It’s finally up, though it still needs a bit of work.

Check it out if you like.

Freakin’ ftpx just about had me on the ropes there for awhile.

On October 5th, help drive out the Bush regime.

Or not.

It’s a free country.

For the moment.

Is it ethical to transplant an entire head onto another body?

I just sounds to 1950s sci-fi cool … unless they saved Hitler’s brain or something.

Still, I’d like to see Professor Monkey-for-a-Head in the flesh.

A full week on the road. I love a good road trip.

We drove through downtown Wichita on the way south, a place where we’d lived for a few months in 2003. The area is a total ghost town, with Available signs as far as the eye could see. Entire skyscraper buildings were totally empty. It was even more depressing than when we’d lived there, which is hardly fathomable.

Regardless of my previous post, I don’t particularly hate Oklahoma, especially since it was the place with the cheapest gas on the trip ($2.20 a gallon for premium). What I hate is small town, Oklahoma. Specifially Okmulgee, about 30 miles south of Tulsa, where the sidewalks roll up by 8pm.

The Indian casino in Okmulgee is a tin building with no restaurant or bar. They do have a concession stand, but how do they keep people gambling without decent food and alcohol? Then again if there really is nothing else to do in a town, I suppose you’ll sit at a slot machine and drink unspiked, free soft drinks all night long. This is advice I never thought I’d give, but you folks need to visit the casinos in New Mexico to see how this Indian gaming thing works.

Oklahoma also has a traffic cop, radar ablaze, every 3-5 miles. So, every 3-5 miles, the radar detector would go off. Hence, we had to slow down every 3-5 miles. Not only did it take us for-fucking-ever to get out of Oklahoma, but it inspired a discussion about the crime rate in the state. That made the time go by faster, anyway.

Once across the Texas border we found higher speed limits, no cops, and beer and porn at the local convenience stores. Never thought Texas would seem progressive to me, but there you go.

We went to Dallas to visit family we hadn’t seen since last Thanksgiving and it was really nice. We also spent an entire afternoon shopping … there is nothing I’ve found anywhere else like Sam Moon in Dallas. Trust me, if you get to the area, you should visit their shopping complex off Harry Hines Blvd. Sure, just about everything is a cheap, Asian knock-off of designer stuff, but I still picked up two bag’s worth of it.

We also got to spend some time (and money) at Fry’s, the best computer store in the world. No, there is no Fry’s here in Denver and sometimes I think that is a very good thing, especially since I live with a gadget nut. Lest anyone think we weren’t working while we were gone, bear in mind we travel with our laptops, cell phones which have unlimited Internet, cigarette lighter chargers, and everything else we need to get things done in the car. I even rebuilt the gallery website, though I am waiting on a couple of phone calls to finish the update and load it.

I don’t know how we managed it, but we made the entire 13-1/2 hour trek back to Denver in one day. We were pretty road weary and giddy - ask me about the “gold bullion cheese” someday - but happy to be home. The TiVO did exactly what it’s supposed to do, which means we’re a week behind on our viewing, and we’re both panicked about the gallery sneak preview next Friday, but all is right with the world when you fall asleep in your own bed.

Now if I could just get off the computer and do something useful …

Has got to be better than Oklahoma.

Whining will stop upon leaving tomorrow morning.

Sucks.

But you knew that already.

Intelligent people who are happy all the time are simply not paying attention.

Yet here it is:

Social drinkers have higher salaries.

Another round, barkeep!

I saw her in the liquor warehouse store. She was on the next aisle over, so it was only her head I saw at first. Her super-highlighted blonde hair was teased up into a form I had not seen since the last time I saw AC/DC live in concert. Her eyes were lined in black makeup reminiscent of my 21st birthday. Everything about her hinted of a woman who had gotten as far as 1985 … and just stopped.

Everyone has a favorite time in their lives. Some, however, never get beyond those favorite years; instead, they get stuck in a never-ending loop of reliving and recreating the past as if it had never ended.

I rounded the corner and caught the woman’s full form. Her tight, black sweater sported a cowl-neck - a cowl neck! - while her jeans, painted-on tight like Olivia Newton-John at the end of Grease, were tucked neatly at the bottom into her short, black boots.

I wanted to get a picture so that I could show how I dressed in 1986. It was beautiful. It was fashion history.

We’ve all seen at least one 60s reject, still wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, sandals, and a headband decades after the Summer of Love ended. Then there’s the jock who still wears his letter sweater long after graduation. I once worked for a former 1970s disco queen who thought that Danskin skirts were still all the rage. I even met a guy recently who is still sporting the 80s new wave look, complete with checkered shoes, a ska hat, and skinny black tie.

The liquor store woman’s look was not meant to be an ironic style or a costume and, hence, I found hers to be one of the saddest, stuck-in-an-era lives I’ve witnessed to date. Maybe it was because she looked just like I did back in the day. Perhaps being reminded of who I could be, had I stopped evolving at that very moment of my life, was what made me feel so sad for her. This woman was, top to bottom, the personification of part of my own life 20 years ago, and her entire visage simply filled me with pity.

I wonder sometimes why I’d left that version - or any versions - of myself behind. What became of the college girl? The dominatrix? The corporate hack? The baby dyke? What happened to the drag queen stuck in a femme’s body? Just in the past year, I’ve switched from romantigoth (corsets, lace, heels) to 1920s goth (flapper dresses, sensible shoes, period hats). Who knows how long even the goth look itself will last with me?

I’ve always gladly pursued what lay ahead and changed my look and my lifestyle with what I found there. A precious few among us continue to change and evolve, even as our peers do not. So, for we who move on, I propose a toast:

To evolution;
To taking the leap into something new;
To understanding that stagnation may work for most of humanity,
But it will never work for us.

By the way, the woman in the liquor warehouse purchased two cases of Lowenbrau - a beer which reached its height of popularity in the 80s - and drove away in a pristine, white, Chevy Camaro IROC Z.

If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

Proof that the current age of misanthropy suits me.

I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya, too.