Weather Report

It has rained like hell here the past several days. In fact, this Spring has been wetter than most, which we Texans should be grateful for. But no, everyone I know is groaning and complaining about it. Why, for God's sake?

It's too cold in the Winter for these people; too wet in the Spring; too hot and dry in the Summer. They wear me out. It's only from October to November that they shut up.

But, I have noticed that, while I put up with the other atmospheric conditions, I do really enjoy rain.

Ever notice how folks who believe in reincarnation are always professing that they are reincarnated kings or queens, pharoahs or indian princesses and other high-falootin' nobility from the Past?

In my past life, I think I was a duck.

Tuezdayz Cheeze
(made with real dairy!)


Here's the latest episode available of Mr. Deity!

Mr. Deity Episode #9

Sunday Mop Up 03/25/07

Well, here I am again, leg still taped to a vacuum. On Friday, when the hole was inspected by The (professional) Meat Packers of the wound care clinic, there was much to be positive about. The hole is really only the size now of the wound opening, which is a huge decrease in size. yippee. I am ready for this to be over and done with. Yet, the vac continues to suck, and I continue to saunter into work in shorts and sandals. It never ends.

I'm grumpy, and here's why:


TBRU (Texas Bear Round Up)

is happening RIGHT NOW in Dallas. 800 furry men at the Crown Plaza hotel, including just about every friend I have here in Austin, except Bob. Me and Bob. (heavy sigh!)

Got a phone call from Rich, filling me in on all the hoopty-do and thanking me for letting them take my room. I was delighted to help.

See, I know I did the right, adult thing by cancelling the trip. My leg needs to be my focus. If I were up there, I'd be running all over town, up on the leg all day. That wouldn't help the healing process. So, in a way, I'm proud of myself for doing the right thing, but I can't help but groan about missing out.

By the way, it was one year ago this weekend that I first met Rich and Dave. They are two friends who I am very, very grateful have come into my life. I feel like I've known them forever, and the fact is, that I'm still getting to know them. Weird, huh?

I spent some time both Friday night and Saturday with Bob. He says he is doing well, but is having severe leg cramping issues. He sees his doctor on the 28th to figure out what is going on. I'm worried about him.

Wildflowers

I don't know about your corner of the world, but Spring has hit Texas, baby, full force! And what that means is, for the next 4 weeks the landscape of the central Texas area is awash in color from the indigenous wildflowers here. It's really beautiful, and will be completely over in a mere month's time. Yes, flowers don't last long in the baking Texas sun, but we enjoy them while we have them.


"Rehab" by Amy Winehouse

is loaded onto my jukebox at the top of the page. If you haven't heard it, be sure and open the playlist and doubleclick on the song to play it. Maybe it's the whole Britney Spears' thing that coincides with this song that endears it to me. Maybe it's my own trip to rehab. All I know is that I love it. I follow it on the jukebox with my favorite Britney cover. Enjoy!

Okay, one last thing I have to get off my chest and then I'm done for now:



Sanjaya

American Dildo Idol is an abortion of a tv show, and if you watch it, you should be seriously ashamed of yourself. I won't go into detail about why I despise it, but I can link you to a post that I wrote about it last year here.

What I am furious about now is that people are waking up to the fact that it is utter crap, yet are continuing to tune in to see if the skinny twink-ass, pre-op tranny bottom boy is still in the running. Of COURSE he is, damnit! The fact that he SUCKS doesn't matter! He has already proven that he couldn't hum a tune during a blowjob, yet the fact that you are tuning in MAKES HIM A BIGGER STAR. Trust me, the producers of the show are squealing with delight that this buttboi continues to get votes from braindead, sobbing teenyboppers, to mis-guided Howard Stern fucktards. At this point, thanks to all the talk, this kid will get a record deal whether he wins or not, and his overly-plucked eyebrow will be staring at me from the magazine rack at the grocery store checkout line for years to come. Thanks a lot, America!

The fact that I even know this clit's name frightens the hell outta me.

If you have had enough of the sick joke that this disgusting program is PLEASE turn your televisions off and stop talking about it. I'm begging you.

Cree.Pee. Seriously.

Tuezdayz Cheeze
(all natural!)

Red-Eyed Tree Frogs



Is there a cheezy aspect to cute pictures of these rainforest dwellers? Who cares, I like these shots!

I also found a shot of two frogs mating, but this blog isn't always about sex, damnit!

Sunday Mop Up 03/18/07

Howdy, kidlets! It's Sunday, so I am tanking up on java and have begun my ritual of weekly housework whilst I try to piece together a post about my life here. There is comfort in repetition, ya know. That's why I'm such a big fan of both blogging and masturbation. The two are very similar, actually. Anyways...

Make A Little Birdhouse In My Leg (They Might Be Giants)

I SWEAR to you that I am NOT going to go on and on about my medical issues, but some of my peeps have been asking, so I will cough up a quick update.

Every day the leg looks better. The redness from the cellulitis is dissipating and I look forward to being permanently detached from this pump (that farts at me all night long) shortly. No one at the wound care clinic is venturing a guess at it, but my own pretty-fuckin-well-informed-opinion-at-this-point is that I might well be vac-less in just a couple more weeks. Like two, tops. Do you hear me, God?

Friday, when I went in to the clinic and they pulled the suction cup off and dug the foam out and looked around inside, it was VERY clear that the hole is filling in nicely. Even I could tell the difference. And it's starting to feel a little tender around the opening to the wound. This pleases me because, for all this time, as people have poked around and handled my leg, the fact that I had no feeling around the wound really bothered me. Having sensation there again reassures me that the nerve endings are coming back to life.

One really sweet perk of all this crap has been that I have been able to go to work in my cargo shorts three times a week. Yes, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I work in shorts and tennis shoes and a big, loose golf shirt. This is so that when I go to the clinic on these days, they can have easy access to my leg. Long pants would be entirely problematic. Let me tell you, working in shorts is the BEST! This is Texas, by the way, why can't EVERYONE wear shorts at work? I vote that we allow it. There are some legs in this company that I am quite curious about.

Bob

Bob is a bear friend of mine who I met through Rich and Dave last summer. We found ourselves naked in their pool together one day and just kinda floated towards each other. Older, quiet, sweet, sensitive, and sexy. I found him utterly charming. When I went into the hospital last month, I was taking care of Rich and Dave's house while they were at a Big Man's getaway in Palm Springs. Since I couldn't exactly keep an eye on the kitties while immobile, I had to call Bob and ask him to pick up my slack Not only did he do that, but he also came to see me the first five days in a row when I was hospitalized. He was a great comfort. At one point, I had him call Peggy to tell her what was going on, and she was very impressed with the guy. In fact, now she wont shut up about him.

Well, two days after my surgery, Bob noticed he was having some chest pain. He works in a hospital himself, and while on duty, he had some chest x-rays taken. What was found was that he had blockage in three arteries.

Bob was rushed into surgery and had a triple bypass.

I had no idea this was going on until two days after his surgery. I was still in the hospital and he told Rich and Dave to not tell me, because he wanted me to focus on my own recovery. When I was finally told, I flipped, but there was nothing I could do. I was still bedbound. I called him and chewed his ass for keeping it from me. He would have done the same.

He is recovering at Rich and Dave's house, because his home is out in the middle of nowhere and is a two story. Rich and Dave live in a beautiful ranch style single-level home (a mere two blocks away from me) and, being the awesome friends that they are, want to keep an eye on Bob for a while. This pleases me greatly because Bob is now so close to me, geographically.

As a matter of fact, Rich and Dave will be going to a new friend's house for dinner this afternoon, and I will be over at their house with Bob, watching Texas play USC in the NCAA basketball playoffs.

This coming weekend is TBRU in Dallas, and at first I was super-pissed that I was going to miss it. There's no way that I'm going to hang out with 800 hot, hairy men in a hotel while I have tubeage coming out of my body. Not a good look, seriously. But it turns out that I can give my hotel room reservation to Rich and Dave (cuz MY reservation is for a king sized bed, while the best they could reserve was a room with two doubles) and I will be here in town to keep an eye on Bob, while those two get to be the social butterflies that they are. It all works out, is what I'm saying.

An Open Letter To Homosexual Men

Dear PenisPeople,

I have spent a good amount of time as of late, online and on the phone, chatting with many of you. I am noticing something that is really beginning to annoy me and I need to call you on it.

I can't help but notice that when any discussion turns to the female gender, someone in conversation will make a derogatory remark about vaginas or cunnilingus, and the room will go APEshit in disgust. Cruel and unkind comments abound, as if women are some filthy, diseased aberration of our species. The cackling and shrieks of disapproval and horror are both amazingly sad and pathetically ridiculous.

Look, it's a given that, as a gay man, you are not interested in participating in sex with female genitalia. It's kind of obvious, okay? If you were interested or aroused by pussy, I'm sure you'd figure out a way to incorporate some into your sex life. But, that you aren't interested does not make it okay for you to squeal and retch, and say some pretty ugly, arrogant things about females and their bodies.

Are you so insecure about your own sexuality that you have to put women down in order to feel better about yourself? Don't you see that this type of smarmy, ignorant bigotry is the very thing that gay culture has been fighting against ever since one caveman dared to touch another's monolith? Wait, those were apes...forget that metaphor...

I'm stunned when I hear a gaggle of fags cringing and pontificating upon the dirty and gross aspects of oral sex upon a woman in one breath, only to fantasize and masturbate to talk of licking and rimming a man's BUTT in another. Are you freaking kidding me?

Here's my point: All sex is gross. It's primal, it's messy, it requires a good shower afterward. All of it. Heterosexual or Homosexual. Body fluids, textures, and smells occur every single time, no matter who is involved. Not everyone is going to be enthused about everything, sexually. So, you get to pick and choose what works for you. But your choice of expression is not superior to any other, my friend.

And, chances are, you are no expert about vaginas. Sure, they bleed every so often but, dude, you shit out of YOUR hole daily. You've got nothing to feel superior about.

Please, knock it off.

Sincerely and in a very gay way,

jimbo

Hey, That Bill Maher Is Funny!

From last night HBO Real Time, re: General Pace's "gays are immoral" comment:

"Say what you want about the gays, at least they know when to pull out of a shithole."

Tuezdayz Cheeze
(be sure and try the swiss!)

I nearly missed the deadline this week. Cheeze on Wednesday would be SO wrong!


Mr. Deity Episode #8

Sunday Mop Up 03/11/07

So, it's another Sunday and I'm still in the same ridiculous routine with my leg as I was last week. Don't get me wrong, progress is being made but, Jesus on a Ritz cracker, the progress is SLOW.

I'm going to step up my work hours next week to six hours a day, and continue to struggle with how to be productive there and keep my leg elevated. Not an easy trick, I'll tell ya.

The wound vac continues to suck me (not in a 'good' way), and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I go to the wound care clinic and professionals stand around and stare into the hole and 'ooh' and 'ahhh' and assure me that things look good. As far as I'm concerned, things won't be 'good' until I can chuck this mechanical vampire and get my old, dysfunctional life back.

Look, I'm doing my best to keep a positive attitude here. When dealing with my healthcare providers, I am one little ray of friggin' sunshine, I swear. They smile at me, and I smile back. We talk and joke and laugh and all that crap. And then I get by myself, like when I'm loading my ass into the truck to get back to work, and I'm dealing with the tubes and wires and machine in the purse, and I just want to SCREAM. Motherfuckingsonofabitchshitpisser!

Then, I take a deep breath and offer my thanks to the Universe for all the blessings I have. I know I've got it easy and that it's all good. I know that I am a lucky fuck and things could be alot worse. I know I'm being a baby.


But, more than anything else, I'm really tired of talking about this stuff. I'm certain that you are tired of hearing about it, too. But this is what consumes me at the present. So, this week I'm just going to wave to you and blow you a kiss and promise I'll be back soon to talk about something OTHER than my medical nightmare. I need to get back into bed and get the leg elevated here pretty quick, anyway.

I'm hopeful that you people are making up for my lack of sex by humping like bunnies out there. Please, kids, do me a favor and fuck someone today. You know you want to.

Big Love!

Since I'm Always WAY late in posting about National Events:


Ann Coulter is a Cunt.

Hey! SHE started it!

Here's a cute little widget that Melissa was turned on to, so she turned on the rest of us who read her. Since I love explaining me and describing me to anyone who will hold still long enough to listen, I had to generate one of these babies about myself. If you think it's neato too, click on the link at the bottom and do one of yourself for yourself.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Medical Update

I just had to jump on today and announce that I had the PICC line removed from my chest yesterday and I am no longer having to lug around the portable i.v. pump, pack, and tubeage.

Was so happy, I kissed the nurse when she got the catheter out of me, and she blushed beet red. I'm a dynamo of sexual energy, ya know...

Still have the wound vac attached to my leg, and have to deal with carrying around that purse for several weeks yet. No biggie. Feels like progress to me, man.

By the way, I forgot to go the scoreboard for sick time tracking:

Tracking My Sick Days in 2007 : 12

That blows, considering we aren't three months into the new year yet. Let's hope I'm done being a mere mortal for a while, huh?

Tuezdayz Cheeze
(smile when you say it!)

It's "The Jeannie Tate Show"!

Soccer mom JEANNIE TATE hosts a talk show from her minivan.

Sunday Mop Up 03/04/07

Look, kids, I know I'm not exactly pumping out the posts, but give a fag a break, huh? I am currently lugging around two separate pumps connected to my body by tubing, and I am supposed to be lying in bed with my leg propped up at all times. Just getting to the bathroom to pee is a logistical nightmare, never mind sitting at my pc, yammering on about my plight while my leg swells below me. I'll spend some time today doing it, because it's SUNDAY, after all, and I cannot handle the cluttered chaos around me. 'Organization' is hardly my strong suit, to begin with. You should see the jumble of tubes, wires, and machinery I have become. That I haven't yet unplugged something accidentally and bled to death in a thick puddle of ooze during sleep is simply astonishing.

Word on the street is that I may get to unplug from the portable i.v. pump on Monday. This would make Life As I Know It MUCH more manageable. I'll be attached to the wound vac on my leg for several more weeks, as it tries to suck the hole in my leg into filling from the inside out. A smartass friend thinks all I need is some wood putty to get the job done. When I relayed this to the nurse at the Wound Care Clinic, her response was "Never seek medical advice from Pinocchio".



I'm hobbling around doing some much needed laundry, slurping my bucket o' coffee, and clearing Casa del Jimbo of remnant bio hazard from another week's worth of Bachelorhood Gone Awry, and babbling a bit to you about the things that have been kicking around my skull as of late. I loosely label this phenomena as 'thought'. So, here goes this week's installment:

Anti-biotics

Maybe I have said this before, and I apologize if I am repeating myself, but I LUVS me some anti-biotics. My complexion is ever-so clear ( I haven't had a zit in friggin' weeks), any chance of b.o. is non-existent!

Bloodwork Results

My PCP insisted on drawing blood and doing lab work on me before releasing me to work a sparse 3-4 hours a day at my job for the next two weeks or so.

[Yes, in between drs. appointments I am hauling my tubed ass to work for a few hours a day now. It's kinda cool. I show up in flip flops and cargo shorts and have a drs. note insisting that I keep my leg hoisted up (on my desk, mind you) while cranking out work on my desktop. Right about the time that shit starts to hit the fan on any given day, I get to announce that I'm going home to rest. Why can't my job be like this all the time?]

Well, the bloodwork results are in, and I don't mind telling you that I RAWK! My LDL, HDL, and triglycerides were well within range. My overall cholesterol was 181 (down from 218 in the Fall). My a1c (longterm blood sugar level) was 6.3 (down from 6.8), and my fasting blood sugar was 102. My doctor's nurse is a sweet little thing named Chris who LOVES to lecture me about my numbers had nothing to bitch at me about. She, instead, congratulated me. But I think she was a little disappointed that she couldn't crawl up on her soapbox about SOMEthing.


Okay, all this crap about my medical status is even boring the shit outta ME, so I want to tell you about someone I met while in the hospital. Get comfortable, this may take a bit.

Ligia
(pronounced "LE.hee.ah")

She was my day shift nurse for three days in a row during my hospitalization. She is a 65 year old Colombian woman who is fairly new at this hospital. Ligia used to be a psychologist and had a private practice while she lived in Colombia, many years ago. As a young woman, she studied and got her Ph.D, from a university in Paris, France.

Ligia was married for 19 years to a Colombian man who was a corporate bigwig with Esso (now known as Exxon) Oil. As she tells it, leaning in and whispering into my ear, he was "an asshole. He cheated on me constantly. He was irresponsible with our money. He refused to grow up. He gambled, he drank, he ran around with whores." But, in Colombia, divorce was not socially acceptable, so she remained married to this man while her career as a cognitive therapist (for the 1% of the Colombian population that could afford such a luxury as counseling) flourished. She learned quickly to put back her own savings for the future.

She would tell me about her life as she tended to me. The more I heard her story, the more I was fascinated by her. I asked lots of questions. She never refused to answer, sharing these personal things as she emptied my urinal, perched proudly upon the table next to my bed ("Oh!" she would coo, "Your kidneys are working wonderfully! This is a good sign that you will recover quickly!"), strip and change the sheets on my bed while my fat ass was still in it ("If I had known how to do this while I was still married, my husband would have never wanted to get out of bed. Ugh!" And then she'd lean into me again and say, in a hushed tone, "He was an asshole."), or give me a sponge bath because I could not stand up to get into the shower at first. Her story made me forget about my aching leg, if only for a little while. It also took my mind off the embarrassment of being helpless to tend to myself.

Ligia and her husband had a daughter who wanted to attend college in the United States. Ligia's parents had residency in New York state, having moved there years before, and the daughter was attending class at NYU, studying fashion design (I think). During the daughter's first year of school, Ligia came to the U.S. to visit. It was her first time in America.

She LOVED it here. New York City was like Paris in her youth, only 5 times bigger. She was surrounded by Culture and Art and Freedom and Choice and even more, Family. She had missed her daughter, and was delighted to spend time with her parents. She had initially intended to stay two weeks. She stretched that into a month. She called her office in Colombia and pushed her waiting clients' next appointments back further and further.

At this point, I asked her if she felt bad, or guilty, about not being there for her patients in Colombia.

"Guilty?" she asked, "About what? My practice was day after day of listening to rich businessmen, and mostly kept housewives, complain that their children did not love them, although they were never home to spend any time with their family, that sex with their spouse had become routine and uninteresting,and that they were so depressed because they cannot afford yet ANOTHER house with a swimming pool and maid staff. My life was all about handing out anti-depressants to the self-centered Rich. These people weren't interested in working to improve their lives. They wanted Happiness brought to them on a silver platter. They thought they could buy Satisfaction and Contentment through me. Let them wait for me a little while longer. I needed a break!"

When Ligia phoned her husband to announce that she was staying in the States longer, he became anxious. It looked bad that his wife was gone for so long. He worried about what people might think and say.

"He asked me how much longer I was going to stay and I told him, half-joking, that I might not ever come back. This really got his attention. He said to me, 'Ligia, I miss you. I need you! How about I come up there and spend a week with your parents and our daughter, and then I take you to Orlando for a second honeymoon? We will spend a week together, just the two of us, and then we will come home together. I'm sure I can arrange to take the time off from work and my busy schedule.' Then, he asked me if I would like that."

"I had heard that 'second honeymoon' promise for years. He didn't miss me. He wanted me home for appearance's sake. To stop the gossip, I'm sure. He was coming up to take me back. To make sure I came back." She broke into a whisper, leaning in, "You know..."

"Yes, I know." I jumped in, whispering back. "He was an asshole!"

We both burst into laughter.

The night of his arrival, the whole family went to LaGuardia to meet him, Ligia, her parents, and their daughter, waited to welcome him to New York City. But the plane did not arrive on schedule. Arrival was set for 9pm. At 10pm, families of the passengers of the flight began asking questions and getting restless. They were told that the flight was delayed. At 11pm, an announcement was made that all friends and family of passengers on the flight were to meet in a conference room at one end of the terminal. Once there, officials from the airline announced that they had lost contact with the plane over the Gulf of Mexico. It was unclear what the status of the plane was, or where it might be. Everyone was told to return home, and the moment anything was known, they would be telephoned.

By the time they had returned to her parent's home it was 1 am in the morning and there was a message on the answering machine. The airline was alerting the media that the flight was "lost and presumed crashed" into the Gulf.

In the following days, helicopters were sent to cover the flight path of the plane. In one area of the Gulf, a large oil spill was found. Upon further inspection, luggage and clothing from passengers of the flight began popping up at sea level. The evidence confirmed the suspicion. The plane had crashed, and there were no survivors.

"When it sank in that he was dead, I realized that I had an opportunity. I had no more reason to need to return to Colombia. I wasn't happy there. My family, my future, was here in the United States. I packed my bag to go back to close my business, to sell the house, to tie up the loose ends a week later. As it turned out, my husband had put all of his insurance policies into his mother's name. She got the death benefit from Esso, she got the proceeds from the sale of our house, he even bought flight insurance for the flight that crashed. He bought that insurance every time he flew. It went to his mother. I didn't get a dime."

I was stunned. "You got nothing?"

"I didn't need his money. I didn't want his money. I had my savings. When I returned to Colombia I was the talk of the town. You see, when a woman becomes widowed, it is custom to grieve and wear nothing but black for five years. Five years! I was finished grieving after five days! Can you imagine me in black for five years?!? I got off the plane in Colombia wearing brown slacks and a red blouse. I didn't care. I was there to bury that part of my life. His mother..." she stopped and chortled, "was furious!"

"I closed my practice, and returned to the United States, and decided it was time to change careers. I went to school to become an RN and that is what I do now."

"Isn't that a big difference in pay?" I asked, blinking.

"Oh," she laughed, "Very big! But I have plenty of savings. I invested my savings and it continues to grow. I make enough money to pay my rent and buy my groceries. I love my job. My life is very full. I get up every morning at 4am and have a breakfast of egg whites, a piece of toast, a piece of fruit, and a little piece of cheese. Then, I go to the gym and walk 7 miles on a treadmill. Then, I sit in the sauna for 20 minutes which I adore, and then I swim for a bit. When I get to work here at 7am, I am fully charged up and alert and ready to tackle the day. I see young people stumble in to work, hung over and exhausted. They eat doughnuts and sugared coffee to wake up, and can't understand why they feel so lousy.They stay up all hours, with the parties. I am in bed by 9pm every night."

"But, wait" I said, "I don't understand why you, a Ph.D in Psychology, would give up your education and training in that field to become a health care provider who spends the day wiping butts, cleaning up vomit and blood, and working in an environment of sickness and disease. I see patient after patient like myself: frustrated, angry, and in pain. Why would you choose this world over the world you left?"

"Oh," she smiled, "the difference, for me, is that the body is a wondrous thing. If given the chance, the sick body will always try to heal. But, the sick mind will sometimes refuse to heal. Sometimes it does not want to get better. I choose to work with this amazing, beautiful thing we have called our body. Watching the sick heal is an inspiration to me."



I have spent a good portion of my life discounting my body. I like to tell people that our bodies are just the bags we live in. But, Ligia has make me think about the astounding miracle that these things we live in really are. The superficial beauty of them has no relevance to the awesome determination they possess to stay alive and vital. We abuse and forsake ourselves with so little thought. Our bodies have to combat a world full of contaminants and dangers and sickness, but it also has to combat a sometimes sick, sometimes unthinking mind. Its war is external AND internal. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that beautiful?

One of my favorite sayings is: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I think I was ready to meet Ligia.