I going to be able to date someone and then just put my feelings for them up on a shelf after we’ve moved on to different lives?

For better or worse, I’m assuming that the answer is yes. I might be completely deluding myself, but I think that I can make it work. I don’t know if it’ll be by virtue of never making our relationship official, or if it’ll be because I never let myself get that close to begin with.

Or I could be playing with fire, setting myself up for distaster. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.

love, jeongmin

just now emily forwarded me an email sent to her by her korean accompanist. i thought i'd share.

"Emily,

I have already a student of Pr.Fisher who needs an accompanist at 4pm. It probably ends up at 4:30pm but, I am not sure. For this reason, I think it won't seem beautiful for you to wait. I am sorry about that.

Thanks,
Jeongmin"

while an excellent example of engrish, it can't quite measure up to the all-time classic, which can still be found on many chopstick wrappers:

"welcome to chinese restaurant. please try your Nice chinese food with chopsticks, the traditional and typical of glonious chinese history and cultual."

yes, it's sad that i have it memorized. and now i offer my apologies to all my asian-american friends.

a blog about television

this morning on the shuttle i was doing my usual "hmm, what am i going to blog about today?" and i had two ideas:

1. the today show today had a whole feature on american idol. i watched it because a) i watch the today show every morning no matter how boring the subject matter; and b) because i'm the only person i know that doesn't watch idol. i just don't think it's funny. i'm always like...oooh, listen. they can't sing. they're wearing a dorothy costume. it's inevitable that i feel bad about the person at first, and then think to myself, well, they've done this to themselves on national television. and then i start to think about how some people will do anything for "fifteen seconds of fame," as the special guest on the today show said this morning. so i don't watch. the whole point is, they said that there's now a scandal surrounding our dear pop princess kelly clarkson, the only american idol i'll ever need. apparently she's refusing to let any of this season's contestants sing her songs. paula abdul said something like, "it's just sad when people forget their humble beginnings." like being an l.a. lakers cheerleader, paula? it's true, though. you're from dallas, kelly, don't forget that.
2. i can't sufficiently express my disgust at project runway's insistence on keeping that wretched santino on the show. i don't know how many of you were watching (if you were watching anything else at 10 last night you were wasting your time), but the ice skating outfit that santino made looks like he took three pieces of spandex and hot glued novelty feathers to the back. and then tied the three pieces of spandex together at the neck and called it a costume. dear old emmett's ice skating outfit was completely lame (not "VULGAR" as that blonde bitch kept insisting) but he certainly didn't deserve the axe. just as heidi said, "i'm ready to give him my auf wiedersehen." and by "my auf wiedersehen" i mean my foot up his ass after i've taken clippers to his wretched hair and beard.

after thinking about these topics, i thought to myself, robert, what on earth is going on with you? the only things you can think of to blog about is television. surely more is going on in my life than tv. i mean, i'm applying for jobs in new york, singing, drinking, living, laughing, loving. yet i sit here blogging about kelly clarkson. i guess i just need to "breakaway." har har.

my blog about the golden globes (for dennis)

i excitedly turned on the television on monday night to watch the golden globes, specifically because i wanted to watch brokeback mountain kick everyone's ass to the curb. what happened, though, is that at the very beginning they used that wretched song--"don't you wish you girlfriend was hot like me" or whatever it's called--as the theme song. and they showed all of these self-congratulating actors prancing down the red carpet while playing a reworked "don't you wish...," whose lyrics included things like "don't you wish your uma therman was hot like me?"

i started to think to myself, "oh my god, this is what people in america want to watch?" and then i watched the first couple awards and it was just this big festival of ass-kissing. "you're more talented, no you're a better actor, no your hair's blonder." and i wanted to scream, "YOU'RE ALL JUST MOVIE ACTORS!"

so i put in a DVD and ignored the golden globes. but i'm still happy that brokeback raked 'em in.

fellatiating

you can always count on george for a good at-work conversation:

george: the doctor told me how to use "oral dams"
george: i was like
george: oh yeah i remember that from health class
robert: WHAT?
robert: ORAL DAMS
george: when everyone laughed at is improbability
robert: for WHAT?
george: oral sex
robert: um
robert: like on a woman?
george: well her thinking is that you put it on whatever you're (LONG PAUSE HERE) performing (PAUSE) oral sex on.
robert: haha
robert: with me there are no pauses:
robert: they just show me how to unroll a condom with my teeth
george: she did pause
george: i was like, what, "fellatiating? "
robert: wow

dodge the bullet

hot on the heels of this morning's post about the (un)safety of baltimore, this terrifying article just came out in today's citypaper.

PR.

according to my friend jordan, the "only person who could be a designer on his own is santino, other than daniel [v, i assume, since he's hot as HELL], who will be designing my bedsheets as he lays in them."

project runway. it's addictive.

crime without punishment

lest any of us be lulled into the false notion that baltimore is a safe place to live, hopkins medicine just sent this out to all its employees:

"The Hopkins employee was off campus, walking on Ann Street toward Fayette, and had just passed the KKI playground and loading dock, when the above-described female suspect approached the employee from behind, pulled a knife, and demanded her purse which she handed over. The suspect then ran toward Fairmount. The employee was not harmed during the incident. She notified KKI Security and the Baltimore Police Department who responded and filed a report."

i'd love to say that the woman who was attacked was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; that she stupidly ventured into east baltimore at 1am, flailing her cartier bangles in time to the ipod she was carrying. in fact she was right off campus, near where terry always insisted on parking his car (against my loud and terrified protests), and was robbed--at knifepoint, which i suppose is better than gunpoint--at 8:40am. now, in my experience, most people who live in east baltimore aren't out of bed at 8:40am. most seem to prefer rising anywhere between 10 and 3. at least that's what i've found in the study i work on.

it's just scary to know that people are still getting robbed/murdered/attacked in baltimore. since i basically drive my car from mt vernon to canton to towson and back, and because the area around hopkins hospital, once one of the scariest places in baltimore, is gentrifying so quickly, i forget that most of baltimore is a crime-ridden stinkhole. it might be the gem of the bay, but it's still not a very safe place to live.

and, sadly, that's one of the main reasons i'm moving to new york. even if i weren't a classical singer, i'd have to leave baltimore because it's just so unsafe. everyone i know--literally, everyone--in baltimore has had some kind of crime perpetrated against them: i've been mugged, hilary's had her car broken into around four thousand times. i don't even know what they're going for when they break into her car. is it the 5 year old headphones? the four pennies under the driver's seat? that old morrissey mixtape? we may never know. but i'm not going to stick around long enough to find out.

30 minutes a day to keep in shape...right.

so my masters recital is on my ipod, and every now and then one of the songs comes up in shuffle. contrary to popular belief, i don't, in fact, just sit around the office listening to recordings of myself in the ol' glory days. that said, a little snippet from dichterliebe just came up and i was like, "oooh, classical music! who's that? it sounds good!" because i have several versions of it on my ipod. then i realized it was me singing. and i was like, "damn, i wish i still sounded like that." i guess that working a full-time job and never practicing really does take its toll on the voice...

dirty pictures

ooh, look! new pics from this weekend's cross st. market trip posted here.

his top ten

thanks, scotty, for ten more reasons i need to move to new york.

ew, chelsea

happy late martin luther king, jr. day, dearest readers! i hope that you all enjoyed a day off yesterday, and that if you didn't get a day off you at least came to work drunk off your ass on 40's of mad dog. you know, in protest of the fact you had to work. does anyone else see coming to work wasted as a protest? just kidding, me either. (damn it's hard to type when you're this drunk.)

i was greeted this morning with an updated resume that my boss worked on for me this weekend. in her words,

"Hi Robert,
On my unusually swingin' Saturday night, I had free time to review and make some changes to your resume. Hopefully this will help you acquire a corporate position with a high salary!"

when i saw the resume that she'd drawn up for me i was literally embarrassed to have sent the ones out last week that i did. i mean, she tweaked it to look like i had an extremely amazing job with all kinds of intense responsibilities. there's really no exaggeration on the resume; it's just that she somehow made it all sound better than i could. now if i could only find a way to weasel my way into upper management somewhere and get a starting salary higher than 28k a year. because, my friends, 28k a year isn't going to go very far in new york. that's barely even enough to go drinking in chelsea 6 nights a week. i mean, come on. a boy has needs.

just kidding. ew, chelsea.

the day in pictures

kate alerted me to this brilliant photo-recap of my new favorite show.

the dollar menu

this morning on the shuttle a woman sat next to me eating fucking mcdonald's ice cream. at 8.30am. she wasn't just eating it, either. she was making love to it. she was like swirling it around with her spoon, licking each spoonful clean with an outstretched, milky tongue. at 8.30am. now, if you know me you know that i hate the morning, and i usually hate just about anyone i see in the morning. so this woman making love to her mcdonald's ice cream made me want not just to wretch, but to wretch all over her.

and the whole time i'm thinking, "welcome to baltimore, fittest city in america."

diiiiiiiplo

kate and courtney's favorite dj, diplo, the same man who dj's hollertronix in philly and sometimes at sonar and is literally the best dj i've ever danced to, is apparently getting pretty darn famous. he's doing remixes for the likes of m.i.a. and beck. he's in an interview this month in genre magazine and gave a shout-out to baltimore:

"What are the biggest crowd-pleasers right now?
People are really responding to new dance music that comes from Baltimore. It is a mix of house and breakbeats. M.I.A.’s “Bucky Done Gun” also does very well. I put a lot into that song."

i'm not really sure which dance clubs he's talking about; apparently i'm going to the wrong places. read the interview here. (via arjanwrites)

seeing is expensive

there's a girl in my study that always squints at you when you look at her. she was in for three clinic visits, which equals about 10 hours of time spent with her, before i came to the realization that she wasn't a total fucking bitch. i thought that she was judging me with those squinty eyes, clicking her tongue, glaring at me through slits. i kept thinking, who the hell does this girl think she is, constantly reading me like this? then i realized that the poor dear is blind as a fucking bat. and she's an inner-city teenager whose mother miraculously takes care of her asthma and probably doesn't have her shit together enough to take her to the eye doctor. now when i see her, i always wanna go, "[name suppressed because i don't wanna lose my job...hipaa's a bitch]! over here! no, here! good. now just follow the sound of my voice." just call me the miracle worker.

the point is, i feel a little bit like this girl this week because, as i sit here squintingly staring at the computer screen, i'm reminded that the only thing that separates me from her is a pair of brooks brothers glasses that i've had since i was 19. a pair of glasses that i no longer have, because i'm clearly a moron.

that's right, ladies and gents, i've lost my glasses. no, they're not at my house. and no, they're not at any of my friends' houses or in my desk at work. they're not in a coat pocket or in my car. they're not floating around my bag and they're not in the clinic. they are, as far as i can tell (or see), gone. i've now made it a full work-week without glasses. luckily i'm near-sighted so i'm able to do my work. and my vision isn't that bad, anyway. i'm no ashli ryon. now that girl is blind as a bat (lylas ashli).

really it's just a pain. i'm blind enough that i need glasses and when i don't wear them i have to strain to see and start to get a headache. like now. and i keep reaching to push my glasses up on my nose and realizing that they're not there. so i have an eye appointment this morning (thank god, my insurance gives you one free eye exam a year) and might be shopping for new glasses this weekend. because, you know, i have so much spare cash laying around what with taxes and trying to move to new york. at least now i know what to do with it.

donald fucking trump

well, it's been a really difficult day at work. i mean, i had to do a whole clinic visit that lasted a whole hour and then send out two more resumes to companies in new york.

i just sent my friend scott an email that said, "i'm done doing the daily whoring of my resume," which is exactly how i feel. it's like, "are you looking for someone? no? right now? you can't wait until april 1? ok, well here's my resume! enjoy!" my plan is to apply for literally every job that i think i could stand until i get interviewed and eventually land a job. i just applied for some job that's only an administrative assistant position but pays 38k a year. i know that living in new york is expensive and everything, but if i was making 38k a year i'd feel like donald fucking trump.

okay, that's the end of today's mid-afternoon rant.

as gay as it gets

i'll take three. (via queerty)

auf wiedersehen

i'm sitting here listening to "i found my everything" by my girl mary j., the second time i've listened to it today. my reaction to this song is one that can only be called "getting churchy." it's the same reaction i have when i hear "young, gifted, and black" by aretha. i'm getting churchy. not quite like nakia in church (don't ask--it involves a tab of E, an extremely vibration-conducive choir pew, and a massive pipe organ), but close enough.

anyway, i'm sitting here thinking, "what to blog, what to blog," and i'm reminded of a funny story that happened to me yesterday in the gym. i ran into my friend anthony--well, ok so we're not really friends. friends are people who actually hang out, whereas i always just see anthony at the gym and i've been to one kegger at his house. i know his last name but still refer to him as "anthony from the gym," and i'm "rob from the gym." rob. yeah we're great friends. very very close. the point is, i told anthony yesterday that i gave notice here and he acted all shocked--even though i know i've told him before that i'm moving. he then said, very dubiously, "well, i don't suppose that you're interested in fashion at all."

hello, i'm a homo. am i interested in fashion? no, i only watch project runway every wednesday and scream "YUH OUTD" along with heidi klum. am i interested in fashion? just look at me. i'm incredibly fashionable(y challenged). the point is, i'm thinking, anthony, if you have a lead in the fashion industry you better fess up now. "well," he says, "my sister is actually in the fashion industry in new york and they're always looking for employees." sweet, i'm thinking.

what kind of fashion does it turn out his sister's in? she works at a bra company. don't get me wrong, i'm still going to forward anthony my resume because a job's a job. and a job at a bra company, especially if this bra company offers health insurance, would be hysterical. i'd be a tit man. literally.

woot!

i got linked. check out jack's blog.

a quote pour vous

i just had to share with you all that my friend (and hot-ass ex) brian just said to me, "that's why i get more ass than a toilet seat." along with scott's "i'm serious as a heart-attack" it's the best thing i've heard all week.

the slippery slope (park slope that is)

dearest, darling readers, i can't believe that i've forgotten to write about this for so long. it's like i've been so busy blogging about kelly clarkson and fart jokes that i glossed right over something very important that's happened in my life: after months of sweating, worrying, and nervously laughing, i told my boss that i'm moving to new york at the end of march.

(for those of you who don't know, i never planned to be at hopkins so long. initially i was going to move wherever terry moved for grad school [i know that sounds sad, but please see "the line," the last column i wrote. oh, and he only applied places i said i wanted to move. so there.] in august. but then, you know, things happened. like us breaking up. and suddenly i had to make a new plan. so, after many sleepless nights, i decided to call up my friend amanda from college and inform her that it was time she moved out of her cushy connecticut mom's house and get into the city with me. after all, hilary and nakia were moving, too. then nakia decided not to go to nyc and hilary got thrown into the end-of-march-moving-mix and shit started to get really crazy and exciting. so that's how i ended up moving to new york at the end of march.)

anyway, i gave notice to my boss and she couldn't have been more supportive. i had all these visions of her getting pissed. saying things like, "you don't want to be here? you know what? fine! GET OUT!" and then i'd be leaving hopkins, soggy kleenex in one hand and a box of "personal effects" in the other. and i'd be either a) waiting tables or, if i was really lucky b) shirtlessly barbacking at a gay bar until i moved. there are some days at this job that those options don't sound too bad, but then i remember that i have crohn's disease and have to have someone else pay for my medication. yes, hopkins has me by the balls.

but, as i said, my boss was very supportive. she said that i could stay as long as i needed to and to make sure that i had prospective-employers call her for references. i told her, quite honestly, that i couldn't have asked for a better job for the last year and a half and started to tear up a little. because i'm a total homo.

and so i've started the slippery slope towards new york city. i've forwarded my newly-updated resume to my boss for tweaking (i love the word tweaking because it always reminds me of nipples). i've sent three resumes to three different companies in new york, and will probably be sending more today, since unlike those hateful "young artist" applications, sending resumes for jobs is free. i'll just maniacally send them until i land something. then there's that little thing called "finding an apartment in new york when you really want to live on the upper east side but what you can afford is harlem." i'll cross that bridge when i come to it (literally, since we're going to end up in queens).

i wanna marry a lawyer

i can't believe i nearly forgot, but let's all give a round of applause to my sister robin, who just called me last night (while i was in bed at 11:30 because i'm an old man) and told me that

SHE GOT INTO TEMPLE UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL IN PHILLY!

woot! here's to ya, robin.

morning goods. AGAIN.

ay, PAPI.

a shocking confession

dearest readers, i have a confession to make. you might be shocked and even a little disgusted. you might say, "but robert! we thought you were stronger than this, that you'd never give into this kind of temptation." and i thought so, too, dearest readers. but i'm hopelessly, shamefully addicted to kelly clarkson's breakaway. i know. i said the same thing. ew, american idol. ew, kelly clarkson.

but after hearing this weekend that my latest guilty pleasure is "since 'u' been gone," (there's really nothing quite like being on the dancefloor of a gay club when this little pop gem comes on, unless it's dancing to the new madonna single when i move to new york. i think that'll probably trump it, but i haven't moved yet, so kelly wins.) phong played me the whole cd in his car. then he burned me the cd and i've been listening to it pretty much non-stop since then. since every song from this album has been a top-ten single, kelly seems to have been gnawing away at my subconscious for the last year, quietly breaking down my defenses, eating at my brain quicker than the syphillis that might or might not have killed e.a. poe. now i'm nothing but a drooling pile of quivering pop jelly, mouthing "i hate myself for losing you" while considering auditioning for american idol.

i mean, c'mon. lyrics like "what do you do when you look in the mirror and staring at you is why he's not here" don't come along every day. this texas girl's album has been in the billboard top twenty non-stop for the last year. just give in. you know you want a hit of clarkson.

in other funny music news, i was hanging out with phong this weekend and a song came on his itunes that neither of us could recognize. what we both thought was some random black lady singer turned out to be jesse mccartney. ha.

swimmers.

ooh, look! another reason i go to the gym five days a week.

oh goodness

finally, i've been featured in my underwear in a gay publication. and it only took me twenty-five years to do it.

whattamorning

Q: what happens when you take a sleeping pill and then forget to set your alarm?

A: you wake up at 8:45, when you were supposed to be at work at 8:30.

that's right, ladies and gents, i woke up this morning, lazily stretched, and decided that even though my alarm hadn't gone off i'd check to see what time it was. i always wake up at 7:15 and then think to myself, dammit, why couldn't i have just slept another ten minutes? c'mon, body! needless to say, when my trusty clock radio, the one my mom bought me when i was in first grade so that i could start waking myself up, read 8:45, i said (out-loud, mind you, because i seem to be saying a lot of things out-loud to myself in my apartment lately) "OH HELL NO." maybe this is what comes of living by yourself for too long: if there's no one around to talk to, you just make do and talk to the only person who really cares what you have to say: yourself.

anyway, i practically screamed "OH HELL NO" and flew out of bed, straight to my cell phone, where i called my boss. since, thank god, she's a cool boss she just laughed and said, "oh that's ok, i'm just pulling into the parking lot myself." next i called my office, because i knew that since i'm the one in charge of getting crazy study participants into the clinic and i wasn't there no one was coming. i walked my coworker through the form you have to fill out to order a cab (is it brain surgery? no. does anyone else know how to do it, apparently? no.) and screamed into the phone, "I'M GETTING IN THE SHOWER NOW!" then slammed down the phone and somehow got showered, shaved, and onto the shuttle in thirty minutes flat. and so now i'm at work, where the study participants who were supposed to be here an hour and a half ago are still trying to get into the cabs that weren't sent for them.

i have to go have a granola bar.

the future

i'm sorry, but this just screams "SOILANT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"

"Renowned chef David Burke is betting consumers will. He is the inventor of the David Burke Flavor Sprays marketed as containing zero calories, zero fat, zero cholesterol and zero carbohydrates. The flavorings, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, fall under three categories: classic, exotic, and sweet and sinful. The offerings range from smoked bacon to chocolate fudge and are being billed as an alternative for those desiring to shed pounds but hesitant to surrender taste."

read the whole, scary, engineered-fake-foods story here.

let's just not go there

in one of the few entertaining things to happen at work today, our office manager has informed me--loudly, and in front of two other people, including a principal investigator--that my mohawk looks like a "D.A." a D.A., to those of you who aren't people who grew up in baltimore in the 60's, stands for "duck's ass." yes. i keep my mouth shut about dye jobs, people. let's not start on the hair.

language lesson

what happens when you hang out with a first-generation vietnamese/chinese-american? you learn how to say "mom, can you send me some congee...because my gay friend wants some..." in vietnamese:

"ma ma, ni ke bu ke yi gi wo i dian zhu....in wei wo do tong shin len de peng yo yao chr..." is apparently the way to ask your mother for food for your gay friend. so that she can color it pink. because, you know, we gays only eat pink food. ok, i'll stop.

if by fit you mean obese, then...

considering the fact that most of the teenage study participants i see every day outweigh me by at least fifty pounds, i'm not exactly sure what the hell men's fitness was thinking. but they've named baltimore "america's fittest city." thanks, terry, for sharing the news.

marn!

it's that time again!
The Line


We were having the kind of conversation that you can only have with a stranger in a bar, one that you’re certain you’ll never see again. It was honest, intimate, drunken. I was talking to my sister’s friend Julie while I was home for Christmas break.

“I dated this guy,” she told me, “and on our first date he listed all the women he’d dated since he was like 17. It was just one woman right after the other, like one big long-term relationship. Three years here, four years there...”

“What’s so bad about that?” I asked. I mean, women are always complaining that guys can’t commit, right? This guy obviously had no problem committing.

“He was 32 years old,” she said. “And it was like his entire life was defined by these women--he told me about all the sacrifices he’d made for all of them. It was like he didn’t know what to do unless he was in a relationship. He’d lived his entire adult life making job decisions, deciding where to move, everything, based on other people.” Obviously this kind of commitment wasn’t something that Julie was looking for. I understand where she was coming from. It’s one thing to be put on a pedestal but it’s quite another to carry someone’s fate in your hand.

It made me wonder, though: at what point in a relationship do you start making concessions? When is the right time to decide that you want to be with someone enough to change your life plans? And if you decide to alter what you want to do with your life or your job, is that really such a bad thing?

As I was talking to Julie I started to think about my own history with guys, specifically the times that I’ve made the kind of accommodations that she was talking about with such distaste. The truth is that I’ve always been the kind of guy that makes compromises in a relationship. It’s not like I define my life by my relationships. I didn’t choose my college because I was dating someone; I moved to Baltimore for no one but myself. In the end I’ve always done what was best for me and my career, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t taken into consideration the needs of the person I’m with.

I wonder, then, how Julie decides how much of a compromise is too much. At what point, for instance, will she pass up a promotion to be with the man she loves? It’s a hard decision to make. You have to weigh your options: is being with this person worth what I’m giving up? And, of course, what happens if I make this move or pass up this promotion and we break up? It’s a gamble, obviously, but it’s a gamble that I’ve always thought was worth taking.

I suppose that it all comes down to priorities. If it’s something as small as postponing a move, the decision’s pretty easy. What if, though, someone gave me an ultimatum? What if they told me that I had to give up singing or stop writing? What if they said that the life of a classical singer was one that was too risky for someone they’re dating? For me there’s just no question: giving up music, something that’s defined me for so long, isn’t something I’m willing to do.

So I guess I’ve kind of answered my own question, drawn a line for myself in the sand. I know what I’ll give up for another person and what I won’t. Does that make me selfish? I don’t think so. Julie didn’t either.

“Being in a relationship is like walking down a road together,” she said. “If you get to a place in the road where your paths have to diverge, it just has to happen. It’s sad, but in the end you just have to do what’s right for you.”

She’s right, but the true test is how I’ll deal with that fork in the road when I come to it. Will I stand my ground, stick to the decision I’ve made? I think I will.

a stab at legitimacy

woot! my blog was linked in the "read what bloggers are saying about this" box on washingtonpost.com!

mwa ha. ha ha.

a celebrity visitor

sweet, kdunk (author of the hysterical more than donuts) just left another comment on my blog. i feel like a STAH.

even pastors have needs

of course this had to happen in oklahoma. (via towleroad)

i don't care if your dresses really are the best,

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii hhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttttttteeeeeeeeeeee yyyyyyyyyyyyyooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!

love,
robert

am i a myspace slut?

you bet i am. up to now, i've tried to only have people on my myspace page (and friendster, i suppose, but myspace seems to have taken over the field of online supposedly-not-dating sites), or at least people i've talked to online. i gave that up yesterday, however, when a pretty hot 19-year-old randomly added me to his myspace page. i was like, "asheton? i don't know any ashetons." at first i thought it was ashli, but then i realized that she was like my first friend on myspace. so, no. it's some random hot gay 19 year old from hopkins. upon doing more research (meaning skipping straight over his profile and looking at his pictures then his friends list), i discovered that he had the same number of myspace friends that i do...except that 90% of them were shirtless hunks. and i mean HUNKS.

i was like, um, want to add me to that list? done, done, and done!

i have my suspicions, however, that the reason i was added to this random teenager's list was my lube wrestling picture, which i shamelessly posted the day i got it. not because of the picture of me with my sister's weird shawl-cum-miniskirt on my head christmas morning.

wha?

"There was a celebrity dining at Aldo’s on this Christmas Eve, a world-famous fashion designer, herself from Calabria, whose opulent lifestyle and appreciation of excess has been merrily lampooned on Saturday Night Live. We were happy that Donatella Versace had found Aldo’s, imagining that she felt both comforted by the cod and delighted by the decadence of crab imperial over sea bass, the crunch of a corn flake over chocolate."

um, what the hell was donatella versace doing in baltimore?

the rachael ray 365: no repeats challenge

funnily enough, i was planning on blogging about this, but george got to it first. is it sad that things like menus have taken up such an important position in our lives? i, personally, don't think so. someone with an actual life might, but fuck 'em.

my sister got me rachael ray's 365: No Repeats cookbook for christmas. i didn't want to admit it to myself, mainly because i think rachael ray is supremely annoying (EVOO, anyone?), but i desperately wanted this cookbook. i've always bitched and moaned about trying to make a menu every week. it doesn't matter that i'm only cooking for myself, mind you. every week i make a fancy menu and follow it. before i lived with terry, i ate a bunch of shit like george foreman chicken breasts and frozen fish. but not anymore, oh no. now it's all about fancy foods and good cookware. without homework to worry about, i suppose, one has to focus one's energy somewhere.

so i sat down with this huge cookbook on christmas day and started flipping through it. even with rachael's cop-out "master recipe" concept, where she takes a master dish and then changes like two ingredients and--bam--it's supposedly a new recipe, there's just a ton of things in it. i had no idea where to start. so i decided to start at the beginning and work my way through.

always one to make a mountain out of a molehill, i've decided to call it the rachael ray 365: no repeats challenge. it means that i'm going through it, recipe by recipe, in order, only skipping the recipes that sound absolutely wretched to me. and trust me, there are a few that i just know i'm not going to like. "cheesy turkey chili mac" is one of them. since i'm only cooking one night this week, i only got ingredients to make "smoky (not smokey, as phong insists it should be spelled) turkey shepherd's pie." at two recipes a week this challenge could take years. but i'm doing it. it's like tiny-kitchen olympics. can i stand rachael ray for two or three years? we'll see.

i told hilary about the challenge and she said, "that sounds great, but as soon as amanda and i start getting fat we're going to have to give it up." i promised to use lean meats and only olive oil because we know that we girls have to maintain our figures.

rachael ray, your ass is grass.

"i wanna color in your tattoo!"

what happens when you have outlines of bugs tattooed on your shoulders?
this happens. (don't fret, it's just sharpie.)

break the chains

in an email i just got from scott, he has an idea about how to break the chains of our day jobs:

"When you move here let's start playing new york lotto together. I'm serious as a heart attack."

i'm in.

pictures. oi so many pictures.

pictures from the pre-christmas ice cream eating contest, christmas with the marils, and new year's eve all posted here in one big clump. enjoy!

foiled

great. so i'm sitting here reading my new addiction, and my PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, that's right, the BIG MAN IN CHARGE, comes up to talk to me. do i do my usual quick-window-hide? no, for some reason. he comes around my desk to see scott's hysterical post, "music to die to." great.

"music to die to in a bathtub?" he says. "we need to keep you busier, robert."

great. great great great.

elbow lickin' good

george: haha just the other day i thought that "cream cheese" and "1 stick of butter" should really also be a part of Paula Deen's "house seasoning"
george: "i'm going to add a bit of house seasoning here"
robert: hahahahahahahahahhahahaa
robert: oh that's getting blogged

making a list

dearest, dearest, darling readers. i know i've been a bad blogger lately. i know. i've spent time in airplanes, airports, gay bars, malls, and even oklahoma. instead of trying to type all of the completely insane things that have happened since last we spoke, i thought it might be kind of fun (for me, anyway) to make an itemized list of my christmas, er, i mean winter break.

• four (4) airplane flights, two (2) of which were spent sitting next to screaming babies/children, four (4) of which were spent high as a kite on valium
• one (1) gay magazine (out, i'm embarrassed to admit) and one (1) gay non-fiction historical book read
• three (3) trips to and from oklahoma city from ponca city, totaling seven (7) hours spent driving/riding on the straightest road this side of montana
• one (1) blowout fight with my mother, epic in proportion for my family, concerning her reading of the national review
• one (1) new year's eve "manpile," completely nonsexual in nature (unless you consider jeff, kel, phong, and robert wasted and trying to sleep in a full-size bed sexual)
• one (1) pair of expensive, ass-hugging jeans bought for pre-manpile gaybar excursion
• one (1) new year's eve kiss that lasted roughly three days
• four (4) grandparents and one (1) great-grandparent, totaling 440 years of age. i shit. you not.
• one (1) christmas dinner, courtesy of queen anne cafeteria in oklahoma city, because my grandparents are too old to cook
• four (4) christmas songs sung, sick as a dog, at two (2) christmas eve services
• six (6) zithromax antibiotic tablets taken
• one thousand (1000) cappuccinos drunk, because my mother got an expensive cappuccino machine for christmas
• two (2) cd's bought: guerolito by beck (cool) and the breakthrough by mary j. blige (shh)
• one (1) haircut, which i went into my stylist and called "an off-hours mohawk." "like a faux-hawk?" "no, cut it like a mohawk but i won't spike it like a mohawk. trust me." he gave me a faux-hawk. but it's cute.
• five (5) drunken new year's eve makeout pictures that i don't remember taking

ten (10) days off work, seven (7) of which were spent outside baltimore? priceless.