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.

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.

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!

My nephew is selling raffle tickets for the Ransomville fire department. Apparently there are about ten different grand prizes along the lines of a laptop, flat screen tv, dyson vacuum, a generator, power tools, etc. Also there is supposed to be a beer/wine tent. and other things. Well I guess that since a good deal of my family will probably be there for it and my parents should probably be in town for that - I might as well go. And then I realized that it was august 11th... the day before my birthday. Wow. Nothing like spending the day before my birthday at the firehall... reminds me of me of my entire youth - always there has to be a fire department event to go to.... God my life is exciting.

Ever walk around in a store and just have a striking urge to just stick your arm out and just knock everything on a shelf onto the floor? Not that I would ever do such a thing, but I still think about it and it makes me chuckle to myself a bit.

Last night I dreamt of our buffalo apartment. It was right on elmwood and it was lovely. I don't remember much about the actual apartment, except that we had a lovely brown and light blue living room (as seen @ pier one). I only remember that it was great, and I felt wonderful living there. I hope that is a sign of great things to come.

I can't think of all those things that I thought about posting previously. So I guess I'm done.

Hope you all have a great time tonight/tomorrow! And good luck to lilho's evening goals!

I just set my post its to go to my phone. how exciting... i feel as though somewhere along the line i have jumped into the age of technology.

So I am presently working a ten hour day in one of my stores. It is a slow store, so i usually spend the day bored/playing online. today i watched a movie online - Another Gay Movie which is a spoof on all the gay movies that are out there.

Wow there is a lot of gay sex in that movie.

So the funny thing is that here I am, watching gay sex movies at work.... and if my boss was here , he probably would just laugh at me.

The funny thing is that the owner of this company has another business. he runs this website: www.shevibe.com with his wife. so when i work in the poughkeepsie location, there is constantly shipments being delivered for his website.... and so when the owner (thor) calls me back and says 'hey your order is in' and then he waves a giant black dildo at me, i think to myself... wow... this is the greatest job ever...

if i were just reading this, i would probably be completely skeeved out by the idea of a boss waving a giant rubber dildo at their employees... but somehow here it just is hilariously the way it is...

anyway... i just thought there should be some type of indication of the fun environment in which i work..

I'm not used to working Mondays. One of my employees quit this weekend, bringing my hours up but totally screwing my schedule. Wednesday I work a ten hour shift and now Thursday will be at least 11.5 hours.

We have managed to schedule a date for our next visit to Buffalo. June 18th-20th. Basically will involve waking up at the ass crack of dawn and driving for 6 hours, then Job Hunting/Apartment hunting for both the rest of Monday, as well as all day Tuesday. We will be camping too.

Yesterday I also managed to schedule in the following events.
June 1 - Art Show in Utica
June 9 - Nick's Body Building competition in Poughkeepsie
June 18-20 - Buffalo
June 22 - Concert in NYC
June 28/29 - move out (TO WHERE???)
June 30-July 1 - Campout going away party @ Kim & Jean's
July 7-8 - "the Felly & Lauren are gone!" party @ 66 south
July 22-25 - Family 'get together' @ Bear Mountain State Park.


I also got completely overwhelmed by all that is to happen and how the hell to do it all.

I realized that we have no place to store our crap for the entire month of July (if we don't get an apartment right away July 1)

I realized that I may not be able to work in July if I have already given then a July 1 leaving date.

All this and Mel decided to spend a good hour asking me why I am wasting my time selling cell phones when I am such a talented videographer. All the reasons that I managed to give to her all ended up being a steaming pile of bullshit. What it all comes down to is basically a lack of confidence. Sometimes I know i'm an awesome videographer. I can't even watch a movie without picking it apart. Then when it comes down to actually trying to prove that, I just get afraid of putting myself out there. And then I say.... All I need is ten G's and i'd be fine... I would start my own business!
blah blah blah its all bullshit.

Really though. Lauren is going to be gone for the evening so I'll spend the night painting some delicious works of art for Jess. And avoid the thought of taking control of my life yet again!

We bought a tent.

which basically means that no matter what happens, we will never be completly homeless...

maybe that is a rather bleak way of looking at the future. But seriously, it will work out wonderfully in our travels to Buf to check out apartments. We can just camp there and make it a fun little getaway. But the screwed up part is that I have a crapload of relatives in the youngstown/lockport/wilson/ransomville area up north of Buffalo. Brothers, grandparents and aunts and uncles. But really the only place that we could really stay would be my grandparents house due to circumstance.

I love my grandparents. Really I do, but with my grandpap's recent decline and the stagnant emptiness/loneliness of that house when nobody else is there... well i just don't like staying there.

And I count myself so lucky, because my gripe with not wanting to stay there has nothing to do with the fact that I am in a lesbian relationship and would be bringing my girlfriend with me. The last time we were there, they absolutely loved lauren. I am so very lucky for such a wonderful and loving family.

Alas. I love tenting. And so it shall be.

okay so i'm trying to upload photos and it is telling me that adobe flash player is having a script error or something that is causing my computer to run slowly. then the photos that i upload have little x's on them of the red variety and so theydo not upload. are the two related?

my original post spoke of bubble tea.... here is the post without photos.

[box]I first heard of Bubble tea on here, but I was new to the estrip community so I did not voice my confusion. (what the hell is bubble tea? Bubble gum flavored tea?)
Then yesterday Wazina invited me to the City with her and Steve to have Bubble tea and do some shopping. (actually they didn't tell me they were shopping, they said 'walking around')

2 story morals here.
1. bubble tea is weird but good.
2. never shop with wazina and steven.[/box]

also saw 28 weeks later last night... not all that great...

it was as if the cameraperson was having an epilectic fit. i mean, the first one had just the right amount of fast camera pan/tilt/zoom/etcs to give you glimpses of what was going on... but this one - it was just too much... i felt cheated i guess... but then that is my videography training perhaps... i often feel cheated when watching movies...

also saw shrek 3 online.. (hehehe) and though the quality was poor, i enjoyed it immensely!
okay time for groceries.

Today I took a look at this schedule that Jeff, the other manager, made up. somehow my hours have dropped down to 30 hours and his has risen to 40. this is all, of course, due to the fact that Anthony recently tried to quit for a better cell phone company with more hours/pay/etc... he was kept and given a full 40 hour work schedule and raise and whatnot. well this is bullshit because now i'm getting hosed out of a good ten hours.
my girlfriend told me that i have to calm down. i'm calm.

anyway, it just sucks and it really makes me consider this job and these people who i work for to be a lot less grand than it used to be. not that it was ever 'grand' but now i see them as a hell of a lot more shady.

good thing i have tomorrow off. Nelson asked me to work for him tomorrow and i told him ihad things to do.

i'm sad that i'm missing yard sales. i need stuff. cheap stuff, apparently, since i'm losing money.

also - i was just doing some family genealogy research and just found my grandfather in a 1920 census. he was a fireman. he lists his parents as being born in 'england'.

England?? what happened to Ireland?? I THought I was IRISH! somehow i definetely just switched heritages... how odd. not that i embraced the irish part of me much more than drinking heavily.

i need to make a visit to buffalo soon and do some job hunting.

This is my third attempt at writing a post.
Entry number one got eaten by a power outage/storm.
Entry number two was lost in a horrible backspace/back a page incident.

here we go

we just had a really crazy 5 minute storm. dark as hell, lightning, rain like a waterfall, etc... we lost power which ate my first entry. and now its gone, sun is out, and only 5 minutes have passed!

before that a fella with a lisp came in and wanted to pay his bill. being as though we are not a corporate, the only way we can accept payments is through Precash, which charges for every payment. And its cash only. So the guy just flipped out on me and then said that I was rude. I told him that he needs to chill. He demanded that I call customer service. I told him that irregardless of what customer service tells me, I cannot do something that my system physically will not allow me to do.
Where is your manager?
I am the manager.
Where is your home office?
This is the home office.
If you are not sprint then you take that sign down now!
um. no.
What are you going to tell sprint when i bring somebody from sprint into here tomorrow?
um... the same thing that i'm telling you now.


incidentally, this guy has been in this store several times before trying to do all kinds of stuff that only a corporate office can do. So he knows that I cannot do this stuff. Also he had a lisp.

I have to say that normally i am one of the most helpful and understanding persons ever, but sometimes people are so besides themselves that I have to laugh so that I don't get pissed..

and i just heated up soup which means i'm now very busy!