Valid questions for those against gay marriage

Direct Address
Sally sends a letter to the antigay marriage crowd

By Sally Sheklow
Dear Heterosexual Chauvinists:

Thank you for caring so much about my personal business. I feel a little guilty because, frankly, I don’t care at all about yours. No offense.

It’s just that your marriage, as state-sanctioned and God-ordained as it may be, isn’t something I spend much time imagining. Not that I have to. I see and read and hear about straight marriages every day. The way you flaunt your lifestyle, it’s sort of hard to avoid.

I mean, who doesn’t already know that nearly half of all one-man-one-woman marriages end in divorce? It’s no secret. And any women’s shelter can tell you that 97.5 percent of domestic violence occurs in straight households. You don’t exactly keep your dirty laundry private. Still, I’m not out there trying to prevent heterosexual marriage (although I do support women’s shelters).

I don’t spend my time fuming over the heterosexual newlywed photos in my local newspaper, the very paper that—unlike the New York Times—refuses to print same-sex wedding announcements. That policy isn’t fair or right, but I haven’t launched any campaigns against heterosexuals’ civil liberties because of it. I don’t sit around plotting how to keep opposite-sex couples from enjoying their marriage rights. Nobody has to enter into matrimony if they don’t want to. If you choose to keep on marrying and divorcing your opposite-sex partners, go right ahead. It’s not my concern.

I can’t control your orientation, no matter how abnormal it may seem to me. Just like your freedom to choose your religion, your choice to marry outside your sex is protected by law. Even though I find your obsession with same-sex marriage totally bizarre, I don’t scour the Bible for verses that might bolster my point of view, although I understand there are quite a few—love thy neighbor as thyself, for example.

I find it odd that you blame lesbian and gay people for how difficult you find it to love, honor, and cherish each other. You claim that our marriages threaten the sanctity of your marriages. Hello? We didn’t invent adultery. Or wife beating. How you can fault same-sex marriage for your own failings is beyond me. Especially when as many as 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their male partners. Where’s the sanctity in that?

I truly don’t see how my equal access to the same privileges you enjoy (and often squander) threatens you. I’m not the one organizing my congregation against you or rallying voters to declare your relationships unconstitutional or lobbying my legislators to deny your rights. I have neither the time nor the inclination for straight-hating.

How you relate to your spouse is your business. And what you do in the privacy of your own marriage—or even what you say about mine—is beyond my control. You call us perverse, but you have no idea how incredibly weird you Defense-of-Marriage people seem to the rest of us. Come on, is there anything odder than fixating on other people’s sexuality? Your non-consensual peeping into my life is downright creepy. I suppose I should be honored that you find my personal life so fascinating, and maybe I would be if you didn’t insist I can and should change.

Anyone who’s married surely should know your marriage is doomed if you think you can change the other person. Get a clue. You can’t eradicate or outlaw or convert everyone who isn’t made in your image. So we’re different—big deal.

You’ve spent millions persuading folks that our differences somehow threaten their marriages. Kinda crazy, but your freedom of speech, like mine, is protected. Just think, though, of all the good you could do if the time and effort and money you pour into your antigay rampage went toward something useful—like reducing poverty or saving the rain forest or making peace between nations. You know, helping.

Instead of demonizing me for being created as I am, why not pitch in? You have so much drive, why not use it to do something people really need? Help ensure education, food, housing, and health care for everyone. We could work together, pool our energies to increase dignity, respect, and joy in the world, for all creation.

I would at least like to continue the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that our Constitution recognizes are my inalienable rights. I understand that prejudice runs deep and that blaming scapegoats is human nature. There’s room in my heart to forgive you for your limitations. Unlearning hateful thinking isn’t easy. You’re entitled to take as long as you want to come to grips with reality.

Meanwhile, this would be a good time to kindly step aside and mind your own business.

Most sincerely,
Sally Sheklow

link to full article

Saturday night at home

I've done almost nothing today - YAY! It's perhaps a good thing. A day off. No cleaning, no document preparation, no .. nothing.

Isadora Duncan. Why can I never remember her name?

The hooker has been texting all day - he's NUTS. He sulks if I reject his requests to drop everything and go pick him up and pay him for sex. He's almost like a rejected lover. Weird, weird.

Speaking of putative lovers, Nick sounds awful today. He's been sleeping all day, and the two messages he's left and the brief time we've been on the phone, he sounds just dreadful.

Yummy! Soup!

Watching the expanded version of "Titanic" - yeah, shut up. I've waited eight years for this movie to come out. Right now, I'm watching the deleted scenes; then, I'll watch the whole thing. I think BuhZilly wants to go have a drink after he finishes working.

I think I'm having lunch with T and his kids tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I think some house cleaning and dog laundering is in order.

Just finished the book "The Historian" which was terrific. Now, I'm reading a Michael Ford collection of somewhat elevated erotica. Four more books to read, and four more coming.

I feel very VERY good about my decision to stay home for T-day and Christmas. Not only does it save a bunch of money, but it reduces stress of being away. I'm figuring that it would take me some $2,000 to take those two trips. Dad's sold his house in Florida, and his place will be FULL of Mary's kids and their broods for the holidays. Maybe I'll go in early January, and help them pack or something.

There's an airline for sale on eBay. I can just see reverse merging Fabulair into it, and making something happen. I sure want to get started working on that project full time again.

I'm about to spend next week looking into how to make that happen. Get unstoppable, just like in the old Landmark days.

Friday evening -

Van Helsing - what a lame movie. Pleh.

Almost time to hit the sack. I've been so tired since Nick left.

Poor Nick is just miserable. He's miserable because he's in a lot of pain, because he is worrying that he's really injured and doesn't know it, and because he's in Ohio. His car isn't feeling very reliable to him, and other stuff. He's just getting it from all directions.

Yep, this movie is really stupid.

Have a few things to do in the morning, including getting my hair cut. Then, I think I'm going to sort stuff for eBay auctioning (this next week) and also getting some rest and relaxation. It's going to be meditation weekend.

Boy, I sure want that Phaeton that the guy in Fort Worth found for me. I WANT IT.

Want want want want want.

Curt suggested tonight that we find a restaurant for Thanksgiving. I think I'm going to stay home. It's over $500 to fly home, and with the uncertainty of these loan files, I'm just going to hunker down and save the money.

Also, it seems that Dad has sold his house, and Mary's kids want to come down there for Christmas. Another family trip cancelled. Another $500 in airfare (plus spending money, dog sitting, etc.) saved.

And more tranquility gained.

Opened up my "heart's desire" list from last year. Well, the tranquility part has been achieved, but nothing else. Not even close. Blarg.

This movie is TOTALLY stupid.

I think it's going to be early to bed tonight.

I HATE THE MORTGAGE BUSINESS

Today, especially. Is it that it's just really a crappy business, or do I not know what I'm doing? Am I just making stupid mistakes that end up in big problems later?

Why do all of the deals have some big bomb laid in them? Why do I have to jump through hoops to get anything done with anything?

I'm just processing through why people don't want to pay me (not everyone, but most everyone.) It's the same energy as Nick getting hit with a pipe, just happens with the absence of a checkbook.

I think I'm going to go through my Quicken register and see how much money I've made doing each of the things I do do this year. I have to figure out how/why this isn't working for me.

Okay, enough of sulking and pouting .. I'm going to finish reading my book, watch a DVD and stay away from the computer as much as I can.

Love that Jack!

Defending Imperial Nudity
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 04 November 2005

Hans Christian Andersen understood bad rulers. "The Emperor's New Suit" doesn't end with everyone acclaiming the little boy for telling the truth. It ends with the emperor and his officials refusing to admit their mistake.

I've laid my hands on additional material, which Andersen failed to publish, describing what happened after the imperial procession was over.

The talk-show host Bill O'Reilly yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" at the little boy. Calling the boy a nut, he threatened to go to the boy's house and "surprise" him.

Fox News repeatedly played up possible finds of imperial clothing, then buried reports discrediting these stories. Months after the naked procession, a poll found that many of those getting most of their news from Fox believed that the emperor had in fact been clothed.

Imperial officials eventually admitted that they couldn't find any evidence that the suit ever existed, or that there had even been an effort to produce a suit. They insisted, however, that they had found evidence of wardrobe-manufacturing-and-distribution-related program activities.

After the naked procession, pro-wardrobe pundits denied that the emperor was at fault. The blame, they said, rested with the C.I.A., which had provided the emperor with bad intelligence about the potential for a suit.

Even a quick Web search shows that before the procession, those same pundits had written articles attacking C.I.A. analysts because those analysts had refused to support strong administration assertions about the invisible suit.

Although the imperial administration was conservative, its wardrobe plans drew crucial support from a group of liberal pundits. After the emperor's nakedness was revealed, the online magazine Slate held a symposium in which eight of these pundits were asked whether the fact that there was no suit had led them to reconsider their views. Only one admitted that he had been wrong - and he had changed his mind about the suit before the procession.

Helen Thomas, the veteran palace correspondent, opposed the suit project from the beginning. When she pointed out that the emperor's clothes had turned out not to exist, the imperial press secretary accused her of being "opposed to the broader war on nakedness."

Even though skeptics about the emperor's suit had been vindicated, TV news programs continued to portray those skeptics as crazy people. For example, the news networks showed, over and over, a clip of the little boy shouting at a party. The clip was deeply misleading: he had been shouting to be heard over background noise, which the ambient microphone didn't pick up. Nonetheless, "the scream" became a staple of political discourse.

The emperor gave many speeches in which he declared that his wardrobe was the "central front" in the war on nakedness.

The editor of one liberal but pro-wardrobe magazine admitted that he had known from the beginning that there were good reasons to doubt the emperor's trustworthiness. But he said that he had put those doubts aside because doing so made him "feel superior to the Democrats." Unabashed, he continued to denounce those who had opposed the suit as soft on sartorial security.

At the Radio and Television Correspondents' annual dinner, the emperor entertained the assembled journalists with a bit of humor: he showed slides of himself looking under furniture in his office, searching for the nonexistent suit. Some of the guests were aghast, but most of the audience roared with laughter.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee oversaw an inquiry into how the government had come to believe in a nonexistent suit. The first part focused on the mistakes made by career government tailors. But the second part of the inquiry, on the role of the imperial administration in promoting faulty tailoring, appeared to vanish from the agenda.

Two and a half years after the emperor's naked procession, a majority of citizens believed that the imperial administration had deliberately misled the country. Several former officials had gone public with tales of an administration obsessed with its wardrobe from Day 1.

But apologists for the emperor continued to dismiss any suggestion that officials had lied to the nation. It was, they said, a crazy conspiracy theory. After all, back in 1998 Bill Clinton thought there was a suit.

And they all lived happily ever after - in the story. Here in reality, a large and growing number are being killed by roadside bombs.

GAO report confirms that 2004 election was stolen

Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings
October 28th, 2005
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005

article here

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the General Accounting Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government’s lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its through, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as “conspiracy theories” adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received “more than 57,000 complaints” following Bush’s alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, “some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.”

The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that “public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines.” The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O’Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush’s official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O’Dell’s statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush’s official margin of victory.

2. “It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.” Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a “widespread conspiracy” but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.

The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives — or less — to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software.

The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:

· The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.

· A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County

· Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry’s name saw Bush’s name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry’s margins in both counties were suspiciously low.

· A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.

· In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called “electronic transfer glitch” gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the “loaves and fishes” vote count.

· In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.

· In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county’s central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.

· In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.

· Prior to one of Blackwell’s illegitimate “show recounts,” technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.

· In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.

· In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation—only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.

· In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that “by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better.”

But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.

Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that’s exactly what happened.

link to full GAO report

Hump day - now, Drama Free!

Well mostly.

Monday, Monday ver. 646.01

[08:13] Larry Lee: I'm beginning to think you spend more than Uncle Kelly when everything's added up. quite an accomplishment, I might add.
[08:13] DrDivo: urk. nasty.
[08:13] Larry Lee: on the wooing, almost wedding, and bedding of young men.
[08:13] Larry Lee: I know, but . . .
[08:14] Larry Lee: so he's here through next Wednesday or so?
[08:14] DrDivo: day after tomorrow, then he goes home
[08:15] Larry Lee: well, if you don't get any of that booty -- and I'm certainly not saying you won't -- that will almost be the equivalent of Uncle Kelly flying to Tampa for a blow job, and San Francisco for one session of sex. expense wise, that is.
[08:16] DrDivo: If one is looking only at a sexual transaction per dollar basis
[08:16] Larry Lee: and what are you looking at if not that?
[08:16] Larry Lee: you must know that he's obsessed with Carlos and will be for some time.
[08:16] Larry Lee: by the way, I still have pop-ups. who said I wouldn't?
[08:17] Larry Lee: pop-up blockers, actually.
[08:17] DrDivo: I don't have an expectation that he's going to turn into something. We had an amazing connection over the phone, I felt it was worth a couple hundred dollars to check it out, it didn't work out, and thus ..
[08:17] DrDivo: you should have the yahoo toolbar pop up blocker only
[08:17] DrDivo: which comes with your DSL service
[08:17] Larry Lee: don't know. it's identical to what I had before.
[08:17] Larry Lee: you know I'm computer illiterate, boy.
[08:17] DrDivo: does it seem to be operating more quickly?
[08:18] Larry Lee: you know I love you, Doug, but this repeated behavior with strangers met on the internet . . . not two days before his arrival the other guy blew up on you. were you going to bring one and leave the other at home?
[08:18] DrDivo: what other guy
[08:19] Larry Lee: I can't really tell the difference, perhaps slightly more quick. but I can't get the high-speed DSL through SBC and it seems to work just fine.
[08:19] DrDivo: Gary and I could see a huge difference yesterday afternoon
[08:19] Larry Lee: whoever it was that flew in and "went out with friends."
[08:19] DrDivo: same guy
[08:19] Larry Lee: it's really kind of strange that you two could see this huge difference when you don't use this computer that often.
[08:19] Larry Lee: you're kidding.
[08:20] Larry Lee: I stay so confused with these matters. so the lesbian friend is who he went out with.
[08:20] DrDivo: nope
[08:20] DrDivo: yes
[08:20] Larry Lee: okay, I give.
[08:20] Larry Lee: WHO did he go out with?
[08:20] DrDivo: when? Last week? He went out with the lesbian.
[08:21] Larry Lee: that's what I said. this is beginning to sound like Abbott and Costello.
[08:21] Larry Lee: any way, it doesn't matter so long as YOU'RE happy with everything. it's your money and your time.
[08:21] DrDivo: indeed it is
[08:21] Larry Lee: yep.
[08:21] DrDivo: I have replaced boys with a new obession anyway, as of our stop in Fort Worth
[08:22] Larry Lee: well, all that money spent would go a long way toward the Phaeton.
[08:23] DrDivo: WHile you're on your soapbox, I'm going to give you two examples from similar circumstances and ask you to re-evaluate
[08:23] DrDivo: I met Matticia on yahoo in a gay chatroom -
[08:23] DrDivo: I flew him out here five years ago. We never had sex.
[08:23] DrDivo: I talk to him EVERY SINGLE DAY. He's a fabulous friend. I paid for his ticket to my birthday party.
[08:23] DrDivo: Do you think that was money wasted?
[08:23] Larry Lee: incoming email.
[08:24] DrDivo: my gracious that's a handsome man
[08:24] Larry Lee: oh, honey, I know Matticia and you are friends. and I'm not saying you do this ALL the time. just rather frequently.
[08:24] Larry Lee: look at that penga!
[08:25] Larry Lee: Matticia is a delightful young man that, on first blush, isn't all that cute. but, honey, we were ALL taken with him (should I say smitten) in no time at all. truly a delight!
[08:25] DrDivo: and, I met E (Eric in Vancouver) on gay.com - I flew him down here TWICE. He's one of my best friends. He and I have NEVER had any sexual interplay. However, the initial circumstances were the same.
[08:25] DrDivo: So - in life, there are things that don't work out, and there are things that work out better than any possible expectation.
[08:26] Larry Lee: amen, and amen!
[08:26] DrDivo: the initial investment in each has been the same.
[08:26] DrDivo: So, if Nick turns out to be something like Matticia, have I been well or ill served by my expense of about $400?
[08:26] DrDivo: For which I'll 1099 him
[08:27] Larry Lee: now you're talking! never entered my mind -- a business expense with side benefits. whether you claim him or not, it's all for you and you alone to determine whether or not you were ill-served.
[08:27] DrDivo: I'm asking you
[08:27] DrDivo: you've offered your strong opinion this morning
[08:27] DrDivo: thus, I'm asking you
[08:28] DrDivo: Curt wants to know if he left his boots there
[08:28] Larry Lee: I'll respond after taking this call.

Sunday evening after coming home from Big D

And little everything else.

A very nice day. We had fun hanging out, talking to each other, and then going over to Lucky's for dinner. Then, off to home in Curt's SportTrac. Nick did the driving today. We made it home in just over four hours, including stopping for gas.

Fortunately, after a short while, I was able to get them to turn DOWN the bass boost and the volume. We listened to retro disco all the way back, which was a nice change from the hip hop on the way up.

Came home, and checked out the Phaeton online. Oh MY. I think that I have to have one.

Tonight, it occured to me what that car is like. It's a toy store for gadget freaks, carried on a magic carpet, propelled by a locomotive, contained in a soundproof booth, and assembled by elves.

I read some articles about it today - the best factory car stereo in the business. Better than the Mercedes S500. Kudos, acclimations, nothing but accolades.

Nick mentioned tonight as he was driving us home that he didn't want to go home on Wednesday. I told him we had a LOT of things to talk about before that was possible, but that it was possible. Now, he's off with Ruby visiting his lesbionic friend and watching "Desperate Housewives," which turns out to be a re-run. I hope that they're not out getting their drink on. With Ruby. Yep. Nope.

Maybe tomorrow, he can get Ruby's car stereo working again. Soon. Ruby also need some tie rods, and her motor is still not running as smoothly as it once was.

Have a ton of work to do tomorrow and Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll get there. Then, later in the week, I plan to make sales calls regarding my book.

I guess that's it. Tonight's burning question is .. will Nick come home at any time that bears a relationship to what he said to expect?

Did you set your clocks back?

Last night was a bit of a hoot. Kent had shared, earlier in the day, with Greg that if he wanted Nick's booty, he had to reimburse me for Nick's airline ticket. That had backed Greg off a bit, but it seemed that more laser lock was in the air.

We went over to Gary's new apartment, which is four blocks from the Cedar Springs bar area and VERY cute, and then we wandered off to Cedar Springs, where the city of Dallas had blocked off all six blocks of the bar area. The street was seething with people, a goodly percentage of whom were in costume, a number of which were really, really creative and fun. We quite quickly got separated, found each other, went hither and yon - I was the only one of our group in costume. I was causing people to bellow with laughter (from my costume, of course.) Most of the gay people were not too attracted to it, but the STRAIGHT people were in stitches.

Eventually, we wended our way to Larry's favorite bars on Fitzhugh, and we hung out at the end of the bar where they were playing great music. Finally, around 12:30 I felt I could start having fluids, and we left about a half hour later. Kent had gotten waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay drunk and Greg had to take care of him.

Larry and Gary think that Kent did that to cut Greg out of the herd. Anyway, it was all very amusing. We got ready to leave, and Curt annouced that he was going home with Gary. Going home HOW? Not ready to come home yet, staying out a litter later, coming home later going home? Or "we're going to screw so hard that Gary's cat is going to run downstairs and dial 911" going home?"

Oh, my.

Anyway, Nick and I had a lot more interaction after Kent had Greg cut out of the herd. After we got back here and Larry went to bed, we had a few more nice moments, and this morning has been very nice. I really like this boy's personality, and I really appreciate that he really, really likes me.

Yesterday afternoon, I successuflly distracted myself by looking at the VW Phaeton at Autobahn VW in Fort Worth. My God, that car is amazing. It's the most gorgeous car I've ever been in. It drives like a dream, and there are more buttons and toys and features than you can ever imagine. The guys at this VW dealer are just .. well, they're what you expect to get when you buy a car like that. The salesman that went on the test drive with me was AMAZING - he's a walking encyclopedia about the car.

I've decided I have to have one. They're looking for a four seater for me.

Going to have a low impact day today. Then, home later tonight - we've discussed that, anyway.