24 Hour Party People
January 31, 2007
I drove to Cincinatti last week for Emma M\’s occasionally annual January house party last week. Emma and her lovely wife throw an amazing party, so there was no way in hell I was missing it. I rented a car this year–my own car being at death\’s doorway–and set out on Thursday morning, only an hour late. While I was driving south to pick up I-70, I got a call from Zelda. Zelda was scheduled to room with me in Cincy, but she had told me the night before that she might be too sick to make it. Her call was a confirmation of this. I was disappointed that I wasn\’t going to see her, but them\’s the breaks. Fortunately, the hotel room was in my name and we had already invited Emma\’s friend, Steffy, to room with us, as well. So I wasn\’t unexpectedly out of pocket. The drive was long, but long drives are made more bearable by audio books. I listened to Agatha Christie\’s The Hollows on the drive up, and Orson Scott Card\’s Speaker for the Dead on the drive back.
I arrived in Cincinatti two hours late (I forgot about the time change), showered, and went to Emma\’s to pick up Steffy so she could stow her luggage. Then I got dolled up–I haven\’t been dolled up in a long time, so it felt really good–and back to Emma\’s.
Emma\’s parties are what you might get if you stripped SCC of all those pesky seminars and served really, really good food. In fact, they are more like food and wine parties with a little crossdressing and fetish thrown in than they are \”gender\” parties. Emma is a fetish doll, so fetish was a significant fashion theme for the weekend, especially on Friday night. There were more \”fetish\” people at the party than in times past, so Friday a couple of fairly rollicking BDSM scenes, some of which featured yours truly. I didn\’t pack much of a toybag–Zelda was supposed to bring the toys–but what I did bring turned out to be very popular, mostly for the noise they made. There\’s video, and I wager that if I were to post it here, my hit count would rocket through the stratosphere.
Saturday night was \”glamour\” night, and I wore the dress I wore to Emma\’s last party, one at which I managed to snap both of the spaghetti straps. I finally got it fixed the week before the party. It\’s a dress I really shouldn\’t wear. I should avoid sleeveless fashions, because I have linebacker\’s shoulders, a feature sometimes accentuated by the tight corsets I prefer. But I love the dress too much. I was going to wear it come hell or high water, dammit. Ronnie interviewed me for her web show on Saturday, too. I haven\’t seen that video yet, but I\’m sure I sound nervous. I\’m a terrible public speaker; speaking in front of others terrifies me, regardless of how friendly it is. This effect was compounded by a lack of sleep, so I wasn\’t as quick as I might have been. I think I was more of an intellectual egghead than she was expecting, too, but that\’s something I can\’t help.
The most striking thing about Emma\’s party–an impression that is stronger than similar impressions I\’ve gleaned from other events–is that there are absolutely extrordinary people in our community. The amount of talent, charm, and warmth among the party-goers was a constant delight all weekend. Part of this impression comes from Emma\’s house itself, which is the kind of place you see in design magazines. Part of it is the atmosphere Emma cultivates. She wants to know what your talents are and she wants you to show them at her parties. Whether that talent is Vicki D\’Salle playing piano, Steffy accompanying on harmonica, Ronnie doing an uncanny Louis Armstrong, Ronnie and Kat Steele creating a television show in the attic, or everyone who pitched in to create fabulous foods in the kitchen, it doesn\’t matter. Everyone gets to shine, and generally rises to the occasion.
These parties take a lot out of our hostesses, so if they don\’t have another one soon, I can understand it. It shames me a little to realize that I\’ve never created an event like this for the friends I have in my area. It certainly puts the idea in my head, because, in truth, meeting people in real life where whatever talents and charms they have can be immediately demonstrated rather than inferred through an internet interface is so much more fulfilling than talking about it after the fact. We are dancing animals, after all, and dancers need partners.
24 Hour Party People
January 31, 2007
I drove to Cincinatti last week for Emma M\’s occasionally annual January house party last week. Emma and her lovely wife throw an amazing party, so there was no way in hell I was missing it. I rented a car this year–my own car being at death\’s doorway–and set out on Thursday morning, only an hour late. While I was driving south to pick up I-70, I got a call from Zelda. Zelda was scheduled to room with me in Cincy, but she had told me the night before that she might be too sick to make it. Her call was a confirmation of this. I was disappointed that I wasn\’t going to see her, but them\’s the breaks. Fortunately, the hotel room was in my name and we had already invited Emma\’s friend, Steffy, to room with us, as well. So I wasn\’t unexpectedly out of pocket. The drive was long, but long drives are made more bearable by audio books. I listened to Agatha Christie\’s The Hollows on the drive up, and Orson Scott Card\’s Speaker for the Dead on the drive back.
I arrived in Cincinatti two hours late (I forgot about the time change), showered, and went to Emma\’s to pick up Steffy so she could stow her luggage. Then I got dolled up–I haven\’t been dolled up in a long time, so it felt really good–and back to Emma\’s.
Emma\’s parties are what you might get if you stripped SCC of all those pesky seminars and served really, really good food. In fact, they are more like food and wine parties with a little crossdressing and fetish thrown in than they are \”gender\” parties. Emma is a fetish doll, so fetish was a significant fashion theme for the weekend, especially on Friday night. There were more \”fetish\” people at the party than in times past, so Friday a couple of fairly rollicking BDSM scenes, some of which featured yours truly. I didn\’t pack much of a toybag–Zelda was supposed to bring the toys–but what I did bring turned out to be very popular, mostly for the noise they made. There\’s video, and I wager that if I were to post it here, my hit count would rocket through the stratosphere.
Saturday night was \”glamour\” night, and I wore the dress I wore to Emma\’s last party, one at which I managed to snap both of the spaghetti straps. I finally got it fixed the week before the party. It\’s a dress I really shouldn\’t wear. I should avoid sleeveless fashions, because I have linebacker\’s shoulders, a feature sometimes accentuated by the tight corsets I prefer. But I love the dress too much. I was going to wear it come hell or high water, dammit. Ronnie interviewed me for her web show on Saturday, too. I haven\’t seen that video yet, but I\’m sure I sound nervous. I\’m a terrible public speaker; speaking in front of others terrifies me, regardless of how friendly it is. This effect was compounded by a lack of sleep, so I wasn\’t as quick as I might have been. I think I was more of an intellectual egghead than she was expecting, too, but that\’s something I can\’t help.
The most striking thing about Emma\’s party–an impression that is stronger than similar impressions I\’ve gleaned from other events–is that there are absolutely extrordinary people in our community. The amount of talent, charm, and warmth among the party-goers was a constant delight all weekend. Part of this impression comes from Emma\’s house itself, which is the kind of place you see in design magazines. Part of it is the atmosphere Emma cultivates. She wants to know what your talents are and she wants you to show them at her parties. Whether that talent is Vicki D\’Salle playing piano, Steffy accompanying on harmonica, Ronnie doing an uncanny Louis Armstrong, Ronnie and Kat Steele creating a television show in the attic, or everyone who pitched in to create fabulous foods in the kitchen, it doesn\’t matter. Everyone gets to shine, and generally rises to the occasion.
These parties take a lot out of our hostesses, so if they don\’t have another one soon, I can understand it. It shames me a little to realize that I\’ve never created an event like this for the friends I have in my area. It certainly puts the idea in my head, because, in truth, meeting people in real life where whatever talents and charms they have can be immediately demonstrated rather than inferred through an internet interface is so much more fulfilling than talking about it after the fact. We are dancing animals, after all, and dancers need partners.
The Past Through Tomorrow
January 30, 2007
So, I\’m driving home from Cincinatti this weekend and I pass a roadside tableaux of the three crosses from Mount Golgotha on the bank of a ditch. These are stark, unadorned crosses, and they had cords hanging from the top of them. Silhouetted against a lead-gray sky, flecked with light snow flying through the air, the entire scene seemed like it was transmitted to me from some medieval painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (see above for the specific echo running through my mind). I\’ve been entertaining the idea that post-capitalist society won\’t be the socialism predicted by Marx and Engel–at least, not in the United States–but rather will be a new kind of feudalism with corporations acting as lieges without the requirement of noblesse oblige. Couple this with an impulse towards theocracy by the radical Christian Right, and you have a kind of nightmare landscape where pentitent flagellants and inquisitorial witch-hunters scour the land, all with a hint of Mad Max. There\’s a science fiction novel to be had from such a thing, something along the lines of A Canticle for Liebowitz, perhaps. This feeling of temporal disclocation was reinforced by a sight waiting a few miles down the road. I had emerged from the overcast and the snow by that time; the sun was going down, rendering many objects along the horizon in vivid, colored silhouettes. One of those objects was the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant in Callaway, Missouri, whose plume of steam was a vast purple cloud against a ragged sunset, and whose tower was aglitter with lights. This too, reminded me of Brueghel and his visions of hell.
It was a strange ending to a long week.
I dont\’ have a point to make here. I just wanted to record this impression before it faded.
I should note that I love the word \”Golgotha.\” \”Place of Skulls,\” it means. What an ominous word.
If anyone is curious about the piece of art attached to this post, it\’s \’The Triumph of Death\’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. A fair sized reproduction of this painting can be found here. It\’s a piece for anyone who likes zombie movies.
The Past Through Tomorrow
January 30, 2007
So, I\’m driving home from Cincinatti this weekend and I pass a roadside tableaux of the three crosses from Mount Golgotha on the bank of a ditch. These are stark, unadorned crosses, and they had cords hanging from the top of them. Silhouetted against a lead-gray sky, flecked with light snow flying through the air, the entire scene seemed like it was transmitted to me from some medieval painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (see above for the specific echo running through my mind). I\’ve been entertaining the idea that post-capitalist society won\’t be the socialism predicted by Marx and Engel–at least, not in the United States–but rather will be a new kind of feudalism with corporations acting as lieges without the requirement of noblesse oblige. Couple this with an impulse towards theocracy by the radical Christian Right, and you have a kind of nightmare landscape where pentitent flagellants and inquisitorial witch-hunters scour the land, all with a hint of Mad Max. There\’s a science fiction novel to be had from such a thing, something along the lines of A Canticle for Liebowitz, perhaps. This feeling of temporal disclocation was reinforced by a sight waiting a few miles down the road. I had emerged from the overcast and the snow by that time; the sun was going down, rendering many objects along the horizon in vivid, colored silhouettes. One of those objects was the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant in Callaway, Missouri, whose plume of steam was a vast purple cloud against a ragged sunset, and whose tower was aglitter with lights. This too, reminded me of Brueghel and his visions of hell.
It was a strange ending to a long week.
I dont\’ have a point to make here. I just wanted to record this impression before it faded.
I should note that I love the word \”Golgotha.\” \”Place of Skulls,\” it means. What an ominous word.
If anyone is curious about the piece of art attached to this post, it\’s \’The Triumph of Death\’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. A fair sized reproduction of this painting can be found here. It\’s a piece for anyone who likes zombie movies.
You\’re So Vain…
January 29, 2007
I\’ll have a lot more to say about my vacation in Cincy, but vanity compells me to post this picture. I think it looks pretty good. A rare sentiment from my perspective.
You\’re So Vain…
January 29, 2007
I\’ll have a lot more to say about my vacation in Cincy, but vanity compells me to post this picture. I think it looks pretty good. A rare sentiment from my perspective.
Fast Food Nation
January 19, 2007
We were running late yesterday morning, so instead of sitting down to eat something good for breakfast, we stopped at a conveniently located Hardees on the way to work. I don’t eat fast food very often–certainly not as often as I did when I was younger. In fact, before yesterday morning, I couldn’t tell you the last time I had fast food. But I like a good greasy breakfast biscuit every once in a while. They have a new breakfast biscuit at Hardees right now called a “Monster Biscuit” which includes egg, bacon, a sausage patty, ham, and cheese. I called it the Myocardial Infarction Biscuit, speculated that it probably ought to come with a portable defibrulator, but ordered one anyway. It was a challenge, you see, and damned if it wasn’t tasty as hell.
A curious thing happened to me, though. Over the course of the day, I felt bad. I felt like I had just awakened for most of the day. And towards the end of the work day, it became obvious that my fast food breakfast, lubricated by all that yummy grease, was travelling through me like shit through the proverbial goose.
I think that’s that for me and fast food.
Felicia, whose schedule is way more occupied than mine, eats fast food fairly often, and I think it has an effect on her health. I’m going to have to go out of my way to make sure she has something else to eat every day. This morning, I cooked a big pot of oatmeal so I could get on with scraping the residual grease out of my system. I had a couple of granny smith apples for lunch (one apple has as much fiber as two bowls of oatmeal, if you didn’t know). Tonight, I think I’ll have some black beans over brown rice. Anything to get that nasty shit out of my system.
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Food snob moment of the day:
I turned forty last year, which is about the age when my dad began to develop type 2 diabetes. In an effort to forestall that, I’ve been eating a very high fiber diet lately, including a lot of oatmeal. I tend not to eat instant oatmeal or “quick oats.” It’s good old fashioned oatmeal for me, but that means I don’t get all those “yummy” flavors instant oatmeal comes in. When I was growing up, my favorite flavors of oatmeal were maple and brown sugar, apples and cinnamon, and strawberries and cream. A couple of months ago, I decided to try to recreate these with “real” oatmeal. Maple and brown sugar was easy: add maple syrup (real maple syrup tastes best and isn’t loaded with high fructose corn syrup) and brown sugar. I started adding chopped walnuts to this soon after. It’s usually what I have in the morning. Apples and cinnamon was more of a challenge. The solution: mix some applesauce into the pot while you’re cooking it and season with cinnamon and brown sugar to taste (again, I use the natural apple sauce that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup as its base–I’ve been trying to eliminate corn syrup from my diet, which is more challenging than I thought it would be). If you’re really ambitious, run half of a granny smith apple through a food processor and boil the chunks of apple before mixing in the oatmeal, but don’t omit the apple sauce. I put walnuts into this, too and the result is way better than any instant oatmeal I’ve ever had. It’s like eating apple pie for breakfast. Very tasty. A friend of mine suggested boiling the oatmeal in apple juice, but I haven’t tried this. Strawberries and cream turned out to be fairly easy, too. Use milk to boil the oats instead of water–this takes longer, by the way–then mix in some half and half and strawberry pieces (fresh is best, but frozen is fine) and sugar (I use that ubiquitous brown sugar, natch) to taste. This one surprised the hell out of me with how rich a breakfast it is. It’s too rich for every day consumption–at least for my tastes–but rich enough for me to have on Sundays.
One pill makes you larger…
January 17, 2007
…and one pill makes you small.
Enjoy
A Gentle Reminder
January 17, 2007
Here’s my semi-annual reminder to everyone out there who wants to add me to their “friends” list. You need to convince me that I want you as a friend. The generic 360 invite won’t cut it, especially if you have no content on your page or if you have nothing but photos of body parts, clothed, crossdressed, or otherwise.
Please note, you don’t have to be my friend to get updates on my page. Nothing on my page is set to “private only.” There are no hidden sexy pictures, no locked blog posts. If you want to keep track of me, you can add me to your favorites without friending me. Mind you, if you plan to communicate with me, then by all means send me an invite, but make sure you say something in the invite. Or better still, make comments on my page. I don’t have that set to “friends only,” either.
One final note to the guy out there who has invited me twice by claiming to be a fan of BBWs. While I’m flattered that you think I’m gorgeous–what girl doesn’t love to be told that she’s gorgeous?–I’m a little miffed at the way you put things. I’m 5′6″ tall and I weigh 170 lbs, most of it muscle. A little tact, please?
Fimbulwinter
January 15, 2007
The ice storm hit us hard. It was falling in crystals–not snowflakes. It was sleet on steroids. Most of the trees in our neighborhood are beginning to lose branches. Several have split in two from the weight of the ice. These are hundred year-old oaks, mainly, and it kills me to see them being destroyed. I haven’t had much to do this weekend. We’ve been more or less confined to the house. We can get out, but driving anywhere is risky. Fortunately, I work for an institution that has MLK day off. So I’ve stayed home.
I say all of this in the realization that things could be much, much worse. We still have power, and I’ve been watching the power and light guys driving through the neighborhood most of the day. Kudos to them and thank the flying spaghetti monster the city of Centralia, MO doesn’t depend on Ameren for their electricity like St. Louis does. St. Louis is enduring yet another bad power-outage. It’s the third in less than 9 months. I still can’t believe that there is no inquiry into their neglect of St. Louis’s power grid, but that’s political influence for you.
It’s been hardest on the dog. The world around our house is coated in sheets of ice and when the dog goes out to do her business, she’s having a devil of a time finding a spot where she can get enough traction to squat. I’ve never seen ice like this. Ever.
So what have I been doing to occupy my time? Cooking, mostly. We have plenty of food, so we won’t be going all Alfred Packer any time soon. Plus, there’s a grocery store not two blocks away, so we don’t really need to drive. Felicia went into work today. I worry about her. I’m debating whether or not I’m going in to work tomorrow. My office is at the bottom of what used to be a rock quarry, so if I go down there, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to get back up. Maybe I’ll start telecommuting tomorrow.
Fimbulwinter is the harbinger of the end of the world, by the way. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, is presaged by three bad winters with no summers in between them. It is speculated that this myth stems from an ur-Little Ice Age in the Scandinavian countries, which are known to have been much warmer in the human-populated past than they are even now. Do I think that this storm is a negation of global warming? No. But it is indicative of the increasingly volatile weather that global warming entails.
