RuffBlog

quick pupdate.

the job is working out well, draining my worries away.... this is the reason employment is called occupation

everything smells great. i love september.

THE STATUS 'PO

I've you've been within five feet of me this week you probably know my double-whammy of sob stories.

My debit card and PIN were cloned/scammed/hacked/frauded/whatever, my account is overdrafted by $1000, and locked pending the super-pleasant fraud investigation. It's such a fucking hassle, but I'll admit with a little pressure RBC eventually came through, advancing me seed money for my week of Outgames debauchery.

Surprisingly coming in a close second in my woeful week, my company lost their main contract and I'm facing a layoff mid-month.

It's an awkward feeling... I never meant to embark on a career as a travel agent... so I'm not sure how I feel about suddenly having to find another job...

but I'm good at it, and perhaps due to my fetish-like fondness for all things complex and chaotic, really enjoy it.... so much so that I'm aligning my paths to combine design, travel, and business... my explanatory scenario generally reads "eventually, I want to be the guy who designs the identity for an airline, or spearheads the design revamp of a hotel chain..."

in the meantime, I've got some more time to put in being a Sabre-geek.

at first, it was really scary watching experienced colleagues pulling up fares... it's this odd physical-mental human-computer twitching... you describe to sabre what you want (be it a passenger record or a list of flight options), wait for a response, do a split-second analysis of what has been presented to you, and repeat the twitching transactions again and again, all the while maintaining chipper and efficient conversation with the client.

anyway, stuff is happening. more to come...

Outgames Safe Sex Ad

Out(games) of Order

The Outgames have begun.

Gay men are wandering helplessly through the city. It draws attention to the forgotten fact that Montreal pretends to present itself on the standard north-south axis, as New York or Toronto are... whatever human instincts we have left to get our bearings are simply tossed aside....

I drank like a 23 year old last night, which is out of character for me...

And at 9am this morning, I couldn't tell which element of my predicament was more horrific:

- the fact that i was vomiting in a metro station... or...
- the fact that i was vomiting in the metro station in VERDUN.

(to verdun's credit, i'd never been there before, and the station is stunning.)

p.s. - given the likelihood that a potential employer may attempt to google me this week, i'd like to point out that i'm more fond of architecture than i am of alcohol....

black and white

I absorb and discard a lot of cool, interesting, important, or outrageous "stuff" as I surf the internet... and simply don't make the effort to point it out.

A few days ago, I encountered the controversial dutch advertising for playstation. Somewhere, a debate was raging on whether this was ignorant racism, or well-executed 'disruptive' advertising courtesy of ad firm TBWA.

Anyway, I didn't blog it. Until now, when I encountered something elsewhere:

Ota Benga (c. 1884 – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 exhibit at the Bronx Zoo alongside an orangutan as an example of the evolutionary "missing link" between humans and apes.

The end of his story:

Ota Benga was caught between two worlds, unable to return to Africa, and viewed mainly as a curiosity in the U.S. On March 20 of 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and shot himself with a stolen pistol. The death certificate listed his name as "Otto Bingo."

Gay or Italian?

I'm out at the office. And presumably because of that, I get to hear way too many stories involving words like "tampon".

It also means that, on occasion, I am called upon to bring out my gaydar and measure up my fellow employees. Of course, my gaydar is broken and my co-workers are quirky, so I assumed they were all gay. Then one turned out not to be, and now I don't know what to think anymore. I gave up guessing and got back to work.

Today I was having dinner in the village, and realized one of my colleagues was there. On a date. With a pastel-shirted male dining companion.

When I explained this discovery to my dinnermate, he sneered. "Of course that guy's gay!"

I'd thought so too at first.... the tan. the hair. the clothes. the gym bag. Then I concluded: He's not gay. He's just Italian.

And it's sort of become a buzz phrase... Gay or Italian?

Need more of either? Check out MBAM's exhibit.

mothers ARE making us gay.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060701/fob1.asp

Birth order may steer some men toward homosexuality in a process that perhaps begins before birth. A new study finds that homosexuality grows more likely with the greater number of biological older brothers—those sharing both father and mother—that a male has.

Men display this tendency toward homosexuality even if they weren't raised with biological older brothers, finds psychologist Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. No gay connection appears in men raised with half-brothers, stepbrothers, or adoptive brothers, all deemed non-biological by Bogaert.

"The mechanism underlying this fraternal birth-order effect remains unknown," Bogaert says. It's possible that succeeding pregnancies with male fetuses trigger a maternal immune response. A mother's immune system may treat male fetuses as foreign bodies, attacking them with antibodies that alter sex-related brain development, the Canadian psychologist suggests.

Scientists haven't yet looked for any specific immune reaction during pregnancy that targets later-born boys who become homosexual.

Trinity...

i feel badly that i missed trinity's performance last night. i'm publishing her (very well done) poster so you can know you missed it too.

i heard the show was great.

i don't mind walking. but i want to buy new shoes.

i've noticed it parked outside a few times, but today i made the effort to price it out...

mercedes s500. my landlord drives a hundred thousand dollar car.

i'd say he's a nice old man who's worked hard and deserves it. but then again....

last fall i leased an apartment two blocks from school. at first, i was so proud of my pseudo-investment, convinced all the time saved by eliminating a commute would leave me more time to study, create, and generally be happy.

the landlord owns half the neighborhood. and it's full of students.

everyday as i retrieve letters from my mailbox addressed to myriad people i've never met, i keep realizing nobody stays. nobody renews their lease. everybody realizes they've been had.

and they leave. and the rent goes up another twenty bucks. some new naive student moves in, paying more rent for a studio than most families pay for a mortgage on a real house.

i was planning to stay another year. but then i started noticing how other people are living. and the rents they're paying.

and i feel like a sucker. i don't know the landlord's name. but i paid for his fucking mercedes.

general update

grand prix weekend. sounds chaotic. air choking. people overwhelming. glossy dirty metal machines moving too quickly. gawking at poor stupid people gawking at rich stupid people.

i wasn't meant to be here.

combustion.

flesh. fiction. scars. scabs. wounds. healing. picking them open just to change. i know, it's irrational.

rationality. ritalin. respiration. repetition. reasons for everything.

red bull. beer. metamucil. nothing goes down smooth. enough.

all the lonely people. heros nowhere to be found.

drunk. thirsty. brothers. fools.

summer has arrived.