New javascript pop-ups installed (for the most part, lots of links still need tweaking).  I just can't keep it simple. 

...from this article, the writer goes on to say, "Not that they are about to displace the main organs of journalism. I don't think any serious blogger would make that claim."

Spoken like a true self-preservationist, suckling on the teat of journalism's main organ. 

Journalism is a joke in most of its present propagandized incarnations.  It is so bad in fact that I don't think any serious journalist would actually claim that as a title.  He'd probably have a weblog and call himself a blogger. 

Good journalism is out there to be sure, but too many so-called journalists are nothing but ad copy writers, which is in itself an honorable profession -- writers must make a living too.  But when ad copy is passed off as journalism, and when the stuff being hawked is political manipulation -- the basest of snake-oils -- that my dears is called propaganda.  They can call themselves whatever they want if it helps them swallow their own saliva without retching.  But if you won't tell me the real stories, which I find almost exclusively by reading weblogs, then you might as well be lying. 

I thought it might be nice to have a dependable connection again, so I asked Speakeasy to help.  They responded fast but, alas, they probably won't be able to help me.  Actually they responded so fast that I was forced to restate (and rethink) what it is I want from them.  In the interest of getting this posted in the tiny window of connectivity which I am now enjoying, I paste from my e-mail to Speakeasy:

Oh my, but when it is fast, it is FAST.  See that little delicious detail in this morning's FTP session log?  2.25Mbps.  Oh yeah, I'm hard.  But I fear it won't last long, and that is why I am typing like a fiend to get this posted, like the last wave of a swimmer in distress. 

This is certainly not a complaint about Speakeasy.  Indeed I have heard nothing but good things about them.  But the logistics (and other details of which I am not aware) of DSL procurement in the cutthroat DSL market is prohibitively complex.  I am expecting too much if I want them to reuse a perfectly good, tested, and working connection loop, and my router, and perhaps even the DSLAM at the CO.  That would require too much of a departure from the polished routine which they have perfected, of getting people hooked-up and online fast.  I guess I just want it my way. 

I have been amazingly lucky -- DSL for free for over a year.  This is not unappreciated here, especially now.  DSL is my ONLY connection with the outside world; no phone, no cable, no TV.  But I am addicted now, and I will do just about anything they want to stay connected via DSL -- even if it doesn't occasionally reach 2.25 megabits per second.

Enough!  ...enough, already.  That's not my life -- at least I hope it isn't. 

Time is running out.  I want to tell you how the air felt when I shut off the a/c today and opened the window for the first time in weeks.  I want to explain that my landlord reminds me of my father, just because he's the man who owns the house.  I would like to capture in words this fleeting terror that comes and goes unbidden, without warning -- even without words, I would like to capture it and send it on its way, like an unwanted bug in my bed.  I want to say so much. 

Today, the air was like the air two weeks ago, the sky precious blue and clear, the sun warm; a joy just to breathe. 

Now, if someone is keeping track of how many other websites have posted a given URL, well, I can't help but wonder how my humble offering ranks.  It doesn't.  In fact, this is all they know 'bout me.  So far. 

Whilst I make another cup o' joe, I encourage you to add your site to their 'bot 'base.  You will be assimilated eventually anyway. 

And then I remembered; there is something in me that needs to come out -- that's why I get into this kind of unfocussed frenzy.  So, what might it be?

I wonder sometimes why in this weblog I don't write most of the things that are going on.  Other bloggers give a nicely proportioned serving of their day with some detail, sometimes with great detail.  Why don't I do this?  (Rhetorical question -- no e-mails, please.)  So.  This is what is going on:

1. I am supposed to be looking for a new apartment; actually I'm supposed to be in a new apartment already, but since I am not, then I guess I am supposed to be still looking.  I find this difficult because
   1. I can't get out of bed -- not in the morning, not in the afternoon, nor at any other time of day even after I have been in bed long enough to have lost a pillow (the fact that I am able to recognize that a pillow is missing constitutes evidence of adequate rest -- but I still cannot get out of bed.  It is just so much nicer than the alternatives.) 
   2. Once out of bed (it's inevitable) I can make coffee, but I am unable to do anything else before supper-time -- not even shower -- much less locate and call prospective landlords, visit their properties, and ramp-up my enthusiasm to present myself as a generally desireable potential tenant.  And because,
   3. I don't want to.
2. I'm supposed to be living.  I am 43 years old and less than 200 miles from where I live, the lives of over 6,000 people -- most of them younger than me -- were snuffed out in less than 30 minutes.  You could say that I feel a little guilty about that, especially since I have done shit with my life, but let's not dwell on the negative.  Whatever else may be the case, there is some living to be done here, by me, in whatever time I have left.  However, I find that this too is difficult.  See item number 1, sub-items a, b, and c. 
3. I have blown-off (or am trying to blow-off) about $10,000 in credit card debt.  This item is related inversely to items number 1 and 2 in that 'success' here equates with failure in the other areas.  Of course defaulting on my debts was not my goal in spending so much money over the past four years.  But my logic was faulty.  I thought if I incurred so much debt that I needed to make more money, this would motivate me to advance professionally and increase my income.  Ha!  I don't think I really really believed that, but it provided a functional rationalization while I was spending six grand on computer hardware, and the other four grand on vodka martinis and tips for cute waiters. 

So that is what's going on -- or not going on, as the case may be.  And I don't feel even the slightest bit better for having not indulged my fetish for javascript merely for the sake of trying to be more like all the other bloggers in the world.  Harumph.  I'm going now to play with some javascript -- or maybe getting into bed would be nice.  Hmm... 

...and anything could happen

Ahh, Mary.  Is it you who make the tears?  Or is it me?  Or are they made in that horrible holy space between us all, where we fail -- fail to meet; to love; to touch and give; to touch and receive; to let go; to hold on... 

(I want -- just one more time in my life -- for the center of my world to be my nana's chocolate chip cookies.) 

But here the tears gather, in the wet of my own eyes; blame me for them.  Guilt by association.  But I don't want them.  But here they are, more and more. 

And more.  Thank you.

I used to live at this site.  I watched his webcam day in and day out.  I was in love with him in the same way that I love the sexy boi's I know I cannot have, the fresh beauties who do not have a pathologic attraction for older paunchy men.  Rex was the perfect sweet soul, kind to all, sensitive in a crystalline-honest way, and gentle.  He was one of those delicious boys who made me achingly aware of that place in my heart where I wanted someone to be.  But I tried to be the good observer from a distance, not contemptuous of him, for he deserved no contempt, and not hating him for his vital youth and love of life, for that is the basest kind of jealousy.  I tried to be just me, whatever that would be if I were like his other admirers -- open and honest and not trying to keep contained a raging white-hot lonliness in a pressure vessle of calm appearance. 

He was so many things that I was not; young, attractive, productive, social.  Genuine.  While watching his webcam I listened to his nightly web-broadcast on gaybc.com almost religiously.  I watched him have coffee most mornings when he got up around 8 or 9 AM his time, which was around 11 or noon my time -- we usually got up together.  It was as much interpersonal reality as I could handle at the time, the silent movie of reX updated every 40 seconds.  I wondered what he was saying when I saw him on the phone, and who he was saying it to.  I wondered what he was watching when the downloaded image showed him alone on his couch illuminated only by the light from his TV.  I wondered how I would behave if I were there, within earshot of his TV -- within the sound of his voice.  How would I respond?  Who would I be? 

I tried to read the language of the bodies when he was not alone on that couch; he was modest, never an exhibitionist, though he was extremely hot.  And his partners (the few I saw) were never interested enough in him; either they persued their own sexual urges despite his reluctance, or they dumbly ignored what appeared to be his obvious affections, withholding their warmth and resisting intimacy with him.  Baffling to me. 

One of the things I respected most about reX was the loving way he handled people -- callers to his show, people who wrote in, guests -- who were HIV positive.  He treated us the same way he treated everybody, with whole hearted kindness and goodwill.  He even had a positive boyfriend for a significant period of time.  I loved reX. 

I speak of reX in the past tense not because he died or anything like that, but because he left.  He disappeared from gaybc without much explanation that I could find.  But I didn't look too hard because he was still on-camera; I had figured out how to watch his webcam without going to his site -- stealing bandwidth it's called.  I am a sinner.  But even his pictures spoke of something different.  My reading of his images told a story of some disruption, a hard wind of change.  His images switched web-hosts, he started showing more skin -- not immodestly, but like a modest boy pretending to be immodest.  I wondered where he was going. 

I stopped snatching his images off his server because it began to appear like reX was using them commercially, on badpuppy.com.  Private galleries of reX-images became available to subscribers.  And nowhere on the web could I find his voice, which, now that I think about it, had always been wHay more sexy than any cock- or butt-shot could ever be. 

Fast-forward to tonight, while I was wrestling with my lately spotty DSL connection and out of sheer annoyance at my disconnectivity I clicked on a streaming-audio link in an e-mail sent by Eric at planetconcrete.com. There was reX, at radio.gaycams.com.  I listened to reX again.  I watched.  And I read. 

And I cried.  Because I've been at this place before.  And I never finished crying from when I was in that same place, eight years ago, discovering that I was HIV positive, too. 

Maybe you never finish, maybe you never complete the task of working through a tragedy.  Maybe instead of crying as much as you could -- which would take forever and certainly be enough tears to wash away all the dust from ground-zero -- instead, you simply mark the dust with a thousand tears, and then you walk away.  They say that even a work of art is never truly finished, just abandoned. 

I love you reX, and I don't care what anybody thinks of that.  I don't even care if you don't love me back the same way -- which of course you don't.  (If you do, I'll be there within 24 hours.  <grin> )  No, I love you because my love is -- it has to be -- unrequited.  It cannot safely exist otherwise.  It blooms in the space of your absence; it would wilt from shyness under the sheer intensity of your attention. 

The truest work of our hearts is never finished, just abandoned... 

Everything ends.  Violinist Isaac Stern dies. 

Goodbye, Isaac.

This is the beginning of underground journalism.  If the objective story is going to get out, somebody is going to have to go in and get it.  But beware, this is post-911 America; leave your press pass behind.