Two Trips to Teany

One of my favorite places to visit when I'm in New York is Teany, a small cafe owned by Moby. It's nice to take a break from running around to sip a pot of tea and chat with power lesbians about Anna Nichole's death.

Later in the afternoon, I realized I had lost my cell phone at Teany:

Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 13:56:27 -0500
From: ransim
To: theAlphaJohn
Subject: Your Cell Phone

You're cell phone is at Teany's, you left if there, I tried to call you and someone called me back from there and wanted me to tell you. Hopefully you get this, not really sure how else to reach you and wasn't sure when you were heading back.

Also I told her if you had left or didn't get it back that you'd call to have them mail it.

-mary

A trip back that evening reunited me with the phone I plan to dump and filled my tummy with the best piece of carrot cake known to man (with some kind of vegan frosting that still made my inner carnivore smile).

I will be sending a thank you letter.

The Lesbian Super Collider

Joey, her brother Chris, and I were enjoying a quiet drink in Curly's bar the night before the wake. After about an hour, I witness this exchange between Joey and Chris:

Joey: Are you going to tell him about Debra?
Chris: [...] I hadn't decided yet.
Joey: [...]

Somewhere in the 2000-2002 timeframe, my cousin Chris was engaged to a lovely woman named Debra. For various reasons, Debra and Chris broke off their engagement and went their separate ways. One of those reasons was not, however, the fact that I made out with her in front of him six times on my 22nd birthday:



Well Chris has a best friend Aaron who just got divorced from his wife Debbie. Can you see where this is going...?

Debra and Debbie packed up their UHaul (on the first date) and moved to the island of Lesbos.

I am the lesbian super collider. I just am.

Virginia Ballot Issue #1

An email sent by the Provost of George Mason to all faculty and staff:

On behalf of the faculty, staff and administration of George Mason University, we are writing to express our concerns about the potential impact of the proposed Amendment, “Ballot Issue #1.” It is unclear what the specific consequences of this amendment will be upon the operations of our own state institution. The amendment would prohibit the courts from “recognizing” or giving “legal effect” to arrangements that provide to unmarried people rights, obligations and protections similar to those that are available through marriage.

The economic wellbeing of Virginia and all of its public agencies and institutions depends upon attracting and retaining talented workers and dynamic new enterprises, and this proposed amendment could have the chilling effect of discouraging high-value workers and businesses from locating in our state or accepting employment at our university, thus putting us at a competitive disadvantage relative to neighboring states in the region where no such broadly proposed restrictions now exist.

If Mason is not allowed to offer competitive benefits for all employees, and if benefits for unmarried individuals are reduced, we will lose the competitive advantage of both our location and our status as a nationally recognized institution of excellence. Mason could lose its ability to recruit and retain top quality students, faculty, staff and researchers if the Commonwealth of Virginia is seen as a less tolerant state where discriminatory state law is allowed to persist. Over time, heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual students, faculty and staff, could choose to go to states more tolerant and embracing of diversity.

The office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia, has provided an advisory opinion which states that it is their position that the proposed amendment will not affect the current legal rights of unmarried persons involving contracts, wills, advance medical directives, shared equity agreements or group accident and sickness insurance policies, or alter any other rights that do not “approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage” or create “the rights, benefits, obligations, quality or effects of marriage.” Furthermore, the opinion states that passage of the marriage amendment will not modify the application and enforcement of Virginia’s domestic violence laws.

We encourage you to educate yourself on the language of this proposed amendment, and vote for what you believe is in the best interest of all citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We promise you that irrespective of the outcome of the vote, we will do all that we legally can do to ensure that Mason continues its rich history of embracing diversity. To the extent possible under the law, we will ensure that equal benefits will be available to all students, faculty and staff.

But no matter how you feel about this important issue, we urge you to vote on Tuesday, November 7.

Morrie Scherrens, Senior Vice President
Peter Stearns, Provost
Sandy Hubler, Vice President University Life

Dropping my digital frat weight

After kaitain died in January [1] [2] [3], I needed to make changes to my website so it would run in a chroot jail.

My personal website design is pushing five years old, and while I was still at FELD I had toyed with the idea of a rewrite but didn't have any time to invest in it. During the process of making it chroot safe, however, I came to the conclusion it's time for it to go.

Rewriting the site needs to be done in a couple phases:
(1) make existing site work inside chroot jail [done in April]
(2) get rid of five years of cruft content (including favorites like "Lesbian blind date") [done as of 5 minutes ago]
(3) choose a new site design
(4) code like a mother
(5) beer

I used the metrics from my Google Analytics account to decide what pages had to stay and what should go. For now the Lawson pages stay, but much of my photoshop stuff and the page about stupid tv shows had to die.

For now, it's workable. We'll see how motivated I am to choose a new site design and start coding. I may end up moving my pictures to an external service like flickr, but we'll see. The lighter my site is, the better my options to eventually just move everything to a hosting site instead of hosting it at my house.

I don't mind running my own box, but I like to have options.

I should be in bed

George and I have both setup Fire to work with Google Talk over a week ago, but tonight is the first time we ran into each other online:

Football George: omfg
Football George: so it does work
theAlphaJohn: !!!
Football George: cool
Football George: i thought i had it fucked up
theAlphaJohn: what's ur google talk address?
theAlphaJohn: eek...you're on there already
theAlphaJohn: this is like jew magic
Football George: yeah
Football George: it said once that you subscribed to my google ass
Football George: shouldn't you be in bed
theAlphaJohn: yeah i should be
theAlphaJohn: my bed broke again, i just fixed it
Football George: ...
Football George: lesbian fist fight in it again?
theAlphaJohn: fat girls from winchester, what can i say?
Football George: well that's fun
theAlphaJohn: some men are 7s chasing an 8, and some are 7s chasing two 4s
Football George: haha
theAlphaJohn: did you see on my house blog that i have hamsterfied my closet?
Football George: hmm
Football George: i don't think rojo picked it up
Football George: rojo is occassionally having some issues with my feeds and it is causing extreme angst
theAlphaJohn: that is unacceptable
Football George: they don't seem to hit peoples rss feeds often enough like i'll get updates in huge spurts
Football George: very annoying to know a post has been out there for HOURS and i did not know
theAlphaJohn: rojo is fired and deported for burning dinner and forgetting the drycleaning
Football George: yeah
theAlphaJohn: i'll write you and RSS reader in ocaml
Football George: i want that ocaml book that is only in french
Football George: so i can master it
theAlphaJohn: you need to learn french first
theAlphaJohn: neither ocaml nor french are worth learning
Football George: i'll hire a hot translator chick on craigslist
Football George: she'll have bush like you wouldn't believe
theAlphaJohn: "SWM Seeks fluent French speaker for translation, watersports"
Football George: lol
Football George: perhaps
theAlphaJohn: i got your email...what were you and sleeper talking about?
Football George: deviantart.com
theAlphaJohn: is that like myspace?
Football George: no, it actually doesn't suck
theAlphaJohn: umm i'm on there and i'm looking at camera phone shots of teenagers bedrooms
theAlphaJohn: not hot at all
Football George: are you trying to get me arrested?
theAlphaJohn: this picture: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/27975623/

theAlphaJohn: 0% hot, 0% art
theAlphaJohn: awkard teen girls who pad their bra, not so much sexy
Football George: hm
Football George: i should clarify by saying i only browse specific categories
Football George: juste because you immediately clicky clicked on the "hot broads from pittsburgh" link
theAlphaJohn: maybe she's going to be raising a joey kangaroo in that pouch
theAlphaJohn: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/27975612/

theAlphaJohn: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/28035041/

Football George: plz stop now k thx
theAlphaJohn: this is like livejournal, only i dunno what he's listening to or how he's feeling
theAlphaJohn: if you look closely, you can see spiderman underoos with skidmarks on the floor
Football George: you know
Football George: i go to deviantart all the time for backgrounds
Football George: i clicky clicky for maybe 2-3 minutes in categories like "buildings" "sky" "landscape" etc and i find something awesome
Football George: you immediately go to the 15 yo skaterat hangout
theAlphaJohn: i discovered this weekend that i have something to destory before myspace and livejournal...hollister
theAlphaJohn: cotton candy is spun from sugar, and hollister is spun from skaterats and evil
Football George: what is hollister
theAlphaJohn: http://www.hollisterco.com/hol/homepage.html
theAlphaJohn: from the people who brought you abercrombie
theAlphaJohn: only more beach, less...substance
Football George: oh
Football George: gross
theAlphaJohn: lots of teeshirts that say things like "your mom's box"

Don't blame me, I have a Y chromosome

George pointed me in the direction of a spectacular post on JWZ's blog:

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Some friends of mine, a lesbian couple, recently had a baby. I asked myself, what's an appropriate gift for that situation? And I answered, "self, go find an old-fashioned turkey baster and have it bronzed."



This got the best possible response: "that looks just like the one we used!"

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Why didn't I think of this first?