After work yesterday Lauren and I drove up to Utica to see her ex boyfriend's art show.
Now I have to first of all admit that I don't like the guy. And it is not just because it is her ex boyfriend, but more so because he is a genius in most everything that he does and therefore tends to be extremely pretentious. Most of the time I want to punch the pompous little prick in the face. (I'm not violent; I just wish I were sometimes). Anyway, the kid has only been painting for about 10 months, and he already has an art show. He is exceptionally good and I have to admit that there was a green little monster inside me that I was having an internal debate with for a while.

So I have decided that this evening I will grab the paintbrush and canvas and let it go. I will paint with wide-open strokes, and not tiny tentative dabs. I have spoken it, and therefore it is so.

Last night, in the car on the way home, we were discussing Buffalo, and she said, "We are going to need a new cute gay boy. I need a cute gay boy in my life!".... Okay we are fag hags. Gay men = Less drama + more fashion than a lesbians.... Applications to be our gay boy will be posted in the weeks to come.

So I see from e:metalpeter's pics that last night's party was quite the enjoyable one! the pictures really helped me get a better idea of what the estrippers are all about. Also to put names with faces - though i don't know 98 % of you still...hope to see many more pics from tonight's party! I'll be sitting in my garage painting whilst you all party on up!

first of all thanks paul again, as the restore key just kept me from being a very cranky dyke on Pride day!

the parade was today. but first.....
KITTEN!

cute as hell, I know. so anyway... on to the parade....

a truck (float) in our parade.


this was the grand marshal though i'm unsure as to who he is supposed to be.


I love these drummer women. they are an all female brazillian drummer group and they rule.


this is one of the hudson valley drag queen personalities. she is at all the gay events. i wish i cared enough to look up her name.

then after the parade came the festival in the park

i am not sure who these horses were but i loved them...

Char played later after we left.


this is qi. i wish i could describe qi, but there are no words that could possibly get you to truly wrap your mind around that which is qi. this picture, however, is probably the closest that i could put up here without legal implications. please take in the hair, the yell face, the half pointing finger and the starbucks cup of straight scotch. this is qi.

my drummer ladies played too!

which led to....


in new paltz, gay parades turn into hippie festivals...

lauren likes to dance too!


michael (one of our current fruits) came out of nowhere with a water bottle full of tanqueray and a splash of tonic.


got home and found our other fruit - steven, at home... steven doesn't do the pride thing.

so yeah those are a couple of our current fruits that we need replacing...


i'm doing something. or should be doing something now anyway.

Due to some of the recent discussions of religion on the estrip, I have decided to write a bit about my own religious views.

I'll begin with something my mother once told me. It went something like
"I don't need a roof over my head to believe what I believe" in reference to going to church.

I grew up attending church. Or Sunday school at the very least. I have to confess that a great deal of my superficially religious nature had to do with the activities at the church, rather than the religion itself. My Sunday school teacher was a wealthy woman who used to set up an assortment of activities that peaked my interest. Picnics, trips to Darien Lake (what is that religious week that they have? Kingdom Bound?) We went to Toronto to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat.

It wasn't until about tenth grade when, in my social studies class, we started to study world religions from an educational position. It was at this point that I started listening. I started quietly questioning what they were teaching me.

Throughout the years I have become very interested in religion, but from a more open minded, historical and didactic point of view. I took a course in the Bible in college and got an A. I have probably watched every program that has ever been on the History channel about religion. But my curiosity has always been in the historical rather than the religious. To be precise, the evolution of religion to what it has become today, and the theories and gospels that have been dropped along the way.

I read in a book of fiction recently (one of the slew of post - DaVinci Code religious conspiracy theory books) something that I actually found as an interesting theory. At the risk of an argument, I will summarize.

The theory went as follows: Jesus was an ordinary man who had a religious inspiration about the way to live life. It was a beautiful and inspirational way to live without judgment of others, and love for one and all. When Jesus died, he was not resurrected to walk the earth in the flesh. The resurrection of Jesus was intended to develop into the rebirth of his principles into the traditions of his followers. It was the state of the world, and the requirement for a more authoritative message that prompted for the ascension of Jesus as the Son of God, in order to generate Christianity as force to challenge the pagan religion of the Romans as well as Judaism.

Now I'm not saying that this is in fact my belief, but I will say that this speculation touches me more than the contradictory and ever evolving verses of what has become the bible. The bible is an amazing volume of poignant and moral (and not so moral) stories that serve as a guideline for living a life of love and peace. But the idea of taking said Bible and following it as if it were law is quite absurd to me. I am very much in the conviction that religion is an individual experience, not one of sheep following sheep blindly without question.

Okay on that note I'm going to stop, as I could probably go on forever, and I've probably made enough enemies for the day.

nerves abound folks, time is flyin and felly is still apartment and job less!

you know if i'm referring to myself in the 3rd person i must be going nuts.

in one week from now i'll be in buffalo checking out apartments. i told my mother this mornign that i was not in any way interested in staying with my grandparents. she gratefully understood.

anyone know of any campgrounds near buffalo that i can stay at?

i spent a good 5 hours sitting in the garage painting last night. i was listening to a harry potter book on tape to keep my mind from going nuts as i was doing some detail work on the branches of a tree. Could you imagine painting tree branches for 5 hours without developing an annoying eye twitch? yeah i guess i'm just floored that it happened.

also - i have decided that for my big going away bash i am getting a kareoke machine. because the idea of some of my friends getting smashed out of their mind and singing 'girls just wanna have fun' makes my stomach tingle with glee. or maybe thats just the pizza that i had for lunch.

okay i get to leave work in no more than 20 minutes.

OH WAIT! i have an amazing story that I have to pass along.


About 3 houses down and across the street live these group of weirdo hippies. i mean these guys even have one of those purple hippie vw busses! anyway the other night there was firetrucks heading out that way. i got very nervouse because this place is right across from the bed and breakfast that jess runs - and she would have had to be institutionalized if anything happened there.

so apparently this is what happened.....

their cat died. so they decided that, instead of burying the poor thing, they shoudl cremate it. yes... they decided to cremate their own cat. So they had a memorial service and played guitars for the cat and sang like the hippies that they are.......but apparently they waited too long to cremate it - as in it had been dead for a few days and started to fill with decomposition gases. so they tossed the cat in a ditch and poured gasoline over it. when they threw the match at the gasoline soaked/gas filled dead kitty the sucker exploded. EXPLODING CAT! the explosion managed to ignite a nearby ranshackle shed and thus the fire department.

this story was related to jess by the guests at the bed and breakfast that sat there and watched the whole thing happen.

am i sure that i want to leave this town?

i'm excited as pie. blueberry pie maybe. or cherry. i love cherry pie. ala mode. or maybe half a slice of blueberry and half a slice of cherry with a big fat scoop of vanilla perched melty like all on top and in between the two.
okay yeah.. my point was....
oh yeah

i just made a double appointment to go check out a couple of apartments on monday.

first thing first we have 367 elmwood - elmwood village.

Then we have 950 Delaware (sheldon apartments) on the corner of hodge.

they are both run by esquare capital - which i hear is supposed to be a good/gay friendly company, yes? no?

anyway - so they are both about $665 a month.... which rather frightens the hell out of me - but they include heat... so what... would that be equivilant to a $600 a month apartment?

just spoke to a woman about seeing an apartment. even though i told her i'm presently making 40 grand a year and i manage two sprint stores that if i don't have a job before i move to buffalo then she won't show me anything.

'why don't you get yourself settled in buffalo first and then give me a call?'

explain to me why i would get 'settled' in buffalo in some apartment or another, and then prospect your shitty ass four hundred and fifty dollar a month apartment?

i stoutly informed her that

that whole conversation made me extremely pissed and dissapointed and nervous that i would not, in fact, find a job.

There is something about ancient knowledge that fascinates the crap out of me. The kind of ancient evidence that goes against what we know. We have an established history and millions of books that say 'this is the way it is'. And what interests me is the stuff that gets the panties of scientists and historians in a major knot. There are so many phenomena that are simply ignored because to actually look at it realistically would cause such an enormous shift in our paradigm of the world that nobody wants to even bother.
Anyway, I would go on forever about it, but instead I'll present you with my most recent findings.

This is from a book I'm presently reading.

The Aryabhatiya, an ancient Indian mathematical/astronomical work states:'A year consists of 12 months. A month consists of 30 days'

The ancient Babylonian year consisted of a 12 months and 30 days in a month.

The old Egyptian year consisted of 12 months of 30 days.

Plutarch wrote that ancient Rome (during the time of Romulus) the year was made of twelve 30 day months.

The Mayan year consisted of 360 days.

The Incan year was divided into 12 quilla of 30 days.

The Ancient Chinese Calendar consisted of 12 months each of 30 days.

In all the previous cultures, the addition of 5 extra days to the yearly calendar (and in some cases even the addition of a day every fourth) is indicated to have occurred around the same time.

This is the basis of the theory that at some point in the archaic past the earths orbital position underwent a change. Which leads to many other theories that I won't even get into. Because they involve everything from pole shifting, the changing height of human beings, floods, Atlantis, dual moons and the like.

Okay I've bored you all enough.

so i'm recounting the deposits for the last week so that i can make a bank deposit....

and as i'm counting i'm noticing something strange...

i keep losing count between 14 and 15.

i say 14 in my head and then 15 and then i'm like... wait... was that right?

i did this about ten times just now and it makes me wonder if there is some reason i have forgotten that after 13 comes 14 then 15 and so on... perhaps its true...

this job has eaten my brain.

or maybe its just the zombies...

okay at any rate its time to go home, thank god.

buffalo HERE I COME!

i think we are leaving around 5 am. lauren hates me for that. but i'm driving, right?

we have to get up to wilson and drop off a bunch of my stuff at my brothers house, visit, and make it over to my other brothers house in ransomville before heading back into buffalo for a 2 oclock double appointment at sheldon apartments and elmwood village apartments.

then i have to run around putting in applications all over b-lo

tuesday morning at 9 we are to call and confirm a noon showing of another apartment.

we also have to call about a 2 bedroom on ashland.

and do some more job hunting

and lauren has to go visit the college at some point.

BUSY BUSY BUSY

and I still do not know where i'm going to end up staying. the problem is now that my family is guilting me into staying with them. oh sweet jesus if they were to find out that i came to western ny and did not stay with them then they would be convinced that the world is ending... so lauren and i are just going and saying the hell with it - we will get to where we are getting and do what we have to do....

okay i need to get some food and look for more apartments online

We just got back from Buffalo
(pics later)

We went first to esquared's sheldon apartments wherein they started showing us this first apartment....

"the guys who lived here before were artsy"

and when i mentioned e:jim and e:james she promptly said that it was their apartment!

we saw your plaaaaacceee...

lauren loves your color preference, but we have no idea how you could have lived with that kitchen...

and i have to ask... they were really going to raise your rent due to the 'balcony'?

anyway - we went over to the other place and fell in love. we took it.
we are official e:strippeerrss!!! 367 elmwood baby!

more soon...