When I was 9, we moved to Wheatland, Wyoming, so Mom could remarry. The man I call my dad (not to be confused with my father, who is someone very different — any man can be a father; it takes someone pretty damn special to be a dad, especially in my mind and life) scared the glitter out of me, though I don’t know that he knows that (well, until he reads this; I’m sure Mom will point it out to him). That passed by the time I was an angry, sullen, parent-scorning teenager, and disappeared completely when I grew up.

Dad has always, in my mind, been a part of one band or another. Mostly, the bands play country of one sort or another. His biggest love, though, I think, has always been Outlaw Country. For those who don’t know, outlaw country is best characterized by strong, throbbing bass lines and bright, twangy steel guitar. Sure, there are lead guitar, drums and other instruments, usually fronted by strong vocals, usually with a southern drawl to them. Some of the best examples of these are Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, Hank Williams, Jr., and Willie Nelson. Even when he wasn’t playing, there was usually music playing in our house, most likely Dad’s outlaw country.

Needless to say, at the time, I hated it. Did everything I could to avoid it. Now, 25 years later, I can’t get enough of it. It’s one of my comfort sounds. It means “home” to me. Safety. Happiness. It’s where my parents live.

About a year or two ago, I started gigging Dad to make me a CD (or 30) of his quintessential music. Every couple of months, I’d ask Mom if he was working on it. See, Dad’s gonna be 72 this year, and he’s got a LOT (and by a lot, I mean OMG WHOA) of vinyl. He’s also got a KILLER stereo system that allows him to record from his vinyl to CD. It would be a crime to lose all of that music for any reason.

A couple of weeks ago, he finally got a bug up his ass to work on it. Two days ago, I got the first installment: six CDs that he recorded for me (and Mom tells me that my siblings will get copies, too, so keep your panties on, kids). I get them first because, well, I asked for them first. And because I’m the oldest, and the parents, they love me best.

The first installment. I’m giddy ridiculously happy about the next installment or twelve. I’ve got 83 songs right now that I’m slowly working my way through on my walk to and from school. I have two David Allan Coe CDs (Once Upon a Rhyme and The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy) and a Waylon Jennings CD (Honky Tonk Heroes), as well as two mix CDs that he put together and a CD of a performance of a band that he played in, from a bar in Baton Rouge in 1976.

Y’all, I can’t put to words the awesomeness of this. It’s… beyond amazing.

Thanks, Dad. You have no idea what these mean to me.

From Kristen’s LJ, because she said it much better than I could:

I am not sure how many of you are on David’s friends list, or on Seth’s, and I am not sure how many of you read David’s post yesterday. If you didn’t, forgive me for the “inside” talk – let me get you up to speed. David and Seth are dear friends who live on a farm they call “Turkey’s Rest” in Virginia. You’ve seen David’s comments on my journal. David and Seth are amazing people. The love they have for one another is the most powerful thing I have ever seen, and the life they have built together is one I would like to have for myself one day. I am so grateful to know these men, and to count them as friends.

Seth broke his ankle, and in a series of medical problems, developed pneumonia. He is currently in the ICU of a hospital which is an hour away from their home. David is with him almost around the clock, and is having to make arrangements for the animals at their home, make decisions about Seth’s care, deal with Seth’s mother, worry about their jobs, and deal with the fear that comes with Seth being in the ICU. He’s overwhelmed and exhausted, and there is very little any of us can do to alleviate that. We are too far away, and airline tickets and hotels rooms are luxuries we aren’t in a position to afford right now.

I don’t know about you, but this helpless feeling is about to choke me. I want so badly to get on a plane – take care of the dogs and the chickens, write the thank-you notes, provide updates, make David sleep, make sure he eats well, and for crying out loud, fix that goddamned floor that started all this mess. And I find myself looking at my bank account and my obligations here and being outraged that I was not born into wealth and a life of leisure.

But there is something I can do. There is something we can ALL do. We can come together on these wires known as the internet and we can MAKE SOME NOISE.

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Now, I have two pretty firm policies when it comes to this journal. I don’t ask for money: I don’t fundraise, I don’t solicit for myself or others. It’s just a personal thing – I don’t judge anyone else who does. It’s just one of those things. The other is that I don’t give out my address. Safety issues.

I am breaking both of those policies today.

Today is the first day of Team Turkey.

We can’t fly to Virginia, and we can’t magically make Seth well, but we can damned sure throw money at the problem. And we can do it now, before it’s needed.

Here is what I propose: I have set up a separate, interest-bearing savings account with my bank. I have set up a PayPal site called “For David and Seth”. I will collect as much money as we can raise, and we will let it sit until it’s needed.

It may not be needed, in which case we will figure out what to do. Maybe we can pay to have that floor repaired, maybe we can start the LJ Fund we’ve been kicking around. If that’s the case, certainly we can arrange to return the money to those who request it.

It doesn’t have to be much. $5 from 100 people would buy a lot of gasoline for David to make that hospital trip. Food to be delivered once Seth is home and recovering. Someone to make sure Spike and Kojak are walked and fed. Someone to take care of those chickens.

We have thousands of birds up on these wires. If each of us gives at least $5, we could actually DO something here.

If you feel up to donating, please do so.

Today, the freak-out about next Wednesday started.

I know that this is a good thing for me. Really, honestly, I do. However, it’s also one of the scariest fucking things I’ve ever dealt with.

We live in an insanely shallow society. Years ago, a group of us on PernMUSH were chatting OOCly, and a very dear friend said something about, “God help you if you’ve got bad teeth.” My teeth had just started their downhill tumble, and it hurt me beyond words to see that on the screen. We had never met, she had no idea, and I didn’t let on that it hurt me. I’ve never told her, and it would mortify her to know that she hurt me that badly.

That statemnet, though, has been a big part of the change in my smile, my speaking mannerisms, my laughter. Nobody has ever flinched away from me because of my teeth, that I know of, but that doesn’t mean that I’m completely clueless to the fact that it happens, and I know that it gets discussed behind my back. Very few people in my life have ever asked about it. And I know that, to a lot of people, it just doesn’t matter.

But it matters to me.

I’ve got three months of recovery time with this: two months of just healing and another four-week process to get the dentures. I keep saying that I’m going to be a shut-in for the next three months, and people keep saying that I don’t have to. It’s not that I think I have to; it’s that I don’t want anyone to see me like this. I’m not doing this because of society, necessarily. I’m mostly doing it for my own peace of mind. I don’t know what this recovery time is going to be like. I don’t know how it’s going to change my speech patterns or my ability to eat or drink, although the speech and eating have both been affected already.

I’ll be going to school four days a week the whole time I’m doing this. I’ve already talked to three of my teachers, and they’re supportive. Two of my classes have presentations due in them. One of those teachers said, “Well, we’ll get to see how great your PowerPoint skills are and how fast we can read.” I’m going to end up doing three presentations in that class that look like Surviving the World, and that makes me happy.

The other class that requires participation is going to be more difficult. I’m one of the people who lets his opinion be known in there (well, in general, but really in there). We’ve got a group project due by the end of the class. I’m hoping I’ll be able to convince my groupmates to do the talking, and I’ll do the behind-the-scenes computer stuff, like typing everything and the PowerPoint stuff.

I’m just a little… unbalanced by all this. And I’m starting to react badly to it. I don’t want that to happen, but I’m not in a good headspace about it. I’ve worked so damn hard to keep myself positive about it and to find good things about this (I’ll be losing a TON of weight, I’ll be able to eat a crapload of ice cream and not feel guilty, no more fear of rotting my teeth out!), and I know that this bad space will pass; I’m a little entitled to this freak-out.

I’m scared as fuck.

This wouldn’t hurt, though…

On July 14 at 5:00pm, I’ll be having what’s left of my teeth pulled.

For those of you who know, this isn’t much of a shocker. For those of you who haven’t seen me recently (or ever), my family has a history of very weak enamel. Not having insurance or money to pay a dentist has left my mouth … well, pretty horrific, to be perfectly honest.

Today is the first time I’ve been to a dentist since 2002. It was pushed on me by having the last full tooth I had in the top of my mouth break while out with friends on Thursday. So, with newly added dental insurance, we called to find a dentist who could see me.

I’ve never had a more comfortable experience in a dentist’s office ever. Dr. Matt was awesome. Everyone in his office was awesome. He did a free consult that included two X-rays, which they threw in at no cost to me. His front-end manager worked up a price for me, and it was… shockingly small. My out-of-pocket cost will be about $1400, which includes our deductible.

On the 14th, Dr. Tammi (Dr. Matt’s wife) will be doing the extractions. I have a six to eight week recovery time before I have a series of three different appointments to fit me for full dentures, both top and bottom.

It will take some adjustments. For the next three to four months, I’ll only be able to eat soft foods and soups and a few other things that I can adapt to my circumstances. I’ve got a mouth-rinse that I have to use twice a day.

I hate that I’m going through this. I hate that at 37, I’ll have full dentures. I hate that for the next three to four months, I’ll basically be an anti-social shut-in, leaving only for school and for Between the Worlds.

What I love is that I have a partner who is willing to deal with me while I go through this; that I have a dentist who is amazing and comfortable and is willing to work with me; that I’ll have the support of family and friends while I am dealing with this. This is something I need to do for me. I miss my smile, more than I can express with words.

And hey, if they let me choose what my smile will look like? It’s gonna be Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s smile.

From this CNN.com article:

Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for Protect Marriage, the group that came up with Proposition 8, said he believed the issue was over when Californians went to the polls.

“Seven million Californians voted to preserve or restore what marriage has meant since the beginning of time,” he said. “If they’re not permitted to do something as basic as that, then there’s something, really something, wrong with our system.”

The beginning of time? REALLY, you raging hypocritical retarded douchebag? REALLY??? The beginning of time.

Andrew… Darling dear crack-addled Rhesus monkey that you are, did you really think that statement through before you opened up your pie-hole? I know nothing of your religion. I do, however, know that your fucking asshole douchebag employers, this so-called “Protect Marriage” bullshit, is a band of Mormons. Yes, do please tell me how their little petulant assholery, all started because the laws of the United States say that you can only be married to one person at a time, is not part of “from the beginning of time.” Was Joseph Smith, the founder and “prophet” of the Mormon church pulled out of time when he had 44 wives? How about Brigham Young and his 55 wives? Look into the back stories of these paragons of marriage fidelity; I fucking DARE you. Many of their wives were still married to other fucking people when they married them.

Shockingly, but really not so much, the morons have shown themselves to be stupid yet again.

Beginning of time, my hairy white homo ass. Fuck you, you raging douche.

Is it wrong that I’m very tired of the “family friendly” attitude that seems to be invading everywhere? This year’s Columbus Pride theme is “Celebrate Our Families” and while that’s a very benign, made-to-be-inclusive type of theme, it feels a little, well, heteronormative (and as a quick aside because I’ve heard some ass-chappery about it, I don’t care if you don’t like the word; it’s my blog, and it’s a more valid word than metrosexual will ever be).

Families are all well and good, don’t get me wrong. I love most of my biological family. I’m tired, though, of the nuclear family being the end-all-be-all of society’s existence. My chosen family doesn’t include very many children, if any. I feel like I’m being somewhat discriminated against at Pride if I wear my “Today is my Casual Sex Day” t-shirt because OMG THINK OF THE CHILDRUNZ!!!11!1!!! And why can’t they know what casual sex is, and why can’t they know that OMG grown-ups do that!

I understand that there are a lot of gay families with children, but if those of us who don’t have children have to accept and respect those who do, then those with children need to accept those who don’t and give us that same respect. If we’re supposed to “Celebrate Diversity!” as the bumper sticker shouts at us, well, doesn’t that include all diversity, not just the diversity that the PC-Nazis force on us?

One of the assignments we have to do is a series of 13 worksheets based on a series of Excel spreadsheets. One of the spreadsheets is set up to simulate a paycheck, using variables such as marital status, withholding allowances, state and local tax rates, payroll period, gross pay, and voluntary deductions.

The questions that pissed me off are thus:

8.) Consider a single person, claiming one federal withholding allowance, with a biweekly salary of $8650 who has no deductions other than federal withholding tax, FICA, Medicare, state withholding tax (5%), and local withholding tax (2%). Would this person’s net pay increase more if they receive a 5% raise or if they got married? Don’t forge to increase the number of withholding allowances to 2 if they get married.

9.) For the single person described in Question 8 above, what percent increase in their biweekly salary would they have to earn to have their net pay be higher than it would have been had they married?

Obviously, the answer to 8 is “Get married.” I put in “Married. Of course.” Yeah, a little bitter.

The answer to 9? NINE PERCENT. In order to get the same amount of money that someone would get if they got married, you would have to get a 9% raise. There’s not a single company outside of an oil company or an insurance company that gives more than a 4% raise, and most of them haven’t given raises in two years as it is!

Do you see those numbers? NINE FUCKING PERCENT. Now tell me that fags and dykes shouldn’t be able to get married. Fuck you.

I should be doing homework, but I can’t get this post out of my head. It’s been in there for three or four days, and if I want to get my assignments done, I need to write this. DAMN YOU, MUSE! WORK WITH ME!

Have you ever looked back at your life and seen just how surreal it really was when you were a kid? And then wondered why your little kid-brain didn’t clue into it? Or, more, why the “grown-ups” in your world didn’t clue in?

I grew up in a town that was a Lifetime Movie of the Week. My mom will probably disagree, but really, it was. Let me tell this to j00.

The biggest scandal I’ve ever heard, even with all the Washington DC crap and political things, happened while I was in high school. And I’ll get to that. I need to tangent somewhat to a different topic, namely my beef with Glee.

I love the show more than I can put into words. Kurt’s struggle through small-town life as an emergent gayboi and his relationships with his father and schoolmates have me in tears every damn show. The music, even all auto-tuned like it is, is fantastic. That’s what makes me love the show. What I struggle with, even more than it basically being (as my friend Pamela calls it) “Teen Angst: The Musical”, is that in my high school, the glee club, known as The Entertainers (let it go; it’s small-town Wyoming), is (or at least when I was in school, it was) made up of mostly the popular kids. To have the glee club be the dorks? That makes me happy.

I was never cool enough to get into the Entertainers, and that still hurts. I could have been encouraged by the director to work at it but instead, I was ignored by her, and openly mocked by most of the performers. It wasn’t until I turned 27 and started singing with Voices for Diversity that that hurt started to heal. I learned that I had a damn good voice, nearly perfect pitch, and I could work my ass off to be a really strong singer. VFD, subsequently, has ruined me for any single-gender gay chorus; if it’s not mixed-voice, I can’t sing with them. I need SATB; TTBB just doesn’t do it for me.

So, our choir director’s son was my age. Her husband was one of the local vets, and the one that most people turned to when they had animal issues, and in a ranching community, he did pretty damn well for himself. In February of my junior year, he disappeared. A couple of days later, his body was found in a hotel in Colorado; he has committed suicide. The stories varied; one said he hanged himself, one said it was Valium and vodka. Needless to say, his family was devastated.

Over the next few months, stories came out that the director was having an affair with one of the sons of one of the local preachers. While the son was still in high school. The son was a friend of the director’s son. “Awkward” only begins to describe that. The preacher made his kid publicly apologize to his entire congregation.

Keep in mind that these families were still some of the rich families in a small town. To quote Allison Janney in Drop Dead Gorgeous, “It’s front page news when one of ‘em takes a shit.”

The director resigned mid-year. The vocal music program at the school was a mess. My heart sang just a li’l bit.

See? Totally Lifetime Movie of the Week. Hell, Lifetime Mini-series of the Year! Scandals in a Small Town!

So, there’s really no point to this brain-dump. You can see why I got the hell outta there. It was… toxic. I love my folks and I love the town. I hate the Peyton Place/Harper Valley aspect of it. It makes me wonder how I got out of there as well-adjusted as I am.

It’s 4:00 am. I should totally be asleep. However, for unknown reasons, Lady Insomnia has grabbed me by the face. I’m caught up (and ahead) on my homework; my next assignment for anything isn’t due until the 26th and, naturally, it’s a math quiz (Statistics. I’m excited. Can you tell?), so I’m not really all that pumped up to take care of it.

I’ve got a total of nine assignments (that I know of) due before the end of the quarter. Finals start on June 10 and I’ll have five to take. I’m taking my Intro to Keyboarding final either on Thursday or next Tuesday. I’m far enough ahead in the class that I’ll finish that one up with two weeks of no classes on Tuesday and Thursdays, woo hoo!

For the most part, this quarter has been good. I’m pulling solid A’s in everything. I’ve had a couple of assignments that have made me wonder what I was smoking, but the rest of them have been pretty okay, and I should end the quarter with a really good GPA, something of which I’m pretty proud. This has been very good for me, honestly, and I hope it continues.

Speaking of continuing, next quarter is another 19 credits. I’ll have Bookkeeping Basics, Principles of Business, Document Formatting and Skill-building I (the next level of my keyboarding class), Office Procedures II, Access Modules 1 & 2, and PowerPoint Modules 1 & 2 (my only online course next quarter). It’s those first two that I’m a little nervous about, honestly. I need them both for my major (I’m not taking a whole lot of random electives; those were covered in my last stint in college), but damn, they scare the glitter out of me. My books will cost me about $350, which isn’t terrible. I don’t have to buy the books for two classes, as they’re both using books I had this quarter, and a classmate said that she’d sell me her Principles of Business book.

My schedule is going to be… hectic next quarter. Mondays are noon to nine, with a 3-hour break. Tuesdays are going to be loooooooong. My first class starts at 9:00 am and my last class gets out at 8:50 pm. I have a 2 hour and a 2.5 hour break in there, but that’s not really enough time to get home and do anything constructive before I have to go back to school again, so I’ll probably end up sitting in the library or a computer lab, finishing my homework and not having to worry about much else the rest of the week. Wednesdays are short, and Thursdays are only a little longer. I have night classes on Monday and Tuesday, which is what’s going to make them so long.

I feel kind of at a loss as to where I’m going right now. I know I need to finish this degree. Someone in my Office Procedures I class asked me on Monday why I’m taking the class, since I seem to know all the answers anyway. I explained why.

And you know what? I hate like hell that I have to take these classes for the validation of a piece of paper. Evidently, 14 years in various offices isn’t enough validation. I’m sick to death of the stupidity of having to work twice as hard to prove myself because I’m an admin assistant who’s a guy. There are a lot of guys out there who are tired of the “glass ceiling”; I’m here to tell you that it works for men, too. It gets really old.

I’m going to get zero sleep before class.

I’ve obviously been listening to too much Wil Wheaton lately. And to be fair, my walks to and from school have been the entire runs of Radio Free Burrito and Memories of the Futurecast, all in the last two or three weeks. If you haven’t heard them, they’re awesome. And if you know him, Klae did a bumper for one of the early RFBs in his “Buenas Noches!” announcer voice.

In any case, I said that to get you to this story about why I’m right and Leon doesn’t think so.

We’ve been working our way through the entire run of Voyager over the last few months. It’s my favorite of the various Star Trek titles (as is evidenced by my first-season Voyager tattoo). Yes, really. Let it all go and just move on. We’re on disc 6 of season 5, on an episode called “Relativity”. There’s some (shocking!) temporal bomb planted on Voyager, and at one point, the ship explodes. When it happened, I said, “Ka-boom. Earth-shattering ka-boom.” Leon said, “Better than Ka-plop.” I said, “No, that would be on a Klingon ship,” and started laughing. He gave me a flat, unfriendly look. I said, “I win.” He disagreed.

Now, in order for that to be funny, you have to understand that the word Qapla’ is the Klingon word meaning, “Success!” It rhymes, more or less, with “ka-plop.” He was unimpressed that I made a funny using a completely made-up language. I made a total nerd-pun and, therefore, I win. Tell him I win. And that I’m totally the nerdiest.

No? Fine. I’ll sit over here in the corner with my friend Sheldon.