Time to Move On
And when you move on, move, don't keep your life bound to the life you're leaving behind.

Don't slowly sever those threads that bind you, use a machete to chop them all at once, break the ties cleanly, quickly and get the pain of the loss out of the way as soon as possible. I fear this post may descend into an obtuse barrage of statements connected by epithets and if so then I'll apologize beforehand.

I'm frustrated right now, living in a house where I'm not all that comfortable, where one of the evening's excitements is wondering what kind of bottom feeder's coming by to see my housemate this time around. Now don't get me wrong, these aren't bad people, they are polite and respectful when they're around. But come on now, its not too hard to figure out what someone does for a living when they have no job, spend money pretty easily and have a ready supply of drugs available to them. Ummm, I'll take street level drug dealers for $200, Alex.

With my pending move from the house I've lived in for the last 3 years and have been well associated with for the last 8 years, I'm depressed about the state I'm leaving it in. The last six months have seen a distinct change in the complexion of the house and I'm just sad that I'm going to be the last of the pals in the neighborhood to be there. Sucks.

There are so many angles and facets to go about detailing what's going on in the house but there's really no point in bogging down there. How about a highlight or two? I got woken up this morning at about a quarter to 7 by one of my housemate's alarm clocks going off at top volume. Not a big deal except said housemate didn't stay the night at the house last night. So this alarm would have kept going off all day if I'd let it. So I get up to go turn it off, out the side door, up the stairs and to his room. His door's locked so I go back down and get my key, it won't work, so I go back down to get my other key, it works and I finally get the fucking thing turned off a food twenty minutes after it had started going off. The isn't one of those little alarm clocks you can ignore, either, its a goddamned Bose Wave Radio (which, by the way, kicks ass in other uses) but this thing goes LOUD, LOUD, LOUD. And with his bedroom literally on top of mine, it was impossible to ignore.

Okay, so that's the latest. What else? How about leaving doors open, doors to the outside? My house is a strange configuration and has numerous decks, to get to the top bedroom its required to go outside and up an external set of stairs. There's a door there, it opens but for some reason it doesn't close. I can't even count how many times I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and that door is WIDE OPEN, which means my house is a flipping ice box almost all the time AND our bills are through the roof.

There are dozens of other incidents that I could write about, I could fill this page, the next page and ten more just like it with crap that's happened. And its not going to stop, it'll just continue until I do something about it. I hate having to be the guy in charge but I am so I'm going to have to deal with this shit. And if that means booting him just at the same time I'm moving out then so be it, shit happens and disrespecting one's house and housemates is the best way I know of to find yourself streetbound.

But I'm open to other ideas of how to deal with this situation. Anyone want to offer any up? And no, shallow graves don't work here, the ground is too sandy.

Speed Movie Review
Paula and I watched a movie I knew was going to be heavy before we even hit play on the DVD. It was called "The Laramie Project" and dealt with the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard (the foundation begun in his honor and the Matthew Shepard International resource guide) aggravated kidnapping, assault, torture and murder. It was a profound and moving movie, very well done, starring more hefe big name Hollywood types than most award shows (though I must say that Peter Fonda waaaaaaay over played his doctor's role).
It detailed much more of the events leading up to and surrouding Matthew Shepard's death than I'd ever known. And then showed some of the bullet headed in-bred stupidity that people possess out there in the world. Yes, he was gay, and yes, he was killed because of it. By a couple of ardent homophobes who beat him BEYOND recognition. By the way, to all you homophobes out there, the reason you hate gay people so much is because, deep down inside where you're scared to look, you're scared you ARE gay and so you throw up these barriers like hatred as an attempt to deny the fact that you may be what you profess to hate. Think about that for a moment, you hate what you might be and by denying what and who you might be you generate hatred for those who ARE brave enough to step out of the shadow and announce who THEY are and its scares you little narrow minded homophobes to the core of your being.

I would recommend Laramie Project to anyone who needs to have the light of a reasoned and very, very well done examination of the repercusions of hatred in a small community. That and the two buggers who killed Matt Shepard, or rather, the two buggers who played those parts in the movie, were incredibly creepy and very, very good in their roles. Scary good.

A well done but disturbing movie. The kind that makes you lose faith in humanity or think that we're on the long spiral downward as our culture topples over upon itself. And today's quote is quite appropriate too: Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.
- Seneca

My sole knock on the movie shouldn't be a knock because it was a part of the world that he lived and died in. The religious knocking that came down from all sides, how God was watching over him, how God hates queers, how God thinks homosexuals are a sin against mankind, yadda, yadda, yadda. It was wrenching to see and hear how narrowly people think, the wife of the state trooper was the most shockingly fucked up interview of the whole bunch. She was questioning how the accidental death of a state trooper could only warrant a small blurb in the paper when this gay man's death was international news. It made me almost physically sick to think that there really are people who think like that in the world.

Also, go read Layne today. She wrote about her weekend in New York with her Spanish lover and I could only read the first part this morning but it's one helluva an amazing start and I'll probably print out a copy to read offline at lunch. She is, as always, highly recommended.