Also, a quick life update

Not really fair to jump from May 22, 2008 to July 5 2011 without some sort of catchup. So here goes:

-Left old job
-Applied for grad school
-Got accepted to grad school
-Found part-time temp work to pay bills during grad school
-Obama was elected (Yay!)
-Left part-time temp job to work two graduate assistantships
-Love/hate relationship with grad school
-Theses sometimes take longer when you make them too complicated
-Adopted dog with J
-Moved in with J
-Planning the move to Chicago

That is a really succinct update of my life, but without going into details wraps up everything nicely in a small package.

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Moving Frustration

So, J has a new job lined up, one that requires a 600ish mile move to Chicago, which is fine for me as I finish my thesis and look for a better paid gig than “stay at home doggy daddy” and “unemployed masters student”.

On a recent trip up there we found an apartment that we really like: cute, renovated (read: fresh insulation and IKEA kitchen), and well within our agreed price range. The application process is thorough, as I would assume most are in cities larger than OKC, and requires a part to be signed off on by the employer. Here is where my frustration comes in.

J’s brother is getting married in Hawaii this week, so J is out of town with little access to communication to the mainland (at least, little cheap communication). And we have still yet to hear back from the new employer. I understand, they’re busy, we’re busy, everyone’s busy. Not placing blame on them. But, part of this equation would be slightly different, I believe, if I were his “girlfriend/wife” rather than his boyfriend/non-legally-recognized-“partner”. (For the record: I hate the term “partner”. It just feels gross coming of the tongue.”

If I were “Mrs. J”, I could call New Employer and explain the situation and probably get the info that we need to secure our apartment much easier than I can as “J’s boyfriend/’roommate'”. Yes, I realize this is Illinois we’re talking about, the land of newly minted domestic partnership laws. Yay! Hooray! We’re not domestically partnered. Legally in Illinois, I have no more access to employment hooha for J than our dog. Actually, she may even have a bit more than I do at the moment.

So for now I sit with an apartment application that is 99% completed with my hands tied by our nation’s inability to grant equal rights for all of its citizens.

That said: Yay moving!

Je fait la même.

I have been a terrible person and have completely ignored this blog, among other things, in the past few weeks. I’ll cover that later.

In the meantime, Nathan has tagged me to do a meme. And while I am usually fairly against such things, this one isn’t about what american accent I have and doesn’t ask me to specify if I like the person who I talked to last on the phone.

So I give you twelve random facts about me.

1. I have Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost memorized (among other poems) from my 8th grade English class. What is more random about it is that I will almost always physically keep the beat of the poem and will actually say out loud the beats between the stanzas. This is how I learned it and this is how I recite it.

2. I have very fond memories of our pop-up camper and spending weeks during the summer in various state parks and camping grounds in Oklahoma and Arkansas. My parents kept all sorts of old KOA and various other camping, cooking and family outing magazines from the 60s and 70s in the magazine rack beside the table and I remember looking through them over and over.

3. I have an affinity for trap doors and secret passageways. If I could build my dream house, it would have at least one secret passageway with a hidden entry.

4. My first dog’s name was Rusty, named after my dad’s dog he would always tell me stories about. My second dog was named Rustina, b/c to a young boy adding “-ina” to anything makes it feminine.

5. While mowing the lawn in middle and high school, I would listen and sing along to either “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (New Cast Recording)” or En Vogue. Yes, I realize what you’re thinking.

6. I have been an uncle since I was 4, and at that age I couldn’t remember if I was going to be an uncle or a grandpa. I now have 12 nieces and nephews from 22 years down to 8 months.

7. My freshman year at the University of Oklahoma, I received a bursar bill in the mail for $0 from Oklahoma State University.

8. At my age, my dad was married with 3 kids

9. I originally wanted to major in musical theatre, but didn’t because I thought my parents wouldn’t support that idea.

10. Like Nathan, I think I’m either discovering or acquiring mild dyslexia. It doesn’t happen all of the time, but just now and then.

11. I worked for two years as a counselor at a Catholic youth summer camp. I now see some of my campers at the gay bars.

12. I have lived in a different apartment or house for almost every year I’ve lived in Norman.

I’m not even sure who to tag for this, so I give a shotgun tag: If you read this, you’re tagged!

They’re Number One at Number Two

This may top the list of weird gift ideas. I don’t know how I would react if someone actually gave me anything from this company.

This journal, this wonderfully attractive all organic paper journal, is made of poo.

Let that sink in for a second then we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty. Yes, this journal is made out of recycled elephant dung and is possibly the greenest item I’ve seen. Ever. The little booklet that comes with it describes in detail how the poop is processed and cleaned and turned into paper. It honestly sounds like a project we did in 5th grade to make homemade paper… except we did not use large mammalian excrement as the base.

I make it sound a lot worse than it is. The company, The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company Limited, produces a wide range of stationery items, all of them are odor free and contain no actual *poo* in the end result. After the poo has been boiled down and deodorized, the paper is made from the remaining fibrous grasses and leaves plus an additive of pineapple and banana fibers. The little booklet also explains that 60% of the food an elephant eats leaves the body undigested.

I’m actually quite impressed with the company and how they purchase the poo from wildlife habitats and mahouts and the money goes to help keep these endangered creatures alive and procreating.

Pardon me while I squeal like a little girl…

True Colors Tour!!!!!

Originally uploaded by antigravity cobbler

TRUE COLORS TOUR IN OKC!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I’m just a little excited…

(ps- We can probably thank Sally Kern for them deciding to add us as a stop on their tour.)

Reincarnation

This site has a weird name, and like most odd things it has a story to it, interesting or not. Short story: as freshmen we had a dessert one night that would not fall out of its cup. We held it upside down for at least thirty minutes and then sent it off down the conveyer belt to its cafeteria food death. Still upside down.

This is not the first time I’ve used this name for a website. The first (and possibly secondish) incarnation is here. That was my best attempt at using Dreamweaver. Shut up, I know it sucks.

But that was my first “blog”. (Though, at the time I nearly refused to call or admit that it was a blog. It was my “website” and any attempt to make me call it a blog I would ignore. I’m over it now)

So here is to a new start, nearly seven years after I last updated AGC through Dreamweaver. Enjoy.

Sally Kern does NOT speak for Oklahoma

I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out exactly what to write about the whole Sally Kern ordeal. At first I was just kind of amazed that someone would say things like that and believe them. As I keep reading about it, including the fact that she has a gay son (more on my thoughts of using this as leverage against her later) and that the Republican controlled state House of Representatives gave her a standing ovation for *not* apologizing, I get more and more angry. Not an angry that would make me go out and do malicious things, but an angry that makes me want to fight for these close minded people to wake up. And also fight to make people who aren’t from here and can’t see past the Oklahoma stereotypes realize that Oklahoma is not some completely backward state.

Beyond anger, I feel pity for her. Crazy, I know. But I feel pity that she lives her life in such a hateful way while making a mask of Christianity. I feel pity for her son, Jesse. Not only has he been an outcast from his own family, but now we as gays and lesbians are using his life and, honestly, his mistakes in life as leverage against his mother. We shouldn’t have to fight the wars of our fathers, let alone be used in the wars against our fathers without our own consent. Has he stepped forward to make a statement? Do we really have to go into such detail about his indiscretions at Oklahoma Baptist? I feel pity that he had to grow up in that household, and I don’t hold it against him that he thought that was the only way he could act upon his desires he had been forced to repress.

I was somewhat surprised at the standing ovation by the state house. I know for a fact not every one of them would have supported her speech and her refusal to apologize. Al McAffrey, Oklahoma’s first openly gay state legislator, probably acted in about the most Christian of ways to her upon seeing her on Monday morning. He walked up to her, hugged her and said she looked like she had had a tough weekend.

Sally Kern doesn’t speak for Oklahoma. On some base level, I’m sure she probably speaks for some of the people in Oklahoma, true. But the things she said in her speech are hateful and without basis in fact. To call a group of people “a worse threat than terrorists or Islam” is not only hateful to the main group she is talking about, but also slides in a slander against another minority. She is promoting, whether she believes it or not, a continued hatred for gays and Muslims and gives credit and validation to people to hate and physically hurt those two groups. And sadly, there are people who agree with her. Just like there are people who think this country was founded by the pure ethereal essence of Christianity. But this thinking does not seep into every pore of every Oklahoman.

My friend Nathan possibly says it best:
“People are constantly asking me what I must be smoking that I, as a gay man, live in Oklahoma. Similarly, most of the gays I know endlessly bitch about how awful and repressive and stupid Oklahoma is, what with its megachurches and Hummers and lack of decent public transportation and endless suburban sprawl and with neighborhood after neighborhood of identical houses with GOP signs in their yards. Most of these people then move to Dallas, with its megachurches and Hummers and lack of decent public transportation and endless suburban sprawl with neighborhood after neighborhood of identical houses with GOP signs in their yards.
[…]
I think what makes me the most irritable about this is that it makes Oklahoma look like some backwater place where homos are hunted down and lynched, where creativity is stifled and we don’t want anyone in our midst who is even the slightest bit different than us. Oklahoma’s not like that at all – it’s not gay hell, it’s not bereft of artistic or creative people and it’s certainly nowhere near as boring as, say, Connecticut. But to the degree that it is unable to attract a higher caliber of creative and productive people, businesses and industries, it is because of people like Sally Kern, who are constantly going out of their way to make people feel as unwelcome, unwanted and unloved as she possibly can. You know. Just like Jesus wants.”

I get angry most of all that she is trying to play herself off as the victim in all of this. I’m sure all of the attention, positive and negative, is taking a toll on her. But I can only hope that even in some fleeting moment she will maybe think to herself, “My God, is this what it feels like to be the subject of even part of the persecution some of these people feel?” I highly doubt she will, but I can hope.

I am a proud Oklahoman. My family made the land run and settled here before statehood. I’m proud of the progress some of us are trying to make, even in the face of people like Ms. Kern. But Sally Kern does not speak for me.

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There is an anti-hate speech political rally being held in OKC tonight (Friday March 14) at Memorial Park (NW 36th & Classen, where the Pride Festival is held), from 5:30-6:30, and you are only asked to bring yourself and signs if you feel comfortable holding them.

It is sponsored by The Oklahoma Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus among others.

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