Monday, August 18th, 2003

Time	Event
9:31a	Wounded but not Licked I'll never understand human nature. Before I tell you this story I'm going to tell you one of my biggest life philosophies. I learned it in a class once years ago. Living through TRUTH is the most important thing in the world, providing one knows the difference between TRUTH in fact and TRUTH in opinion. What does this mean? Well, we live in a world of people with entitlement complexes. We have struggled as a society to be heard as individuals and to be able to express ourselves, and this has led a lot of people to confuse their opinion as speaking the "truth." A very very simple example of this would be: Jenny askes Dave "Do you like my dress?" Dave thinks the dress is ugly and unflattering. Dave has to consider: will speaking the truth about his OPINION in this case make an important impact in the situation? Will telling Jenny prevent her from being embarassed when they go out, or is it a perfectly okay dress that Dave just happens to dislike (in which case his opinion is hardly relevant.) Or to give examples of truth vs. truth about opinion: "Jenny is wearing an ugly, unflattering dress" - opinion "Jenny is wearing a green dress" - opinion but unbiased (I might call it a blue dress) "Jenny is wearing a dress" - mostly factual (but then some might call it a gown) "Jenny is clothed" - truth Somewhere within these lines of extremes we all have to find the right scale for the situation. So why am I bringing this up? One of the ways that truth-issues come up in my life on a regular basis is in dating or social interaction. It is important to me that people tell me the truth about how they feel rather than lie to me to spare my feelings. (Again, talking about truth of FACT, not of OPINION.) If you go out on a date with me and you're having a miserable time, please tell me that it's not working out. We can end an unproductive moment early and I can go shopping. I PROMISE I'll get over it. How many people on Earth; 6 billion now or something? I can handle a little rejection. PLEASE DO NOT say what a great time you had and then not return my calls or emails. PLEASE DO NOT see me on the street weeks later and give me a huge hug and say how sorry you are for not calling but you were busy with work. RESPECT ME enough to allow me to recover from hurt feelings when being told the truth. SO...on Saturday this weekend I was at Rawhide bar in New Orleans chilling out when this bear couple came in. I began talking to them and it turned out it was one of their birthdays. They had flown into town from Dallas to celebrate. Although they were both very handsome men, they did not play around with other guys. I was cool with that, you know? I'm the first to jump on a romantic opportunity, but I'm also the first to just make friends. Well, we hung out for several hours, maybe 2-3, drinking and having a good time. We eventually moved to another bar and all three of us got a little bit tipsy. One of the guys, the birthday boy, began to get a little more flirtatious than I was comfortable with. He was pushing his leg up against mine in such a way as to, you know...you KNOW. You can tell the difference between coincidental leg brushing and intense rubbing and pushing. Anyway he got more physically affectionate and even went so far as to make a comment about how if he was single or was in New Orleans alone... dot, dot, dot. But I chalked it up to the booze and although I was physically affection back at first, as it continued I started sort of pulling his hands off of me. If his lover had been doing the same it would be different, but I just felt akward. Still, we had a good time. They had made arrangements to meet someone from LIVEJOURNAL later at Lafitte's, but they were tired, so we agreed to meet there at 10:30. I ended up running into them at Rawhide at 10 but they both seemed down. One had a headache from drinking too much earlier; the other had a stomach ache from some seafood. So once wet got the Lafitte's we all decided just to go home, but we made plans to meet at Rawhide for karaoke night at "around 9" on Sunday. I got there at 8:30 and sure enough they were there. They were sort of flanking this LIVEJOURNAL friend. I was having some reasonable difficulty getting into the mix. You know how if you meet some people who are expecting you and they welcome you into the conversation they slightly rearrange their positions so you're in the "circle" so to speak? Well these guys seemed to be intentionally positioning themselves so that I wasn't included. The birthday boy barely made eye contact with me and said barely two words to me. The other fella did talk to me a little bit, but only because at some points it seemed even he was being excluded from this conversation. Now I'm a grown up. This isn't high school. So it's not like I was devestated or jealous. But it was a little bit hurtfull to be completely ignored. I mean, seriously, it was like I wasn't even there. At one point I even made some comment about how difficult it was to get into the conversation since I walked in late, and B-boy said "oh no, you're fine!" But then turned around to ignore me again. So since I'm so visibly being shunned, I mean seriously, it couldn't have been more obvious, I figured I'd let them finish this leg of their conversation. I walked away for about a minute and a half, just 10 feet from them, and talked to some guy. When I turned around, they were gone. Yes, that's right. They completely left the bar. It went from "You've definately got a place to stay whenever you come to Dallas!" to leaving a bar without even saying goodnight. That really hurt my feelings. I mean, to a degree I'm over it, although it still effects me on a human cruelty level, but what did I do to deserve being treated like that? I can't imagine the ENTIRE day before was the effect of alchohol because they weren't drunk to START with. I figure that they just met this other guy who they liked better (or frankly thought was cuter) and decided I wasn't worth their time anymore. But it still stings. I did trek out on a Sunday night to hang out with them. The least they could've done is make some sort of an excuse or said, you know, "Hey, we're gonna go to yadda-yadda with this other guy, it was really nice to meet you and we'll keep in touch online!" I mean at least then they've made it clear that they're going elsewhere, that I'm not invited. I can HANDLE that. So yeah, I'm bummed out. I don't like making new friends who turn out to not be much of a friend. I'm pretty much over it, especially after typing it out here, getting it off of my chest. But it did suck. -NOC- (Comment on this)
11:43a	HOLY SHIT! THEOLOGIANS: "JAMES WARNOCK IS THE ANTICHRIST!" By Elena Zeitsev, Staff Writer MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (Monday, August 18) — A newly published university study based on the so-called "Bible Code" contends that it has identified the Antichrist spoken of in the Biblical book of Revelation. The cryptological analysis, published this week in the Journal of Theological Research, transliterated ancient cuneiform references to modern-day letters, and ordered them in what researchers say is the Antichrist's human name: James Warnock. The authors of the paper stressed that the people who share this name all are "innocents," except for "the unique individual who may not even know he or she is the Antichrist." The researchers, from Bob Grant University outside Minneapolis, are currently studying geographical evidence using the same techniques. "The evidence so far indicates that this individual lives in New Orleans, La.," the paper said. The researchers say the next step will be to investigate the background of every James Warnock within a 50-mile radius of New Orleans, La., and determine whether any "extreme sanction" can, or should, be taken. (1 Comment | Comment on this)
4:51p	Found Art Someone else's commentary about Madonna on IMDB.COM - I loved it so much I had to share it with you all. --------------------------- I came away from "Truth Or Dare" feeling the way I do when someone cuts me off in traffic and then gives me the finger. This is a hard film to categorize. On the surface, it's a competent documentary, well-edited and interestingly photographed (even the grainy backstage footage). On the other hand, the film is like having obnoxious personalities thrust at you with every turn. At the center of this carnival of hard-working but uninspired nincompoops is Madonna herself. Madonna certainly fancies herself the queen bitch, but also wants to show us that she's got a sensitive side too (like when she lies on her mother's grave in front of the camera). I had to laugh when I read other reviews that ascertained how this film shows us that Madonna is "just another human being". What did we think she was? An alien from the planet Diva? Admittedly there's some funny stuff here. I enjoyed watching the weirdness involving Warren Beatty, especially when Madonna lost her voice and he was able to get a word in edgewise. But something really bothered me about the whole thing. For instance, for how gay-positive Madonna is supposed to be, this movie gives us the double whammy of the straight dancer Oliver deriding the gay dancers, and then shows us footage that shows how right he is--Madonna's dancers ARE irritating. Madonna herself comes off as a self-obsessed clod, although her legions of devoted fans probably did not see this side of her when they saw this movie. Madonna has always put on airs about herself (like the phony British accent she tries to pull off these days), but here you can see her stumbling over her various phony images and fronts, like in her decidedly inarticulate speech before the show that she dedicates to Keith Haring ("...who doesn't have the luxury of being alive like we do..."). The "religious" Madonna chokes on her words and seems flustered that the camera is still rolling (she feels the need for a self-aware aside that says "I don't know why I do this to myself!"). Poor sensitive thing. In fact she's so sensitive that her first reaction when she hears that one of her makeup staff was given a date-rape drug and sodomized is a giggle, albeit a nervous one. Then there's the infamous scene where she totally misses Kevin Costner's sense of humor and mocks him behind his back. Gad, she's so wickedly funny, isn't she? We also learn that Madonna is loyal, like when she excitedly waits to reconnect with a childhood friend, then disregards the woman when she says she'd like to name her unborn baby after Madonna. We also discover that Madonna is an "artist" and that her music is her art. It's funny to watch Madonna and her brother, Christopher, defending the calculated stage show by calling it a "journey...you have to go through all the different parts to get to the end." He he. Looked like just a bunch of costumes, lip-syncing and elaborate stage sets to me. I have never understood Madonna's mass appeal or why she has become as famous as she has, and "Truth or Dare" doesn't give much insight to this. In fact, she seems to have succeeded almost in spite of her bitchy attitude and her tendency to either alienate or disregard those who have befriended her or worked with her. Her music is mostly unremarkable, and she seems to want to paint herself as an individual who is relentlessly driven to succeed and gets everything she wants. While this may be partly true, "Truth or Dare" seems to overlook the fact that Madonna is very clearly a product of a corporate entity, a mediocre recording artist who was so heavily promoted by both herself and her record label that she was bound to catch on. Madonna may have sold millions of albums off of her ability to "push peoples buttons" (as if being sexually explicit is an original idea), but you can bet a bunch of guys in suits and ties have made a lot more money off of her. Her willingness to do anything to succeed probably looked pretty good to Warner Brothers records, so they lavished her with money and promotion and let her take off like an obnoxious little kid racing a bike down a hill. The thing that "Truth or Dare" taught me about Madonna is that she was the little kid who probably pushed all the other kids off their bikes so she would get to the bottom of the hill first. Blonde Ambition, indeed. (Comment on this)

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