Journal of Scix

"Tired Whore"


"Tired Tranny after the Show"



"Necromancer Pimp"



Annimated gif of the guy that played Riff

These are pictures of the RHPS dress rehearsal we had today; I was a stand-in for Rocky, so I'm all in my golden drawers:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037412&id=203002623&ref=nf

Both Utahns and others have asked me with outright flabbergast why I moved to Salt Lake City.

Friday was the 250th anniversary of the invention of Guinness. There was a celebration at a local pub called Piper Down. I went there with some friends (including one who had won a bar tab at a poker game and bought my drinks) and we had a lot of fun. Shortly before we had to leave, a band called the Pagan Love Gods came up on stage and with drums, bass, guitar and accordion rocked a punk rendition of "Jesus Wants Me For a Sun Beam". The crowd roared and sang along.

I am told this is a Mormon thing. The bar was full of apostate Mormons, apparently, or at least folks who grew up in the culture. There is a fierce joy in thumbing one's nose at an oppressive regime. People have some idea of what Utah is, but in its core, in Salt Lake, there is a strong and proud contingent of freaks, geeks, perverts, queers, artists, pagans, and atheists, and in this island of madness, they dance fiercely and rage against the dying of the light.

The next day I was at a rehearsal for the local Halloween production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The cast calls itself the Latter Day Transvestites. There's a line in the film where the Sweet Transvestite himself, the cannibalistic crossdressing answer to Mary Shelley's protagonist, Dr. Frank N Furter says, "There's no crime in giving yourself over to pleasure, Brad." The gang cries out, "There is in Utah!" with a great deal of satisfaction.

Also this weekend I was at a party that had fire dancers, Buto, excellent close-up legerdemain, a Rifftrax presentation of Twilight, and some of the most interesting, funny, creative people I have ever met. Plus good booze. This morning before I showered the vegan diner with champagne as the survivors of the party gathered for mimosas and brunch, a couple of us went to a nearby Unitarian Universalist church to hear a speaker from the Atheists of Utah. There was a lesbian singer (her busty, dusky partner sat in the front row snapping pictures with her phone), a former Mormon of Indonesian extraction, who sang chants and a fun little ditty called "Behind the Zion Curtain" that addressed a lot about what "Normal" Utahns are about (I particularly recall a line about Jell-o Salad got some laughs).

Why salt Lake City? Because people live life fully here, live HARD, defiant, teeth-clenched and joyous, spinning and fucking in the face of the Prophet. I have lived in Maine, where there I have found nothing like this, and California, where there's no reason for anything like this, and prefer it here. The outcasts of Salt Lake City are the tiny weeds struggling through the cracks in the pavement.

They try harder.

Say, anyone reading (esp haven Housers) Know the recipe for Eric's booze cake? It's Wm's birthday, and if at all possible, I would like to make him one.

Text is from the guy's blog, in response to Vellum.

I awoke this morning, and could not think of a single reason to get out of bed. Realizing the relative unhealthiness of this -- plus having a full bladder -- I dragged myself forth.



Burning Man was, it goes without saying, an intense experience. This year was all about personal connections. I met new people and, somehow, magically, grew stronger connections with some I have camped with for almost a decade.

I came back to a home that doesn't yet feel like home, my coffers depleted past ability to pay rent. I had vowed to not miss my first month's rent. Things out of my control be damned, I broke my word. And really, there were options. Staying behind was one. I made the choices I made, and now the consequences. But I am not the one paying this time, except in regret.

Aaron, my love, was there, and Alexei, his love, as well as William, my other love. And others, many linked by love, past love, or outright love-lust-moistness.



There were powerful moments, transformative. Nothing that will show in pictures. I focused more on others than usual, and more-or-less missed those moments of depression that always struck at inconvenient times at Burning Man. And when those moments did come, I was surrounded by people who magically knew how to do exactly the right thing.

I met someone new I really care about. This may develop in a number of ways, but it feels as if something important is brewing. Not romantic something, but something.



And others. Between mourning for Tony and being gurnied to the medical tent for heat prostration, there was an awful lot of catharsis. Add to that the endorphin flush of flogging, the NRE of meeting and connecting with new people, and just a soupcon of sexuality, and things could have been a horrifying roller coaster ride. But they weren't. Even the worst parts were savagely beautiful.

We came home tired.

So now I am trying to imagine my way out of the no-money worldview. I will likely sell the car. Lady Doohickey will need to go to a home that can support her. Hopefully she will continue to find love and adventure. I may also eBay a few costumes, push to sell more rugs, sell a few books and CDs, and I have some other ideas; all while poking my employers for some work and seeking other venues for income. It'll work, I am full of possibility. Right?


More pictures, some NSFW, below the cut:

( Read more... )

And as I do at every Burning Man,

I got dirty a little, I got drunk a little, I ate a little, I had a medical emergency a little, I sexed a little, I wanked a little, I walked a little, I was wise a little, I washed a little, I massaged a little, I went too far a little, I failed to go far enough a little, I won a little, I lost a little, I loved a little, I whipped a little, I made noise a little, I stayed quiet a little, I slept a little, I danced a little, I grew a little, I healed a little, I kissed a little, I marched a little, I felt included a little, I felt abandoned a little, I did everything under the sun a little, I did everything under the moon a little,

I came home. A little.

Aaron, William, David/cyan, Andrew and I are off to the Black Rock Desert in a few hours, laden with goods and wares and a few dozen condoms.

See you when we get "back".

Proposed label for our kvass beer-like beverage. Details of the image may be NSFW, but it's from an ancient(ish) artwork, so it''s okay, right?

Grrrr.... The SLC craigslist won't let me post the ad below. Why? Because I accidentally posted it yesterday on the Maine list, the deleted it, but even so, it is "too similar to one you recently posted". BAH! I say. Maybe later in the day, 24 hours from the original, it'll let me post. I really wanna sell it before Burning Man.

For sale: one XBox 360 Arcade, gently used, in box. Includes two wireless controllers, one wired connector, the XBox Arcade compilation disk with Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, Uno, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Feeding Frenzy, plus "Trial Versions of Five More Games!" (this disk came with the XBox). I have left save games on the 256 M memory stick, obviously you can delete those.

Also selling at $20 each:
Dead Space
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Fable II
Fallout 3
Resident Evil 5
Army of Two

Pickup only, first-best offer gets it. Near 9&9

pics and story ere long. Nebraska was surprisingly pretty. And vasty.

Tired, but safe and closer to goal. Still more story + photos.

It was the alternator, and we have a new one and have had some more mishaps and adventures ont he way.

But sleep needs must come soon, for the morning surely will.

Aug 13, 2009

Well, we left on schedule, that's the important thing.

We are sitting and lying at the Grand View Lodge & Cabins just west of Gorham, NH on Rte 2. That's Gore-ham, not to be confused with Gorrum, Maine. Our trip meter reads 26 miles. That's all. And part of that was being pushed down the road.

Aaron arrived all right, in one piece, as they say, on Tuesday, within an hour of the expected time. For a variety of not very interesting reasons, everything that day ran late, and late, and finally at 9pm we crashed, too tired to poop.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday we took the car in to the garage, "sticker pleases, sir" and left it overnight to get new rear brake pads and an inspection sticker. We spent the day triaging and packing; later, Mark took us to my storage unit and we emptied it into his big, white van. It pretty much filled it. A lot fo stuff. I have given all of it to him to do as he will, to take, buy, sell, store or dispose of. Then dinner with my folks (mom slipped me some cash) and back home. Tired again, but could at least spend a little time enjoying each other's company. The bedroom, the apartment, the town seems stifling.

And then this morning (or yesterday morning, really, it's past midnight), bright and optimistic, more packing, progress made, and hey, I think we can make it! We get the car, new brake pads are installed, but the guy sends us somewhere else to get the sticker. Some guy's garage behind a trailer in the middle of the woods. Slap-dash, but we have the sticker. And the mechanic, when asked, said he thought the car -- newly dubber Lady Doohickey vonClick-Click (Tony had named it Doohickey, but she was growing a personality, and by now I've had the car far longer than he had) would surely make it to Salt Lake City.

Car back, we clean it well, install the roof carrier. Well, that's a bit of a production. I bought a suction-based rack and a softback carrier, and they didn't fit together, and for some reason the front right suction cup won't hold. But after a while we developed a triply-redundant system that satisfied us, and we packed and packed and lo! it all fir, but just barely.

Mark and his friends took us out to supper, saw some friends, some cried, called mom, and putt-putt, we're off. Car seems fine, we cross the line into New Hampshire, the battery light comes on, we pull into a truckstop, there's a bit of oilsmoke, battery light's still on, and Aaron swears the headlights dimmed. We buy an atlas, cross fingers, head west, hoping to make [town in Vt on Rte 2] before taking a room somewhere.

Fingers must have come uncrossed, for less than five miles out, the car's heat meter began to skyrocket. We pulled over, let it cool a bit, and then tried to start it, and it failed. It was the first big hill, so maybe this was just a great first test, yeah?

My big camp lantern on the ground behind, my iTouch on flasher on the front windshield, we waitd for AAA as the emergency flashers grew dimmer and weaker and dimmer and weaker.

There's a meteor shower going on tonight, and the sky is beautiful. The road was empty and dark, and I could hear something thrashing around in the bushes. Peepr frogs and an old bullfrong ga-RUMP announced a swamp nearby, and distantly, a cow lowed and a donkey brayed, why at midnight?

AAA could not help us before morning, and beautiful as the night was, next to Aaron as he pointed out stars and constellations, I followed a hunch and saw a building down the road was, indeed a motel. More-or-less downhill.

So Lady Doohickey vonClick-Click was inelegantly rolled into the parking lot. I rang the night bell, rousing a sleepy older lady, who graciously let us in, tsked over our story, and charged us a cut rate (she said; I haven't checked the normal rates).

And that's how we checked into the Grand View Lodge & Cabins just west of Gorham, NH on Rte 2. The lobby was full of something for sale, there was maple sugart candy ont he counter, the upstairs hall was papered in red-velvet flowered motif that makes me think of an old west whore house. Dolls and stuffed animals line the walls of the corridor in tiny chairs. A faint waft of mothballs pervades. Nonetheless, room 15 is a welcome and homey haven. Soo, I will sleep. In the morning, we'll call AAA back and see what is possible.

It is fruitless to speculate on the future, but we do it anyway. I find myself unwilling to give up on Lady Doohickey vonClick-Click; somewhere along the line I have come to like her.

And hey, we left on schedule, that's the important thing.
--------------------------



post with pictures soon; posting from an internet cafe in Gorha.

Get yer motor runnin'
Head out on the highway!
Lookin' for adventure
Or whatever comes our way...

All my life -- or at least since I saw Fozzi and Kermit in a psychedelic Studebaker Movin' Right Along* -- I have wanted to do a road trip. For a variety of not very good or interesting reasons, I never have. Starring in a road movie was a dream deferred.

But now I am 39. Midlife-crisis time. Time to quit my job, buy a Camaro and date a blond half my age. Except I have never had a lifetime career-job, I am not fond of cars, and I haven't dated a blond since I left San Diego to return to my home town of South Paris, Maine four years ago. In that four years I have held eight jobs, and seen five people close to me die. I am more than ready to find a new beginning.

Some of my travel-tropism has been fed by my annual pilgrimage to Burning Man Labor Day Week in the wild desert flats of Nevada. An amazing trip, every time. And as road movies are always also buddy movies, I have amassed a coterie of interesting people, support and foil and sidekick and hero, and somehow, somehow, too many of them have turned out to be from Salt Lake City for me to ignore the coincidence. Either fate or merely a higher ratio of hoopy froods from the SLC brought them to me, and me to them.

As sure as two plus two equals five, I have chosen a wild and woolly path, and to Salt Lake City I go, road-style.

And my buddy for this movie arrives by plane tomorrow morning. Adventure begins from the moment the path is chosen -- months ago, now -- but the first miles roll under out wheels this week. I could not be more excited, terrified, proud, and my way rolls ever, ever on.



*

http://www.simonandschuster.com/giveaways/uglies-download

Free, DRM-Free download of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies. I haven't read it, but it comes highly-recommended for subversive YA literature. I think I'll load it onto my iPod and give it a whirl, "risk" getting sucked in to the whole series -- which is the publisher's desire, of course.



Simon and Schuster have done a lot of web-based experiments like this -- did you see Stephen King's N as an animated, narrative comic? It was lovely.

(looking at the King page and seeking a link to offer, I see I am behind on his books again. Dammit, will he never slow down? (heh heh, not that I really want him to))

Here it is. "N", a short story. The scroll on the right side links to individual episodes, most recent first. I think the story appears in one of his collections, this was a sort of promo for the book.

"You look like a desperate old queen" is a pretty offensive phrase, unless context allows for a basic understanding of irony. For example, if it is said by someone understood to be unlikely to mean such a thing. Gay or otherwise.

Neither Scott Kurtz nor his character have a free pass here.
http://www.pvponline.com/2009/07/29/hairy-potter/



And the Comic-Con scribble bugs me too, for different reasons. Here the assumption is that dressing like a character makes sense, but dressing oddly because in real life you don't get to do so is pathetic. Again, I don't think there's a free pass here. At least the other one is funny. This one's just mean.

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/07/27/clothes-make-the-fan/



I like PvP. I've met Scott Kurtz, and I have also done battle with him in Internet brouhaha -- back when I still indulged in such things. I consider that he's an Aspie (I don't know this is true, nor have any real reason to think so) and then I feel okay with him when he says or does things that would be unacceptable in anyone else.

But these two stick in my craw, and I can't seem to let it go. So, what, I post the gripe to my blog? I guess I feel better.

From a series of pictures of the place I am house-sitting. Sort of portraits of the family based on their space, what they left behind when they went on vacation.


Dog Napping Deep in the Dustbunnies


Landing


Squeeze


Dora's World


Booth Seating


A Princess's Bookshelf


Home Sick



Waiting