I'm From Milwaukee and That's Not Funny

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Happy Birthday, L!
Today my man turns 64!! Yay!!

Well THAT Didn't Last Long
Today I said something that even now I think was a totally innocent pun, yet I still pissed someone off.

Implementing yesterday's resolution is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Mean Girls
Lately I've been noticing that my meanness trigger is a lot more sensitive. Normally, I strive to be both funny and nice, but lately I haven't been so nice. I attribute it to my seasonal blues that I fight so hard to stay out of. For some reason, during the winter my ability to consider other people's feelings goes on hiatus (along with other things). There are times when I wish words were tangible items I could stuff back in my mouth or bubbles that could be popped before anyone heard them. Sadly, such is not the case.

I RESOLVE from this moment forward to fix this. I WILL consider the feelings of others before I open my yap.

I initially threw in an escape clause of "unless I'm with my buddies and we all make a pact not to tell anyone who we're shredding." But really, maybe I'm better without such an out. I should think the things that are better thought and say the things that are better said.

You know?

Stinky T
For reasons kinda sorta outta my control, I spent three days in a cabin without a shower.

*kinda rank*

And This Completes the Collection
Yes, that's right -- I am SO TOTALLY looking forward to getting this CD. My sister owned each and every vinyl Partridge Family LP, and we played them all until they were almost worn smooth.

SQUEEEEE!

Which reminds me, it's almost time to break out The Partridge Family Christmas Card LP. It's a family tradition! It also happens to be quite good!

To 411 or Not to 411? To Facebook (Again), or....? And Beard Rant
Personally, I've always resisted joining Bear411. I've heard too much crap about the way members are treated and all the stuff surrounding the way the webmaster runs the site. But all-in-all, I find my resistance wearing down a bit. Maybe I will join -- I'm not sure. My buddy, Larry in Fredericton, took several nice photos of me once, but I thnk I could use some more updated ones. The pics on my Bearciti account (the shirtless ones) are a bit misleading because I've chunked out a bit. Anyone want to take a few pix of me?

Same is true for Facebook. I used to belong to Facebook until people I didn't want to talk to anymore (high school, mainly) started finding me. Also, I was never really all that enamored with updating what I was doing at this or that particular moment. But now I'm being tempted by the siren's call again.

Over all, I cannot find a great reason why I've resisted other than to find some sort of coolness in being left out. In school when all the other kids were reading "The Hobbit" and playing D&D, I was reading "A Wrinkle In Time" and playing with myself. Even until recently, I resisted selecting "My Types" on Bearciti because everyone did that and why should I follow the pack?

Huh.

In other news, I have come to the realization (again) that I will never be able to grow a beard. Thick, luxurious moustache? Of course! Goatee? Yes! Mutton chops? Sure! Full beard? Nope...it's "Deliverance" baby!

Spoot!!!

On The Pill
L wants me to give up Propecia, a baldness medication that I've been taking for about five years. Yes! It DOES work, but only at the crown of my head; I went from almost totally bald at the back to now fully-haired. The front part of my head, though, is bald. For me, the only problem is that it's so damned expensive. Vanity, thy name is Topper.

But from what I've read, Propecia works by doing various things to your prostate. L originally had prostate cancer (before it left the bed and metasticised in various places elsewhere), so he has always been leery of Propecia, even if it does work on my hair. A study done shows that Propecia can cut the risk of prostate cancer by 30%, but still L distrusts it.

And recent accidental "experiment" involving forgetting to take the drug for a week resulted, strangely, in my sex drive going through the roof. One of the side effects can be decreased sex drive. So I guess I can be either bald and horny all the time or fuller-haired and -- well, what would the opposite be? -- horniless?

Does anyone have tales to tell about hair plugs and the like, like Bosley and related companies?

It's Amazing How Bulky A Gift Shop Sweatshirt Makes You Look
L took this of me at the top of the lookout tower, Old Fort William, Thunder Bay, Ontario. What a very cold day (the high was 59 F -- in early August!)

POLL: Help Topper Decide Where To Go on Vacation
Well! It appears that I have a bunch of vacation time I need to use up. I'm kind of on the fence, as it were. I'd like to visit Toronto, but getting and staying there is quite expensive (just getting and staying there would be over $1000, not to mention food and entertainment). Visiting northern Wisconsin is a possibility. I could stay at various winter hotels and have a nice, quiet rest in smallish towns that I love (Superior, Hayward, etc.) OR I could go for the gusto and go all the way to Thunder Bay. Northern trips, though, require much driving.

Please help me decide!!

Poll #1475760 Up North (Wisconsin) or Toronto?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

Where should Topper go on his mid-December vacation?

View Answers

Toronto
1 (33.3%)

Up North (Wisconsin/Minnesota)
2 (66.7%)

REALLY Up North (Wisconsin/Minneasota/Thunder Bay)
0 (0.0%)

Olfactory At The Ol' Factory
This post by

aadroma got me to thinking about something that happened to me recently.

Maybe its because of my astoundingly poor eyesight (damn you, keratoconus!), but I have always been driven by scent. When I was a kid, I could name every place my mother had been for the day by burying my face in her coat. Once I even followed the smell of a "dirty" fire over 14 blocks to find someone's garage in full blaze. And like

aadroma, romantic memories are stirred by old colognes like Lagerfeld, Aremis, and Trailblazer.

Anyway, I opened an old box at work last week and was immediately greeted with a smell that reminded me of SRA. Did you have SRA as a kid? It stood for Scientific Reading Assessment, and it was a box of hundreds of little stories with tests to help a student improve his reading ability and comprehension. At the start of the school year, we each took a reading test. The score was matched against a color which corresponded with the SRA box. The dummies were given light and pastel colors like rose and aqua at the front of the SRA box, while the stories for the geniuses were at the back in bold but simple colors like dark blue ending with black. The idea was that you had to read and pass x number of booklets/test before moving on to the next (slightly darker) color. Progress was recorded in the SRA book, with each child getting the "honor" of coloring in their achieved squares with a colored pencil.

Rose always seemed to be my starting color. It wasn't at the very front of the box, but it wasn't very far in, either. In third grade I got curious about the stories in the dark colors. I pulled out a rose story, and it had wide letters with lots of space between each word saying things like "Bobby sat on the ground. Betty saw he had apples. Bobby ate too many apples. Betty saw him puke behind the barn." Test questions were along the lines of "Who was eating apples?" (How did I not wind up in a higher color?) The brown and black stories were amusing little pamphlets on Aristotle's theories and thermonuclear science.

But the worst part of SRA was Teddy Bickford. Teddy was a brilliant kid, I'll give him that, but modesty was not something his parents encouraged. Every year, Teddy would raise his hand and say "Mrs. Highland, I seemed to have tested straight into the black section...again (exaggerated eye roll). During recess I completed all the stories and passed each of the tests with 100%. May I please be allowed to go to the (pause for dramatic effect) 4th grade box?"

"Oh, of course, Teddy! You tell Mrs. Glump that I said it was okay. But you start at light yellow, okay?"

"Mrs. Highland! Light yellow in the (pause for dramatic effect) 4th grade box is like *tsk* blue in this grade. Can't I try for something higher?"

"You let Mrs. Glump decide."

I hated that fucker. By 4th grade, Teddy was moved off to the Academy of Basic Education to be academically challenged. I don't even know where he is today because there are a surprising number of Teddy Bickfords in the world.

So, back in the present, I got what I needed out of the box and replaced it. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find an old box of SRA material on the internet (the program has long since moved to computer-based instruction, so the boxes are a bit rare).

Scent. It'll take you places.

Seen At the Red Light: An Alternate Reality
Today I had another lunch with Judie. I love Judie for so many reasons, and one of them is her zest for food. Even though she feels she should lose weight, she knows the secret to eating well. And by "well" I don't mean eating a balanced diet full of fruits and vegetables and crap like that. I mean that the foods she chooses to eat -- good or bad for a person -- are exactly the ones she desires at that moment. She never eats for eating's sake. In short, eating for her is a joyous event.

On the way back from the restaurant (called Transfer on the corner of 1st and Mitchell for those of you who live in Milwaukee), I stopped at a red light on the corner of 1st and Greenfield. I hummed along with the song on the radio for a little while and found myself gazing toward a nearby gay bar called the Harbor Room. The Harbor Room has a strange reputation -- it tries to cater to blue collar guys, but somehow misses the mark. For example, I remember one person telling me that they advertised half-price drinks to patrons who go shirtless and wound up with a bar full of bull dykes in their bras.

Anyway, here it was 1.45 pm, and a car pulled up outside the bar. Out stumbled someone vaguely familiar to me. He lurched across the road and into the bar, and as he entered, his identity came to me. It was my ex, Kurt.

Kurt and I were together or a little more than two years. Physically, he was unlike the type of man I went for (then or now), but we had common friends and sometimes love is found where you do not expect. I broke up with Kurt when it became apparent that he had two loves in his life: me and the gay bars. It's not that Kurt was whoring around at the various bars around town; I just couldn't get him to come out of them. Weekdays had a set pattern (work until 5 pm, then bar until 9 pm, then home) as did weekends (bar at noon or a little earlier, home for lunch at 2, back by 5 until close). Oh sure I could ask him to do other things, and we did them, but I always felt I was making an appointment, and that if I didn't specifically ask for a certain time period he would simply go to the bar. I realized that I wasn't willing to share, so we ended our relationship, fittingly, on barstools. We are not friends today.

But seeing Kurt, who is now retired, stumble across the road and into the bar so early in the day validated my decision to leave him. Evidently nothing, not even the loss of a relationship because of too much bar time, kept him from tavern. It made me realize that had I stayed with him, I would have been in exactly the same situation I was in 15 years ago.

Harry Reems As A Super Mario Brother
I'm trying to decide if in this picture, young Harry Reems looks adorable or deranged. I guess there's no law that says you can't be both.

What do you think?

Why I Love Judie
Me: I just don't get it, Judie. I've been working out for the past month -- cardio, weights -- but I'm gaining weight, not losing!

Judie: Muscle weighs more than fat.

Me: Well, I don't think I've had enough time to really--

Judie: Listen to me. (takes me hand) Muscle. Weighs. More. Than. Fat. Just keep telling yourself that. You take one step into the gym, and any weight gain is explained just like that. Muscle... Weighs...

She's so wise.

And Now the Voice
Now the cold has moved into my chest, giving me a voice not unlike Sam Elliott turned drag queen: deeper, but more feminine.

I've Godda Code
Whew!

This cold that's going around sure packs an exhausting, dizzying, cranky, sweaty, congesty, coughy, sneezy (maybe even dopey) punch!

I Can Haz Flakes Too!
This was taken about two weeks before Katie died. We knew she was not going to make it, so we pretty much let her do whatever she liked. We're glad we did.

Beautiful Portrait

Gentlemen, this is a beautiful portrait. I love the way it seems three dimensional. The delicate details and the graceful lines give it a realism that enthralls me. Arnold Machin, its creator, also made the famous coin effigy that is this post's userpic.

It's been said that this is the most reproduced portrait in the world because of its use on the United Kingdom's stamps. It's also been said that The Queen refuses any requests to update or otherwise change the portrait. It's easy to see why. It's just a beautiful work of art.

Did It Again
My hand has healed from the weedwhacker incident, but now my toe is mashed. L and I were moving furniture last night, it bobbled and landed squarely on my big right toe, shattering the nail like a potato chip.

Need chocolate still.

Things for the Neighbors
Yay! We found a home (literally) for the stuff L and I wanted to get rid of! Some of you know that we would like to sell our duplex (which we run as one big house) in the spring, so we have been identifying things that can be discarded so we only move what needs moving.

The young lady who lives next door instantly claimed the sofa-bed we put at the curb. She revealed to L that she has no furniture, and the other tenant in her building said that her statement was no exaggeration -- she literally has no furniture. She and her three kids are sleeping on the floor in their sleeping bags and they sit on the floor to eat and watch TV.

When L mentioned this to me, my little ears started flicking around. Wait! We have a queen sized air mattress that we no longer use *and* a leather easy chair that got disqualified during January's redecoration. The only problem was that I had given the air pump for the mattress to my mother, so I went out and bought a new one. Tonight, I bumped into her while walking the dog and asked if she wanted them. She said "yes", so there you go.

I've slept many hours on that easy chair, so I'm glad it's in a good home.

Me and Bailey
A fine summer day. A pretty girl. What more could a guy want?