this is a true story. the pronouns have been changed to protect the innocent

i love you

i am made of holiday

holiday comes in, holiday goes out. in special holiday color and with the easy creamy texture, the way only mom makes. here are the mashed potatoes, there is the mashed standing rib roast. this is the broccoli casserole and that is a bit of the old fashioned family face time. we have masturbating in my boyhood bathroom and dinner milk. if i had rings like a tree or strata like geologic rock, the people who cut me open could read my brunches and follow the holidays.

three monsterous things i would do for you

• give an unearned gift
• fart under the dinner table
• use "who" as an object

Case #31861

City of David Dept. of Child Services
December 25th, 0

Multiple complaints of suspicious activity at local establishment The Inn. Responding CoDPD officer confirmed crying from within adjunct barn. Entered barn on probable cause to discover infant male and 9 suspects:

Female, age 12-16, believed to be the mother, psychologically unstable. Describes audiovisual hallucinations and claims to have been asexually impregnated by a spirit. Recommend rape counseling as well as further diagnosis of psychotic episodes and treatment for possible chemical abuse. Currently in the care of CoD Woman's Health Clinic postnatal unit.

Male, age 25-35, claims to be the mother's husband but not the father. No identification or marriage licence on record. DNA tests scheduled. Currently being held on charges of child endangerment, child abuse, and sexual assault. He has filed for custody.

Three cloaked males, ages 45-60, claim to be "here to adore the child." Currently being held on charges of child exploitation, sex trafficking, expired visas, and first degree possession of frankincense and myrrh with intent to distribute.

Three younger males, ages 18-28, also claim to be inquiring after the child. Report to have been referred by a man in white robes wearing wings. The description has been relayed to all area precincts. The men are currently being held for questioning.

Male, age 5-7, with drum. Also said to have "gift" for the baby. Currently in the care of CoD Dept. of Child Services. Under examination for sexual abuse and drug use. Due for transfer to Longterm Intermediate Housing.

Infant male found lain in feed hay. Currently in NICU. Tetanus and rabies sequences for unsanitary exposure to animal livestock. Tests reveal blood alcohol content above 90%. Life expectancy: short.

Inn Keeper being held on charges of accessory child endangerment and unlicensed keeping of animal livestock.

a reminder

better times have many names. "tomorrow," "the day," "when my hemorrhoids go away." i'm not fucking awful right now per se.

'tis the season and that's by no means an excuse for disguised drinking in public but it's a reason. like genes. substance abuse is so stinking commercialized.

now with double active ingredients for lasting relief: alcohol free! minty scent! acts fast! he will stink like perfect when we're happy for once at last. and that's money well spent!

all the good greek gods were blind and luck strikes only to remind: fucking awful's just a state of mind.

the new adventures of post-op nancy drew and the mystery of the missing pickle

big day tomorrow, team. i need everyone looking their best.

first i have a doctor's appointment, then i am dancing at a housing works fundraiser party (via evb). if you were planning on missing that, plan again, bub. i know where you live and i can go-go all over your face AND THE FACES OF EVERYONE YOU LOVE!

now is time to exfoliate my butthole. JUST KIDDING. i am grosser than you anpissitated.

TCOBLTSM

"a warm compress of holiday cheer helps you take those sacraments like a champ!"

it's
The Church of Better Living Through Self-Medication,
bitches!!

with
ALL SALVATION ALL THE TIME
24/ETERNITY

have you sinned?
are you sinning right now?

The Church luvs sinners
and we know just where it hurts
IN THE VESTIBULE!!

PRAYERS: ANSWERED!
MORAL RELATIVISM: ESCHEWED!
ARTISTIC BOYS: MADE REGULAR!

we get the RESULTS
'cause we're the only ones with the goods on Almighty God
and that slut does whatever we say
EXCLAMATION POINT

BELIEVE AND BE CURED
JOIN TODAY
THE CHURCH OF BETTER LIVING THROUGH SELF-MEDICATION

"IN THE VESTIBULE!!"

be specific!

I want the boy the boy I want would want. I want to bodysnatch his general ass. He is general to my specific and that's what the boy I want wants. As in: generally long hair. As in: generally ripped shirt. Posture LIKE THIS. Punk rock LIKE THAT. Slide the fader, motion the band. He is our sound-boy tonight. I make the kind of money his ripped shirt (and ripped pants!) can only wildly dream about. I work out very specifically while his metamorphic metabolism alchemically churns value menu fries into tightly packed, Saran-smooth, little muscled flesh. Generally toned. Generally smooth. General eye contact and then motion the band again. He smokes. I don't. Guess who's generally getting lung cancer? I want him to want me and be seen to jealously abuse the boy I love. I bet he's straight.

love, hate, legislate!

there's context for this. if you don't know what it's about, get a fucking clue.

GENERAL QUESTION:
how does one handle these kinds of things? smile or bile?

PERSONAL ANSWER:
i spilt my bile already. i can also do without the hemorrhoids right now. i am going to smile because my life is full of beauty. i share my beautiful life with beautiful boys and maybe one day i'll fall in love with one of those beautiful boys and maybe he and i will have a big party with all of our friends and family to celebrate our love and our lives and everyone will dress up and eat cake and abuse champaign and then somebody with vested powers will read a nice speech and then ask us some questions and then we'll kiss and get a piece of paper and then we won't use condoms anymore. i plan to live the rest of my beautiful life in the future. the future, where health care costs grow slower than GDP. the future, where capital letters are reserved for sarcasm. the future, where everybody can marry the person they love. i am smiling.

PS PSA:
if you decide to go bile, please remember to be clever!

i want us to run away and get hitched in a foreign jurisdiction, but fuck! we just CAN'T ELOPE!

OH READER, you old coot. how the hell are you? i'm always getting these "feelings" but this time i really feel it. like we're like this, you and me. you maybe can't see; i'm twisting two fingers together. yeah, i feel like we're close. private. biblical. i'm just kidding, SILLY!

or am i?

enough of riffraff; let's get down to business. the serious stuff.

over here is me, symbolized by this cantaloupe. now cantaloupes don't have noses, but i do. and i want to talk briefly about mine.

richard feynman wrote brilliantly about smell. summarily, people smell better than we pretend we do. "smell better" i mean have a stronger facility for olfaction, not what you thought i meant. i feel (there i go again!) like we only really exercise our sniffer when we're COOKING or having SEX. the rest of the time, smell is bad. an intrusion. a violation. "you smell" is an critique instead of a tautology.

smell has to be my favorite sense. if i were given to favoritism. it combines the unelectiveness of sound with the proximity of touch. and it's everything wonderful about taste.

smell isn't about understanding, the way the fancier senses are ("look, ..." "listen, ..." "do you feel me?"). smell is about relationship. it establishes identity and situation. transient and ambient, odor precedes and lingers. it is a product of our bodies; not our minds.

that's my third semicolon which means it's time to call it quits. i have more to say but it all means so much and i'm tired. also there is a very real risk of further semicolons and i'm seriously NOT IN THE MOOD FOR THAT SHIT right now.

smell somebody. now. do it because i told you. my blog is depressingly odorless, but this post ends with a whiff of a woman. or a man. take your pick and stick your shnoz at the nearest body. and remember it! because it's about memory too.

i've lost the will to post

NOW YOU TRY!
What Would Scott Say?

Write a post for Scott's blog. Think about voice and content. If you were Scott, what would you blog about today? Try to be both profound and funny.

Here are some keywords to get you started:

• Brunch
• Boner
• Creative Cop-out
• NOW YOU TRY!
  What Comes Next?
  
  Complete this list with an apropos and witty keyword. Consider using a thesaurus or non-sequitur.

Parents: Write a comment for your student's post. Be sure to highlight and correct any spelling or grammatical errors.

prolapse

are you allowed to put anything in front of the words "industrial complex" and be automatically right? WAKE UP, AMERICA!

• Circus Industrial Complex
• Jumping-On-The-Bed Industrial Complex
• Hemorrhoid Industrial Complex

if you're obsessively following everything i do and say on Internet (Creepers Industrial Complex), you will have noticed a recent up-tick in my mention of hemorrhoids (up from "never"). i've got 'em. mild. not painful. one is prolapsed.

why am i telling you this? because i am a genius brilliant medical detective like House! Ego Industrial Complex. when you're me and you get hemorrhoids, the first question is, "what the fuck is going on!" the second question is, "why the fuck is that going on!"

i'm going to try to not be too crude in this post because there could be children who have somehow learned to read and open doors that are looking at this. let it suffice to say that hemorrhoids cramp my style.

so i was worry worry worry worry. the usual causes include: too much sitting, dehydration, lack of fiber, pregnancy, being really old, and "intimate reception." i am virile and young and if any of the above were to blame, it would mean that i am naturally given to such things. my dickensian character flaw: mr. thomas and his 'rhoids.

and then i knowed! i knowed what caused 'em! my stalker readers will again perhaps remember a tweet from last month: "My asshole has had ABOUT ENOUGH of this office toilet paper." friends, you don't even know. i had three straight weeks with papyrus-rash inside my ass. i am very thorough when it comes to hygiene and i just couldn't leave things be, despite the VICIOUS FRICTION COEFFICIENT. blood and all. it hurt to walk, i kid you not.

moment of realization came when i was tenderly cleaning myself last night and noticed that the prolapsed bugger is RIGHT WHERE the wiper meets the wipee. evidence #2: they showed up the week after i got back from boston. Logic Industrial Complex!

i am absolved of worry. some prep h for a week and all should be well in the land of my ass. now whom do i see in human resources about this?

Homo Gymnos

Loudest Guy At The Gym
Given to moans, sailor talk, barnyard sounds, and calling things "baby." May spontaneously clap.
Deals: 5 awkwardness
Fears: Techno

The Old Bird
Brings Depression-era gumption to a physiotherapy routine apropos of her last plastic joint. With sole avail of the half-pound weights, The Old Bird (and Checkers Meyerhold, the seeing-eye collie) are inspirational supernumeraries in anyone's workout.
Deals: 2 slowplay
Fears: Osteoporosis
Crit to summon Checkers Meyerhold

Sandals
Bucking gym dress code in Velcro-clad socks, this workout fashion maverick models selections from the Three Wolf Moon collection in timeless double-ex-el. Optionally sports a fanny pack + The Sony Walkman.
Deals: Unknown
Fears: Also unknown

Mr. Huge
The kind of huge that belongs on a rhinoceros, Mr. Huge is not anatomically able to perform the YMCA dance and has internal testes. Bystanders frequently steal lateral looks in hopes he will "pop any minute."
Deals: 290 lbs
Fears: Sudden drops in blood pressure

The Couple
The number-two cause of puking at the gym, after StairMaster but before bulimia.
Deals: 5 PDA
Fears: Wondering eyes

The Old Couple
In contrast to The Couple, The Old Couple is CUTER THAN FUCKING PUPPIES!
Deals: 3 PDAOPA (Public Displays of Adorable Old-People Affection)
Fears: Death

Powertool Kleptocunt
Dykebitch can, will, and should fuck u proper.
Deals: Larceny
Fears: Unicorn tears

Skinny Bitch
Wields Ponytail of Seriousness, because fun is too many calories.
Deals: Sudden drops in blood pressure
Fears: Bagel

recent events

there's context for this. if you don't know what it's about, search for jorge steven lopez mercado.

i've been struggling to understand this. "this" the crime, i mean. "this" the event of what happened and why it happened and "this" the world where such happenings do.

it makes me literally sick when i think about it. i get the urge to retch. and then i get scared because i'm not able to understand. it's, um, confusing. and unpleasant. blah blah blah.

i volunteered at the vigil last night. the vigil was beautiful and moving. and draining. and i still don't understand. but i am reminded of something forgotten at one's own peril: we are strong.

EXHIBIT A OF HUMAN STRENGTH:

Muttering Retreats

I am dragging out these ratty old fantasies in a desperate attempt to get some sleep. I've tried writing, I've tried masturbating, I've tried deep breathing, and now I'm wrapping myself up in what are certainly unhealthy, old, familiar thoughts starring characters from my personal life in highly creative situations of impossible intimacy.

I used to craft quite elaborate fictions concerning my objects - don't let's be coy; object - of desire. I specialized in specificity, as I always have. Rehearsal was an integral part of this ritual. Once initially improvised, a scene underwent nightly private drafts, refinements and performances. "From the top!" again and again until I couldn't keep my fantasy eyes open anymore and I succumbed to better dreams.

There is a story (one which takes place in the real world) about how Scott lost all of his fantasies. It is for another time, though. Now, all that remains of these empassioned productions are the manuscripts. Dusty with niglect, they come to mind on a familiarly sleepless night. With a new cast, we could ride a revival all the way to Dreamland!

Or I could masturbate again.

titles r trouble

i wish theez shitty little drizzle drops were snowflakes collecting on my coat shoulders and eyelashes, making me the image of something to kiss. instead, they remain rain. fuck you, meteorology. fuck you, causality. i am going to kiss anyway!

Things I Fucking Love, Vol. 12

Whole Foods' Moroccan Turkey Salad. I really hope the profanity effectively communicates just how much I fucking love that shit.

POWER TOOL KLEPTO CUNT

POWERTOOL KLEPTOCUNT

is coming

for all your

BATTERY POWERED HAMMERS

and

PORTABLE ROTARY SANDERS

and

HAND-HELD HOT CAULK GUNS

you can hide

or disguise

these and other

POWERTOOL ITEMS

but the

KLEPTOCUNT

will

Locate

And

Steal

your personal powertool property

MOUNTING

SCREWING

BRACING

NAILING

HOISTING

DRILLING

all must be done with

MAN-POWER

and the old-fashioned

ELBOW GREASE

part

CUNT

part

BITCH

part

GODDESS OF REDEMPTIVE HOME IMPROVEMENT

POWERTOOL KLEPTOCUNT

cares nothing for your

SPECIFIC ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCE

nor your

NANCYBOY EXCUSES

KLEPTOCUNT

will have only

your

ELECTRIC JIGSAW

your

PNEUMATIC NAIL GUN

your

LASER STUD FINDER

and

SIMILAR SUCH DEVICES

a date to either side, OR, being clever with my words look how fucking clever i am

all of my dates seem to be of the up variety. if blog continues in this direction, we are very soon going to encounter my perennial Fear of Heights.

i have to poop so this is going to be a quickie. boston is over, my friend alex is in love, and i am looking for someone with whom to repopulate the world after our relationship causes the apocalypse.

call you mother.

own-age

I really want to look at you for a while. My day - side note: I always find the prevelance of possesives in English so interesting: "my day," as if the day belonged to me. "myself" is the funniest. Like "self" were this possesion; this thing that I owned. Kind of auto-objectifying if you ask me. Maybe it says something about our culture if we talk about everything in terms of ownership.

Center note: I just want to look at you. I've got a specific "you" in mind but you can pretend it's really you. Maybe it is. My day - side note again: what if each day really did belong to someone. Every day, one person would get to own that day. They (whoever they are) would show up at the one-bedroom shack of some family-man goat farmer in Abject Poverty and say, "the day is yours!" And that would be it. But it would be real. Official, I mean. Under property law. We can own land, so why not days? Space and time the same thing you know.

Regular note: My day was the kind of day I don't want to talk about. The kind of day that makes me want to swear off talking all together (which i guess would be kind of hipocritical). All I want to do is look at you. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to make your funny faces. You don't have to look back. The day-people haven't payed me any visits and the warranty on my self is up. Space-time is running out and all I want is to see you with my own eyes.

31

Morning passes for afternoon
And as the moon becomes a haze we wake
From strange sides of the bed.
The world feels brighter from below
And all of white is orange instead.
From our skin in our cloths we can't shake
The feeling more will happen; soon.

Crunchy leaves bunched in piles
Alite in flight of chase of minivans
Familiar miles down the streets.
Choruses of four-foot Deaths
Murder peace with four-foot breaths
Demanding handy candy treats
(Lest The Damned have other plans)
As each coy pumpkin squats and smiles.

Bigger figures mingle,
Fingers closed on glasses or to asses curled
And the evening passes for another world
Where no one is single.

And you and I meet in disguise.
At least, it could be you. And me.
Tomorrow we will pay the price
If the sun's alive
And we survive
But right now, this is very nice.
I take you where no one can see
But all the trees are full of eyes.

Orange in night light from the moon
We know that more will happen; soon.

'spection

i had this nightmare where i was slightly less in shape than i actually am and woke up in a body-image PANIC! the truth of the matter is, i'm rather in love with myself. i love my body, my face, my cock. i'm just not obnoxious about it. because self-obsession is unattractive.

on the nature/nurture spectrum, i feel like i'm off on a third axis: self-construction. my genes are the tools for building the person i want to be. i got lucky with genes. and parents. i guess those are the same thing, actually. heritage. but the past is just a bunch of ingredients for the future.

so i get to make myself into who i want to be. and i really like that person.

"I select a man and follow him into the adjoining glory hole." - Matt Seigel

blog is better than real. IT'S FOREVER!

holy fucking shitballs. you heard right. Shit. Balls. that's where we are right now.

shit is intense. BUGHOUSE. inside-out roller-coaster feeling. and there is fucking borrito bits stuck in my teeth. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

it's saturday night, we're in the office freaking our precious little hearts out, and pervy Old Man Time is face-fucking all our inner children. here are the things (barely) keeping me sane right now:

• scissor sisters
  
• scooter racing
  
• my new s2vs jacket. and s2vs is having a fucking clearance sale that i am fucking missing because i am here in fucking bastan. fucking.
• i love my straight-people friends but two weeks is a lot of hetero to handle for me these days
  
• brian kenny is a god damn fox
• this list has become just random shit i'm thinking

PENIS PROSPERITY!

status update

a quick checkup. i am in boston for two weeks on business. if the missing me becomes too much, just remember that i'm not really as awesome and funny and gorgeous as you think i am. which we both know is not true but i have faith in your imagination.

Things I Fucking Love, Vol. 11

again, more of a person, but gail collins.

the tooth, dear duke, THE TOOTH!

i have two sentimental artifacts.

let me start this post again.

i HAD two sentimental artifacts. important things which are important to me for purely personal reasons. one of them - my tooth necklace, or "necktooth" - is gone. lost forever. this is a singular loss of faith for me.

not only was it a) precious to me, and b) muthufuckin' badass, but it was also c) completely irreplaceable. that is, i am completely unwilling to replace it. this was my tooth, bythewayifyoudidn'tknow. it came out of my head. like athena.

if you never enjoyed the rare (and now highly collectible) pleasure of knowing my necktooth, then i will paint for you a picture made out of words:

mithing you

erupted maxillary molar,
meet your surgical cajoler.
with my gums a tender rouge
you are, they tell me, "fucking huge."

tooth libre: how well you'd make
a biohazardous keepsake.
mother comes from crafty kin
and teeth, she says, are always in.

pearly white and free of tartar,
what a conversation starter!
"the tooth? why yes, it came from me.
"i brush and floss it twice daily."

nestled in my sternal nook
tooth ignores that nasty look.
it is wise beyond disgrace
this wizened grin beneath my face

but now my neck feels naked. raw.
fate has torn us both apart.
i have a hole inside my jaw
and another in my heart.

hold your applause, please

Tweak!

i sometimes make (usually) small changes to posts after i blog them and i don't leave notes about it. i just wanted you to know that about me. in case you thought i wasn't the kind of person who did that kind of thing. i am.

Stroke!

sitting around and picking my buggers and waiting for genius to strike. a stroke of genius would be swell about now. an inspirational embolism straight to my constipated creativity. am i not eating enough deep fried brie? am i not poking far enough up my nose? what's the deal? where's my stroke?

can you help stroke me?

try better

so adam and i were plotting operation ikea and i said that the store was in red hook and adam said that sounded "seedy" and i corrected him that it sounded "swedey"

omFUCKINGg i am hilarious!

• today we go to ikea
• tomorrow i go see starfucker at santos party house. THIS IS MY EXCITED FACE!
• and THEN on THURSDAY, i go-go dance at the evb fall party. which, happy day, is also the after party for slava mogutin's opening at envoy. slava is, by the by, one of my all-time favorite photographers. THIS IS MY EVEN MORE EXCITED FACE!
  

life is the slow alchemy of time: changing everything to memories.

a threat to the traditional definition of infidelity

fun. it's what i do. it's my middle name. scott "fun" thomas. why my parents chose to include the quotation marks is a bit of a mystery. a cruel mystery, really; people at the dmv usually seem like they're making fun of me. making "fun," that is. haha, get it?

some things fun and i have recently done:

• went to the new planetarium show
• went to lauren & pat's shows
• went to richert's show
• went to julia's show
• went to jeffery and cole's show

and all of that is in addition to the normal fun things i do, like drink myself sideways, disrobe on the dance floor, and go home with what can only be called "people."

if you know of something "fun" to do, please alert me! my social calendar is packed, but there are plenty of friends i have been meaning to blow off. and of course, we are fast approaching the annual holocaust of fun that is HALLOWEEN! i need to get a costume and a life insurance policy.

repetition prediction repetition prediction repetition

.

you, my lovely little world, are my kosher oyster and i am a giant walking point of view. old people and young people and dead people and people i wish were dead and sexy people (such as myself) and people i wish were sexy and dead sexy people and sexy dead people and insensitive people and sensitive assholes and lovely little daddy-issue faggots: i view you all from the comfort of my point. ants crawling out of a butt-hole in the ground. that's you, world. king of the hill. queen of the hole. that's me. i built this body out of food so you could spill yourself on my ass like a pierced poached egg. drink me. eat me. i make you big and i make you small. do whatever you want with my legs just don't fucking apologize. face-down on the counter-top, this is my point of view. this is my point.

Something Wicked

Today we have another of my fictitious newspaper columns.

In The Knew
Observations for the young and the young at heart
by S.T. Peterson

"Something Wicked"

Summer surrenders from our scenic Christian hemisphere like so many mourning goddesses. Grills gasp their final hot-dog-scented breath, pools change their sparkling surfaces to placid plastic and our thoughts turn to the year's most momentous occasion. That annual apex of cultural import. That holiest of holidays. The one, the only, the impending: Halloween!

Soon, October's numinous mystique will gather like dead leaves to an artificially sweetened climax of libidinous masque. Costume, confection, and living flesh will sate our midnight appetite as apples bob around in vodka and doormats cackle. Of course, Mr. Kristol, there are no benefits without costs. Sacrifices must be made to Goth Dionysus; virgins, brain cells, that formerly charming Ikea rug. And in return, for one night only, we are pardoned from the terminal sentence everyone serves: identity.

Which brings us to a subject most dire. Two mere months to go and where is your costume?! Time quietly conspires to make you his fool, hastily clad in rental shop dregs or recycled regalia or T-shirt irony. The party pariah. The puke-doused hobo prone on five subway seats. An embarrassment! With dignity on the line you must be original. Creative. A Da Vinci of hairspray and fake blood. Failures of imagination or craft bespeak either an antisocial apathy or meaningfully inferior genes. The sort none want in their pool. Lucky for you, old S.T. is here with this newspaper column!

Good Costume Ideas:

• Ghost
• Michael Jackson
• An evil version of yourself (w/ goatee)
• Healthcare reform (don't show up to the party)
• The crazy puke-doused hobo
• The sexy Garrison Keillor

Remember, the goal of Halloween is simple: get dressed up, get fucked up, and get fucked. It is never too early to plan ahead. In fact, take a moment right now and think about what you'd like to be. Please share your ideas with stpeterson@nybanner.com. I will plagiarize the best submissions for various of my social appearances all October long.

When the phantoms are mortal once more, counting their hickeys in the November dawn, and the alter egos have changed back into absurd clothing, reflect a spell on the meaning of your existence. I believe you will find it in your camera, patiently awaiting upload to Facebook.

it's not personal, it's blog

hewo fwend

i'm always blogging about myself. why don't we blog about you for a little bit. what's new? how is whatsherface? are the two of you still not speaking? that's terrible. i know how much those kidneys meant to you. it's like grandpappy used to say whenever we caught him pooping in the crib: "i'm a big boy!" what i mean is, you need to rise above. and accept jesus christ.

ok, that was a good blog. let's do it again some time.

ever,
myself

in life, as in dance, one should be correct, erect, and smiling

i love indefinite you

so i'm working. right now, actually (i'm waiting for things to compile). it's unbefuckinglievably awesome and interesting but i am not going to tell you anything about it. because now we have an excuse, you and i, to talk more and spend more time together and be better (please circle all that apply):

• friends
• enemies
• lovers
  
• relatives
• other (please explain)

all's fair in love and terrorism

untitled

sunset spills across the skyline like an overturned abortion; the leftover mess of today's accident. in sunglasses suitable for welding, i appear three kilofags fabulouser than real life. i look both ways after crossing the street and stare into the loving face of my reflection. swiveling my jawline downtown and my ass up, i advance upon the night, eager for the next accident.

stupid smiles

stupid smiles are all i flash when my official face is on the line. trying so hard to look like myself, the official card gives my official name by my officialy stupid pair of partially parted lips. cheese, motherfuckers!

stupid jokes are all i crack when i want people i want to want me back. buh dum bum, motherfuckers!

stupid hair is all i wear when stupid hair matters.

stupid shit is all i worry over with an air-mattress under me at 3 in the morning and nowhere to jack off.

the moral of the poem, my dear motherfuckers, is to keep your mouth shut. and wear a hat.

simple facts

• sushi lounge on ave a does mediocre sushi at an incredible price
• the iphone voice control sucks
• google voice search rocks
• twitterific is great, but it needs text selection and a better search interface
• jay brannon rocks my world in ways i didn't know it could be rocked
• i start work on monday
  

tomorrow redux

flight was canceled. new plan:

• get juiced
• go from there

I'm happy that you're alive, but right now I need you to shut the fuck up and get out of my way.

tomorrow

• visiting ben in san diego.
• we'll see...

"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everyone else. And this is a feeling I have always cultivated."

today

• a lucid dream. it was wild. ask me about it.
• lunch with adam (hummus).
• laundry and manscaping.
  
• dinner with alex and cory.

The education system is just applied literacy.

yesterday

• shopping with alex. my pants are bright. my underwear is brighter.
• shortbus party. nine people, two kinds of brie!
• poetry reading.

Labia Menorah

mess is lore

• brunch
• moon
• kittens
• the great escape

also

• i love my iphone. absolutely love it.

"Tea without milk is so uncivilized."

I WAS going to tweet this, but I thought I'd throw the blog a bone

finished my book yesterday - uncle tom's cabin - and now i'm going to start a new one in the sun. if my credit cards don't arrive today, i will make a pouty face and say a bad word.

Wednesday

• just had sushi with adam. it was thiiiiiiiiiiiis good.
• our new new roommate is here. his name is eric. he's really cute. hey eric. that's right. i said you're really cute.
• i am waiting for my credit cards to arrive in the mail so i can buy an iphone. have you ever read anthem by ayn rand? i feel like it exactly describes my life, except that in the end, i discover "iphone."
• went thrift store shopping today. i am just going to start doing that instead of laundry from now on.

consistency is the new truth

Summer In The Year Of Our Lord, Two Thousand And Nine

The season claiming to be "summer" begins to make its hobbled exit from a decidedly low-key performance. We seem to have got the understudy this year. Bashful meteorology aside, this summer has been, to quote Richard III, "batshit fucking insane."

I returned in March with no job, no home, no money. But I returned. To readers who share my actor's vocabulary, this was the second of my "super objectives." (The first took me away.) Unemployment was a 4 1/2 month exercise in patience, panic, and disappointment. The demure solstice made an overcast backdrop for my spend-nothing/do-nothing prison of poverty. New York is not cheap, you know.

But now the leaves turn. Now I have a job. A really good job. And I am so happy. And summer slowly changes to my favorite season: fall. I loose my youth, but I gain my life. I get to spend paychecks on Williams Sonoma cookwear and drugs.

"I've been thinking everything I ever thought." - Alex

i have a job

a career really. i am a senior software engineer. i am happy. i just opened a bank account. i will get a cell phone. i am going to be a real boy! again! maybe things will work out in this hemisphere.

UPDATE!

I AM STILL ALIVE!

And also...

I AM WELL!

What else?

I JUST BAKED DEEEELIIIIICIOUSSSSSSSS BANANA BREAD!!!

And what, pray tell, was the banana bread baking theme song?

REVEREND HORTON HEAT, SILLY!

Anything else?

YES!

What?

GTA IV IS FUUUUUUNNNNNN!!!!

Four exclamation points seems excessive.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's enough.

YOU'RE ENOUGH

What does that even mean?

!!!!!!

OK, I'm going away now.

I WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AHAHAHAHHAHA

weeks end

• spent the weekend in boston with aaron
• we worked
• and ate incredibly well
• including two consecutive feast-grade bar-b-cues at guy's
• and i got to finally meet guy
• and hang with aaron and miguel and david and brad and jeffrey and anthony
• and then ben won his thing
• and we drove back
• and ben leaves tomorrow

"You can have these girls with no tits, just lop off what little they have and then turn them into a cute boy. It’s not hard to do." - Hernan Bas

My Implements Of Poetry

1)

An indignant fucking disdain for everything including you
know who
which is just a mechanism
for the defense of the precious jewel of my virginity- I MEAN EGO!

2)

A
vicious,
dripping,
ripping,
snarling,
snapping my muzzle with quick and deadly chomps,
and downright unchristian
hatred of somebody's stinking gutty wuts,
and a vocabulary

3)

People who do nice things for me

4)

Desire
the kind you don't want
to think or talk or write about anymore
than the gods of art require
the kind involving travel
at very high cost
the kind that doesn't really make any fucking sense
whatsoever
at all
and never did
the kind that dare not speak its
motherfucking name
'cause if it does you're gonna
FUCK BITCHES UP
and the indefinite "you" here is obviously me

5)

People I love

6)

Myself

7)

A silly little itch to get shit out
a thought or
sound or
pair of eyes
so that you think and say and want
the same silly little shit
and the indefinite "you" here is really you

8)

A different version of myself

9)

NEIN!

10)

Happy fuzzy bunnies and squirrels that cum candy cane rainbows of delicious joy all over my smiling face are you fucking kidding me? no you fucking cunt,
I am fucking scared and
horny and
mad and
really sad and
sometimes optimistic and
usually clever but
mostly narcissistic and
never wrong
never

faster than a speeding bullet point

• i am going to quickly fill you in on my life. if i go too fast, you can always read slower.
• in a surprise turn of events, the super job offer i had was withdrawn. it was an awful situation. i feel terrible about it. i am currently accepting pity - verbal, non-verbal, and edible - so please give generously.
• in consequence of which, i have NOT been going out or having fun or making friends or getting laid.
• instead, i sit around my castle in mourning attire, awaiting the handsome youth of the duke's dispatch to educate me on the radiance of my beauty, and the cruelty my reclusion does the world.
• ben is moving to san diego on the 21st. this also makes me a sad panda.
• i briefly entertained the notion of joining him for a few months and living large in the ca sun.
• i ruled against it in the interest of the job hunt. i want a job in new york, so that's what i'm focusing on.
• i've already been contact by six companies and i have a phone interview in about five minutes.
• we have a new roommie: jessica. i like her.
• i get up late, i stay up late, i work, i look for work. i don't eat as well as i should. i (still) don't have a gym. i run sometimes. yeah.
  

i don't want to talk about it

until one of my immediate family members is brutally butchered to death on christmas morning, this is probably the single worst day of my life. i don't see what i did wrong, but i clearly fucked up my entire future. for now, at least. i'm not ready to kill myself, but i'm about ready to lock myself in the bathroom and sit in the tub until my wrinkles are permanent.

4am

everybody passes out
and i'm about
to put a chopstick
through my eye
until sleep finds
my restful
cyclops
corpse.

seriously.

happy 4th!

Princess Bob

lovely and fair,
the princess bob sits
by the window
of the tower
in the castle
and i stare.

princess mine
radiates
golden glances
on the fields
on the town
on the people all around me and
sometimes so very near
that i can feel his gaze divine.

princess inaccessible,
come down!
i am saving all my happiness
for when we spend
our summer smiles
picking peaches
on our horses,
gator-baiting in your moat,
and after twilight
we might even kiss!
or do other things
which are guessable.

desired,
you sit in the sky
alone with your dresses
and people and fields and fathers ignore you
but i adore you!
i sit with you all night
and don't get tired.

check out that ass!

my fine, fine ass heads off the pics from the evb party casting couch. i was defiantly the couch slut and most of the omitted "blowjobs, handjobs and cockshots hard and soft" probably involved me. thanks to the nice collective for the great getup.

like you like me

you've got
your life
i've got
mine

we've got
dinner,
talk and
wine

i like
you like
me just
fine

and then...

when i'm
a bad
memor
y

and you
are a
past-tense
"he"

we'll know
i loved
you loved
me

but we'll
blame it
on the
wine

thomas

my father's father was born of the thomas stock before his adoption by the petersons. he took "thomas" as his first name in commemoration of that heritage. all of his male progeny (six total - two sons, four grandsons) bear the "thomas" namesake in one fashion or another (five middles, one first).

with all due respect to another gentleman, i have finally decided to implement a plan hatched by my esteemed associates and me during college: nomenclatural coup d'état. in the interests of disambiguation and aesthetics, i am unofficially changing my name to Scott Thomas. please update your records.

thursday

i am gogo dancing tonight at the east village boys party @ the hose (225 ave b, btwn 13/14) from 10pm on.

wednesday

all-day interview at google. six interviewers, two whiteboard marker deaths, lunch and a t-shirt.

tuesday

i got a job offer from a new york trading firm. with bonuses, i could be making six figures.

pills

• age 8: ritalin
• age 9: dexedrine
• age 10: combination risperdal & anafranil
• age 11: combination zoloft & wellbutrin
• age 12: off meds

thanks to my dad for digging up these records.

Sexyism

The 10 Commandments of Youth
1-10) Get Laid

moo

it's almost 3am tuesday. i've been talking a lot today. saying a lot about my family. and myself. also talking to some of my family. and myself. i feel really weird. right now. yesterday too. i feel like if i were paying attention, i would feel really weird all the time.

normalcy is just another kind of laziness.

Emphasis Quotes "Are" Fun!

reading in cold blood its good so far

new roommate is moving in val from france

sometimes realism seems impossible to me

and punctuation makes me want to throw up

Breakup Letter

Dear Humanity,

I have finally had enough of your shit. You pathologically make fool of yourself at the slightest opportunity and I am all out of excuses. You clearly have a tremendous amount of potential, so it pains me all the more that you demonstrate a masochistic compulsion to embarrass me with your juvenile antics. Deliberately or otherwise, these lesser demons have shouted down one too many better angles for my taste.

Your dangerously immature and reckless patterns of behavior are outdone only by their willfully ignorant and laughably absurd motives. The nonsense which passes for reason in your halls of power puts any other bullshit to shame. How I wish you would break character to jocularly inform me of the hidden cameras. PUNKED! you would yell, and I would weep cathartic tears of relief. Instead I am weeping tears of shame for this fantastic joke with no punchline.

Your opportunities are numbered. I urge you to seize upon those as yet un-squandered with the talent and zeal of which I know you are capable. Your potential is the standard by which you are judged. The high achievements of the species are of a quality supreme. Your consistent and repeated failure of this quality betrays the essential tension of humanity: that between consciousness and instinct. This tension must be addressed if humanity is to ascend. You must become a moral and reasonable civilization of moral and reasonable individuals. You are as yet awkwardly poised between that goal and a tribe of big-headed shit-sniffing primates. Let me know when you evolve. In the meantime, I'm going to sit over here in the corner making snide remarks and crying myself to sleep.

Best of luck,

- Your Future

What is the sound of one hand blogging?

• I had a job interview today at another trading firm, this time in NY.
• I finished my book. It was Catcher in the Rye if you didn't know.
  
• Anthony made me delicious meatballs for dinner.
• Unit tests are still the best thing since pre-sliced bread.
• The CA supreme court made me a sad gay panda.
• My day looks more impressive in list-form.

Marriage is for children.

Three Musketeers

Excerpts from our Craig's List ad, courtesy of Ben:

ADAM
Adam is reserved yet adventurous, and though his batteries require alone time to recharge, he is completely sociable. He lacks the voracious wit of Ben and Scott, yet his keen social awareness, general desire to keep everyone happy, and zen-like gravitation towards flexibility when it comes to the little decisions (as opposed to childish warlording), make him a benefit to any social setting 100% of the time.

Adam is an actuarial consultant for Towers Perrin, meaning he puts his perfect-test-score-brain to use for The Man, 9-to-5-style. He’s also responsible for the giant flat screen plasma wall TV and the sick black leather couch.

momma-dAdam (so called because of his bread-winning AND expert house-wifery) puts his incredible drive towards more interesting stuff as well. He can break the sound barrier with a bull-whip, hypnotize you, and although our kitchen occasionally turns into his personal brewery for small periods of time, we know you’ll enjoy drinking all the beer that he produces (which can go toe-to-toe with your favorite micro-brews).

BEN
Ben is somewhat in a period of transition, and results of personality alteration experiments he’s conducting with Scott are still being processed. Typically though, he’s very outgoing, a bit goofy, and has a smidgeon of (only quasi-serious) arrogance that he gets away with because of his uncanny charisma, social finesse, and adorable self-awareness. If occasionally he’s behaving oddly or ineffectively or professing alternative opinions, it’s probably because he feels the need to make statements about the poor value system of humanity at large, unless it’s a rare instance when he is being different just for the sake of it.

Ben’s insight into the human condition and ability to reason analytically are unparalleled. He’s also overall the best gamer in the house, and covers a good chunk of his frugal lifestyle with money he brings home from miniatures events. The rest of it comes in from temp work and the dregs of his trust fund, which hopefully won’t bleed to death before his web-based T-Shirt company gets off the ground. He would love to spend all of his free time acting, writing, and gaming.

SCOTT
Scott is very extroverted and generally the bubbliest of the three, though his capacity to shut out the world around him and sit amidst raucous socialization coding an innovative masterpiece for well-known web millionaires is remarkable. Scott enjoys intelligent discourse perhaps even more than Ben and Adam, and he has quite a wealth of knowledge, as well as an impressive though unnecessarily large vocabulary.

Scott thinks of life as an opportunity for experience. This intellectual viewpoint shows on his sleeve as he tries to get Ben and Adam to go to anything and everything there is to do in the city on an almost daily basis. He’s also easily excited by ideas that are so crazy they just might work, and he’s often hatching some sort of scheme with Ben. He’s also occasionally a frantically disorganized and neurotic mess.

Ultimately, Scott has a youthful and full social presence, and his adorable smile and cuddly nature are enough to win anyone and everyone.

Suitable For Framing

We have some new art hanging in our apartment:

Imagination Playground
Wood sign
Stolen from Imagination Playground in Brooklyn

212-443-9999
Paper posters
Stolen from New York University

giraffe
Colored pencil and glitter on paper
Bought at a garage sale

VHS Incredible
Photograph of a CRT monitor, with sticker
Found on the street in Brooklyn

True Love
Oil on canvas
Bought at a pawn shop

Stay Awake Or Else

What fascinating intrigues of night and day detain me in this reality of space and time and work and words and serious things that seem absurd. It's bedtime. Again. Instead I'm... awake. Till 10. Till 12. 1, 2, 3, 4. There are more sheep than people in New Zealand. Force is mass times acceleration. The mortal coil can kiss my ass. I'm ripe. I'm due. Sleep, where are you? It's late. And I hate lying here like a fool of a fetus examining my eyelids. I have better things to not be doing. I think all my favorite thoughts again for the third time until everything is watermelons and capture the pig and damn ok here we go SNORRRRRRRR!!!

The Times

I am quoted in a New York Times article on Circle Rules Football, of which I partook for the first time last Sunday. I had such fascinating things to say as, "It’s about having fun." Better still, the link on my name yields 8 pages of articles on the convicted murderer. My date is also visible in the header photo, looking nearly shirtless and totally fearless.

I had my job interview today in Chicago. There was a slight snafu in the not-missing-my-flight department but I caught a later plane and proceeded to have a very long, largely enjoyable interview process. I unfortunately was not able to meet up with Cora. I will think about her while while masturbating all next week to make it up.

I am re-reading my favorite book right now. It is as good as ever. If you're curious what it is, why don't you ask me? It's been too long since we caught up*.

Well my chick peas, that's all for now. Remember that I love you just the way I pretend you are!

* NOTE to my posthumous readers for whom that sentiment is potentially upsetting: Sorry.

Thursday, May 14th

• Lost my phone last night playing Midnight Capture the Flag in Central Park.
• Retrieved my phone this morning, cutesy of a grounds keeper.
• Ben and I had our collective BEST IDEA EVER. You will be able to read all about it in our forthcoming memoirs: Our Best Idea Ever And How It Made Us Both FILTHY SEXY RICH!!!
• I fly to Chicago early tomorrow for a job interview. Cora is having a Friday BBQ but unfortunately I won't have any leisure time: I fly back at the end of the day.

I am reminded all the time how glad I am to live in New York.

MAJUSCULE MANIFESTO!

i am done with capital letters. any semantic value they purport to have is a fucking joke, they steal valuable space from classroom walls and the unicode spec, and their required pinky-finger gymnastics are a waste of precious keyboard calories. they are an entirely arbitrary complication of an already criminally arbitrary language and their conspicuous lack of ascenders and descenders makes them frankly hideous. caps are dead to me.

Star Trek

I could try to tell you what I thought of Star Trek, but I would probably cum all over your face.

A Plausible Post

Alex brought over this huge bag of pita chips on which I have slowly been munching. They will be my end. Alex was the bad guy on this week's Law and Order: SVU. We had a viewing party and it was really fun. Michael and I had a really great talk last night. Yeah... what else. I just remembered this dream I had - it was kind of weird. OK, that's all for now. Bye.

As grampa always used to say, you can only fiddle so many kiddies before sombody looses an eye.

On Audience

This blog is many things: a journal, a biography, a sounding board, an archive. Above all, it is a means of self-expression. The things I choose to express are sometimes personal, sometimes profane, sometimes interesting and sometimes indelicate. The proliferation of information in this Internet Age makes my blog transparent to more of the people in my life-to-date and my life-to-come.

Which raises the question of audience. I do not write this blog for my friends or my family or my colleagues, though I know they all read it. I write this blog for myself. It is a reflection of what I think, how I feel and who I am at the time of writing. I neither appologize nor compromise for my self-expression. If you are uninterested in learning more about me than you care to know, I suggest you take your eyeballs someblog else. And that's all I have to say about that.

You can live in New York, or live in denial.

Wittyism

The 10 Commandments of Comedy
1-10) Be Funny

Friday

Going to the aquarium later. Taking a shower in a bit. Reading Internet right now.

"New York is always full of fresh young things, so it’s always really sexy, but I’m very grateful that I lived through a time when I didn’t have to wear a condom. That was pretty special." - Stephen Petronio

Wed 29 April 2009

Ben's car got towed yesterday. And again today. Yeah.

Gold

Cower and weep: I am 23.

I make an annual effort around this time of year to express anticipation for my impending Golden Birthday (in hopes that my friends will get the hint). Impending no longer: it is April 23rd. 5:12 AM and no surprise party yet...

I'm actually spending this birthday in a car for 11 hours. Driving to Charlotte. Fun times.

Stace, Tiff and I had dinner with Jimmy. He lives right next door to me. I will pay him many more visits.

More from the Veil Of Decrepitude as it happens...

"Eyebrow" is redundant. Unless we invent a new kind of brow. Perhaps tits can become "abdomen brows."

Yesterday

Yesterday was 78F and gorgeous.

• Adam and I had a brunch special and people-watched.
• Then we met Ian and Brittany in Central Park for some Frisbee.
• After the sun set, Alex joined all of us for a guac party and we put on Helvetica.
• Then Ben, Alex and I did a poetry reading.
• And after everyone left, Ben and I did some writing together.

"It's the real thing. Period. Coke. Period. In Helvetica. Period. Any questions? Of course not. Drink Coke. PERIOD!"

Bye Bye Mommy

My mom just visited me. She and my godmother took me to dinner Wednesday, then Mom took Ben and me to dinner and Hair on Thursday. She also brought me Girl Scout cookies, a computer and a hand-made hat. I love my mom.

18

It all began with a casual after-dinner philosophical chat. Ben and I chewed the fat about culture and art and shit like that. The hours wore on and the debate turned inevitably toward Ben's and my favorite topic: the nature of morality.

After a long and deep exchange, we retired to a dénouementic ease of conversation on various miscellaneous matters. Enter stage left the 20-sided die.

The theory goes as follows: at any given time, there are a number of things we want to do and an associated likelihood that we should do any of those things. For example, at 3am in the morning, 8 hours before my job interview, Ben and I might:

1. Go to sleep
2. Watch part 2 of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries
3. Smoke weed and read/write poetry
4. Go out to a bar and talk with a stranger

These choices represent a spread of probability. There is a 60% chance of doing option 1, a 20% chance of doing option 2, a 10% chance of doing option 3, and a 5% chance of doing option 4 (the remaining 5% is left for "re-roll").

If we randomly selected our course of action, we would make the "responsible" choice most of the time, the "irresponsible" choice some of the time, and the "interesting" choice every now and again.

But left to our own devices, we will not choose randomly. We will never actually elect the most interesting option. We will select from the 80th percentile 100% of the time. This means that we will never experience the "long tail" of life: the unlikely but very interesting choices.

Cue 20-die.

• 1 = Re-roll
• 2-13 = Go to bed
• 14-17 = BSG
• 18-19 = Weed & poetry
• 20 = Bar
  

The poem we wrote together is entitled 18:

My, oh my. Maybe it’s just telling you something that it’s not telling me?! Like a secret??! >:0

redeye

redpants

redburp

these are the bytes that [man, the 20-sided die was so right. Don’t cha think > ] , are [[beep]] being scanned,

[[beep]] being shot out.

[[beep]] being scanned,

[[beep]] being shot out.

and for a moment I believed that you actually said something that you didn’t say.

a spot um it’s really intence to explain the experience of looking at a hand. Bam – fist. It’s really intence.

put some vomit noises into the poem.

My Lady's Smile

My Lady fills with pregnant pause
And viciously her nostrils sigh.
She sideways-glances at the cause
And gives to me her best shit-eye.

My Lady does not care for farts
Or joke with words unfit for church
Or any talk of body parts
That might her lily ears besmirch.

My Lady smiles at everything,
Politely pleased is her disguise.
Her gnashing teeth are all hiding
'Neith crescent lips and sideways eyes.

Trash TV

I am addicted to Queer as Folk. I am hoping that by posting about it, I can shame myself into stopping. It is the trashiest show not on TV anymore. I love it.

Jesus loves you. But Jesus doesn't really have standards.

YEAH!

WE WILL OVERRIDE!

Hahaha

Hahahaha. HAHAHAHA!

HA!
HA!
HA!

Things I Fucking Love, Vol. 10

Ben. He is not a "thing" so much as a "person," but I love him none the less.

Annabelle's House

It is commonly known that when Annabelle leaves
The house is invaded by arsonous thieves
The preclusion of which no precaution achieves.

And the innocent, well-bred and handsome young guys
Who would live in this house under Annabelle's eyes
Are most certainly felons in handsome disguise.

Or at least are the dimmest among short-bus stocks
Who cannot be trusted to understand locks
By virtue of their vulgarly having cocks.

They Were The Best of Pants, They Were The Worst of Pants

Aaron Bockover no longer has my pants! This is an important development.

I am an uno-pantalones kind of muchacho. I own many pairs but I wear only one: The Chosen Trousers. I know exactly what I want from a pair of jeans and I usually don't find it. An entire day of shopping may only yield two "good enough" purchases, of which, only one will grace my ass day in and day out.

Just before going to that place I've been for 9 months, I assembled a task force of trusted friends and embarked on a mission: find Scott a New Pair of Pants. No establishment was spared, no jean unmolested. Every 30-32 in the Mall of America had my butt in it.

After a wearying blur of denim, two victors emerged: the Lucky Jeans that I really, really liked and they're not perfect but they're about as close to perfect as any jeans I've ever tried on, and the other pair which I also liked and they would make a great backup pair. Damn good work, people, I told my task force. Damn good work.

I was all set to live happily ever after with my nearly-perfect jeans, but AARON BOCKOVER had other designs!!1!!1 I was at his place getting ready to leave the country forever when my pretty-perfect pants mysteriously forgot to get back into my luggage. A LIKELY STORY! Of course, you and I both know what really happened, don't we? Baby-faced Bockover, wild with jealousy, took 'em! I have reports that he was soon there after seen around Boston in a fabulous new pair of Lucky Jeans, and that they made his ass look GREAT!

Meanwhile, I was half a world away stuck with the fucking backups. If any one thing can be blamed for the failure of my business... it would probably be the GLOBAL ECONOMIC CLUSTERFUCK. But a close second is that pair of pants. Attempts were made to emancipate the pants from Bockover's belt, all of which met with suspicious failure.

Well friend, the veil of tears is lifted at last. Last Saturday I popped by Boston and was reunited with my fairly flawless slacks. JOY! Aaron then proceeded to treat me to dinner with Miguel. He hid it well, but I caught that solitary tear silently rolling down his baby-faced cheek as he gazed mournfully at the fine, fine denim clinging tightly to another man's cheeks. Au revoir mon ami, glistened the tear. He then wiped it away under the pretence of adjusting his glasses and ordered another quesadilla.

Bonjour à nouveau, mon ami!

The Kindness of Strangers

Traveling takes the blog out of me. I am well, I am in New York, I don't have a job, I am staying with friends.

All kinds of stuff has happened that you would know about if I had blogged it, but I'm just going to catch you up on the best part.

Leins Barthe is my hero. Chances are, you don't know him. Leins is from Haiti. Leins drives a cab. Leins saved my ass.

I realized, about three hours before leaving for Auckland International Airport, that I had no place to stay in New York, no money for anything, and no phone with which to call people in the Northern Hemisphere. I would arrive in New York at 9pm on Friday with nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to call, holding two huge bags and my total personal worth of $400 cash. Unless I lined something up in three hours.

I sounded the Facebook Distress Call and, praise be, was heard. A friend who shall remain nameless set me up with his or her phone number, address and invitation to stay a spell. Two and a half hours later, I was on my way.

My air travel experience was something of a tragedy of errors, but I will skip ahead to the arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Luggage in hand, I stood before that eternal riddle which has plagued the minds of men from Socrates to Sartre to Scott: do I lug my bags on the subway to some godawful part of Brooklyn where I've never been and it's the middle of the night by now and godonlyknows how much walking I'll have to do BUT it's only $7, or do I get a cab?

So I'm in the cab telling my cabbie, one Mr. Leins Barthe, all about my life and such and how I don't have a phone yadayada and Leins offers me his for to call my anonymous generous friend, which I do, only to get a "number not available" message. Hrmm. Must have written it down wrong, I think aloud to Leins Barthe. Little did I know, it was actually the number for FORESHADOWING!!!

After circumnavigating the entire burrow of Brooklyn, Leins and I arrive at my destination. I hop out and buzz 1C. It does not buzz but my friend had told me that the buzzer did not work so I am comforted. I buzz other apartments until I get somebody and I explain that I am trying to get to 1C and their buzzer doesn't work so could you please come let me in or something. 1C, the other apartment person tells me, is vacant - the people who lived there just moved out.

That is when I become suspicious. I manage my way into the building and confront the door to 1C and give it a bit of the old knuckle. Audibly comes the scurry-shuff-shuffle of the people within. Hello? quoth I. Silence, quoth the door. It's Scott Peterson, quoth I. HubbubhubbubScottPetersonhubbub, quoth the door. Listen, I just got off a plane from New Zealand and I'm tired as shit and it's really late and I have almost no money because the fucking exchange rate fucking killed me and I have two huge bags and my cabbie is waiting outside with them and [NAME REDACTED] told me I could stay here and I literally have no place else to go because my American phone has been out of service for five months or something and this is the fucking ass-end of Brooklyn and there's no way I'm going to be able to hail another cab out here and I'm kind of freaking the fuck out because if you don't open this goddamn door I am going to be spending the night on the freezing streets, guarding my personal possessions with a nail clipper from the lusty advances of wild-eyed hobos and foaming crackheads so [NAME REDACTED], if you're in there, just open the mutherfucking door PLEASE, quoth I.

So I'm back in the cab telling Leins about the 10 minute monologue I had with the door and how the people behind it, whoever they are, refuse to acknowledge my presence. And to make a long night short, I ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room of the cabbie who picked me up from JFK, one Mr. Leins Barthe. The next day I take a shower and Leins takes me to go buy a phone and I call my friend Ross and line up space at his place and then we go back to Leins' and his daughter Lindsay makes me a papercraft flower which says "For: Scott From: Lindsay Barthe" and then Leins' cousin Reg drives me to Ross'.

God, it's good to be back.

What Have I Learned?

My southern hemispherical adventure is nearing its end and the question looms above me like ten thousand New Zealand dollars: what have I learned? Two things. One of which I will share with you now. The first lesson is: Don't start a small business two months before Global Economic Armageddon. This is just a simple matter of listening to what the damn gypsy in the Fulton St. subway station told you. If she said Rasputin's penis told her to tell you to not invest all of your personal capital in a startup, then by gosh by golly, don't do it! As for the second lesson, ask me in person and I will tell you.

See you soon. Whoever you are. And whenever soon is. And assuming I'm not blind by then.

Epistles

If I could bring back two fads, the second would be the epistolary novel. They were really big in the 18th century but I don't know what's happened to them since. I just wrote a whole bunch of quick emails and I would like to share them with you now. I'm omitting the recipients. The salient details to pick out are: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Friday the 13th, and either 9:15 or 9:18. I was apparently a little confused.

Subject: Flight

I'm getting into JFK next Friday at 9:18pm. I have a number of bids for generously-putting-me-up, so what can you offer in the tender hugging, unsolicited smiles, and omelet skillet departments that would seal the deal? I will see you in a week my dear.

Love,
Scott


Subject: Home again, home again, jiggity jig

I'm getting into JFK at 9:15pm on the 13th. I will be staying with some friends until I something figured out. Might that something be with you? What's the latest? And how was your mom's wedding? Keep me aboob.

- Scott


Subject: Christmas is Coming Early

Ho Ho Ho, bitch! You've been a naaaaaughty girl this year, haven't you. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! Well, I'm just gonna have to come over there and do something about you. My flight gets into JFK Friday the 13th at 9:15pm. Meet me in Manhattan. In the alley. Behind the building. My inappropriateness and I will be waiting.

But for serious, I may not be in NY very long and I want you to visit. I don't care who you fuck. Make it happen.

And I love you.

- Scott


Subject: Get Ready

My flight gets into JFK at 9:15pm. WHUCHA GONNA DO, HUH?!


Subject: Re: Get Ready

P.S. I love you very much and want to go to dinner with you and by go to dinner I mean have you take my to dinner because I just spent the end of my money on a plane ticket and it's OK if dinner is at KFC I'll eat anything just so I can spend time with you.


Subject: I am returned

Like Jesus, I'm comin' back! My flight gets into JFK at 9:15pm on Friday the 13th. Hope your thing today goes painlessly. I'll be in touch soon.

Happy March

Oh yeah, and it's March. Let's celebrate! I'll get John Philip Sousa, you get the guac.

Sunday

• Went to the ocean. I am pleased to report it was wet.
• Had a Murder Burger.
• Watched Le Grand Bleu.
• Am working on getting myself a job.
• But I need to be careful that I don't end up playing Bejeweled. It can happen at any time without warning. I have to keep my eyes peeled. For any Bejeweled playing. By me.

Speaking of getting myself a job, you know those times when you realize, 5 years after the fact, that you had two thinly veiled blow job offers at Japanese language camp? Wasted educational opportunities. おっと.

CC

My Flickr (which I have sorely neglected) photos are licensed under Create Commons Attribution. This means anyone can use them for any purpose, provided they attribute the work. I was putzing around a while ago and stumbled across a familiar picture on the Wired blog. I then searched for links to my Flickr account and was pleased to see that a number of folks have made good use of my stuff:

• Wired Blog
• The Consumerist
• Futurismic
• Greenwich Connect
• A presentation on JavaScript libraries (PDF, page 49)
• Philadelphia Will Do

I should be taking more photos. By the way, all original content on this blog is dedicated to the public domain. Because I have a militant lack of faith in the copyright system. Bite me.

My Sister

My sister turned 20 a little bit ago. She is a wonderful person. She is extremely smart and very beautiful. She's a very good friend and a great sibling. I am very lucky to have my sister.

Self-Fulfilling Prophesy?

Just watched the State of the Un- excuse me, Presidential Address to Congress, on The Intertubes. Funnily enough, it was playing while I was at the gym but I didn't realize it at the time. If I'd known, I'd have had some popcorn. That's a lie. I'd have had a salad. And I did have a salad anyway. It wasn't a Victory Salad, though.

Republicans continually remind us how ineffective government is. They also continually fuck things up. COINCIDENCE?!

Disinterested Party Animal

Alcohol is the best way to make regular people interesting.
If I'm the one drinking.
And they're actually hookers.

Alcohol is the best way to make ugly people pretty.
If there are no pretty people at the party.
And the theme is "Relaxed Standards."

Alcohol is the best way to make children feel grown up.
And pretty and interesting.
Especially if they're hookers.

Child prostitutes are the best way to make perverts feel good.
And pretty and interesting.
But also old in a sad kind of way.

People are the best way to make alcohol feel digested.
And regurgitated on the cat.
Then digested again, by the cat.

Domestic abuse is the best way to make alcoholics interesting.
And their wives and children ugly.
And later, alcoholic.

Sex is still the best way to make babies.
But not with child prostitutes.
They are too young.

And, of course, alcohol is the best way to have sex.
With regular people,
Interesting people,
Ugly people,
Pretty people,
Children,
Perverts,
Victims of domestic abuse,
And cats.

Apple

This week, we have another fictitious installment in my fictitious newspaper column.

In The Knew
Observations for the young and the young at heart
By S.T. Peterson

"Apple"

A long time ago in a gated community far, far away, a very plausible naked girl, on the advice of a very persuasive snake, partook of some mind-altering, modesty-enhancing fruit, in commemoration of which, to this day, apples are customarily made a tasty reminder to educators that they traffic in original sin.

I, for one, approve of Eve's taste in verboten vegetation. Were it not for her "bite heard 'round creation," you and I would probably be chilling in paradise right now, fucking each other. No thank you. I can have nudity, organic food and casual sex any Tuesday of the week. But there is one necessity paradise cannot provide: my newspaper column. Without it, I am just some pathetic no-newspaper-column-having loser. Like you. Unless you are Garrison Keillor. Hi Garrison!

Which brings me to the topic of today's column: Love. I get mail all the time, let me tell you, all the time, asking for advice on love. Whom to love. When to love them. When to stop loving them. And I have these answers. Oh yes, I do. What I do not have is time enough to tell you all each individually what the blind baby has in store. As a compromise, I am going to reveal the single most important secret in the Book of Love. I am violating a number of Non-Disclosure Agreements to bring you this wisdom so if anyone asks, you heard it from a snake.

Whoever you are, whatever the circumstance, no matter the details, the following Truth supersedes all else: there is one and only one true love of your life. That love is New York City. You may think some boy or girl means more to you than the Big Apple. You may even leave Manhattan and chase this person around the world, dreaming of happily-ever-afters. WRONG! You have stupidly forgot the Golden Rule: "I ♥ NY."

Rule #2: New York does not love you back. It is a harsh mistress. It will toy with, tease, and use you up only to leave your half-conscious ass on the mutherfucking F train to Queens in a puddle of unfamiliar vomit. And for this, you will love it all the more. You cannot escape. You cannot forget. You do, have always, and always will, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, 'till death do you die, love the Big Apple. And now you are...

In The Knew!

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can

I have this recurring theme in my dreams where I am running really slowly. I'm trying to run faster but the harder I try, the slower I move. This has been a feature in my dreams for about a year now.

All of my childhood forays into sports ended disastrously. It was never my idea, of course, to play soccer or join a little league baseball team or sign up for track & field. I caught a baseball with my eye socket on the first day of practice. I chased butterflies across the soccer field. But sports are compulsory for sons, apparently. Like, you have this kid and then you feel obligated to provide them with the Comprehensive American Childhood Experience. Because TV will rot their brains and free-range Finch children end up on a John Walsh special. So you have these little people whom you don't really know all that well (and they're changing all the time) and so you just kind of stick them in any old age/gender-appropriate activity. My sister did figure skating and ballet. I did karate and baseball. My folks eventually caught on and put me in ballet too.

I mention all of this because during my first track & field competition, I was coming in last and deliberately fell down before the finish line to get the sympathy "you fell down but you finished the race anyway GOOD FOR YOU!" effect. And now I run all the time. So Dr. Freud, put that up your nose and snort it.

Monday

• Really sunny today.
• Digging Infected Mushroom.
• Had a nice time at the gym.
• Did not watch the Oscars.
  
• Still need to find a job.

Youth is now!

Saturday

• I've had the same salad the last three meals. Lox can do no wrong. If smoked salmon were to beat up an old woman and steal her wig, I would still love it.
• Helped bake a cake. Also helped eat it.
• Watched Hellboy
• Watched Hellboy II
• Summer is coming to a close...

There's only one way to go from here: old.

Cock Culture

My new favorite art/culture/softcore pornography blog: East Village Boys. Hey, I used to be one of those!

Wednesday

• Felt really good yesterday about getting stuff done.
• Went to Piha with my new Auckland buddy Piotr. Beautiful beach.
• Did some work and laundry.
• Had another in a long line of 3am omelets.
• Didn't go to the gym, but I'm OK with that. Really. I am.

Vanity is its own reward.

Tuesday

Hi friend.

• Work is being done on the roof of the house and it makes it difficult for me to sleep from 8am to 4pm. But I manage anyhow.
• It wasn't supposed to be beautiful today, but it was. I'm not complaining.
• Watched Dollhouse last night. Tell me when you've seen it and then we can talk.
• Made one of my favorite salads: spinach, avocados, smoked salmon and feta cheese with a lemon dressing. So delicious.
• Made some bread. It turned out OK.
• Yeah, just thought I'd check in.

"Let's face it buddy boy, there's two kinds of people in the world: there's you and there's everybody else, and never the twain shall meet." - Nathan Fisher Sr.

Milk

The days of my boyhood were simple and care-free: there was one and only one kind of milk. Skim. Better known to Good Christians everywhere as, simply, "milk." Upon moving to the Big City, my delicate Midwestern certitudes were unprepared for the new and exotic milks on offer. I did a lot of experimenting which lead to a quagmire of amorality and indecision. Until now. I have finally seen the light. I have found my milk: "Xtra Calcium Boost." It's 99.8% fat free but doesn't taste like dirty dishwater. It has both "HIGH PROTEIN" and "VITAMIN D," which is, like, my favorite vitamin. It has a yellow cap, as if to say, "I am the sun, dawning on a new day of dairy beverages; I am the flower, blossoming for the prevention of osteoporosis." I just hope they have this stuff in The States.

You just got INFORMED, son!

Thursday

• Got up at like 4pm
• Took a shower
  
• Said goodbye to Kris and Jess - they are traveling and I won't see them again maybe ever. BYE GUYS!
• Had a lamb kabab. That's a NZ style kabab, which is like a wrap.
• Got some work done because I'm super-responsible
• Went to the gym. It is my precious.
• Took another shower.
• Some of these bullet points have punctuations and others do not. Sorry about that.
• Now I'm doing a salmon recipe that Michael gave me.

I feel that this post fails to capture how awesome I feel right now. I don't know if that's a failure of my communication skills or because I'm feeling good for no reason and therefore the format of the post (what I did today) under-serves the topic. This annotation clears things up a bit, but its formal tone is also largely inexpressive of my giddiness.

The geek shall inherit the earth

Yes I do, I LOVE SHAMU!

Sophisticated Side Ponytail, by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. Their album is very Scissor Sisters meets The Lonely Island.

Good Weather

The last three days have been excellent weather. Not a cloud in the sky and 28C. I've been steeping in my glory by the pool. And going to the gym, except for that it was surprise-closed yesterday (BOOOO!). And writing code, which is good and fun.

I don't love you, but I really like your shoes.

Feb Six

• Made some bread today. My standard recipe does two loaves. The problem is, I always end up eating one of them right away. Nothing gives you that "beached whale" afterglow quite like a whole loaf of piping hot carbs.
• I'm doing some work right now with people in London, Boston, and Brazil. This means I'm generally staying up 'til 5:5omething in the morning. Exempli gratia: it's is 5:28 am right now.
• I love getting things done.
• I also love this new vanilla flavored whey protein stuff I put in my milk.
• I didn't make it to the gym today, but that's OK because it closed at 6 (on account of it's Waitangi Day) and if I have to get my ass out of the house while the sun is still up, you can count me out!
• Also, I love This American Life. In fact, I fucking love it. It belongs in my series.

Promise me you'll never die.

Feb Five

It's like the Fab Five, only more "brewery."

• Made myself a delicious fluffy omelet (see below poem) and ate it in the sun with my book.
• Took a swim in the house pool for the first time ever.
• Read more of my book.
• Had a beef wrap, which is just so much fun to say. I suggest you try it: "beef wrap." Go on. Say it out loud. And say it like it's a double-entendre. Lower your voice and cock an eyebrow. "Beef wrap..." Then wink. Do that to the next person you meet. I task you!
• Went to the gym. It is my Final Solution.
• Masturbated in the shower. Some of my more elaborate rituals are yielding a rather poor return on investment of late. I blame the flaccid economy.
  
• Had some fish and apple sauce. I'll probably make myself some pasta in a bit. I'm a-hungered.

I say "tomato," you say "beef wrap," LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF!

Fluffy Omelet

Fluffy Omelet tastes the best,
Fluffy Omelet we'll digest.
Fluffy Omelet knows no shame,
Fluffy Omelet? I just came.

The First of February

• Just returned from my latest Glorious Return To The Gym. It is my Beloved Leader.
  
• This is my first Super Bowl in a while where I haven't gotten piss drunk at Julia's apartment and screamed like a wild person. GO PATS!
• Kris just brought me three, I repeat, THREE 2-litre (yes, 'r' before the 'e') things of milk. Kris is a milk man. He is a good friend to have.
• And the other day, he brought by two movies on flash drive: Benjamin Button and Rock 'n Rolla. What I'm saying is, Kris is my Santa Clause.
• Benjamin Button had my crying like a fool. Not like that's hard. It was the most sobbing I've done since watching the end of Six Feet Under.
• The Rock 'n Rolla file was slightly corrupt and had some playback issues, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
• I'm all of a sudden digging MGMT. Am I, like, way behind on that?

Who knows what regular people see in each other.

This Week

• A lot of work on the computer
• Not eating very well
• Not going to the gym
• Getting up and going to bed late

The 2nd Theorem of Destruction
As love and effort increase, the probability of self destruction approaches 1
-Kyle Gabler

FOR WHOM THE MEME TOLLS, or, YOU HOLD HER DOWN AND I'LL SCOOP HER BRAINS OUT THROUGH HER NOSE

If I could resurrect one fad, it would be mummification. You could keep grandma in her easy chair next to Mr. Kibbles III. She gets to be in all the family photos. It would be good for the kids.

The next best thing is the topic of today's post: Memeification (meem-ih-fih-kay-shun). If you don't already know, the theory of memes was discovered by evolutionary biologists and subsequently weaponized by the Internet. Memes are like in-jokes where everyone is "in." They are also highly dangerous.

Internet memes function like a kind of mystical incantations. When they are perpetrated upon a person, the victim become memeified. They are transformed from a living, breathing, human being into a walking parody of themselves. Neither alive nor dead. Damned to roam the purgatorial wastelands of their former life, unable to be taken seriously by anyone, moaning ironically with outstretched arms. Or so we imagine. Best examples of memeies (mee-mees, similar to mummies; singular memey) include Chuck Norris and Rick Astley. When memeies are unaware that they have been memeified (as when Chuck Norris suffers from the misapprehension that other people care what he thinks), it is almost too sad to be funny. Almost.

Now we arrive at the call to action: I propose that we memeify Sarah Palin.

This is a tall order to fill. Never before has the internet successfully memeified anyone who is already such a complete self-parody. We are also competing with Tina Fey's extremely dominant direct-parody. The challenge is to engineer a single meme capable of overwhelming all other Palin-related signals, until the woman is wholly and completely memefied from hair to heal-spike.

So what is the ultimate Sarah Palin meme? For that we turn to the evolutionary biological procedure of knock-down-drag-out Natural Selection. A bloody competition for resources and mates. And you can play too! May the best meme win.

The playing field is broad. You can use any part of the Internet to propagate your meme. YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, blogs, podcasts, IM, IRC, Facebook. Anything. The pallet is equally broad: the accent, the turkeys, the unwed pregnant teenage daughter whose baby-daddy's mom could host the reality-show-takeoff of Weeds (when she gets out of jail, that is). No holds are barred in this mad race to become Internet's Next Top Meme.

Victory belongs to the first meme which is referenced by the New York Times.

With the election over, one might wonder at the timing and utility of such an exercise in memetic engineering. I could say that we are immunizing ourselves against Palin '12, but the truth of the matter is, she just fucking deserves it.

GO!