doubting thom

I remembered two dreams this morning. In one of them, Roger and I found a way into the past, and we were visiting the Wild West. Roger won $3022 in a poker game in the saloon, and we were trying to decide what to do with it, whether to spend it there or bring it back with us to the present. We were walking down the street, and the town had just opened a bank, and simultaneously light bulbs (like in There) appeared over both our heads. We went in, opened an account, and deposited the money, realizing that by the time we got back to the present, the compound interest would have made us millionaires.

Sheldon and Lisa were there, too. There was a danceroom at the saloon/bordello, and when we stopped by there to get some punch, Sheldon was dancing with a tall, stunning, red-headed transvestite.

In the second dream, I was somewhere down near Springfield, and my car broke down. My cell phone wasn’t charged, so I began walking, and came upon a shopping center. It was a rainy night, and the stores were closed, but I found a custodial area where some homeless man had made a bed, and he invited me to charge my phone in the electrical outlet there. While I was doing so, I heard lots of crowd noises–applause and yelling–so I went to see what was going on. It was a political rally, and Tom DeLay (though in the dream the posters all said Tom Daschle, but that was just a ruse) had announced his candidacy for the presidency, and he was delivering a rousing anti-gay speech, to massive cheers.

Alex, my nine-year-old Maine Coon kitty–the one whose breed’s name got me in trouble with the match.com automatic profile police, and who’s been with me for four years–has one eye whose pupil hasn’t contracted or dilated properly for several years. Until now, it hadn’t seemed to cause him any pain or any problems; given his continued sureness at jumping and catching, it didn’t even seem to impair his vision.

On Sunday, though, he kept that eye mostly shut, but I thought he was just developing a cold; in fact, he sneezed a few times, and the eye was running a little. So I didn’t worry about it at the time. When I came home from work today, though, he was opening it normally, so I was able to see that the eye isn’t reflecting normally and is looking slightly hazy. There also is what appears to be some blood pooled behind the cornea, so I called his veterinarian up the street. They’re booked solid the rest of the evening, but told me that if I think it’s an emergency or if he’s behaving abnormally I can take him to the hospital; otherwise, they can see him tomorrow morning. I went ahead and made the appointment for tomorrow, and I’m watching him this evening to see if he appears to have any pain or discomfort. Right now he doesn’t seem to be in distress at all–he ate his dinner normally, and was just as interested in playing as usual–but it’s clear that something is terribly wrong with the eye. I’m guessing from the symptoms that he has glaucoma, and he probably already has lost vision in that eye.

And I feel guilty as hell. Here’s a shameful truth–I’m a lousy guardian. While Alex doesn’t lack for regular food and water, daily affection and attention, and clean litter, I’ve been extremely remiss about regular checkups and preventative care. Frankly, while I take better care of him than of myself, that’s not saying much.

And I have no idea at this point what to expect now. Given that he doesn’t seem to be experiencing pain, they may not have to surgically remove the eye, even if the retina has indeed been irreversibly damaged to the point of blindness. If it hasn’t progressed that far, then it may be controllable–though glaucoma’s not curable–with medication or surgery.

Well, I should know more tomorrow. And this morning I thought things were bad because I still had a nail in my tire (which I did get fixed, at least, on the way to work) and a car about whose major, expensive repair work I’ve continued to procrastinate. Now I also have a kitty who may be very sick, who is nearly totally dependent on me, but whom I’ve largely taken for granted and whose medical care I’ve sometimes irresponsibly neglected.

At least I know that I should never have children, in case my level of parenting ability turned out to be no higher than my self-help or pet-care skills.

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram
Test

OK. This seems to be the meme of the week among several of the blogs I read regularly (including Just As I Thought and Digital Flotsam. I’ve been using the Enneagram as a tool for personal development for a number of years, and had posted my results on the personality page of my web site. But I decided to take it again using this online test to see if the results were consistent, and just for the hell of it. The 4w5 seems to be spot on, and that’s the result I’ve gotten each time I’ve taken the test in other forms. The idea of a “mean type,” though, seems unique to this particular test and theorist, and is not as aptly descriptive as my main type; it seems clear, though, that I’m definitely a four.

Throughout the day I kept remembering one odd detail from a dream I had last night: Dubya had proclaimed himself emperor of America, and one of his first decrees was to outlaw all cocktails, especially Cosmopolitans. In the new Bushist Empire, only wimpy Amurrican beer was to be sold, and homosexuals and Sarah Jessica Parker were being rounded up and incarcerated in martini-free camps.

And then this evening, I serendipitously stumbled across this [source: whitehouse.org]. “He volunteered for A BEER RUN. He ended up RUNNING THE WORLD.”

Disclaimer: All the characters and events portrayed in my life may as well be fictional, and any resemblance to real life, people or incidents would be less coincidental than just unusually lucky for a change.

There’s an interesting article in the “Fashion & Style” section of today’s New York Times about the issue I’d recently discussed here, the chance of someone you know–family, friends, lovers, co-workers, employers–discovering your blog and the things you’ve written about them therein. In addition to the perils of losing friends or scandalizing your parents–mine would probably be mortified by the sexual history implied by my purity score–one blogger interviewed suggests that she even was fired by an employer for having written about her job.

The most notable part of the article, though, from my perspective, was the description of a new social anxiety among non-bloggers: the fear of being “blogged.” One blogger interviewed describes it as “personal etiquette meets journalistic rules. If you have a friend who’s a blogger you have to say, ‘This is not for blogging.’ It’s the blogging equivalent of ‘This is off the record.'” Another uses pseudonyms for his friends in order to avoid crossing “the line between simple harmless betrayal of trust and nasty actionable libel.”

This brings up an intriguing dilemma, though. If your friends, family and co-workers don’t know that you blog, is it incumbent upon you to tell them, so that they have the opportunity to keep some things off the record? Do we all need to get the blog equivalent of press passes and credentials, or wear funny hats with BLOGGER on the front? And do pseudonyms really get you off the hook, or just add a mild level of security by obscurity by making it less likely that a friend will find themselves in your blog by googling their name? On occasion, I’ve used pseudonyms, but in general their use as a way to protect your friends seems a little ingenuous; while it might protect their privacy, to some degree, they’re still likely to recognize themselves, unless the hyperbole is so extreme that its really just fiction anyway.

And I hadn’t given much thought yet to what happens if I were to start dating someone now that I’m blogging. But then, I don’t regularly give much thought to other events on that end of the asymptotic curve, either.

Today’s been a quiet day, spent entirely at home. I haven’t even changed out of the t-shirt and lounge pants I put on when I first got up–not all that long ago. Last night I was in one of my sleepless moods, so I stayed up until 6am, and then slept in until around 2pm this afternoon.

Roger and Raymond aren’t home this weekend. They got an invitation from a guy we met in TSO and later in There to come spend the weekend with him and his partner in Long Beach, and were going to be spending the day today in Disneyland. Even though Roger lives in Tucson, we’re usually in daily contact, especially in the evenings and on the weekends when I can have Yahoo! Messenger online. So it’s especially quiet today with him out of cyber-touch and busy with new friends.

I’ve been working on computer stuff, making some tweaks to the journal code so that it would validate for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and consolidating all the little style bits and pieces into the main style sheet which I then also validated.

I’ve also been doing some Photoshopping today, churning out some additional buttons for my site to accompany the ones I’ve taken from Steal These Buttons!. I’ve submitted five or six of the new ones I created today to that site.

I spent some time reading most of my regular progressive news sources, but all the current political news is so damn depressing, and I don’t have any novel spin to offer, so I’ll leave that today for the other bloggers who continue to do it justice.

Tomorrow I have conflicting potluck dinner engagements at the UU church. The covenant group year is coming to a close, so all the covenant groups are getting together for a potluck, and to find out what the discussion series overriding and individual topics will be for next year. But at the same time, we’re graduating our two 8th-grade sex-ed classes. I hadn’t realized until yesterday that the graduation was this weekend, since we still have another week of class after this one, but apparently since next weekend is Memorial Day weekend (already?!), the coordinator thought it would be better to have graduation tomorrow evening. So I’m not sure what I’ll do, since I’m a covenant group leader as well as an instructor for the class. Since both dinners are physically at the church, I may just bop back and forth between the two events. At the same time, I find myself not really wanting to do either one–blasted disaffection! cursed ennui!

I got a fairly decent night’s sleep, especially compared to the previous night, and was up and getting ready for work even a little early. I remember having some interesting dreams, including one where the world was being threatened by some interdimensional baddies, and I had to climb to the top of a mountain to gather the pieces to find the egg-shaped marble-in-appearance key to a machine–which ended up looking like one of Dr. Robotnik’s vehicles from one of the early Sonic games–in order to erase the universe so it could restart and recreate itself from scratch (I’m not sure now why that seemed like such a good way to deal with the bad guys; seems kind of like throwing out the planet with the bath water).

The day went downhill from there.

It was raining steadily, and I’d left my big umbrella at the office; all I had was a small, collapsible one. And since I hadn’t yet taken care of getting the nail out of the tire and the tire patched, I couldn’t risk taking the car out and having it go flat in the rain during rush hour. So despite the raincoat and the duck shoes, the bottom 8 inches of my trousers were soaked through: 2-1/2 hours later, they’re still mildly damp. Of course, it’s my own fault for not getting the tire patched this entire week. While the weather was pleasant, the nail in the tire provided a good incentive for me to walk every day; but today, of course, I’m sorry I procrastinated.

Once here at work, I discovered that the network for the multimedia labs was on the fritz. The lab manager is still working on it, but hasn’t yet been able to figure out what’s wrong. Needless to say, there are lots of folk who aren’t happy about this.

I’m also the Acting Manager for the department today, in my boss’s absence. I was supposed to go to Main State to attend a presentation between 10 and 11:30, but given that the network was down, that I have to do the department’s weekly reports, and that there were supposed to be four others going to the presentation, I thought it might be best for me to stay here. It turns out that two of the five already had dropped out by yesterday, and one of the remaining three was stuck in traffic this morning and hadn’t made it in by the time the shuttle bus was leaving, so my withdrawal left just one person to go and take notes. I’m told that he wasn’t very happy about this. But I’ve been the one to go to this group’s presentations, on my own, every other time, even though it’s not part of my official duties. And I haven’t minded going and taking notes for everyone else, but it pisses me off that just once when someone else is asked to go, he grumbles about it.

So, it’s only 11am and the bulk of the day still lies ahead. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of the day goes, if not better, at least no worse.

Last night, I updated my match.com profile with some new photos and tried to make a couple of minor edits to the text (I have no idea why I’m wasting time on this… I met a few nice guys through match.com and planetout.com, including Terry, whom I dated for about a year, but mostly it’s been a bust). The photos all were approved and uploaded to the profile. But the edits to the profile itself keep causing the following email to be automatically generated by match.com:

Thank you for submitting your profile for posting with our service. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve and post it because a portion of your essay information violates our Terms of Use. Match.com does not allow it’s [sic]members to post sexually explicit language, racial slurs, vulgarity or any other derogatory language in a member profile.

Please take a moment to revise your information to meet our Terms of Use standards, and re-submit your profile. If after a second review, you feel that your essays are acceptable, please contact us at: customercare@match.com

First of all, they really should fix that ungrammatical “it’s” where “its” is needed in the second sentence before telling me that my profile has a problem. </catty class= “gratuitous”>

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what in my profile violates their TOS. At first I thought maybe it was just the fact that I used the phrases “sex ed” and “sexual orientation,” but after removing both of those, the profile still is flagged by their automatic software for some reason.

So here’s what my profile says. If their software rejected profiles for being overly verbose, dull or unappealing, well, ok, then I could see getting my wrist slapped, but what about this is even remotely “sexually explicit,” a “racial slur,” “vulgar” or “derogatory”?

Describing myself

I grew up in a small rural, conservative town in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, where I fit in so badly that I suspected I must have been either adopted, switched at birth, a changeling, or an alien. My mom assures me I was neither adopted nor switched; the jury may still be out on the rest.

I spent seven years studying and then working in Boston, and came to the DC area expecting to stay “a year, maybe two”–however, in that “where did the time go?” kind of way, it’s turned into 16. I do like living here now, and the (sub)urban life suits me, but I sometimes miss the woods and great starry night skies of home. Previously a dot-com CTO, I now work for the federal government. I’m also involved in anti-oppression and other volunteer work; I’m particularly active in my local liberal progressive Unitarian-Universalist Church.

Personality measures: INFP, Enneagram 4 with a 5 wing.
Pet: A Maine Coon cat named Alexander Graham Bell-the-cat.
Hobbies/Interests/Fun : Dancing (club, contra, square, 2-step; would love to find someone to partner for Latin or ballroom lessons); computer games; the Internet/blogosphere; theme parks; renaissance fairs; reading, music and the arts.
Books: Fantasy, sf, medieval mysteries, magical realism, cosmology, creative physics, metaphysics, children’s books.
Music: Especially Folk, Celtic, progressive and alternative.
TV/Radio: HGTV, TLC, BBC-A, Six Feet Under, Food Network, NPR.
Film: Independent films, black comedies, animation, sf.
Food: Spicy cuisines, especially Thai, Vietnamese and Korean; Italian (can’t get enough garlic or calimari); sushi and sashimi; Diet Dr. Pepper or Vanilla Coke; dulce de leche or other caramel/toffee ice cream (or the only decent thing Safeway makes, Athens Baklavar Bazaar: honey ice cream with baklava bits); popcorn.

Describing my ideal match

My ideal? Hard to pin down, especially physically. Each man I’ve been attracted to, infatuated with, or even in love with has looked quite different from the others. Though I can’t quantify my ideal, I guess I can at least qualify it in some ways, though, particularly regarding intellectual, spiritual and emotional traits. For example, I prefer men who are very comfortable with their orientation and fairly if not completely out, who can be comfortable spending time with my family or accompanying me to a business function; who appreciate cuddling, kissing, hugging; with a certain twinkle in the eye and a warm, ready smile; who are curious, creative, thoughtful and intelligent (and I don’t equate this with “educated”; the latter isn’t per se important to me), caring and playful; spiritual though not necessarily, and usually not conventionally, religious. I’m not looking for someone to take care of, or to take care of me; rather, I look for mutuality in my relationships.

Upon re-reading it, the only word I can see now that looks like it might set off an unintelligent/non-contextual language filter is “coon” in the phrase “Maine Coon cat.” I’m going to try to remove that and see if the posting goes through.

[Update: 23:09 – Well, I haven’t gotten any email this time, so that does seem to have been the problem. I had written to them several times earlier asking why the profile was being rejected by their system, and the humans there couldn’t tell me. So if you’re going to put a profile on match.com, don’t mention a fetish for coon-skin caps, or talk about your pet raccoon or your Maine Coon.]

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff made an off-hand reference to Sirius satellite radio, specifically their 24/7 gay programming stream, OutQ.

So over the past few days, I’ve been listening to OutQ via the Internet stream from Sirius’s web site. I like the idea, and really wanted to like the programming, but I’ve been pretty lukewarm on the execution and content of the all-talk format.

I certainly don’t think of myself as at all prudish, and I don’t mind the frank discussion of sex on the Derek & Romaine show (in fact, I find it very refreshing), for example, but I am frustrated by the almost single-mindedness of that show’s focus on sex; the frequent posturing of the hosts and some callers; what seems to me a bias towards casual sex and lots of it, and toward those with strong libidos over those whose sex drives are less strong; and a 20-something POV that occasionally seems to be surprised that those of us much over 30 even exist or have anything of value to contribute. Last night, I started to get so angry listening to it–and as it seems meant to be entertaining and fun, rather than particularly thought- or emotion-provoking, I finally realized it would be best for me just to turn it off and listen to something else.

I recognize that what I perceive as biases, though, may very well be just from the way the show sometimes has pushed some of my particular buttons–sour grapes, perhaps.

I stayed home from work today. I was feeling a little sick last night, and then had slept really very poorly, so I was exhausted this morning when the alarm went off. I thought that if I got a couple of hours of extra sleep, I might feel up to going in around noon or so, and at least work half a day, but I didn’t even end up waking back up until after 1:00, so I went ahead and called it a day.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel that I got anything accomplished around here, either, besides a fair amount of reading (the pleasure reading while eating my late lunch was nice, but checking all of my preferred news resources just continues to depress me. I’m back in one of my “I want to live in Amsterdam or Canada” moods again). By the time 5:00 rolled around and I realized I’d have been coming home at that point anyway, the day felt like it had been practically a waste. And, although the extra rest probably was good for me, it’s only 8:00 now and I’m already feeling exhausted again, and despite being home all day this is the first posting I’ve made to the journal today.