The Lush Jungle Within

(Or: "Learning to Love Your Intestinal Flora")

You know, when the whole "ingest/digest/excrete" process is running smoothly, you kind of take it for granted. At least, I do. The past couple of weeks, however, I have come to greatly appreciate my ability to have a certain predictability to the cycle of taking in food and expelling waste in a comfortable and somewhat cleanly manner. In other words: I had the runs, and I had 'em bad.

I won't go into too much detail; honestly, if you're writing a blog entry about your digestive system, you're treading a very fine line to begin with, and details about how the predicament came about have a tendency to push you way, way over that line. Let's simply say that my inner jungle was the victim of deforestation, and leave it at that. And let me tell you, those little guys sure do serve an important purpose in life, overlooked and under appreciated though they may be. Between urgent runs (no pun intended) to the facilities and...erm...gas emissions that would put a herd of cows to shame, things were bad.

Fortunately, yogurt is the E.P.A. of the digestive system. With the help of corporate sponsors Yoplait and McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals (proud manufacturers of Imodium A-D), a reforestation program has been initiated. I'm pleased to announce that, even at this early stage, the program has been a great success, and much of the affected area has begun to reach a level of functional normality. Though methane emissions remain somewhat above normal levels, the environmental impact of said emissions has been drastically reduced: an improvement which, I'm sure, will lead to much rejoicing on the part of my co-workers, friends, family, and the employees and customers of the local coffee shop I frequent.

In conclusion, I would just like to say this: In an era of increased environmental awareness, there is still vegetation that too often goes unnoticed, and that is unfortunate. I urge you, each and every one of you, to learn to appreciate -- nay, to learn to love the lush jungle within. Take good care of your intestinal flora, and they will take good care of you. Neglect them, and you will learn the hard way just how important they are.

I would like to close this treatise with a quote from famed singer/songwriter, Joni Mitchell:

Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

Indeed, Joni. Indeed.

Why introspect when you can just click swatches?

I rediscovered an old internet fascination of mine: Colorgenics. After clicking on a set of colored blocks in whatever order seems "right", it spits out a somewhat vague and generalized assessment of your current state of being. Here are my results from two "tests" tonight:

One

You have always been on the move seeking affectionate, satisfying and harmonious relationships. Your ultimate goal has been the realisation of an intimate union in which there could be love, self-sacrifice and mutual trust. It has often been said that 'True love is just around the corner' and - if you haven't found it as yet - you possibly soon will.

You are looking for something different. Your imagination has been working overtime and you are seeking adventure - and you'd like to share that adventure, the new experience, with someone like yourself: Imaginative, Enthusiastic and Sensitive.

Everyone has to compromise at times and circumstances are such that at this time you are feeling the need to do just that. Put all of your hopes on the back burner and let matters flow for a time - forgo some of the things you want. The good times are just around the corner.

As of late, you have been experiencing untold stress and this is a result of continuous frustration. You haven't been taking care of all your physical needs and it's beginning to show. It would seem that you have a need to find someone to whom you can really relate - someone perhaps whose standards are as high as your own. You want to be different - to be individualistic - to stand out from the common herd. Your inherent control of your sensual instincts is restricting your ability to give yourself to open up freely but this being on your own, being lonely, often makes you feel the need to give up some of your strict standards to surrender to the general flow - to be like everyone else; a part of the herd. Deep down you regard such instincts as weaknesses to be overcome. You would like to be loved or admired for yourself alone. You demand recognition and tender loving care.

You have so many ideas that you would like to revitalise but you need to realise a stable and peaceful condition to do so. Once you can free yourself from all the aggravation and tension around you, you will make strides that may amaze you. You will not be prevented from achieving all the things you so desire.

Two

Is it that you are working - or even playing - too hard? Because it would seem that you are experiencing a great deal of pent-up emotion at this time which could possibly take effect and lead to irrational behaviour.

You need an atmosphere of peace and quiet and you would like to share a bond of understanding with the 'right person' - you have the belief that with the right person, your stress and anxiety could be minimised.

At times one is burdened with more than one's fair share of problems and this would appear to be your situation at present. But you are adamant - you know what you wish to achieve - and by giving a little and taking a little you may well find that the realization of your dreams could become a reality.

You are holding back. You need to find friends in whom you can trust and once they have proved themselves beyond all possible doubt you will be prepared to give them your all. The existing situation is not of your liking - you have an unsatisfied need for mental stimulation with others whose standards are as high as your own. Trying to control your instincts the way you do restricts your ability to open up to others and the way you feel at this time is suggestive of 'total surrender'. This is not to your liking as you consider such thoughts as weaknesses that need to be overcome. You feel that only by control, controlling your innermost thoughts, are you able to maintain your air of superiority. You want to be admired for yourself alone and not for what you can do or for what you may have done. In essence 'you need to be needed' and at the same time 'you need to need'.

The need for admiration and to be regarded as 'someone special' is perhaps one of the foremost aims in your life at this time. You would like to perhaps do something outrageous or anything that will give you the chance to be recognised as someone special. This desire has now almost become an obsession and in your own way you are trying to fulfil this 'complex' by ensuring you are the centre of attention, both at work or play, or in the home. Stop trying so hard and you will find that people will like you for who you are - not for who you are pretending to be.

I suppose it's time for an update...

First, I'd like to state the obvious: "Well, it's been a while since I've made a post on here..." Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to the update.

It's been a hectic few months. I wound up finding a job which I actually like (most of the time), doing what I actually wanted to do with my life. Shocking! I'm an in-house web developer for a company that will remain nameless, because I don't particularly want my coworkers to find this blog.

One thing I will say, though, is that the average age of the company's employees is shockingly low, and the work environment has a strange frat-house feel to it. And not in a particularly pleasant way (at least in my humble opinion). Basically, it's like being back in high school, with most of the company being the "cool jock" crowd, and IT being the "basement-dwelling D&D player" crowd. Except we enable the "cool jocks" to earn a living, so they don't give us wedgies.

That aside, I enjoy the actual work, I get along well with my fellow IT-ers (and a few of the older non-IT staff members), and I don't really have to interact with the employees who think we're lowly geeks. Plus I can work from home when I want/need to, and I get as much overtime as my little heart desires. Long-term, I'm not sure how permanent it's going to be, but for the next year or two it's exactly what I want and need.

Next week classes start back up for me, and to be honest, I'm dreading it. Full-time job + half-time academics = tired, no matter how often I can work from home. Beyond that, I just feel emotionally and mentally done with school. I've been at it 5 years. I've got my foot in the door of the industry I was hoping to enter. And at this point, I've gained about as much as I can from theoretical education -- at least for the time being.

I'm also nervous that it's going to interfere with my job. Like I said, it's not perfect, but I do enjoy it, and it pays the bills.

Time will tell, I guess.

Product!

While I'm on the subject of appearance and the massive debt academia is burying me under, I might as well talk about why these seemingly incongruent lines of thought have become tangled together in my mind right now. As mentioned in my profile, I'm finishing up my degree. That accursed piece of paper is taking me a couple of extra years to acquire, due to the fact that I spent several semesters going less than full time. Had I not done this, I wouldn't have been able to hold a paying job while going to school, and I'd be even deeper in debt than I already am.

Anyway, this was my first year without studio classes, which meant that I was able to go full time, since a studio course is about twice as time-consuming as an academic course.* Silly me, I thought this would allow me to finish up by the end of this summer. Nope. Turns out, the last class I'll need to finish my computer science minor is only offered in the spring. Because of technicalities with student loan grace periods, that means I need to stretch everything out if I don't want to be shelling out $1,000/month on top of living expenses while I'm taking that last class. In other words: an entire extra year of working and schooling. Joy does not begin to express my feelings about that.

*Note: They actually decreased the studio course requirements, starting this year, because they were so unreasonably high. Basically, full time studio when I was doing it entailed being in class 9AM-12PM and 2PM-5PM four days a week, with about 20-30 hours of out-of-class projects per week, if you took the projects seriously.

Last semester, I went overkill on the work thing. I did two part-time jobs that each paid around $10/hour. That was, to put it mildly, hellish. Particularly considering that one of them was a graveyard shift an hour's drive away. This semester I came off of the Federal Work Study waiting list, so I figured I'd try scrimping and just doing that. Turns out that $80 a week isn't enough to live on, even if you happen to live at home. Go figure. I think working two jobs and going to school full time was actually less stressful than trying to live on $320 a month.

So my strategy this time around is going to be different. I'm going to do my damnedest to find something that pays better. This will hopefully mean that I can build up some reserves for when the debtors come a-calling, and that I can get through the next year without borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. This also means I'm going to need to polish myself up into tip-top bourgeois shape for the interviewing process. Fortunately, I have a slight advantage in that area: not only in my taste-enhancing gay genes, but also in a couple of friends who work on Newbury Street. This means free top-of-the-line haircuts and free fashion advice. However, there's one area where my proverbial bases are not covered: skin care.

You see, my skin is something of a challenge. First problem: I'm half Irish and half Mediterranean. As a result, I have pale, sensitive skin and coarse, dark hair. Combine the two, and I wind up with a five o'clock shadow a full five minutes after shaving (along with razor burn from hell, if I don't follow a precise and esoteric washing-shaving-moisturizing ritual). Oh, and did I mention that my skin instantly becomes mottled if I so much as look out the window on a partly sunny day? Also: combination skin, though fortunately it stays closer to the normal spectrum than the extremes of dry or oily.

I've developed a pretty decent skin care arsenal at this point, but there's always room for improvement. So if anybody happens to read this and has some tips, please do share them. If you can't tell, I kind of have a thing for Aveeno.

The current line-up, including razor:

• Aveeno Positively Radiant Facial Cleanser, alternated with
• Aveeno Ultra-Calming Foaming Facial Cleanser
• Kiehl's Ultra Facial Moisturizer
• Aveeno Continuous Radiance tanning moisturizer
• L'Oreal Expert Circle Eraser Anti Dark Circle Eye Moisturizer
• Aveeno Positively Smooth shaving gel
• Gillette Fusion razor (I've tried electrics -- they shred my face without touching my beard)

Defunkification

I've managed to banish my funk somewhat using two techniques perfected by gay men over the last century: consumerism and saturation with (as well as mocking of) pop-culture. When reality gets a bit too unpleasant, there's always a product, a TV show, a movie, or a trashy novel to distract you from it. While it's not exactly a transcendental solution, sometimes a bit of superficial salving does the trick. And sometimes there just isn't anything that can be done beyond a bit of escapism.

As for pop culture, I discovered the amazingly catty world of "Top Design" blogs. Meow! My personal favorite is Pink Navy. Also? While I thought Carissa was both obnoxious and unimpressive in her design skills for most of the season, she definitely had the better loft in the finale. Matt's looked ugly, bland, cluttered and sterile. Of course, combining clutter and sterility does take a unique kind of talent, so maybe that's why he won.

I think the most amusing part of the entire season of "Top Design" was finding out how much the furniture cost. And how freakin' ugly a lot of it was. It makes me sleep better at night knowing that, while I may have accumulated over a hundred thousand dollars in debt pursuing higher education (in my misguided hopes of climbing out of the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder) at least I haven't spent tens of thousands of dollars on a horrible couch or side table. Until "Top Design", I didn't realize such a thing was even possible. I do have friends with that kind of money, but they actually have taste -- which explains why they're my friends -- and so I didn't know that such hideousness managed to sell in that price range.

And speaking of money and taste... On the anti-Marxist side of things, I made a trip to Macy's and indulged myself in a bottle of Burberry London cologne. I'm completely infatuated with that fragrance - it's like Sexy Man in a Bottle. It's not as satisfying as having an actual Sexy Man to call my own, but a couple of spritzes is considerably easier to obtain and manage than a relationship. I also picked up a Kenneth Cole Reaction sweater for $10(!) and a thin Calvin Klein hooded sweatshirt for $25. I love the clearance rack. I also love rolled cuffs/hems, which are featured on both of my finds.

On Drama and Blogging

I've been having trouble coming up with things to blog about. It's not that there's absolutely nothing going on in my life, or that I don't have plenty of ideas swirling around my mind that I'd like to put into text. It's just that, well, I've been having a somewhat rough couple of weeks. As a result, most of the things I've thought to write about have been...well...not really cheery.

Now, I'm not one of those people who feels the need to put a smiley face on everything. I understand that not every lemon can be used to make lemonade. But I do think that it's very, very easy to let a blog devolve into melodramatic whining, and once it reaches that level it has a tendency to stay there. Some things are simply better shared one-on-one with friends who know the full back story, rather than than with the whole of the internet, most of whom have no idea who you are or why so-and-so's seemingly innocent comment would be interpreted as the worst insult/betrayal ever.

So if I've got a lot of crap going on in my life, yet I feel the desire to blog, how do I do that without being all "woe is me"? It seems to narrow it down to one possibility: the This Was My Day blog. I don't like This Was My Day blogs. If you can't turn an event into an entertaining anecdote, or some sort of interesting observation on life, you wind up with something like the following:

"I got up today and had a bowl of cereal. I really like cereal. Then I went to work. That girl I don't like got on my nerves. I had lunch around noon, and the rest of the day was pretty good, because I didn't see that annoying girl again. Then I came home, made dinner, and watched TV."

Some people can take that basic outline, sprinkle it with a few observations, metaphors, non sequiturs, and side-stories, and turn it into something really interesting/entertaining/insightful. I have a huge amount of admiration for people who can do that, and those are the kinds of blogs that I really love. I, however, am not one of those people. Especially when I'm in a bit of a funk.

The other problem with blogging in/about a bad mood is that it sticks around. A few days or weeks down the line, when whatever was bothering you is over and done with, you'll go back and re-read the drama. Either it leaves you feeling ridiculous for being so over the top with it, or it winds up sending you back into the funk. Neither possibility is particularly appealing.

So it may be a while before I have something amusing and/or insightful to say here. I don't think very many people read this anyway. But I figured that I'd explain. You know, in case someone stumbles on it and wonders why there are only about 8 entries (one of which consisted of a photograph and one paragraph, another of which consisted of iPod fandom).

And there you have it. A shitty couple of weeks, not enough energy to find amusing anecdotes from my life that are worth sharing, and a desire to spare random strangers from the rather tangled web of drama that I've become caught up in. I promise, as soon as I've untangled it all and gotten my head on straight, I'll have plenty of brisk witticisms suitable for the masses. Until then, this page will be a bit sparse.

My obsession du jour

I'm up way too early today. Why? Because I need Morrissey tickets. I NEED them. His last show sold out in like half of a millisecond, so I need to be on the ball when the Boston date goes on sale. I may even become one of those annoying fans who runs up onto the stage and hugs him, sobbing uncontrollably as security drags me away.

In other music news, I got me an iPod. Oh, I love the iPod. I was amazed to discover that its sound quality blew away my Creative Zen MicroPhoto. To the point where I heard instrumentation in tracks that I never knew was there. Apparently Apple's done a lot of improvement in the sound department over the past three years, because when I bought my last player iPod was universally bashed for its poor audio quality. Also? I love podcasts. I love podcasts soooo much. PBS and NPR to go? Sometimes in video form? Yes, please. Random people sitting in front of their computers making talk shows that run the gamut from insightful to laughably moronic? What's not to love? And they have What Not to Wear?? Shut UP!

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I'm so infatuated with my iPod, because on general principal I dislike Apple intensely. They steal ideas (more so than even Microsoft), wrap them in pretty interfaces and multi-million ad campaigns, and artists/designers are such frickin' snobs when they talk about their Macs (because the Apple commercial told them that you can only do boring business tasks on a PC, so it must be true). And working in a digital photo lab that runs on Apple equipment, I've come to absolutely LOATHE the hoops that you have to jump through to make certain things work, and/or figure out what's going wrong when something doesn't work.

But I have to admit, they got it right with the iPod. Totally intuitive interface, the aforementioned great sound quality, and a syncing system that I actually like and can trust not to leave me with five copies of every song.

And now I'm off to hopefully obtain the coveted Morrissey tickets. Wish me luck!