ISleepInADrawer.com

After the Orange Chicken

I opened my fortune cookie, and spent a good forty seconds wondering how this could be my fortune:

Then, a new thought entered my head: turn it over.

Indeed.
Thanks, Adam, for a great vacation.

Thirty-Four

Me: "Well, I'll see you Monday or Tuesday, likely. I'm off to visit my thirty-fourth state!"
Friend: "Wait... you keep track?"
Me: "Yeah, I've been to thirty-three states, plus D.C."
Friend: "And you know this just off the top of your head?..."
Me: "Yeah. Isn't that cool?!"

Apparently not.

The Title

Rarely has my passion for EU politics collided with the general insanity of the Pacific Northwest. Thus, I've been eagerly following this unfolding tale (as reported in The Stranger's blog)... a saga of Baltic diplomacy run haywire, of titles bestowed (or not bestowed?), and (of course) of those silly gays. Won't they we ever learn that LATVIA is off limits?

A quick summary:
1. Conservative pastor opposes gay rights from his Puget Sound pulpit.
2. Pastor begins to forge ties with evangelical Christian denominations, both here and abroad (specifically, in Latvia).
3. After several trips to Latvia, claims surface that the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives allowed this pastor to represent the administration.
4. The title: Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief.
5. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives denies this title was bestowed upon the pastor.
6. Local Seattle attorney complains to the F.B.I., since apparently it's a crime to pretend to represent the U.S. government.
7. Local Pastor (and possible Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief) claims he has video proof, and will be able to release it in a few days.

I'm hoping there are more thrills and chills to come. Surf through the story links if you wish, and hopefully a full article will be printed once more details emerge. In today's latest update, Mr. Sanders (the reporter covering this unfolding he-said-she-said spat between the White House and the pastor) began one sentence thus: "If, like me, the whole Hutcherson affair has you suddenly interested in Latvian politics..."

Do I lose points if I was already interested in Latvian politics?

Forty-Two

Unfortunately, my principles were no match for Zach's desire to have another friend on his list.

Thus, I now have a MySpace profile.

I don't deserve oxygen.

An Old Friend

All this talk of Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel (and former Associate Justice nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court), and her possible connection to the dismissal of a handful of federal prosecutors, has made me frankly nostalgic for her blog.

What's that you say? You didn't know she kept a blog for the duration of her (failed) nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court?!

Shame on you.

But, though some images are now dead links, the truly righteous gems are still in place. If she's new to you, you really should take a dip. If her sweet words are an old friend, take a few moments to embrace them once more.

Did I take some time to carefully extract the pure ecstasy dripping from her Yom Kippur entry, where Harriet bakes cookies for her Jewish colleagues and then is shocked when none of them show up for work? Did I savor the exotic flavor of her campaign poster (shown below)? Did I tremble and giggle with glee as my eyes danced over this phrase... quite possibly the greatest sentence in the English lanuage? You bet your ass I did.

"Let me give youa tip: if your ever nominated to the supreme Court,, you don't have to accept every free drink on your first night... I think I need one of those 'morning-after' pills!

Promenade

For those of you who've kept track of the occasional snapshot of myself posted here, you've no doubt noticed that I keep my hair cut quite short - dangerously short. I've kept it close-cropped short for around five or six years now for two main reasons:
1. I don't know what else to do with it.
2. I fear I'll look awful otherwise.

Those who are unlucky enough to see me on a regular basis know full well that I lack the typical fashion skills of a (sterotypical) homosexual male. I consider my deficiencies in style one of the primary reasons I'm largely estranged from my fellow gays. I've few fancy clothes; my "funeral suit," the nicest frock I own, no longer fits; I didn't know what a color wheel was until college; away from home, I'm most often seen in a hoodie.

If clothing is as foreign to me as breasts, then surely hair styles are the vaginas of my fashion handicap. For over a decade now, I've made peace with my primate self... the nails, primitive dentition, thumbs, and big (sexy) brain were all accepted by me ages ago. But, while I'm fine being a primate, ther eare a few more ancestral qualities of myself that, though I've passively accepted, seem as foreign to me as a Fallopian tube. Such is the case with one quintessential mammalian trait: hair. The shock of mangy fur that crowns my skull openly mocks the much-valued grey matter below. For years, I didn't know what to do with it. By some error in proportional design, my head was alreadly slightly oversized, and the mop atop, I feared, made my cranium a candidate for the solar system's fourth dwarf planet. My hair grew fast, and grew out, particularly during those most awkward of teenage years where I, burdened with an unpopular (yet poorly hidden) sexual orientation, had already found the bonds of friendship difficult to forge. My high school yearbooks will likely remain forever buried at the bottom of a drawer in my mother's house because I can't stand to see my picture within them. For years, I just let the hair sit there and, once ever few weeks, get trimmed... only to let it sit there, awkwardly combed, and regrow its massive forest of cranial kudzu. Late in high school and early in college, gentle prodding from a few concerned (and embarrassed) friends led to a brief "spike phase." Zach, ever a thorough attorney, would have no doubt advised those near me during those years to wear proper eye protection. Luckily, he and I had not yet met back then, and I've since burned all photographic proof.

But, one day relatively early in college, someone (I don't remember who) came up with a suggestion that, for the past five or six years, held the tremendous burden of my foreign hair at bay: "Hey James, why don't you just buzz your hair really short?"

A suggestion so obvious that I blushed... my own large primate brain, after all, had failed to consider such an option.

I remember the first time I walked outside after getting my head nearly-shaved. It was winter, and the raw shock of icy wind hitting a mopless head took my breath away. For years, at least once a month, I'd go through the same buzzing ritual... it became a regular, numbing aspect of my existence. And I didn't have to worry at all. Gone were the days where my hair was the elephant in the room - the foreign part of me - the most shamful part of my mammalian heritage. I no longer felt crippled by indecision, or held hostage by my lack of fashion sense. I felt sexy.

But, as many have lovingly argued, I in reality looked no less awkward. My nearly-bare head looked as round and foreign as my foreign mop. Granted, I oozed confidence (particularly the first week following a hair purge), but my extreme solution to a rather straightforward and petty problem was still indicative of my fashion impotence, and my preoccupation with the perception of others. Most would say that I didn't solve a problem, I merely dodged it.

Occasionally, Zach or a close friend would gently, cautiously prod me to once again face my insecurities. Picture a frustrated zookeeper awkwardly nudging the steadfast and tanklike 200-year-old tortoise, begging the slightest of inchward movements. I'd always continue munching lettuce.

Until, that is, two months ago. I don't know what made me listen to him - he's not a close friend. But, perhaps subconsciously, I let him bend my ear a little more since, in addition to being my barista each morning, he works his afternoon and evenings in a salon.

"Hey James, what would happen if you didn't cut your hair next week?"

Perhaps I've changed in six years. Perhaps I have indeed succeeding in caring less about what others think. If so, I should've stopped then and pat myself on the back; but, instead, upon Jeffrey's suggestion, my mind swam with a possibility I hadn't thought of in years: long hair.

"How would I go about doing it?"
"Well, stop cutting your hair, and we'll go from there."

I did cheat once, around six weeks ago. Panicked by the illusion that the hair on the side of my head grew faster than the hair on the top of my head, I ducked into a cheap hair salon and instructed the hairdresser to give my sides a slight trim. Zach found it handsome. Jeffrey called it cheating, but forgave me and continued to make my morning toddy americano.

About two weeks ago, however, I began to enter uncharted territory. A quick glimpse at old snapshots confirmed that my hair, still short by most of your standards, had not been this long in about a decade. Last Monday, my wavy and tangled locks, combined with a particularly blustery day, gave my thesis advisor the illusion that I'd been electrocuted. Zach put on this zookeeper outfit and gave me a gentle nudge: "Jim, why don't you use some of your old hair product again?" Defiant, I munched lettuce: "Why? I don't want to spike it again." Zach didn't realize my inability to style hair... my only experience in hairstyling has been in sculpting eye-piercing points. My hair was still relatively short, but dangerously pouffy. I joked to my peers that the weight of this tangled kudzu would eventually damage my neck muscles, collapsing my cervical vertebrae.

My barista again intervened.

"My barista at work gave me something Friday. Something to get me to style my hair."
"What? Pomade of some sort?"
"No. Something called 'Promenade.'"
"'Promenade'? Are you sure?"
"Yeah. The jar's sitting over there. Go look at it. It's some sort of waxy goo."
"Jim, it says 'pomade,' not 'promenade.'"
"Oh. Is that a good thing?"

The past few days have been humbling exercises in consuming wholesome spoonfuls of humble pie. With Zach still working out of town weekdays this time of year, I've had to attempt to style my hair with no guidance. Today, something akin to a dead opossum rests atop my cranium. Yesterday, there was an Elvis sighting in my lab. Zach has gently suggested I ask Jeffrey for an appointment at his salon, at the very least to trim some edges as my hair continues to grow... or to culpt my hair into a more respectable style. Working among scientists, my fashion shortcomings are often tolerated in the face of (faux) scientific brilliance. But, I think I'm starting to scare children on the bus.

I don't plan to change anything before I visit him next week. My hair will continue to grow, I will continue to attempt to sculpt it with pomade, and I will also likely continue to call it "promenade." I'm hoping that, eventually, the length of my hair will reach a critical mass, collapsing the natural pouf and permitting me, Moses-like, to (at least attempt to) tame the waves. But, if this event horizon isn't breached soon, I may have to abandon this experiment in favor of preserving the sanity of those around me. Though I've let my hair grow without chipping away at my confidence, I must soon confront a greater elephant in the room: how I, with a handicapped sense of fashion, will soon sculpt my mammalian heritage.

So far, my primate grey matter is a bit overwhelmed. And this lettuce is quite tasty...

Diplomatic Immunity

I knew I should've gone into the foreign service!

Then again, maybe I should've gone into journalism. I would've loved to be in the shoes of the journalist at BBC News who was able to type the following sentence:

"Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth."

If you would've asked me to type a sentence associated with the Israeli ambassador to El Salvador, not in a million years would I have come up with that.

Small Victories

Friend: "So, what did you do last night?"
Me: "Nothing exciting. Mostly graded assignments."
Friend: "Ah."
Me: "Though, now that I think about it, I did finally master the poltergeist within my stove, and was able to make one bitchin' tomato-and-grilled-cheese sandwich!"
Friend: "Grilled cheese?"
Me: "Yeah. I go for small victories these days."
Friend: "Well, good for you for mastering that awful stove of yours. You've complained about it enough."
Me: "Yeah. I celebrated with a fine Merlot."
pause
Friend: "Merlot and grilled cheese?"
Me: "Yeah, why?"
Friend: "Oh... nothing. So, what made it a 'fine' Merlot?"
Me: "Oh, the label was pretty."
Friend: "Pretty?"
Me: "Yeah, why?"
pause
Friend: "Well, at least you're moving beyond white wine."
Me: "Huh?... Oh! My mistake. It was a fine Chardonnay."
Friend: "Chardonnay?"
Me: "Yeah, sorry. Sometimes I get those words confused."
Friend: "Words like 'Merlot' and 'Chardonnay' confuse you?"
Me: "Sometimes."
Friend: "Well, at least the labels were pretty, right?"
Me: "Bet your ass."

I Dressed Myself

While my life has been hijacked by students, grading, and other such activities that would make for generally dull entries (plus, I value sleep), why not spend nine minutes enjoying a Ralph Wiggum compilation?

You know you want to.