This is not what I meant when I said "Exposed Wood!"

If you're like the other dirty birds in Chicago, then you're probably hard up for places to go when you want anonymous gay sex in the mid morning. Foster Beach isn't warm enough during this time of year. The back room at The Ram does open at 9:30 A.M., but all of the better-looking felchers don't show up until after six. So what's a fella to do? He goes to the nearest Home Depot!

I went to the Home Depot today to pick up some trim and was surprised to find that there wasn't a lesbian in sight, what with all of the jokes about the lesbians loving the Home Depot. I really think that they're doing a great job of catering to the gay clientèle with all of the cute boys they've got in the customer service area and all the sassy, big-bootied black women ringing people up at the registers. Everyone knows that sassy black women make the best fag hags and that lots of gay men fantasize about customer service butt sex. But I digress.

There are a lot of dark corners in the lumber section, (which is surprising when you consider how much fluorescent lighting that place has) and I had the unfortunate pleasure of witnessing a man briskly walking away from another man who was zipping his pants back up when I passed by. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that I'd interrupted a public sex act. It turns out that I wasn't the only queen in the Home Depot looking for some trim!

I do notice that I get a lot of hungry stares from the men who shop there. At first I thought it was because they didn't think that it was right for Asian/Hispanic hybrids to do home improvement, but now I realize that it's because they possibly wanted a piece of my pie.

I guess I shouldn't be all that shocked to discover that sort of thing going on at Home Depot. When you think about it, the whole home improvement genre is rife with sexual innuendo. Things get nailed, screwed, and you sometimes use a tool called a 'stud finder.'

You Spell Potato

Someone named Jen was nice enough to bring this to my attention:

I was just surfing the web and I came across your website and I have to tell you that you've been misspelling the word Oblogitory. It should be Oblogatory with an "A" not an "O" because the word Obligatory has an "A". That's all.

I only inherited two things from my mother. One is the gene that causes male pattern baldness and the other is the need to point out when someone is wrong. I'm going to use one of these gifts here today.

Sorry, Jen. While you do raise an excellent point, I must point out that "Oblogitory" is not a word, so there is no way that I could have misspelled it. In this case, it's a proper noun that doubles as a neologism. If there's something that just has to be addressed in blog form, it's Oblogitory.

Kindred

Growing up, I always knew that I was different. While most kids were watching Nickelodeon, I was watching episodes of "Are You Being Served?" on PBS. When asked to use watercolors to depict our favorite movie scenes, I made use of the red-orange and black to recreated the "Tomorrow is another day" scene. I wanted to sing Eartha Kitt's "Uska Dara" in the sixth grade talent show after seeing a documentary about her, but my teacher said that it was weird to sing a Turkish song. Needless to say, I was never a very popular child.

This disparity has followed me all through my existence and has made it extremely difficult to fit in with most of the people I meet. Of course, there is always the surefire method of conforming in order to fit in, but how long can you keep that up before people find out that you really don't think that Bjork's music has the power to end all human suffering? I've settled for accepting the fact that my tastes are just too eccentric for where and when I exist and to duck whenever I see someone swing at me because I'm not a fan of Nascar.

You can imagine my reluctance when my boyfriend asked me to meet his friends, Thomas and China, for brunch this past weekend. I assumed that I'd have to smile hope that his friends would be cool with the fact that I'm 28 years old and I still watch the Cartoon Network and play Super Smash Brothers Brawl in my underwear.

I tried to avoid the topic of music because they're musicians and I wasn't too familiar with their work, so I went the safe route by making various pop culture references during the brunch, including Penelope from Saturday Night Live, and China responded with a spot-on Penelope impersonation. She and Thomas then mentioned several actors and movies that only about five percent of America appreciates and I breathed a sigh of relief.

To further cement their coolness, they treated me to their rendition of "Islands in the Stream" during the car ride back to the hotel. We almost got into an accident on Lake Shore Drive because nobody anticipated what a Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers duet does to my hand-eye coordination.

The clincher happened later that night at their concert when they introduced a delightful Turkish song made famous by the lovely Eartha Kitt. Care to guess which one it was? They performed Uska Dara, the fun little song that my sixth grade teacher thought was too "weird" to sing to an elementary school audience. I shrieked with excitement and possibly caused my boyfriend to lose hearing in his right ear, but it was a small price to pay for this "full circle" moment.


What I learned this past weekend (the ABC After school Special version):

You shouldn't go through life assuming that no one is going to like you because you're different. One day you'll meet other cool people, so just be comfortable with who you are.

What I learned this past weekend (if my mother were telling it to me):

See? See that? You assume and assume and you just end up being wrong. You should pray.

Afrinholics Anonymous: It's been nine days since my last spray

One day in the late 1980s, the minions of hell conspired to figure out another way to make life unbearable for humankind. Anyone who studies demonology or has a passing interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer would surmise that it was the demon Dantalion who spearheaded this campaign against humans. He quite possibly visited the Schering-Plough pharmaceutical company and imparted his demonic knowledge of science to the researchers there and helped them develop a nasty little product that we know as Afrin.

Afrin is a nasal decongestant spray that works by shrinking the blood vessels in your nasal sinuses that get swollen whenever you get a cold or a sinus infection. Sinus congestion/stuffy nose is a pain to endure, especially when you're trying to sleep at night. On the surface, Afrin seems to have many positives:

• Works within seconds
• Lasts for twelve hours
• Is fairly inexpensive
• Can be obtained without a prescription
• Has a phallic-shaped applicator tip

But freedom to nose-breathe does not come without a price. The blood vessels in the nasal sinuses will eventually expand and you're left with the feeling that your breathing COULD be just a little smoother if you had that liquid gold sprayed up your nose. Then you spray more up there and your brain releases some endorphins as a reward for allowing more oxygen to get to it. Soon you find yourself buying multiple bottles of Afrin to keep in your gym bag or the office "just in case." When you leave for work in the morning, you incorporate Afrin into your mental list of things you need before you walk out the door. Your friends try to take it away from you, but they soon regret it when they see the look of desperation on your face as you claw their face.

A lot of people who use Afrin soon develop a dependency, resulting in a condition called Rebound Nasal Congestion. Ask anyone who has used Afrin and you're sure to find one or two people who went through the nightmare of trying to get off of the stuff. My advice is to avoid it if you can.

Meanwhile, Dantalion and his subjects at Schering-Plough are looking at you through their crystal ball and laughing as they count your money and keep a tally of your days of dependency on a little chalk board they keep around just for the hell of it.

Drawing a Blank

I like to pick out a DVD series or a fun video game to keep myself entertained whenever I feel like I'm going to be sick from a cold or flu. I felt one nasty cold coming on last week, so it became a toss-up between Alias: Season 4 and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the Nintendo DS. The video game won out for the sheer fact that I hate getting up to switch DVDs. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a brain teaser type game, featuring animation similar to that of The Triplets of Belleville and over 135 puzzles to solve. It looked like a cute little distraction.

After the first few puzzles, this little gem popped up and caused the biggest brain fart since the time I was naming off the Von Trapp children in my evening prayer and forgot Kurt:

Puzzle No. 033 : Light Which One?

You have only one match left. You want to light the room with an oil lamp (LAMP), start a fire to warm the room (FIREPLACE), and heat your bathwater (TUB). In order to complete all of the above actions, which of these should you light first?

I'll list the answer at the end of this entry. It was a real noodle scratcher for me and I was suddenly wishing that I'd paid more attention in school. The puzzles get progressively harder, so you can imagine how encouraging it was for me to know that it would only get worse from that point.

After fucking lots of circuit boys during my brief stint as a top years ago, I always thought that something that looks cute and juvenile is always easy to conquer. But after playing going 33 rounds with Professor Layton, I'm starting to rethink my strategy.

It might interest you to know that it is not beyond the realm of possibility to find similarities between certain video games and circuit boys. Not only do they both seem child-like and conquerable, but you can also find E on both of them. Naturally, I'm referring to E as ecstasy on the always-tweaked-out circuit boy and E as the ESRB "everyone" rating on the video game box.

The answer to the puzzle? It's the match, of course.