Feast of Fools

So, my friend Nick Starr had the chance to be the guest of honor on the Feast of Fools Podcast last week.

In the episode, they took a question from me which was, “Hey Nick, what would we be doing had I been able to go with you?”

Well they quoted me differently making it sound like I was going to sleep with Nick, maybe they read it wrong.  They also took out words that made me sound like I couldn’t write proper English.  Hmmm.  It’s ok, I figure they just got it wrong since it was live.

But what actually bothers me is the part where Nick says I’m hot.  Well that didn’t bother me haha, it was when they went to my site and right off the bat said I didn’t have any pictures.  (The second post is a picture of me…)

When they found the picture Fausto or Marc stated that yes, I was hot but also that my picture was heavily airbrushed.

Listen to it here

And now, here’s the picture. Click it to go to the larger sized version at PiczarPhoto.com

Argh!  Why does that bother me so much?  I didn’t airbrush myself.  Oh well. Mostly it was all compliments and I absolutely adore Marc and Fausto’s show, it’s been on my podcast playlist since Day 1.

Still, I wouldn’t argue with some of you guys letting ‘em know that the reason I don’t have lines and wrinkles in that picture is because I don’t have lines and wrinkles!  I’m barely 24 years old! You can find the post specific to this episode here.

In the end though, it’s great to be heard on a podcast you love so much. I’m not on Dawn and Drew at all anymore, need to catch up with them… And anything with Keith and the Girl has been on the forms or email but never on the actual cast.

It’s a great feeling to have people talk about you, even with some of the bad parts (misquote/airbrush). But to be called sexy and hot for the whole world to hear, that’s empowering haha.

I want to thank Nick for being so nice and saying such wonderful things about me on the show, and for keeping it down to about two minutes, any more and who knows what might have been said tee hee.

Tags: Adam Curry, Airbrush, English language, Famous, Friends, Hilarious, Just My Podcast, Keith and The Girl, Mashable, New media, Nick Starr, Sexy, Ugh, WTF?, Yay

Mother Fucker

I just lost a 5 paged post.  I’m pissed.

I just wrote a post that was so long, my hands now ache.  It covered all the things that had happened to me in the past year that I had not blogged about so far.  It was hard to write.  It was personal.  It was impossibly well linked.  It had pictures and trackbacks.  It told a story I have never told anyone. It was emotional. It was real.

Now it’s gone and I am so pissed off.  This hasn’t happened to me in years.  Not since Wordpress Autosaved.

Yeah, well it didn’t this time.  I hit publish and it brought me to the login page.  I even tried to quickly copy the entire post just in case, didn’t work.

I am so so so so so mad.  This stuff shouldn’t happen.

I cannot type anymore, I’m nearly in tears and my hands hurt too much.  Christ. The past hour and a half was a waste.  Getting emotion out only to have it thrown away like trash doesn’t have the theraputic effect actually publishing does.  Wordpress is dead to me right now.

Tags: Angry, Annoyed, Blogging, Mad, Pain, Pissed, Sad, Tired, Wordpress, WTF?

Homesick in Houston

It has only been like 30 hours since I left Columbia and I can’t believe it but I’m homesick!

I went on Back to My Mac, which by the way, always works for me and checked in on my apartment using Photo Booth.

I use the PrePane hack, Secrets, to do some extra fun things with MobileMe’s Back to My Mac, you should all get it, btw.

Here’s the picture I got from Photo Booth.

I really need to take hots of the apartment with the new furniture, sorry I didn’t do that before I left.

Anyways, looking at a live shot of my apartment made me all sad that I wasn’t there.  I want to see my fish, I want to enjoy my 55″ HDTV and I want to gaze into my 24″ iMac and ponder over government homework or what I should blog about next.

Never did I ever think I would miss Columbia, and maybe I don’t, I just miss my apartment.  I love my apartment.  It is big, it is clean, it is decorated, it is well equipped from the kitchen to the entertainment.  It has 8 bottles of tasty wine waiting for me.  I just spent $180 buying groceries that are waiting to be eaten.

The floors I just waxed and the new couch and chairs need to be worn in.  I have only slept one night on my new bed!

But all of it is nothing when I keep it to myself.  Happiness is nothing if not shared and with Ryan out of town, I can’t really share so much of it; but he returns Monday and I return Friday.

Well, I guess Micheal will keep the fish company, I miss him too.  And Jeremy, and Max, and Brittany.  And Kaldi’s and Starbucks.

I will have to find a way to keep myself occupied here.  With my closest friend in Houston now in Seoul Korea, I can’t see him when I visit and I miss him so.  We were best friends through high school helping each other out in so many different ways and through all the moves and the distance and the changes in our lives, we are every bit as close as ever.

Except that he’s in Seoul Korea and I’m in Houston, alone.

Wow, I need to get my head straight!  I’m in Houston, I love this city.

Let’s go out in the world, maybe buy something for my camera, maybe eat something totally delicious.  Stop personifying my apartment, no matter how much I love you.

Now if Chase could maybe make another trip down here from Columbia, I’d have a buddy with whom I’d waste time and money and enjoy every second of it.

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Tags: Arts and Entertainment, Back to My Mac, Chase, Columbia, Distance, Houston, iMac, Jeremy, Joseph, Kaldi's, Longing, Love, Max, Micheal, Miss, Photo Booth, Ryan, Texas, WTF?

iTunes 7.7.1 Destoys Library

Being the Apple fan boy that I am, when iTunes 7.7.1 came out yesterday, I hopped right on it.  Supposedly it fixed some bugs and stability issues.  I installed it through Software Update, went smoothly, usual, blah blah.

Then it started to sync my iPhone 3G.  It reinstalled every application, even those I had requested to not be installed onto the iPhone.

Then it said there were updates for all 24 applications.  I had them download and then install.

First off, let’s complain that iTunes keeps every version of every application, it never just deletes the old buggy ones.  So you end up with 1, 2, 3, 8+ versions of applications.

Oh and it loses them, or at least iTunes 7.7.1 did.  Do you see a problem here?

One hour later, still installing and then it froze.  I restarted the computer, then started the sync again.

Warning, 11 files could not be synced because they could not be found.

Warning, 100 files could not be synced because they could not be found.

Meanwhile, only 600mb+ songs synced out of the previous, um, 12gb of music.

Did a check…  Apparently some 10-90% of my music was moved to my Time Machine, as far as the library was concered.

10-90% because it would only show up if I tried to play or sync them and the vast majority of my synced songs didn’t sync…  So thinking that might extend throughout the Library… yeah…

Not only iTunes 7.7.1 “move” files from my 1tb MyBook external and into my other 1tb MyBook external which is my Time Machine, and not just to there, to inside of email account archives.  WHAT THE F*CK?!

So guess what I get to do?  I get to reload my entire iTunes Library.  Anyone that knows me probably knows that I have quite the iTunes Library of music, movies, television shows, applications, podcasts, games, audiobooks and then some; we are talking over 700gb of data.

Now I have no stats on my music, no play counts, skip counts, ratings…

Now I cannot sync to AppleTV or to my iPods or iPhones because I can’t do smart playlists.  I cannot say pick the newest 5gb, I can’t say choose the Top 1,000 Played, I can’t say pick the Top 5gb Top Rated…

I had stats on over 35,000 songs and over 1,400 television shows and 80 movies…

So now what?  Now I call Apple, first thing in the morning and bitch bitch bitch.

Never have I hated Apple, but this is really getting me close to that point.

Moreover, I have more stuff to bitch about.  iTunes refuses to Sync my Microsoft Exchange accounts from Mail to my iPhone 3G.  It also doesn’t store my iPhone Apps on the proper drive, they go to my Macintosh HD not my iTunes drive.

So much of this could be prevented by iTunes storing song ratings and play counts within the files just as MediaJukebox did.

It’s official, I’m pissed off.

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Tags: Angry, Apple, Apple Software Update, Apple TV, AppleTV, Damnit, iPhone, iTunes, Just My Nerdiness, Macintosh, Pissed, Rant, Software Update, Steve Jobs, Time Machine, WTF?

The State of Television

We have all at one point been obsessed with a reality show, whether it was Real World (back when it was awesome), Survivor or Who Wants to Marry a  Millionaire.

Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s I really loved watching MTV for two reasons.  First, Undressed which pretty much was my first porn though officially it was a…

sexy, late night soap opera Undressed, which gave viewers a peek behind closed doors at the intricacies of modern relationships. Each episode featured three different fictional stories and followed various characters to see what happened during their most intimate moments. No subject was too taboo.

No kidding.  They did everything and back then that was a big deal.  They took mixed race relationships, gay, lesbian, step siblings… in school, in the dorms, in the bedroom, in the car… they had sex everywhere and it was HOT.  I really can’t beleive it was on basic cable.  But boy howdy did I love it.

Now we have Gossip Girl, the new MTV Undressed but this time with lots of high style and much better dialog (well, it’s all relative).  While Undressed was made to appear like a reality show/soap opera, Gossip Girl is clearly a drama, but it’s got all the sex.

In fact, they are sexing themselves up, actually advertising the fact that many family groups are greatly opposed to their show.

I have to admit, I’m a huge fan of Gossip Girl, it’s so scandalous and sexy, how could you possibly say no?

The other night I was hanging with Ryan at his base watching television and eating some dinner I made for him at home.  We turned on the television to see what was on.

Disturbing things were seen.  First up, and most disturbing, The Baby Borrowers.

Yes… a show where people borrow other people’s babies and kids.  It is called a social experiment.  So was Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and I’m sure we all know how that ended…  What the hell is wrong with us?  Borrowing babies?  I mean, come one, this isn’t an opium den in China!  Not yet at least.

Even more disturbing, on at the same time on another network, Super Nanny.  On this episode, there was a family of five; the oldest daughter was a goth punk girl who swore and screamed evil at her father, the middle child was wheelchair bound and greatly ignored by her father and the youngest was one hell of a bratty little bitch girl who beat the shit out the mom both physically and emotionally.  It was one hot mess and of course, put on television for all to see.

Why do people do that kind of shit?  Show off how they have been terrible parents, the most important job a parent can have.  That’s like having a show called, “Watch Me Suck at Everything I Do”… oh wait, that’ why we have VH1’s Celebreality.

We still have Jerry Springer too.  Last night I hung out with Jeremy, we watched Resident Evil (which I give a C-) followed by whatever was on TV at 1:00am.  Hillybilly fighting was on…  Well at least you can say he’s consistent.  WTF is wrong with these people?

And while I might be confused, upset, disturbed or down right pissed off at the quality of television these days, there are a few gems.  Damages is incredible, Saving Grace is rich with raw sex and emotion, Mad Men is terribly entertaining and shows like Burn Notice and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia make the summer television season quite bearable.

Oh yeah, and then we have the hilarity that is true reality television.  It is hard to find these diamonds in the rough where someone isn’t putting on an act, when they really are who you see on the screen.  Here’s a great example.  Don’t worry, it’s ok to laugh, she signed some sort of “I’m a fucking weirdo, jackass, dumbshit or otherwise” agreement.

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Ahhhh, crazy Asian girls and their love for COOOOOOKIEEEEEEESSSS!

This post dedicated to my good friend, Jonathan.  One of the best guides to today’s entertainment.

Tags: Baby Borrowers, Chase, Gossip Girl, HaHa, Hilarious, Jonathan, Philip Zimbardo, Rant, Real World, Ryan, Stanford Prison Experiment, Television, Video, WTF?

Travel Woes

I have always loved to travel.  Being able to put out a couple hundred dollars and travel across the country is awesome to me, and I’ve done it more than many people my age.  I have been flying since I was a little child from my yearly voyage to California, to trips to Europe, the Caribbean and Hawaii, to more continental trips to Missouri, Texas, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee…

I’ve been to pretty much every state, take the Dakotas, Montana, Alaska and Maine.

Today was the first time I’ve really been a prissy little bitch while traveling.

The plan was that I would take the MoExpress shuttle to St. Louis, fly to Baltimore/Washington International, have dinner with my best friend of all time Landon during my four hour layover and then finish my flight to Raleigh North Carolina where I would meet my grandmother and then head to our hotel to prepare for our presentation tomorrow night.

Well, I did take MoExpress.  I sat next to a guy stuffing his face full of McDonalds and taking up a good portion of my seat doing it.  Behind me there was a guy eating a ten piece fried chicken bucket with biscuits and gravy.  Oh, don’t forget the woman who some how managed to get actual movie theater popcorn at 10:30 in the morning.  Not a small bag, we are talking the refillable plastic bucket.  Finally there was the kid who had two trays of Chinese food, which he ate solo.

Missouri is  sloppy state.

We arrive at the airport as scheduled at 12:30pm, I went through security without any trouble and declared sanctuary.

Too soon.

My flight is delayed 30 minutes.  I decided to take this extra time and explore the airport terminal.  To my surprise, the E terminal now connected to the D terminal, and so on all the way to A.  This is a new thing.  Southwest’s terminal has always sat as it’s own with no connection to the other terminals beyond using a shuttle.

I walk, and walk, and walk.  There are half mile markers through the terminal.  I guess the city of Saint Louis is trying to remove the negative health stigma attached to the state?

I walk all the way to terminal A, find nothing too exciting and head back to terminal E.

At The Great American Bagel and Bakery I order a veggie sandwich on an asiago bagel.

“That’ll be an extra $0.99 you know”

“Yes I understand that”

“What do you want again?  Turkey?”

“Veggie on asiago”

“Oh, yeah.  The asiago is an extra $0.99”

“Yes, that’s what I hear”

“What would you like on it?”

“Well, what veggies do you have?” (they don’t show the makings of the sandwich which makes me a bit nervous)

Pointing to her right, “Look at “Condiments”

I look to her left, where I see “Condiments”.  Is lettuce a condiment?  Ok, I bite, “Lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, peppers and light mayo”.

“Want cheese?”

“Yes, provolone”

“Alright, do you want any cheese?”

“Yes… provolone”

“Oh, yeah.”

It’s over $9.00 for this sandwich.  I hand her my debit card as a man walks up and says, “I need a large coffee”.

The register attendant cancels the transaction to process his coffee order.  Mind you, there is a line about ten deep behind me and this bloke walks up and cuts in front of us all, and she cancels my transaction for a $2.50 cup of coffee.

Then she picks up the phone, apparently “Char-ease” has called in sick, again.

“Oh no!  You tell Char-ease she can’t be calling in again.  She called in yesterday, no way, nuh uh.”

This continues, my transaction is processed.  I leave, unwrap my bagel and am met with one piece of lettuce, two anemic tomato slices and vinegar.  So that’s how the sandwich got so greasy, the oil and vinegar she poured all over it.  Did I order that?  No.

So I took apart the sandwich and treated it as a half side salad with stale asiago bread on the side.

Needless to say it wasn’t very good and it definitely wasn’t worth $9.00+.  I would have been better off getting the caesar salad from Wolfgang Puck for $8.99 in the other terminal.  Lesson learned.

I get to the gate, flight delayed another ten minutes.

Flight delayed another 30 minutes.

Flight has arrived… ?  Huh?  It was at least forty minutes away and now, magically, it is here. We board the flight.

We sit on the the runway 20 minutes.  We start to take off, we stop.  We sit on the runway 30 minutes.  We return to the gate where we deplane and I plug in my laptop to charge a bit more.

The air traffic controllers in Baltimore are saying there is at least another hour before we can take off so I get myself comfortable, cancel my plans with Landon and hop onto the internet.
Ten minutes later they are calling us back onto the plane.  So much for an hour, but I won’t complain.

We get back on the plane.  We sit on the runway.  We sit some more.  We finally take off.

During the entire thing, everyone kept a positive attitude, thank the lord.  I mean, I was pessimistic and bitchy and pissy but I made sure to keep that to myself.  The flight attendants were so nice, the pilot kept us up to date as best he could and gate workers did their best to keep us comfortable with the entire situation.

That is why I love Southwest Airlines.  They put customer service as a top priority and had this been another airline, I am certain there would have been some pretty vocal people on the plane.

I only wish they had Midwest Airline’s cookies.  Never ending supply of warm cookies would keep any Missourian happy, especially the ones I met today.  Holy shit.
UPDATE:

We have

Tags: Annoying, California, Crappy, Delayed, Pitchfork Music Festival, Rant, Southwest Airlines, St. Louis, St. Louis Missouri, Travel, Ugh, United States, Washington DC, Wolfgang Puck, WTF?

On a Mission (in the Mission)

Our last day in San Francisco was a busy day.  Ryan had a lot of paperwork to get processed and needed a few LiveScans for a job application and ambulance license so we marched down Powell to the Bart station.

Wow, I guess I forgot all about the Pride Parade.  Thousands of people met us at the Bart station, completely hiding it from our field of vision.  We hung out, watched a few floats go by, reveled in the fun, friendly good times and took a few pictures.

As with any gay event, not everyone there was there to celebrate equality.  Some religious zealots where protesting the parade, the weekend, the gay marriages in California and just whatever popped into their heads.

They blamed the fires on the gays.  They blamed the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the gays.  They blamed the salmonella on the gays.  They blamed the storms on the gays.  Apparently it’s our fault.  Sorry guys.  Our bad.

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The kicker was when he said, “If you guys are such a loving, kind and friendly people, why do you need all of these police officers?  It’s because you cause hate and destruction that they are here” and then went onto something about paying good Californian’s tax dollars for us to celebrate our heresy…

I guess what he was missing was this.  The police are there not to protect us from ourselves but from people like him.  Pride is about as safest I have ever felt in a city, day or night.  The only thing one gay guy wants to do to another gay guy is fuck him (excuse my vulgarity and obvious exaggeration).

Well anyway, we finally made it to the UPS Store for Ryan’s LiveScan only to find it had closed for Pride.  Haha, a UPS closed for Pride, how awesome.  We took a seat at Squat & Gobble for lunch while we figured out a Plan B.

Squat & Gobble is the perfect little brunch place.  I always think of Landon when I go there.  I’m pretty sure you would love it Landon, reminds me of The Café in Washington DC only… better.  It was delicious.  While there we found another LiveScan place, hopped on a bus and back to the Mission we go.

LiveScan went easy enough, then back to the hotel.  I’m leaving Ryan here to go to Pride for a bit.  Catch you guys later!

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Tags: California, Dining, Food, Fun, Gay Lesbian and Bisexual, Gay pride parade, Jester, Landon, LiveScan, Mark, Mike, Paul, Pride, Religion, Ryan, San Francisco, Shopping, Society and Culture, Stupid, WTF?, Zealot

You’ve Got to be Kidding

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain has called off a fundraiser at the home of a Texas oilman who joked about rape during a 1990 gubernatorial run in the state. The Texan, Republican Clayton Williams, made the joke during his failed campaign against Democrat Ann Richards. Williams compared rape to the weather, saying, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

He also compared Richards to the cattle on his ranch, saying he would “head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt.” Williams’ comments made national news at the time and remain easy to find on the Internet.

Even so, McCain’s campaign said it hadn’t known about the remarks.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - McCain event canceled over fundraiser’s rape ‘joke’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

Tags: Bullshit, McCain, Politics, WTF?

The New York Post Thinks I’m Single?

Breaking News:…

Justin is single.  He just found out and now he has to chat with hot singles in his area.

Only I’m not single and the only hot singles with whom I chatting is my friend Chase so, once again, the New York Post gets it all wrong.  It’s just another round of targeted marketing going amuck. 

Tags: Chase, HaHa, iPhone, Just My Nerdiness, Love, WTF?

What Can Go Wrong…

Ryan and I had this plan.  The plan was that we would have a couple of friends join us to St. Louis where Six Flags was “celebrating” GLBT Day.  The idea was, two hotel rooms, one car, four friends driving, having drinks with mutual and new friends Saturday night, waking up Sunday and picking up Jenny and going to the park for a fun filled day of rides and expensive bottles of water.

Well damn!

My car broke down.  A recalled part landed my car in the shop.  Coincidentally, that recalled part cost me money to get fixed…

Ryan’s car was too small for four people and the air conditioner is on the fritz so we investigated a rental car.  Every dealer was sold out.

Jeremy’s cousin volunteered to drive us, quite nice of her.  A few problems there.  That made a total of five people driving up in a car made for four people.  Never mind picking up Jenny the next day, never mind that we wouldn’t have a way to see our friends for drinks that night.  Never mind that the other three in the car would be under 21 and thus unable to go out with us.

We get about ten miles outside of town when I get a phone call from my dad that he has managed to get us a rental car.  Our driver reluctantly turns the car around.  (Not so secretly, I was thankful to get out of the car.  Between the packed backseat to the driving skills of our 17 year old driver… I was ready to get the hell out of there).

The car rental place does indeed have a car for us.  It’s a 2008 Ford Mustang GT.

You’ve got to be kidding.

$75 a day, 14-20mpg and you have to be 25 to rent it.  I’m 23.  Reluctantly, again, our driver brings us back to the condo.  Ryan and I decide we will just take his mustang.  It was really the only choice.  So we go inside the condo to pick up a few things… and notice the fabulous trail of chocolate tracked in by my flip flops.

For real?  OMG.

We work hard to clean up the mess, it was actually a bit fun, thanks mostly to Ryan’s eternally positive attitude.

So we clean up the floor, pick up our things, get some gas, buy a few drinks and drive.  We have fun in the car because… well we always have fun together.  If left on an otherwise deserted island and given the option to bring one thing with me, it would be Ryan.

He makes me laugh, he makes me see the brighter side of things.  He makes me feel whole.

Ryan would bring hydrogen peroxide.  He isn’t as romantic as I am in times like these.  wink wink

We make it to the hotel, we get dinner, and ultimately decide that driving 40 minutes to meet our already partially drunk friends at a bar and then have to find our way home would be a bad idea.  Plus our other three people are under 21.

After about an hour of talking to each other about me allowing myself to be trampled on by my friends and my exes, we head downstairs to the bar.  Ryan charms the bartender, I drink my vodka and Sprite.  It was tasty.  We again, have a wonderful time together.

We wake up, head to Jenny’s, get lost… get lost some more.  Get bagels, cheat the system at Panera, get to Jenny’s, eat said bagels, meet her roommate, meet her roommate’s boyfriend and his friend, head to Six Flags.  We forget the camera.  Holy shit.

About the park later.

After the day at the park, we went back to Jenny’s, took a nap, took a shower, and headed out to see Geoffrey for dinner.  Got lost, then we got really lost.  Then we made it.

This weekend has convinced me that Ryan and I have to get a Garmin, or at the least, I’ll definitely have to get the new iPhone 3G with built in GPS.  Holy hell.

Tags: Car rental, Chadd, Driving, Ford Mustang, Geoffrey, Jenny, Jeremy, Six Flags, St. Louis, Transportation, Ugh, WTF?