I have been friends with this girl, Dori, since high school. So, needless to say we go back about 15 years. Dori has always said that she considers myself and our other friend Cara (who I grew up with but no longer talk to) her two best friends. Dori has moved back and forth in the years since high school between Charleston, IL (about 3 hours away) and Romeoville. Currently, she lives in Charleston and has for about 5 or 6 years now. Because she is so far away I honestly only talk to her about 3 or 4 times a year and see her even less. She is married with 3 kids, although her husband has been, to put it nicely, not much of a husband for some of the years they have been married. Dori was one of the first people I came out to, although it wasn’t until about 5 years ago. She was accepting then, but in the ensuing years she has- GULP- found God. I think you all know what that means. Gays and hardcore Christians go together about as well as peppers and pancakes. Still, we have remained friends, although there was always this big cloud hanging over our friendship and I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. She also does not know that I’m an Atheist and always forwards those crazy religious emails to me. Well, Thursday night I ran into her online. We were chatting about various things, however she apologized for being kind of slow because she was also on the phone at the time. My reply was that it was ok as I was chatting with this cute and amazing guy at the same time. This is how the conversation went after that: 

Dori: do you know in 1 Cor 6:9 that it states who will not inherit the kingdom
of God – will not go to Heaven?

Mike: i did not

Mike: altough im sure i know the answer to this, but have you
heard from cara?

Dori: fornicators, idolators, adulterers,
homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers,
extortioners                Not for a couple weeks, we txt once in awhile

Mike: i saw her brother last weekend, he said she is doing good

Dori:  cool

Mike: yeah

Mike:  so you think im going to hell because im gay?

Dori: according to the Bible, yes.       But I know I
love u & u know I would never judge u or any other person for their
choices, but I just wanted to make sure u knew & maybe God planned our
friendship to save u.  Please don’t be mad at me for bringing this up, I
just wanted to make u aware of this and I want u to go to Heaven.

Mike:, im not mad. i knew this is probably what you thought

Mike: however, its not a choice. i know most christians dont
believe that, but it is not. believe me

Dori: whew, I was so nervous to ever bring it up

Mike: also…………im an atheist so i dont believe in hell
or heavan………..haha. i was nervous too

Dori:  I know a guy that was gay, then he seriously
changed because of this and now is saving alot of others because of his
experience

Mike: that might be, but honestly, one can not change their
sexuality. he might pretend to be straight but deep down he is gay.

Mike: its just who you are attracted to. honestly, its what ive
always felt.

Mike: i believe people can not change who or what they are
attracted to. some people are gay, some are straight. some girls are
attracted to older guys, some are attracted to big muscle guys, its just
what we are

Mike: i know its hard to understand

Dori: no, it’s not hard to understand, cuz my choices
have changed over the years

Mike: i know most people have a hard time understanding it
because it is different, but i always compare it to what people are
attracted to. plus, if gay people can choose to be gay than that means
straight people choose to be straight

Mike: which would mean that choosing to be straight would be
the most important decision that one can make…………..meaning that
everybody would how and when they made that decision

Mike: id hate to cut you short, but ive got to get to
bed…………im working overtime tomorrow (need to pay for repairs on
the house)

Mike: it was nice chatting with you…………i hope dj feels
better. give your brother my congrats!

The time stamp is not on here, so it makes it seem like I ended the conversation abruptly, however she had not responded in about 10 minutes and I needed to get to bed so I ended the conversation. I was crushed. Hell, I still am crushed. In the years since I have come out, I feel very lucky and fortunate in that everybody that I’ve told have been very accepting. I’ve always felt that I could not relate to most other gays because I’ve never had to deal with this shit.  I think I just lost a good friend because I’m gay. Now she doesn’t come right out and say that she does not want to be friends. Clearly though she does not approve and does not accept me. My thinking is that we can go on being friends if we want. However, how can I honestly be friends with somebody who despises what I am? She thinks I can change, but we all know I can’t. And let’s just pretend for a second that it is a choice, why would it be such and awful choice? The whole time I wanted to unload on her about religion, but I held back, I wanted to try to approach this as soft as possible and not club her. The thing that we both have in common is that we want to change each other. There was a time in my life when if this had happened,  I would have cursed myself  and hated myself for being gay. I would have prayed and hoped that I could change and not be gay. But, that was a long time ago. Now, I don’t hate myself for being gay. I hate religion for brainwashing people into hating gays. Even if it was a choice, I wouldn’t change to make them happy. Because I don’t have many gay friends, after this incident I was upset and I forwarded it to the only person I knew who could understand and offer me advice: Liam. He gave me a brilliant and very though out response, which I will post tomorrow. This post is already long enough and I want to write about my weekend.

Yesterday was Scooty and Kris’s daughter’s (Robyn is her name) first birthday party. It was at their house and they planned it for 1-4pm. They were having about 60 guests and Scooty’s mom was taking Robyn after the party so that Scooty and Kris can have some much needed alone time. Still, I knew that there was no way they would get 60 people to leave their house by 4 and I was right. However most of the people were gone by 6:30 and John and I were all set to leave when Kris told us to stay for a while. Well, after eating at Portillo’s, playing 5 or 6 games of pool, watching tv, and bullshitting, we left about 12:45 in the am. I felt kinda bad about eating away their whole night, but both of them were cool with it.

Christie and Jeff showed up at the party. This is the first time I have seen them since the summer. Ok, that’s night entirely true. Christie did have a segment on the WGN Morning news a few months go that I saw and posted a link to. But, this was the first time I saw her in person since the summer. They recently got back from a 3 week trip to Cambodia, Thailand and Tokyo. They had a ton of interesting stories to tell, in fact I was captivated with them for the better part of a couple of hours. I always love to hear about traveling, and this was no exception. Jeff is an amateur photographer and he took over 5000 pictures during the trip. He is also building a website so that he can sell his pictures to people. He hopes to have a site set up soon which of course, I will post a link for.

One thing they told us that I found very interesting was that they were in Cambodia and some of the locals (who did know some English) were asking them about Obama and Clinton. Jeff and Christie are both Republicans, but they still found it interesting that people in a country that far away were so into American politics. It just goes to show you that this presidential race not only transcends history and the world. I was reading an article about this in the Chicago Tribune a few weeks ago and how people in other countries are very interested in our election. Isn’t it amazing?

Once again people I’m going to send you on a journey by having you click on a link before reading any further:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFxk7glmMbo

Now I bet you all think I’m going to really rip on this lady, but the fact is that I happen to agree with her. If you have cancer in your toe, you probably shouldn’t say that you are going to forget about it because the rest of you is fine. Honestly, you should probably be concerned. I mean, certainly its not as bad as a gay couple moving in 3 towns and 15 miles away from you. I mean, shit, we all know how homosexuality is spreading like wildfire. And next thing you know your kids are coming home from school with a nasty case of the gays. And we just can’t have that now, can we? Let’s look at little bit deeper into what else she said.

“No society that has embraced homosexuality has lasted more than a few decades.”

This is true. I’m sure you all remember the former gay country of Gaysmackistan which was born out of the former USSR. It lasted for a total of 18 days back in 1991 until Pat Robertson showed up with his Jesus-a-fier and turned everybody into born again Christians. But, that was a close one. Unfortunately for our wonderful Oklahoma state rep that was the only society that embraced homosexuality. So really, she makes about as much sense as eating candle wax for breakfast.

“I think its the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.”

You really can’t even begin to argue with her on this one. I mean, just look at the cold hard facts: Gays and Islamic terrorists committed the same number of terrorist attacks on the United States last year: 0. And Bush has been drumming up support for sanctions against Iran for their blatant support of homosexuals. Its gotten so bad in Iran that they even had to execute one of their homosexuals just for being gay. So clearly you can see the connection between gays and terrorism.

“They are going after two year olds. They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them.”

Were you as shocked by this as I was? I mean this to me was STUNNING. She knows the word indoctrinate! Hell, I struggled just to spell it, I can’t even imagine how long it took her to find that word. Still I think she is right on the money with this one. I remember when I was 2 years old Mr Hornyweather approached me about joining the homosexual agenda. I was so excited that I shit my pants! And there I was, well on my way to the gay lifestyle, I was looking back. And Mark, well nobody approached him and now look at him? Married with 2 kids, 2 of them under a year old. Ahhh, but he does have a 2 year old daughter, I should ask her if she has been approached yet.

“Gays are infiltrating our city councils!”

This is so fucked up! Did you hear about this one? Two gays disguised themselves as straight men just so they could infiltrate the Pittsburgh city council all Tom Cruise Mission Impossible style. And now look at Pittsburgh. Their mayor has not been indicted in any prostitution stings and baseball team hasn’t had a winning season since 1992. Its so gay, they might as well just change the name to “Gaysburgh.”

“This stuff is deadly and its spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.”

See, I told you the gays was contagious! And didn’t I read somewhere that Nostradamus predicted that a major super power would be completely destroyed by homosexuality? If only the founding fathers had enough foresight and sense to put an amendment in the constitution outlawing homosexuality.

What a dumb bitch. I think if I do drive to the Grand Canyon this year, I’m going to stop off and punch that fucking cunt square in the eye. Or sleep with her son. Ahhh, fuck it, she’s a mega bitch,  I’m gonna do both!

You might have missed this, but check it out. Then again, maybe you didn’t miss this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_i

Either way, this is pretty scary. I’ve been an advocate of bottled drinking water for years now. About 8 years ago I worked for a company that did government research. Its sound interesting and even top secret, but its pretty much just a fancy way of saying that we did surveys for the government. And one of those research surveys was tracking down and interviewing former Marines who served at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. It seems that the water was contaminated with the chemicals used in dry cleaning from 1968-1986. The whole time, people were drinking the water without knowing that it was contaminated. Our job was to interview (via phone) these Marines to find out if their children born or conceived on the base had any childhood cancers. It was, to say the least, a heartbreaking study and the origin of my belief that the US military does not give a shit about their soldiers. Anywho, ever since then I have been very weary about tap water.

And its not to say that bottled water is 100% pure. We have all heard stories about how bottled water companies use tap water. I for one believe that Wal Mart probably does this, knowing how cheap and evil they are. But still, I would rather take my chances with bottled water than tap water. For example, the water in the town I live in has more than its share of radon in it. It also has limestone and is known for having hard water that dries out the skin. I’ve been told we are going to be getting some new water systems here, but that it won’t be complete until 2009. The fact that the water in my town has been contaminated with radon and limestone opened my eyes to this even more. And our village says that the water is still safe to drink, but why should I trust them? Just to be safe, I haven’t drank Romeoville tap water in probably 5 or 6 years.

Were you like me though? Were you STUNNED to read this article? I want to say I wish I was surprised, but the more and more I think about it, the less stunned and surprised I become. And to think, there are still a lot of major cities whose water was not tested. If I had to guess I would say that this is a problem in just about every town. After reading the article, its hard to see how it is not a problem is every major town. Furthermore, Congress is claims that they will hold hearings on this issue, that is probably after they get the the FAR more important issues of steroids in sports and the New England Patriots possibly cheating during the 2002 Super Bowl. In case you couldn’t tell, I was being sarcastic.

The disgusting part is how these drugs got into the drinking water: from human waste. Call me nuts, but I thought that we were supposed to have some sort of system that prevented the drinking water from mixing with the toilet water. I know when somebody mixes various foods while they eat they say “ehhhh, what’s the difference, its all going to the same place.” Well I had no idea the same held true for water. They are saying that if you drink tap water you can potentially be drinking Aunt Bea’s estrogen pills. Sure, its probably not enough to do any significant damage, but still the mere thought that its in there is kind of scary. I mean, if that can be in there, than who the hell knows what the hell else is in there? First we find out that fast food companies sometimes get cow shit mixed in with their beef and now we find out that, essentially, human waste is mixed in with our water? Is there no escape from shit? I’m no fucking doctor, but even I can see that consuming feces, even if trace amounts, can not possibly be healthy.

Bill Maher is always saying that our food and water supplies are being poisoned. At first I thought he was being a little nuts, but the more and more I learn the more and more I realize that he is right. And what’s even worse it that I don’t know how we can know we are safe.

Friday was a GREAT day, at least at work. I got my bonus, which was a lot more than I expected. I also got a raise, which was less than I expected, but for longer than it should have been. Confused? You won’t be after the next episode of “Soap”. Ok, that was just an ode to the late 70s sitcom Soap. Anywho, I wasn’t supposed to get my raise until August, but our company decided to do reviews for the entire company in March. This meant that I would not get a raise in August but instead in March, however I would get half of what I was supposed to get because I’m getting it 6 months earlier than I should have. Next March, I will get a full raise. Unless……………….I get this other position I applied for. I found out Friday that they want to interview me next week. I was worried I would not get interviewed because they made me take a Microsoft Word and Excel test. I scored a stunningly low 32% on Word. Which was bad, yes, however I scored a stunningly pathetic 19% on Excel. For those of you not familiar with sucking, 19% is almost like an ultimate sucking of suckiest proportions. Still, in spite of it all, it did not prevent me from getting an interview. And since I interview so damn well and I am tremendous at selling myself, I think I’ve got a great chance at getting this position. Oh, did I also mention I’m cocky? Then again when it comes to interview one needs to project an air of confidence about him.

So Friday night I rented American Gangster and invited Mark and Dave to come over to watch it with John and I, kind of like an impromptu guy’s movie night. Now this is the extended version of an already long movie, so it turned out to be 3 hours long. For whatever reason, Dave decided to do shots of tequila during the movie. An hour into the movie, he was passed out, a combination of the fact that he had been up since 5am and it was now 10:30 in the pm and the tequila shots. Classic Dave. As for the movie itself, it was pretty damn good. Ridley Scott directed it and it just didn’t seem like a Ridley Scott type of movie, as some of his other movies were Alien (never saw it), Gladiator (SUCKED……….I know, I’m in the minority here), and Matchstick Men (saw it, liked it in spite of Nicholas Cage………..talk about sucking, man he sucks so much he could have his own sucking assembly line). 

Yesterday was my live fantasy baseball draft. This is the first time since the mid 1990s that I have taken part in a live, in person fantasy baseball draft. This guy from work invited me in along with a guy that my mom used to babysit some 30 years ago. And I do mean 30 years ago, I’m not exaggerating in the least. As it turned out, a couple of the guys in the league were guys I went to high school with. Anywho, I arrived at this one dude’s house shortly before the Noon start time. I walked in and there was this dog who was kinda big and jumping all over me. For some stupid reason, I took my coat off before the dog stopped jumping on me and he managed to scrape the hell out of my arm. Fuckin damn dogs. As for the draft itself, we wound up not getting started until almost 12:45. It took about 5 hours and I don’t know that I’m very happy with my team. Still, I have always been very good at making adjustments as the season goes along. That being said, this year there is a $3 fee for every transaction made, in other words if I drop a player and pick another player up, that’s $3 right there. It should help me to limit my transactions, however I have to say that no matter what the fee is, if I have to make moves that will help my team I’m going to do it regardless of the fee. It cost $100 plus a $15 website fee to get into this league, so I want to do everything I can to win. And I have had success before with fantasy sports, last year I won my fantasy baseball league and netted $100. This year in my fantasy basketball league I’m in 2nd place. Of course, for every time I have won money in fantasy sports there are two times the times that I have not won money.

So the weekend had been going good right up until today. As you all know, I recently had my crawl space worked on. When they worked on it, they said that I still had some leaking coming from my bathroom. Ever since they worked on it, I have been able to smell mold and mildew in my bathroom. So, I decided to go down there to see what was leaking. As soon as I opened up the crawlspace trapdoor, I could see a rather large puddle right as you would get in. This is not from the bathroom as the door is no where near the bathroom. I called the guy that did it and he will be out tomorrow to take a look at it. Still, this pisses me off to no end, as even though I got the bonus and the raise I was going to put that money towards my leaky roof. This really fuckin sucks. I’m very frustrated but am steadfast and determined to have my house ready to sell by next year.

I should start off by saying you can go to this website to donate to a fund for victims of the NIU shootings. Actually, the link is a PDF, however if you don’t have Acrobat, there is another link.

http://www.niu.edu/alumni/downloads/februaryform.pdf

https://webcluster.niu.edu/CreditCard/fdn2_step1.html

You can also donate by phone by calling 1-877-GIV2NIU.

So the Democratic race has tightened up considerably with Clinton winning 2 big states yesterday. If only Obama had won Texas, he would have done some serious damage to her campaign. And if he had won both Ohio and Texas, even though he would not have enough delegates to win, it would pretty much all but seal things up. But, she won and yet we continue on. Honestly with her wins, we are pretty much back to square one, either one of them can win it.

In watching the coverage last night, I noticed something. For the most part, I watched CNN during breaks in the Bulls game, but I did click on MSNBC and even…………(shutters) FOX News a couple of times. Anywho, CNN kept saying “if you want to get more info and more updates, you can visit our website.” So, what you are all of a sudden to lazy to give us results? This is why we are watching you, so that YOU can tell us who is winning. I’m not going to do your damn job for you and look it up myself. Americans are lazy, just give us the info instead of making us look for it.  I know you all have opinions and analysis, but please put a cork in and do your damn job. Everybody is always directing people to websites, get this from our website, do this on our website. This is why I’m watching you, so that I don’t have to do any work. I mean I can’t very well masterbate to election coverage on your website can I? Wait………….yeah, I guess I can. But, I can’t do it from the comfort of my couch. Unless of course I have a laptop. Which I don’t. But if I did, rest assured that I would probably use Panera’s free wi-fi access to jerk off to porn while I’m eating my cream of chicken soup.

Whoa. I’m kinda way off topic. I should probably just end this.

I’ve decided that I want to drive to the Grand Canyon. There. That was the easy part. Now the harder parts. First of all, I have to find somebody to go with. That can be a challenging part as most people would not want to drive to the Grand Canyon from Chicago. With me. In a car. For a round trip of nearly 60 hours. I can save myself a lot of money if I can find somebody to go with, that way hotels and gas will not only be on me. I’m also concerned about money. As it stands right now, I’ve got plenty of money for the trip. However, as you all know there are some things with my house that are in dire need of repair. These things will cost me THOUSANDS of dollars. I think I can make it work though if I just get the roof fixed this year and save the floor for next year. That should help a great deal. I’ve contemplated taking a second job, but right now at work I’ve been working overtime and the money I make with my overtime is more than or equal to what I would make if I got a second job. Plus, I REALLY don’t want to work a second job. As for the trip, I’ve got to find a good time to take the trip. All I know is that its been way to long of a time since I took a long road trip and got a way. I’ve always said that the Grand Canyon is the one place more than anywhere that I want to see. I know, it sounds kind of lame, especially with Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Japan out there. But what can I say; the Grand Canyon has always held a significant lure for me. I need to determine when the best time to go will be. If I remember correctly (and I should go back and read my posts from back then) it was probably about the same time in 2006 when I decided that I wanted to take a trip. I was aiming for May, but instead took a train in August to go see my sister in Denver.

Back in the day, I used to take road trips all the time. First it was Dave, Jt and I. Then when Dave starting dating Kelli, he stopped going and it was just Jt and I. He is no longer an option anymore, for obvious reasons. Still, we have driven to Mall of America, Cincinnati, New York City/Cooperstown, Florida, Mt. Rushmore/Denver, Green Bay, St Louis, Louisville, Michigan, and Ho Chunk Casino near Wisconsin Dells. Ok, so we started going to Ho-Chunk so often that it really wasn’t a road trip anymore. In fact, the best time I ever had was the trip the 3 of us took to Mall of America. Classic. I used to write about all of our trips in a journal we called Off-Road Rules, which was a parody of the MTV show Road Rules. We even had a picture book to go along with it. To make things even more special, after my mom died we found a picture book that my dad made of when he and his 2 friends took a road trip back in -get this- the summer of 1948! It seems they drove to Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Really, what I should do is recreate their trip, only 60 years later. Now keep in mind my dad died when I was 4, so I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about him. But, it brought tears to my eyes knowing that my dad and I both shared this common love of the road. And he took road trips with his 2 friends just like I did. My lifelong dream has always been to drive to Vegas with Dave and Jt. I know that will never happen, but its still a dream.

Still can you imagine a road trip back in 1948? Just think about this for a minute. A lot of the things we take for granted, they didn’t have back then. First and foremost, the interstate system was not built until the 1950s. Cars had no cruise control. Shit, they didn’t even have air conditioning. There were no cd players or cassette tapes or even FM radio. Shit, I don’t think they even had shoulder seat belts; I think all they had was the lap belt. They had bench seats. It was truly a different world back then for them. There wasn’t much to do in the car except talk. Ok, so I’m sure they had radio, but something tells me they didn’t exactly speed down the road blaring Lawrence Welk out of the speakers. And because there was no interstate, that really gave you a chance to see the country because you had to drive through all these small towns. This is the appeal of taking a train, as trains don’t follow the route of the expressway. Still, as much as I love traveling by train, trains are way expensive, unreliable and I can’t sleep on them, at least not longer than a few minutes. Anyway, a road trip back in 1948 must have really been something.

Wow, I was really kind of all over the place with this post. Its because I’m excited. I get that way when I’m excited.

First of all I should let you all know that I have not heard back yet from that dude, of course I also didn’t bother responding to his last message either. I’m thinkin’ I’m just going to let it die at this point.

I’m so excited because yesterday while shopping at the mall, I was able to buy myself a Cubs classic Andre Dawson t-shirt. Sure, its not the jersey that I long for, but its still pretty cool and much cheaper as well. Also they seemed to have some sort of event at the mall and it was packed with people and vendors and shit like that. One of the vendors there had the Chicago Cubs urn which I desire. It was great to see it in person as opposed to the pics online. Its actually cooler in person than in the pictures, it even has a baseball on top of it. And, its only $800, which sounds like a lot but the one I was looking at online was like $1200.

Damn, I really want to take a road trip. Its been years since my last long, good road trip. I’m craving the road right now, unfortunately I have nobody to go with. And although I have the money, I need to save that money to have my roof and floor fixed.

I wanted to make a longer post but I have to run.