Ever since I was a kid I have always loved breakfast. Even now as an adult when most adults have moved past the breakfast phase of their lives for whatever reason, I still eat breakfast every morning. And its not even that I eat it every morning. I enthusiastically look forward to it. The best part about going to bed is knowing that when I wake, I get to eat breakfast, which for me usually consists of cereal. And not your typical bland, gives you gas adult cereals. I mean, the so called kid cereals, your Count Chocula, Cookie Crisp, Cocco Pebbles, Apple Jacks, Capt’n Crunch and so forth. A lot of people think that they are just loaded with sugar, but honestly if you read the labels they are not that much worse than the adult cereals. The way I see it, its a delicious way to get a low-cal dose of chocolate or sugar. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of how I’m going to have this new Cookie Crunch cereal in the morning and if I finish that off (which I will because there is not much left in the box) I will back it up with Cookie Crisp. I remember one time when I was unemployed I got the brilliant idea of putting Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on my Cookie Crisp. If I remember correctly, I even posted about it on Xanga. I probably should be a diabetic, but I’m not.

And its not exclusive to cereals. Yesterday I went for my yearly blood test to check for various things among them cholesterol. Of course, I had to fast. Every year I will take an hour off work in the morning and stop off for breakfast after the blood test. Ever since our office moved to a new location in January, I have been driving past this pancake house called Butterfield’s.  I have been ripe with anticipation of when I would have a chance to eat there due to this blood test. I would think about it every single day when I drove past this restaurant, looking more and more forward to it each day. Of course, this sets the burden of high expectations on Butterfield’s. That being said, it was really good. Their coffee was great and I got eggs scrambled with salmon and mixed with cheese and onions. It was very good and now I’m looking forward to finding an excuse to eat there again.

I recently watched Gus Van Sant’s Milk starring Sean Penn as 1970s gay activist Harvey Milk about the only thing more amazing than the movie was the man himself. Milk realized at 40 that he had not done much in his life to be proud of. So he moved to San Francisco and become the first openly gay man elected to political office in the United States. Actually, I’m going to go as far as to say maybe even the first one in the world. He managed to do more for gay rights in the final 8 years of his life than in the first 40 years. I had heard about him years ago and knew he was a gay activist who was murdered in the 70s, but didn’t know much more. Gays everywhere owe him a debt of gratitude for his courage, tenacity and trailblazing ways. As with many movies, it really made me think.

See, here I am at 33. And much like him, I don’t feel I’ve done a lot to be proud of. I certainly haven’t changed the world in any way shape or form; especially in comparison to him. To say I’ve never been entirely comfortable talking about my homosexuality would be an understatement. The first person I came out to was in 1994. I didn’t come out to anybody else until 2003 when I came out to one more person. A year later, I came out to most of my friends. Although my brothers know, to this day I still have never told them or told any other member of my family, in spite of the fact that I know they would be overwhelmingly supportive. I’ve never come out at work, even though I know for a fact that my job would be 100 completely safe. I don’t know why I don’t come out more. I have no reason for it except to say that its nobody’s business but my own; I’m a firm believer in privacy. It makes me feel like a coward that I remain partially in the closet free from the verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse and discrimination of more courageous homosexuals. What’s frustrating is that I don’t know why I won’t come fully out. There seems to be no reason for it. Its not lack of confidence as I’ve always been very self assured and confident and even bordering on  arrogant. I’ve always valued being different and completely comfortable in not being like other people. I’ve always been told that I’m weird. I’m an odd thinker. I’ve never been one to conform to anything. Yet, this one area of my life, which is, let’s face it, a rather large area, I am not comfortable. I do not like being different. Although I’m certainly much more comfortable than I was years ago and although I’m in full support of gay rights, I’m not exactly bursting with gay pride if you know what I mean.

Of course, what keeps me in the closet is that its easy. Some people refer to the term “straight acting” but I’ve never liked that term; I instead prefer the term masculine. I’m not what you might call a flamer in the least. If you look at me you wouldn’t think I was gay. If you hear me talk and see my mannerisms, you wouldn’t think I was gay. To make matters even worse, I don’t fit into any of the so called gay stereotypes. I hate musicals. I can’t dance worth a lick. I’ve got no interest in fashion and am a notoriously bad when it comes to dressing. I love sports and gambling. I hate Brittney Spears and love heavy metal/alternative music. Unless somebody told you or you knew me very well, you wouldn’t know I was gay. I’m basically your average everyday guy who, oh by the way, loves cock. That being said, I take no interest in girls. I’ve never dated a girl. I don’t pretend to be straight or be something I’m not. When I’m around guys who don’t know that are checking out and commenting on girls, I don’t respond or participate in the conversation, which has to be a clue since I have an opinion on damn near everything. I’ve always said that I hold no responsibility if somebody assumes I’m straight; its their fault for assuming. I remember when my friend Dave first found out; he was pissed off because he felt I wasn’t honest with him. I told him that I made no apologies for it, after all I never lied to him and told him I was straight.

My masculine personality is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I don’t face the same open discrimination and bigotry that other gays face. I’m able to cover it up if I need to. On the other hand, if I were a flamer than it would be OBVIOUS to everybody and  I wouldn’t be able to cover it up or hide from it. I wouldn’t have other gay guys questioning my homosexuality. When a gay guy sees me walking in the mall with my 20 year old Cubs jacket wearing Nike shoes it doesn’t exactly make ones gaydar go off. People are convinced that I’m either bisexual, straight or that once I fuck the right girl then I will all of a sudden be straight. None of that is true in the least. The one thing I’m totally certain of is that I am without a doubt gay. You can question it all you want and believe whatever you want to believe. I know what I am.

I realize that masculine guys like me are good for the gay cause. We go against every gay stereotype in the book. We are the ones who heterosexuals can relate too. We are the ones who make them stop and take pause and think that maybe being gay isn’t a choice. I realize that my not being out there more probably in some minor way, holds the gay community back. I can bring a lot of good to the gay community if I were courageous like Milk and so many other brave gays. I don’t know if I ever will be able to come out and let EVERYBODY know. What’s worse is that I don’t know why I won’t be able to. In a weird twist of irony, I’m contributing to holding back the gay cause.

Did I mention I recently discovered a 6th toe on my left foot?

I really should have written about this earlier this week, but Wednesday I wanted to write about Earth Day and I’ve been very busy ever since. Tuesday night I went to the Cubs game again. It was their first night home game this season, which I guess makes it opening night. I got off work at 4 in the pm which is 2 hours early. I needed to to get off early though as it wound up being a 2 hour drive to get down there. What really sucked was that not only was it cold, but it was also raining. And by cold, I mean like 38 degrees. Now I don’t mind a little bit of cold. I also don’t mind a little bit of rain. But the combination of the two promised to make for a very long night. What’s even worse, we were also in the bleachers, which has nothing to protect you from the rain. The bleachers are general admission and by the time we got out there at about 6:45, the left and right field bleachers were packed with people. We had to settle on the center field bleachers not too far from Wrigley’s famous scoreboard. For a brief moment, we thought about sitting underneath the scoreboard, which I was all for since it would have kept us dry as there was a very little drizzle in the air. But, everybody else wanted to sit further down. The drizzle only lasted for the first inning, after that it cleared up and instead was just cold. Fortunately for me, Don sitting next to me and he worked like a wind blocker for me.

One of the guys I was with who by the way was a Sox fan (honestly, if I were a Sox fan there is no way I would have put up with this weather shit) left after 2 inning. After about 4 innings me and one of the guy’s decided to get up, me to look for hot chocolate, he to look for beer. We walked under the scoreboard and saw that not only did they have tvs there, but they also had heat lamps! If only we had sat there earlier.

Anywho, here are a couple of pics from the game.

This was taken from my seat. If it seems far away its because it was far away. On the other hand, its almost like a postcard shot.

Right after the game ended with a Cubs win. You can see just how close we were to the scoreboard.

Every year my work has a thing that we do in which we help to rebuild a poor families house. Well, maybe not rebuild, but at the very least we refurbish the house. Yesterday was that day.  I had to be there by 8 in the am, which meant that I had to get up at 7, which really really sucked since as we all know, I HATE getting up early, especially on the weekend. What also sucked was that it rained on and off throughout the day, but at least it was warm, pushing 80 degrees. It was fun though, I had a good time and it was for a good cause.

You know, a lot of times I come up with funny things. While there is nothing odd about that in itself, what is odd is when these things pop into my head. Now as you may or may not know, I’m a huge Bulls fan. Today during the VERY exciting Bulls playoff game against the Celtics I had one of those moments. I was sitting at home watching the very tense game when with about 20 seconds left in regulation (the Bulls needed 2 overtimes to beat the Celtics) all of a sudden, I thought of something funny I could send to my friend Danel in a text. What was it you ask? I sent her a text saying “I just realized I have 6 toes on my left foot.” Just something I found funny and that was totally out of left field. I like to text people or tell people the most random goofy shit all out of the blue. Mental note, save that one for a time when it is least expected and maybe even at a time that is not appropriate. That would maximize the effect.

I went to a wake today for my cousin who died of cancer at 58. He was a longtime smoker and I’m pretty sure it had something to do with his dying. Unlike my cousin who died a few weeks ago, this cousin I actually liked. Every family has the disease that kills many family members. Some families its heart disease. Others its diabetes. Well on my mom’s side its cancer. My mom and 2 of her siblings all died of cancer. This is my second cousin who died of cancer. Another cousin had a cancerous tumor removed and she is fine now. Another uncle has skin cancer right now. It might be 20 years or so, but I think its only a matter of time before it gets me or one of my siblings.

Today was Earth Day. Liberals love Earth Day. Conservatives don’t. In fact, Republicans and conservative Christians for the most part, don’t care much for the Earth. I’ve said this before and I will say it again. I just don’t quite get this. I mean, they are steadfast in claiming that “their” God created Earth, yet they don’t treat it like their God created it. Sure, everybody knows about the problems with global warming or global climate change or Earth baking as I like to call it. Unfortunately, there are still a good portion of the country who refuses to acknowledge it or even that we have an environment that we need to take care of. Fortunately, the global warming, environmentally friendlier Democrats have the White House and both houses of Congress. This helps the Earth’s cause and agenda. The question is, what do we have to do to get it through those fuckers heads who refuse to believe in Earth. Personally, I think we need to pull the same shit they do to try to get their evil agendas across. Here are some ideas:

• Protests that include disgusting and disturbing pictures of a post global warming Earth, just like they do at their lovely anti abortion rallies.
• Get dressed up in all clothes made from nothing but hemp. Maybe “use” the hemp for medicinal purposes, if you know what I mean. Then go door to door to spread the word of the Earth. Its kinda like how they go door to door for God, except that we know for a fact that the Earth is real.
• Use all sorts of overblown rhetoric and crazy, whacked out yip yap scenarios that don’t make a damn bit of sense and would never ever happen so that it scares the shit out of them so bad that they are converted. You know, something totally nuts, like if we don’t stop global warming, then it will make the Earth more livable for Satan and the anti-Christ will arrive and take over the world before their Jesus has a chance to come back for his second coming. Sound crazy? Well so does their theory that legalized gay marriage is only one step away from legalized bestiality.
• Compare global warming to socialism.
• Tell them that global warming would cause taxes to be raised on the rich, but instead imply that the people who are actually having their taxes raised are hard working Americans.
• Blame global warming on illegal immigrants.
• Tell them that shooting their guns actually lowers the Earth’s core temperature. 

Wait, come to think of it, do we really want to stoop to their level? I mean, these dirty tricks are only things they do. In fact, my ideas are all pretty lame, Republicans are the only ones who can come up with amazing, manipulating, calculating ideas to brainwash people into believing what they want them to believe. On second thought, let’s just throw a bunch of money at them to tell their brainwashed sheep to believe in global warming.

Conservatives. Ruining the Earth without even trying.

As many of you know, I’ve been reading this book about the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations called Legacy Of Secrecy as opposed to Legacy Of Secrets. Only a moron would think it was called Legacy Of Secrets. I’m now over 250 pages into the book, which is probably about a third of the way through. The fact I learned recently was that the first shot that hit Kennedy’s head didn’t kill him; instead it just gave him a bad headache. He even remarked to Jackie “I……..er……….uhhhh…………I have a bad………..er……….headache.”

The words laid and off are 2 great words; terms that represent sex. And who doesn’t like sex. What I find odd about it though is that if you put the two words together, you get laid off which doesn’t mean that you had two simultaneous orgasms, but instead that you just lost your job, which is not good at all. I’m just wondering how they got to mean the exact opposite of each other. I guess maybe its because when you get laid off its because a company is fucking you.

My mom always said never trust somebody who doesn’t like Jimi Hendrix.

You know, I really think teeth are given too much absolute, unfettered power. I mean they can chew the food. They can also inflict major damage if you bite your lip or tongue or another person. They also can be used to chew your nails and to tear shit open. A smile or mouth only looks good if all the teeth are there. Yet, there is really no way to fight back against teeth. Oh sure, you can knock your teeth out, but that usually only comes with some sort of damage to the thing knocking the teeth out. And sure you can have horrible oral hygiene which in the short term results in bad breath and people not wanting to be around you and in the long term results in cavities, toothaches and gum disease. Either way, the teeth get their revenge in an awful way. Somehow, there has got to be a way to keep the teeth power in check.

David Letterman recently got married after dating his baby mama for 23 years! Honestly, who the fuck dates somebody for 23 years and all of a sudden decides that “Yeah, I guess I did find the one.” And what chick let’s a guy get away without marrying her for 23 years? To put this into a little bit of perspective, their dating relationship spanned 5 U.S. presidents. Including himself, there have been 3 permanent hosts of NBC’s “Late Night” in those 23 years. I’ve got to wonder, what the hell finally did it for him? Was it the kid? No, that can’t be it, the kid is already 5 years old. Its got to be something. Do me a favor the next time you talk to Letterman, ask him what made him finally do it.

I should have posted about this on Wednesday, but I have been very busy and just had to post about the whole Texas thing. Wednesday I went to the Cubs game with Don and a couple of guys he works with. For those of you not familiar with the area (which for the most part is all of you), I live in Romeoville which is in the southwest burbs of Chicago. Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play, is on the north side of the city. . Without traffic, its probably about a 40-45 minute drive for me. With traffic, its like 6 weeks. Anywho, the game started at 1:20 in the pm. I got down there around 11am and then started the horrid task of trying to find parking. And not just parking, but reasonably priced parking, which being Wrigleyville, is virtually impossible. I drove around for about 20 minutes before giving up my quest of reasonably priced parking and found a little lot across the street from the park for $40, which was easy out (in other words, I would not be blocked in by other cars). If you think $40 is a stupid amount to pay for parking, you are correct. That being said, there were places a few blocks away that were charging the same amount, so my thought was if I’m going to pay an arm, leg, and half another arm for parking, I might as well be close.

As for the game itself, we were in the upper deck, which unlike many other stadiums, is still a pretty good view. Here is a pic taken with my cellamaphone.

See, not all that bad, right? Well, we were also in prime position for a foul ball. In fact, in the bottom of the first, the Cubs leadoff man, the usually useless Alfonso Soriano, hit a ball right to us. The guy directly in front of me reached for the ball and it bounced off his hands and went to the guy next to me before rolling and landing at the feet of his kids. A little later on in the top of the 4th with the Rockies third baseman Garret Atkins up, a ball came our way again. This time one of Don’s friends from work caught the thing bare handed. In all my years of going to games, this was the first time somebody I was with caught a foul ball. Unfortunately it was the highlight of the game as the Cubs lost.

Yesterday, Saturday, was a great day. I started off the day by watching my Bulls open up the playoffs with a thrilling overtime win against the heavily favored defending champion Celtics. It was an edge of your seat nailbiter made even more exciting by the amazing play of Bulls rookie point guard Derrick Rose.

Also yesterday we had our monthly meeting of the Chicago Pizza Club, this time actually making it into Chicago at the original Pizzeria Uno. It was a long wait for a table, nearly an hour for our table of 9 but it was well worth  the wait. I’ve never eaten at the original Uno’s, in fact I’ve only eaten from the old one in Aurora which is now closed down. I always liked their pizza a lot then, but yesterday it was out of this world good. I’m going to make a bold statement and say that it was the best pizza I have ever eaten. Anywho, here is a pic:

Jt’s face looks awful. He didn’t know we were taking the pic and that is what we got, was him eating. Funny shit though.

Next we went to Howl At The Moon, which is a dueling piano bar here in Chicago. If you have never been to a piano bar, well you are just missing out on a guaranteed good time. Just about every time I’ve gone to a piano bar, there are usually several bacholorette parties going on. Last night was no exception. There was even  a party right behind us. The bacholorette had a list of things she need to do that night, among them was get a guy to give her his boxers so that she could take a picture with them. This is where I came in. Needless to say, I went to the bathroom, removed my boxers and gave them to her. I thought she needed to actually keep the boxers, but after a few minutes, she gave them back to me. Turns out that while she had them though, she put them on the table which was wet from either booze or water or whatever. All I know is that when I put them back on, they were wet on the side.

Still, over all it was a great time and a great day. Here are some pics from the piano bar.

 
 This is Dave drinking out a a very long Dave made straw from a huge bucket of long island iced tea.

Its taking too damn long to upload pics on here, so that’s all for now.

You might have missed this, but Texas is making some noise that they might want to secede from the union and start their own country. See, I have mixed feelings about this. First of all, why is it that every time there is a Democrat in office Texas responds with threats to leave the union. I used to know a guy who was from Texas and he told me that every year they have a measure on the ballot for people to vote on if Texas should secede and start their own country. He said that every few years, it gets about 30% of the vote; enough to make people seriously think. This was a conversation I had during the Clinton years. To me, it seems like Texas is the state equivalent of a whiny kid who if things don’t go his way, he takes his ball and goes home. So, the Republicans are not in power right now in Washington. So Texas starts whining and pissing and moaning about taxes and the government’s intrusion into our lives. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said “I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state.” Oh really? And I suppose you hold Obama responsible for this. Let me just get this straight. It has taken Texas all of three months to get so fed up and desperate with Obama and his “oppressive” ways that they are talking secession. Yet, Bush was in office for eight years, spent money like a shopaholic, invaded our privacy and trampled on the constitution by illegally wire tapping Americans, openly campaigned against the freedoms of gays, approved a bailout back in the fall of 2008, outed a CIA agent, and fired prosecutors for not agreeing with him, among many other things and he wasn’t oppressive or intrusive.

Texans like to believe they are the most patriotic Americans. They like to pretend that they are the ones who love America more than anybody else. Yet, they are the ones who love America so much that they can’t wait to leave. They always believe that the Texas way is the right way and the only way. Many people know that Texas does not have a state income tax. Well, just how exactly could they be expected to sustain a federal government without a state income tax?

Well fine Texas, if you want to leave then get the fuck out. Of course you will have to take Oklahoma with you, which shouldn’t be a problem since Oklahoma was once part of Texas and a lot of people in Texas believe that Oklahoma is still part of Texas. But the catch is that you have to take Kansas with you. See, Kansans seem to be stuck in the 1800s, what with their hatred of evolution and Seth Rogan films. Just kidding about the Seth Rogan thing, but I just assumed they hated him too since he is clearly a direct descendent of an ape.

Now here is why I wouldn’t want them to leave. You know that ornery, bitter neighbor who everybody avoids and hates? Well, that’s what Texas becomes. They would be the neighbor who is up early in the morning firing their guns in the air. They are the neighbor who parks the pick up truck on the lawn. They are the neighbor who lets the grass grow to an unreasonable length because its their own damn right. They are the neighbor who revs that loud ass Harley at all hours of the morning, day, night, evening and any other time possible. They are the neighbor that all the neighborhood kids are afraid of and the house they skip on Halloween. They are the outcast that nobody invites to the block party.

So what happens when Texas becomes its own country? Well, guess who they elect as their president? That’s right, George W Bush is back! This is another reason we don’t want them to leave, yet its also the reason why they come back. It took him 8 years to drive 50 states right into the ground, I would imagine it would take him not nearly as long to destroy one measly state posing as a country. The funniest part about the whole thing is that they would never admit that he fucked shit up and would refuse to come to us for help. They would just keep putting him into office over and over and over until finally Texas stands on the brink of complete ruin and on the verge of being overtaken by Mexico that Texas comes crawling back.

I had posted a couple of times recently about a book I have been reading, Legacy Of Secrets. Well, it turns out that upon further review, I am an idiot. See, the name of the book is actually Legacy of Secrecy. Sure, anybody can make a mistake and before you say that anybody can make a simple mistake like this since both words are related, keep a few things in mind. It wasn’t that I just forgot the name once or twice. I was 150 pages into this 800 page book before I realized that it was Secrecy instead of Secrets. Furthermore, I have told several people about the book and told them the name. I’ve also spent a good portion of the time looking at the book, what with the giant words Legacy Of Secrecy plastered on the front and side of the book. The name of the book is mentioned several times in the first 100 pages. Also, like many other books, the title of the book is at the top of every other page. And I am really into this book, so much that I didn’t even take the time to learn the damn title of the book!

I swear, sometimes I’m such a flake.

I was going back and forth with different things to write about tonight but could not settle on a topic. I wanted to write something funny, since its been ages since I wrote a funny post but couldn’t come up with anything worthy of a post. There were several topics in the news that I was thinking about posting on, but just couldn’t decide which one to post about and didn’t think I would have enough to say. Which really sucks because tonight I have more time than usual to post. So I’m just going to end this post for now and maybe…………hopefully come up with something later to write about, which means that this post will either be added onto or maybe I will do a whole new post. Either way, you ain’t missin’ much right now.

You may have heard about Dante’ Stallworth of the Cleveland Browns being charged with DUI manslaughter after killing a pedestrian recently. He said that he tried to warn the guy by flashing his lights. Now I’ve never claimed to be an expert when it comes to stopping cars, but it seems to me that when it comes to stopping a car the brakes are usually more affective than the lights. Just a thought.

I want you to take a look at these pictures and tell me which one of these 3 people look like twins

If you guessed the first two, then you are a complete dumbass. See, it turns out that a friend of mine thinks that my twin brother, shown above holding the babies and Ben Gordon, shown above not with the pink Santa hat or not one of the babies, look alike. Now I know I make a lot of shit up, but I swear to you, this is what he told me. And he was serious. He said he doesn’t know what it is that makes them look alike. I think the reason being is because they actually don’t look anything alike. Ok, so maybe they both have a smashed face. And maybe they have a similar smile. But, still they are about as different as night and day. My friend said that maybe its because both are short, what with Gordon being 6’3 and Mark being 5’2, I mean clearly you can understand how one could confuse their height.

Think about this for a second. He is essentially saying that my twin looks more like a black guy than me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with him being compared to a black guy. I just don’t think its accurate. When I was in high school people said I looked like Sammy Davis Jr, which was not as far of a stretch because we both have/had long jawlines and big chins.

But you can see how much Ben and Mark look alike. I mean, the only difference is Ben is Mark except with a jump shot.