Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Krebs Cast #10

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In this episode I discuss how I have too much stuff, how pain is the true reason I like soft drinks, and the generation gap between me and my gay brother who is twenty years my senior.

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Monday, January 30, 2006

We met in November of 2000. It was his birthday.

I was a junior at the University of Arizona in Tucson and I was living in the dorms. I was supposed to move into a terrific historic property with a friend but when my dad found out about the huge party I had thrown at my parents house in the summer before the fall semester he changed all that. My dad said that I was "not responsible enough to live on my own in light of the egregious act of mistrust" that I had committed. I never had any regrets for having that party. We converted the living room into an ad hoc disco, black lights and all and we gave out packs of cigarettes as party favors. Tons of people, it was fabulous. In any case I was miserable that November. I had gotten into a car accident on the freeway in Phoenix after coming home from a road trip to California over the Veterans day holiday and when my dad found out the shit hit the fan. He took away my car and when he found out I was $5000 in credit card debt he flipped his lid. I had disappointed him so much that he began to think the worst about me. After he had calmed down for a bit he asked me, "Did you buy drugs with your credit cards?" To which I replied, "Dad I'm not a fool I but my drugs with cash. I know not to leave a paper trail."

So on that particular November night I was feeling particularly low so I turned to the place that I knew would make me feel better. Gay.com. There I was able to muster the attention and adulation of many a gentleman caller and screw my worries away if just for a couple of hours at a time. On that particular night I got an IM from someone. We chatted for a bit; the usual questions bounced back and forth. We agreed to meet that night.

I went down to the front of my dorm and waited for him to show. I was to be looking for a green Honda Civic. He showed. Immediately I thought he was cute, pretty blue eyes, full brown hair that led down to reddish sideburns, and just the right amount of nerdiness sprinkled in. To top it all off he was short like me. Never underestimate the power of the matching principle. I got into his car with some trepidation even though I had been in this situation many times before.

He drove us to the back of his apartment where he parked his car. It was dark and all I could see was a dumpster and a building with a window above eye level with bars on it and a soft white light bulb in the room it viewed into. I thought at that moment that my life of wretched excess had finally brought me to my demise. That room with the light bulb was where I'd be chopped into a million little pieces and I'd be disposed of little by little into the dumpster out back.



We got out of his car and we walked away from the creepy room and through a gate that led into a cute backyard with a large pinon tree. Once in his small studio apartment we shared the familiar awkward gaze at one another and I looked around. He was a true nerd, more books than furniture and he had an Alien figurine. "I like the art of Giger." he said. I nodded not knowing who Giger was, but thinking that a Sigourney Weaver doll would have been something I might have if I could find one so I excused it. Then my eye wandered and I saw a small framed print of a Lichtenstein painting, (The Melody Haunts My) Reverie. I was a fan of Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein was my second favorite artist at the time. I mentioned it we conversed and bonded immediately. Much making out ensued. It was the first time I didn't have sex after just meeting a guy from Gay.com.

That was a Wednesday. He called me on Thursday afternoon to ask me to a movie. I was walking with my friend Lindsay to the student union when I recieved his call on my cell. After hanging up I was so excited to have another date with him I jumped up and down with pure unadulterated joy. All of my other problems, worries, and concerns melted away now that I had met Brad.

In the five years that Brad and I have been together we have always had the conundrum of determining when to celebrate our anniversary. We thought we'd just celebrate it on his birthday but that, in good faith, was Brad's day. It seemed wrong to combine the two but we could never decide when to make a day to celebrate our anniversary. Now that we're starting a new chapter in our lives with our first home we decided that January 30th is our anniversary. In our first night, settled, in our new home we celebrated five years of trust, love, laughing, crying, snuggling, fighting, making up, and being silly with each other in the privacy of our own home. I am so fortunate to have him in my life. He is the man who is responsible for much of who I am today. I don't know how it was that we found each other but I know I can't imagine life without him.

I love you Brad. I'm glad you didn't chop me up into a million little pieces and making me a fan of the Alien movies.

Is There Life on Mars?

Brad and I are big fans of both David Bowie and Jane Curtin. We love Bowie's body of work and Curtin's as well. She is great in the new show Crumbs on ABC which actually looks like it could develop into a good sitcom. Anyway we've noticed, especially in recent years, the growing similarities between Curtin and Bowie.

Separated at birth?

67_janecurtin_crumbs

zoolander

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Red Walls Red Meat

Oy! Painting a room red has been an emotional roller coaster. The first coat that I put on in our dining room last night with some friends looked like blood was smeared on the walls. I referred to it as the pig slaughter room. I was freaking out becaues even though we painted with a grey primer to start the paint looked terrible. My friend Kim assured me that the second coat would look good. I was being a drama queen and freaking out and kept thinking that I made a tremendous mistake.

Kim was right though. I was alone this morning at 8am painting the second coat while listening to Evita (the movie recording although I do love Patti Lupone) and I had a nice even vintage merlot on my walls. Crisis averted.

Because Brad couldn't help out today because of some work obligations he rewarded me for my good work with 1/2 lb USDA burger at Who's Who Burger in Highland Park Village. If you're ever in Dallas you have to get a burger here. The food is amazing, a menu with two style of burger: USDA or Kobe Beef. They don't do much but they do it well! The icing on the cake at this place is that you get to see all the fashionistas of Highland Park eating big greasy chesseburgers. I mean how campy is it to see a perfectly coiffed pampered princess with Chanel boots up to her knees in a Burberry overcoat eating a big greasy burger? I love Dallas.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Good Mood

For the first time in the last couple of days I'm in a great mood. I think its the combination of eating a delicious lunch, producing quality results after a week of hard work, and listening to the tunes of Burt Bacharach. It's cheesy as hell but I love his music. I have this whole box set loaded onto my iPod.



Have a great weekend everyone!

Bathroom Reflections

Nathan has put me in the mood to talk about toilets due to his last couple of posts.

There is a design flaw (some may see it as an advantage) in the bathroom at my work. The majority of the floor in the bathroom is covered in a dark slate colored tile of the typical one square foot variety. Most of the tiles have a matte finish save the two rows of tile adjacent to the wall of the bathroom that has the urinals and the toilet attached to it. Those tiles have a high gloss sheen on them.

Lets put two and two together: Dark colored tile + high gloss sheen = Mirror!

Therefore if the person next to you looks down while using the urinal they will have a clearly visible reflection of you from the bottom up whilst you're doing your business. Furthermore if you use the urinal next to the toilet stall you can clearly see the sides of one's ass and witness them wiping up if you look down to check your stream at the wrong moment.

The person that laid this tile was 1.) an incredible perv 2.) had a very elaborate and twisted sense of humor or 3.) completely ignorant of the laws of physics and indices of reflection. I find no one at my place of work even remotely attractive not to mention that I am extremely professional and taken. Therefore when I use the urinal you will know its me without seeing my face because my face is nearly parallel to the ceiling.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

By the way...I'm a Virgo.

Call it something neurotic if you will but I have a certain way of working. Sometimes that way of working clashes with the way others in my lab work especially those that I work closely with. So I'm going to compare and contrast the way I work with the way others work in my lab.

-Adam likes to plan his work in advance by using a piece of technology called a calendar.
-Others like to do their work in no particular temporal progression.

-Adam likes to make sure he has all of the necessary materials before he starts something.
-Others like to throw conniption fits when they find that they are missing a key component after passing the rubicon.

-Adam likes to think about the execution of his experiments before he attempts them.
-Others like to make up the strategy as they go along which usually results in something being spilled.

-Adam likes to complete one task before starting another.
-Others like to stop something midway and commence something totally unrelated in an attempt to "save time."

-Adam has a positive outlook on new endeavors and embraces when things go wrong and learns from them.
-Others like to be pessimistic from the start and get discouraged and depressed when things don't go according to plan.

-Adam likes to stick to the original plan that he made so as to avoid error and confusion.
-Others like to change aspects of their experiment as they go along and end up with confounding results that are inexplicable.

Sometimes my patience on these issues wears very thin and my cordial jocular nature is pushed to extreme limits. There are times when I wish I could just do everything on my own. Did I mention that I'm a Virgo?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Congrats and Thank You!

I'd like to congratulate some fellow bloggers/podcasters for making it into the top 100 in the Audio blog category on iTunes!

Coming in at number is fellow gay Dallas podcaster the catty Michael Glenwick who does his podcast with his hag Fonda Cox.
Glenwick

Coming in at 31 is the loveable and candid Nathan from Nathan Exposed.
Nathan

Coming in a 57 is the modestly sexy bottom from Boise, Donnie of Fresh N' Tasty.
Donnie

And me at number 94! Thanks for listening everyone! I cannot tell you how flattered I am. So cool, thanks again!
Adam

Oh and also everyone, register your podcast or check out podcasts at QPodder. Its a great place to find other GLBT podcasters and also opt to have your feed added to the NellyGator feed aggregator. A big thanks to the PodMother of us all Madge Weinstein for putting those two resources together.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Krebs Cast #9

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In this cast I discuss how I self medicate when I'm stressed out, childood nightmares, and memories from my Catholic past.

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A Texas Sized Conundrum

For those of you that do not know in November Texans will go to the polls to elect a new governor. The incumbent, Rick Perry, is disliked by and large and as long as Diebold doesn't have anything to do with the election he will most likely not survive. That leaves us with Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the tough talking Texas grannie who turned Independent so as to be assured a spot in the race. The Democrat, Chris Bell who spoke at a Stonewall Democrats gathering last year in Dallas and refused to utter the words "gay" and "marriage" in succession but was very keen on saying "civil unions" over an over again. And finally, the other independent with Jesse Ventura's campaign manager at his side, Kinky Friedman, the ex country western signer turned mystery novelist who has gone on record saying he supports gay marriage but also supports prayer in school.

Here's the rundown.

Strayhorn is not really an Independent. She makes no effort to hide that she is a Republican and that she changed parties so as to avoid losing to Perry in the primaries. I think she might be trying to play the Ann Richards card by presenting herself as a straight talking Texas grannie but I'm concerned her politics are no different than the usual song and dance of Rick Perry. The last thing we need is to see more sessions of the state legislature wasted on issues like redistricting and gay marriage while the state budget, education, and state infrastructure go ignored. However it is early and we'll see what she has to say in the coming months.

FYI: the Texas legislature does not meet year round. They meet for only a portion of the year and attempt to tackle all the issues during that time. Sometimes perverts get distracted by things like rigid cock going up supple ass and nothing gets accomplished.

Bell is a Democrat...err strike that. Pansycrat. He is your typical run of the mill slippery pete who likes to say all the right things so as to not offend anyone. How I feel about that kind of political posturing was put very eloquently in an article by Molly Ivans this past weekend on CommonDreams.org. Her atricle, I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton for President, highlights everything thats wrong with the populist politically correct failure factory that is called the Democratic Party, or as she calls it "Republican-lite." I refuse to get whisked up in the anyone but (insert Republican nemesis of Democratic candidate name here) frenzy ever again. I want some real leadership with definitive stances on every issue that cannot be labeled as centrist. Again, its early and we'll see if Bell can present himself as a strong leader.

Finally we have Kinky Friedman. He certainly is different. He speaks his mind and is not an insider to politics. He says he supports gay marriage but that topic is moot now in Texas after the passing of Proposition 2, but at least he said it and that counts for something in my book. My reservations with him are: He supports non-demoninational prayer in public schools and can he really deliver or is he just hoping that everyone is so disgusted by the other candidates that the public will chose him?

I'll be watching the candidates in the coming months and its going to be difficult to make up my mind. Texas has a very colorful history in the realm of state politics and I think this race is truly up for grabs. Texans have been unpredictable in the past and I think the recent indictments of Delay may have opened the flood gates of a free political system in Texas again. It may come down to stances on a handful of issues or the overall package, I don't know. One thing I know is that I will vote my conscience this election year and avoid the pull of the party line.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Curmudgeonly Yours, Adam.

I feel exactly like Tornwordo today. I have nothing to say thats all that insightful or interesting but unlike my fellow blogger I am going to bitch and moan.

The reasons why today sucks (with commentary from the voices of Adam's Mom and Dad that exist in his head):

-I had to wake up early for weekly lab meeting. (Deal with it.)

-I forgot that I had an experiment to analyze today and therefore skipped lab meeting to prepare for that in a hurry. (Thats your own fault. You should have checked your calendar before leaving work on Friday.)

-Did not have time for breakfast. Nobody is safe from the wrath of a hungry Sicilian. (Oh poor baby. You have to have something to tell your therapist later.)

-I had to make my coffee with tap water because I didn't have time to stop and buy spring water on the way to work for my coffee machine. I believe that good coffee starts with good water. (Again, deal with it.)

-Only drank half of my cup of coffee before it got cold because I was preparing for the experiment I forgot about and didn't have time to enjoy my coffee and blogs in the morning when I got to work. (Shouldn't you be working when you get to work in the morning?)

-I deeply deeply dislike moving. (Sometimes you have to do things that you don't like to do, thats life kiddo.)

-I deeply deeply dislike that one has to apply nasty stinky grey primer to a wall before painting it "Vintage Merlot." (Did someone force you to paint the dining room that color? You made your bed now sleep in it.)

-I'll be too tired to go to the gym after work today. (I think you'll live. Stop pouting and get to work.)

I think thats it. I feel like I'm 14 again and the world is against me. I have to admit that I'm somewhat enjoying my angsty emotions but its taking a lot of effort to keep my causticity from boiling over onto my colleagues. Hopefully I'll simmer down by the end of today. Wow, I'm a high maintenance bitch aren't I? Love ya Mom and Dad!

Sunday, January 22, 2006

My Desktop

I'm late in doing this but better late than never. Fellow Dallas blogger Sam from Madlife was curious what all of our desktops look like. Here is mine. Let me just say that my desktop image changes every five minutes (a feature of OSX that I love to use) and this is the one that I captured when the mood took me to participate.

desktop

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Exhausted

I am exhausted. Brad and I tackled painting the living room of our new home today with the help of our friend Melissa. If it weren't for her assistance we would have never gotten it done so well and so quickly. The result is fantastic and I won't post any pictures until all of our stuff is inside. Tomorrow is the dining room. I'm glad we're taking care of the painting now. I think if we had waited we would have never really done it.

This morning we went to the Home Depot to pick up paint and paint supplies. While waiting for our paint to get mixed I was able to observe the Saturday patrons of home improvement warehouses. I realized that we are part of a new faction of the gay community, a faction I have deemed the homowners. Our Home Depot is perhaps the gayest place outside of the gayborhood. I was pleased to see that at least 50% of the shoppers were homowners. Most all of them we're coupled but I did see some single ones, or at least they were alone. So for those of you that are single and not into the bar scene, have you tried Home Depot?

We also met two of our neighbors today. They both seemed very nice. One of them has a W sticker on his car and normally I'd be cursing his name up and down but he was sincerely a nice man. I'm not going to fixate on it since he is living in the gayborhood and and our condo complex, of eight units, is mostly gay. One bright side I thought of having a Republican in our complex is that he would most likely not support spending of HOA money on frivolous projects. I'm trying my best here people.

So based on an idea that I think originated from an article at the The Huffington Post about the White House demanding internet search engine records from MSN, AOL, and Yahoo, lets give the White House something to read. Go to one of those search engines and type your favorite anti-Bushism. I like "George Bush sucks cock." If enough people do this when the White House requests the search engine records from any random day the President we'll know we're thinking of him.

Friday, January 20, 2006

New iTunes Feed Posted

I got into the iTunes directory with my new podcast feed. This was a lot faster than I expected. Click on the button below to subscribe to my podcast in ITunes. If you want to hear my previous seven podcasts go here.

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Krebs Cast #8

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Comments on my first home, iLife '06 mini review, on returning home, why I think American Idol is crap, and pondering a quote.

NOTE: My podcast feed has changed. I am now at http://thekrebscycle.libsyn.com/rss and the podcast site is now http://thekrebscycle.libsyn.com. I will still post links to my podcast here on my blog. I am also working on getting a new iTunes feed and as soon as I have that I will let y'all know. Email me with questions.

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Thursday, January 19, 2006

I'm a homeowner now.

Well it's official. We closed on our house yesterday and its ours. It didn't go quite so smoothly though. The assistant to the loan officer we used totally screwed up our loan when she faxed us the docs before the close. Brad called her and tore her a new asshole as did our kick ass agent. She fixed the problem and gave us a lower interest rate by the time our closing came along.

While Brad was dealing with incompetent mortgage assistants I was leaving heated messages to the real estate agents who represented a new construction property that we were going to buy but we backed out of. In December we withdrew our offer and until this afternoon had still not received our $2500 escrow money back. I left a withering message on the realtors voice mail telling him that I was going to call him every day until we got our money, that I was contacting my lawyer to investigate legal action, and that I would file a formal complaint with the better business bureau regarding their real estate agency. Anyway he called me back and said he had the title agency cut the check and it was ready to be picked up. He apologized and I accepted his apology and then he proceeded on this long story about how the people who needed to sign to release the money were out of town....blah blah blah. By the end of it I said, "Yeah well that was never MY problem." It all turned out OK. Once again our agent, whom I worship, was a beacon of shining hope and picked up the check for us so we didn't have to worry about it.

The lawyer at the title company where we closed was terrific and he had everything organized so well and explained the documents perfectly. All the shit from earlier in the day was washed away when the title company presented us with a bottle of champagne to congratulate us on our new home. I thought that was a nice touch. So we're home owners now. I'll have some pictures to share once we get moved in and paint etc. so forth and so on.

In spite of the fact that we are a wealthy well-fed nation, homelessness and poverty are remarkably present in our nation. I'd like to express how fortunate I am that I have Brad in my life and that we are able to have a house together. As a youth I used to feed homeless at soup kitchens and one time I helped build a home for habitat for humanity. I feel reinvigorated to pursue that kind of volunteer work again. At a minimum everyone deserves a place to call home. I'm not religious, nor do I believe in god, but I truly feel blessed.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

DanKrebs Cast

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My first "joint" podcast with Dan from Turning 40. We talk on a range of topics from previous posts in eachothers blogs.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Sex as Protest?

I will admit that I subscribe to Out magazine. Yes its trite and insipid but I like to masturbate mentally with all media types: audio, visual, and print. In this month's issue there is an article by Stephanie Fairyington that addresses the mounting pressure to couple within the queer community, whether it be for a night or for the long haul. As usual for Out the article brings some interesting points to the table but doesn't quite follow through enough to really make a dent in your head. So naturally I took it upon myself to expound on something that was quoted in the article.

Testimonials for raging against the pressure to couple are given halfway through the article. Typical blurbs from men confessing that they hooked up for the sake of feeling attractive, needed, or wanted. This is all familiar to us and was not any kind of new insight. In fact many of these stories could have just as easily been ripped from an E! True Hollywood Story about a famous female porn star. However, when it came time for Fairyington to give pro-promoscuity views on the subject she quoted the noted David Halperin, an English/queer studies professor at the University of Michigan.

Halperin says "heterosexual culture in the West has produced a culture of erotic impoverishment, in which sex is supposed to be rare, and then has turned rarity into a virtue. Gay male culture has the sense to challenge that destructive notion."

GIve. Me. A. Fucking. Break!

By and large, but not in every case, I think queer studies is bullshit. Most of the time, as demonstrated by Halperin, its just intellectual dribble from the mouths of english professors turned metaphysicians rationalizing being a slut. I'm not advocating promiscuity or monogamy, live your life the way you want as long as you're not hurting others around you. I could care less. But to say that gay male culture is consciously (he said "Gay male culture has THE SENSE to challenge...") tearing down the oppressive heterosexual moires via promiscuity is utterly absurd.

Biologically males have one purpose. Deliver the sperm to as many eggs as possible. Females are genetically programmed to be selective about who's sperm they will accept. The number of eggs a female can produce is finite and they are therefore precious and not to be wasted. As a result females are selective so as not to propagate undesirable genetic traits to future generations with the few opportunities that they have to reproduce. Therefore, females should want to test the males and see which one is willing to endure her selective process before allowing him to couple with her. That means playing hard to get, which should not be confused with "erotic impoverishment." The consequence of two males getting together is no more than a loss of sperm which is produced throughout the entire course of the male's life. Biologically males have no hang-ups about sex because they can afford, and are programmed, to have as much of it as possible. One could argue that the advent of birth control has made this argument moot and invalid; that straight people are at liberty to be sluts without having to worry about making frankenbabies. My answer to that is that condoms and birth control pills do not alter our genetic code and are incidental blips in the grand context of nature.

Additionally what is so wrong with a little bit of restraint when it comes to sex? I find that its the anticipation of the sex, the chase, that is the true allure of the act itself. Nothing is more off putting, to me anyway, than seeing profiles on gay.com that feature a photo of a splayed ass with a caption that says "My door is unlocked, come use me now." I prefer my sex to be more dimensional than a basic bodily function.

In conclusion, Halperin needs to come out of the closet as a slut and stop trying to rationalize his overactive libido. If you're a slut then you're a slut. We've all been there, some of us are still there and there is nothing wrong with that. But please, please don't tell me that the reason why you like five or six dicks clambering to get into your mouth at one time is because you want to tear down oppressive heterosexual moires. When gay men go out on a saturday night and take a waft from their little amber vial before entering a sea of sweaty shirtless men the last thing on their minds is making a social statement. Its far more primal than that. They want to cum.

If you want to read something that gives insight into how gays and gay culture shape and direct our society check out Herbert Muschamp's article from the New York Times last week, Architecture; The Secret History.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Congratulations Chile!

Congratulations Chile! You've demonstrated to the world, peacefully, that democracy is a beautiful thing.

Keep in mind that Chile is 70% Catholic and their new president, Michelle Bachelet, is divorced and agnostic but her political message was still heard above all that. Even with machismo deeply entrenched in latin culture Chile elected a female as a president. It is sad but true that if in this country a divorced agnostic woman ran for president she would have never even been taken seriously as a viable candidate, her politics would have fallen on deaf ears. Even if a male candidate in America were any of those other things, let alone all of them together, he wouldn't make it. Sad, but true. I think that its pathetic that the United States trapses around the world "spreading democracy" when countless other nations are light years ahead of us in actually executing it in their own nations.

Indira Gandhi: Prime Minister of India 1966- 1977 and 1980-1984
Golda Meir: Prime Minister of Israel 1969-1974
Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister of Great Britian 1979-1990 (Ronald Reagan's Brain but still a woman)
Vigdis Finnbogadottir: Prime Minister of Iceland 1980-1996
Benazir Bhutto: Prime Minister of Pakistan 1988-1990 and 1993-1996
Gro Harlem Brundtland: Prime Minister of Norway 1986-1989 and 1990-1996
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro: Presiden of Nicaragua 1990-1997
Mary Robinson: President of Ireland 1990-1997
Mary McAleese: President of Ireland 1997-Present
Helen Clark: Prime Minister of New Zealand 1999-Present
Michelle Bachelet: Prime Minister of Chile 2006-Present

I'm sure there are more but thats enough to make a point I think.

Thanks to Brad from Willing Warrior for reporting the elections. I really enjoyed his last two video blogs on the subject especially how the votes are counted in Chile.

In America
The land of the free they said,
and of opportunity,
in a just and truthful way.
But when the president
is never black, female, or gay,
and until that day,
you've got nothing to say to me
to help me believe.
-From "America is Not The World" by Morrissey on the album "You Are The Quarry"

I say this not out of hate for this country but out of a profound and deep love of it; because I am able to, because this is America and I don't want to lose it.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Only in Dallas

So as part of my effort to be more social this year I went out after work last night and didn't get home till around midnight. Now for some this is common practice but I am a creature of habit, perhaps too habitual. Usually on a Friday after work I make a beeline for the gym, head home after working out, cook, watch TV, internet, read some and then sleep. I think if I continue on this course I will be in danger of becoming the main character of a Lifetime movie.

The evening began at happy hour at Avanti in the Fountain Place tower in downtown Dallas. This bar is exactly the kind of place that I like to go to. Its corporate and reeks of anonymity. Think of the bar where Glenn Close and Michael Douglas have a drink for the first time in Fatal Attraction. Its the kind of place where illicit affairs begin, born out of the constraints of corporate protocol. That combined with three dollar Bloody Marys and I was in love.

IMG_1484
The highlight of my evening was when we went to Adair's Saloon in the Deep Ellum district of Dallas. Its a honky tonk that has survived in spite of Dallas' efforts to be the cosmopolitan epicenter of planet Texas. The quirkiest aspect about this place was that they didn't sell bottles of beer but instead sold cans. I don't think I've ever been to a bar that has done that and I actually kind of liked it. I was completely bowled over when I saw a sign over the bar "$2 Pabst Blue Ribbon." At that moment I had to give in to my surrounds and go with the flow. I solicited my friends for some bills and approached the bar to get my trashy-ass can o' beer. I returned to my group, propped myself against the Golden Tee machine, opened my first place beer and observed the quintessential Texan crowd. Its not really my scene but it's nice to know that there are places in the city where you can get cheap trashy beer.

I'm glad I went out.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Krebs Cast #7

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Pumping iron and feeling queer, cultivating ass, rotten ass, the digital revolution, and why we all need to listen to eachother. Recorded on Jan 11, 2006.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Deal

Here is a short short story based on this sketch.

20051226

Simon, from Secret Simon, made this sketch. He does amazing things with a stylus and a digital touchpad. All of his sketches are digital and they are created by layering. On his blog he posts the progression of each sketch from start to finish. I found this sketch, entitled "The Deal," particularly interesting and the following story was inspired by it.

-The Deal-

The last dish had been cleaned and put away in its proper place and she had faced all of her bills from her tips that night and tucked them neatly into her wallet. Since earlier in the afternoon a storm had been churning the atmosphere outside of the diner. Illustrations of blue plate specials painted on the large glass windows had bowed and warped all day. Percussive tinks and pings of the rain and intermittent hail on the aluminum exterior had made conversation in the diner almost impossible for patrons to hear anything else. She never noticed. The orders uttered from the mouths of the customers sounded the same as they did on any other day. Work was her life, life was her work. Being cognizant of any kind of world outside of that was a luxury she simply could not afford.

Without a thought given to the weather she wrapped herself in a coat and grabbed her umbrella and set outside on her walk home. The glistening road was somewhat deserted save for the programmed activity of the traffic lights and the last bus before morning barreling down the road. Some of the lights in the apartments overhead were on but shades were drawn in an attempt to further shield the occupants from the fury of elements happening outside. It made no difference to her.

The rain beat down hard on her umbrella and the wind threatened to steal it from her every so often. Again she paid no mind to the physical world and was operating on a sub-conscious level, making her way through life on auto-pilot. The world around her had been reduced to a series of stimuli that resulted in her producing the appropriate reaction. Her mind had been swallowed up by regret, doubt, worry, and a host of other distractions. A consciousness co-opted by internal strife, reduced to only producing reflexes when probed.

The wind blew again and her grip tightened but nature demanded her attention this time. Her umbrella was ripped from her hand and floated some distance ahead of her. Although the wind was violent the umbrella seemed to be able to navigate the gust with ease and landed right side up. Handle on the ground, rim of the nylon touching the sidewalk, the umbrella tilted at an angle so as to point at the huddled figure leaning against the building.

She couldn't help but notice the weather now that she was defenseless. As she drew nearer to what she had lost she noticed that the figure leaning against the building was a thin boy. His hair was long and pushed to one side of his face, matted from the rain. She drew nearer and was about to recover her umbrella when he reached for it and took it for himself.

Wet and annoyed she approached the young man and spoke simply, "Thats my umbrella."

He shrugged and put it over his head enjoying the respite from the rain beating on his head.

"I'd like it back please. I need to get home." she said with impertinence not even realizing that she was fortunate enough to have a home to go to on a night like this.

The boy stood and for the first time that evening she had wished there was someone else on the street. He was considerably taller than she was but lanky. The rain had caused the suit he was wearing to fuse to his body, revealing his wiry frame. He lowered the umbrella is an egalitarian gesture before embarking on his proposition.

"Lets make a deal," he said. "Your umbrella for this."

To her surprise he pulled a cube from inside his suit coat. She thought for a moment how she could have not noticed it when he stood up. It seemed almost impossible that something so solid and angular could be concealed given the condition of his attire. Jarring herself from temporary amazement she came to her senses.

"I don't want to make a deal with you. I just want my umb-"

She was interrupted by the boy lurching towards her. With rapidity and grace he placed his right foot in front of the other, bent his body so as to present himself to royalty, and his right arm outstretched with the cube offered to her. His head faced the ground so all she could see was wet hair pointing towards the ground and rain running off it onto his sleeve. He jerked his head up. She had no choice but to look him directly in the eye as he said slowly and deliberately, "You haven't even looked at it."

The sound of the rain had faded and she had forgotten about her soaked clothing. She lowered her head to look down at the cube in his hand. With her eyes fixed on it the top of the cube was illuminated with shaft of light. She couldn't tell if the light was coming from the cube itself or from somewhere above. The glow was so beautiful to her that it didn't matter. Then smoke, similar to the smoke that trailed from the cigarettes of patrons at the diner, began to lift into the shaft of light. Wind was blowing up from the cube and the boy's hair danced. Each strand moved in unison with the other following the current of the violent tempest coming from below. The smoke, surrounded by light, was ignorant of any disturbance as it calmly wafted its way upward.

The boy leaned across the shaft of light and whispered into the woman's ear. Her eyes widened, her brow twitched. She tried to form words in response to what the boy was telling her but her mouth was agape in awe. The result was some breathy vocalizations accompanied by the corners of her mouth moving. Her attempt at speech seemed good enough for him. He drew back. Through wisps of dark hair his gaze was fixed on the woman and he continued to display the cube in the palm of his right hand.

"I knew we would reach an agreement," he said.

She nodded her head in silence and knelt on the ground to bring her face closer to the cube. The light flickered in the whites of her eyes and the smoke was reflected in the dark brown of her iris and the endless black of her pupils. The wind was lifting her up and all she could think about was the smoke and the light, how good it made her feel. The light had not stopped perking her curiosity and she wanted to know where it began and where it ended. She moved closer toward it. With each forward advance she found herself becoming as calm and as elegant as the smoke itself.

The cube had become dark and the boy tucked it into his suit with one swift motion. The street was still deserted and some of the lights in the windows from the apartments above had gone out. Rain was falling harder than when the boy had met the woman. It covered the asphalt on the street in sheets. The reflections of the traffic lights on the black were broken into mosaics of red green and yellow by the fat drops. The boy walked down the sidewalk away from where he had showed the woman the cube. He was soaking wet but was certain he'd eventually dry off now that he had an umbrella.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Microcosms

Willing Warrior left a comment on my KrebsCast#6 post. He said, "I personally think that there is a HUGE link between science and the arts. It feels like you are pressing to bridge it... I'll be watching." Well I don't consider myself an artist and my job, most of the time, is not exactly what one would consider artistic. Test tubes, bags of blood, and pipets are not all together that interesting. The concepts behind the technicalities are the focus and draw of science. Maybe one could eek out a metaphor for art in the way that one decides to tell the story of their research, how they chose to explain the phenomena of nature. But lets not take this too seriously. Its science and at the heart of it it's about ego, fame, and glory by saying "I saw it first!" In any case, the result of an experiment can have unexpected aesthetically pleasing results. I thought of this image that I took last year.

Fat

This is an image of adipocytes (fat cells) that have been stained with a compound called Oil Red-O. Oil Red-O binds to lipids (oil) and stains them red. This photo was taken with a light microscope attached to a digital camera. This is from an experiment from when I worked with stem cells. These fat cells were made from other cells that I treated with some steroids, vitamins, and some extra carbs (I'm not kidding) and after a few days...Voila! Fat!

Now some of you might be thinking why are stem cell researchers making fat and where can I donate mine for money? Well in studying the development of fat it is possible to understand obesity and other disorders such as lipodystrophy (a lack of enough fat).

All that aside when I saw these cells after I had "made" them I thought it was actually quite beautiful. It was one of those days where I was glad to be working in science. Mostly because my experiment worked but partly because of the things I get to observe.

Its not art per se but its nice to look at and I made it.

There are even more sophisticated ways of imaging cells.

Mouse Intestine

This photo, which is from Molecular Probes, is an example of using lasers to excite flourescent tags specific to different cells within a piece of tissue. Each color you see is excited by a different laser and the resulting images from each are layered one on top of the other to create a rather beautiful pattern. This particular image happens to be a cross-section of mouse intestine.

If you're really interested in learning more about floursecent imaging in biological research you can go here for a very nicely done tutorial.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I'm As Moist As a Snack Cake Down There

I don't normally watch Letterman and I never watch anything live anymore but my TiVo has a mandate (one that is over 51% so its a real mandate) to record anything that has Sedaris in it. Last night I watched the Jan 6th episode of Letterman's show and Amy Sedaris was on and it was the best I'd ever seen her live. I seriously love and envy her and her brother's talent and liberation. Think about it. Wouldn't you love to make your living based on portraying a middle aged high-school drop out former junkie and make cupcakes and cheeseballs for the citizenry of New York City? I'd much rather be doing that! I think I could be bordering on jejune to wax philosophical about the Sedarises (whats the plural of Sedaris?) but I think that they are two pieces of performance art that need to be cherished as national treasures. If we could dip them in bronze to preserve them without killing them I'd say lets do it.

Anyway, Amy was hilarious on Letterman and she took over the show. Somehow, in a very clever way, she managed to interview Dave rather than him interviewing her. The best part though was where she elicited him to say this, "Sometimes I feel like I'm just a pimp for the motion picture industry." It was said in jest but I think there is a grain of truth in every joke. Unfortunately I don't think the audience quite understood her brand of comedy. Pfft! Heteros!

I'm such a huge fan of hers that I had to take pictures of her from the TV. This is the third time I've taken photos from the TV and posted them on my blog. I think I've found my niche in photography no?
Sedaris

Monday, January 09, 2006

Geek Speak

I think its entertaining to step outside of ones self and observe certain things that you might say or do from the perspective of an outsider. For example, there are many phrases that are used in a research laboratory that employ common words but would certainly sound very odd to someone who has never been in a laboratory setting.

This is a typical exchange in the lab:

-Me: What time do you think you can go to lunch?

-Colleague: I don't know. It depends on when I can do my flow.

Doing ones flow sounds a bit unsavory to the ears of the non-scientist. If a female uttered this it may sound like her ability to go to lunch is conditional on the commencement of her menstrual cycle. Really what the colleague is referring to is his/her ability to get time on an instrument called a flow cytometer.

Here are some others that I won't explain so you can enjoy the statements out of their context.

- "I'll be there in a minute. My gel needs to run a little bit longer."

-"I picked seven clones and did digests on all of them. They're all correct."

-"I added the stimulus but I didn't see any flux."

-"Do you think I could get in on the next spin?"

-"I don't know what time I'll be able to leave today. It depends on whether or not I'm going to transform."

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Krebs Cast #6

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New intro. HIgh school classmates, Pat Robertson, and being spied on.

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Saturday, January 07, 2006

He's a Skeletor

After they gym tonight Brad and I went to eat at Lucky's which is Dallas' de facto gay diner. Its a good place to get some home cooking and a handful of the waiters are cute if you're into the muscly bearded types which I am. The clientele isn't bad looking most of the time either.

Well tonight I saw this man sit down at a table. Older, about 5'10'', brunette with a very very nice build, big arms etc. etc. However, his face was a little bit hard to look at. After Brad saw his visage he agreed that the face didn't quite go with the rest of the hotness. I leaned in and said "He's a Skeletor." in reference to my previous blog entry. And so it came to pass that Skeletor entered my vernacular.

Skeletor n. - a male specimen worthy of a lay but whose facial features are lacking.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Bored at work.

I'm so fucking bored today. I'm here at work doing absolutely nothing. The highlight of my day was going out to Indian food with some colleagues. That was fun but thats all I've done. I think I'm totally caught up on all blogs and I've caught up on some podcasts as well. So now I'm just wasting time surfing on random things.



I found some images from the old He-Man cartoon. I was a He-Man fanatic as a child, had all the action figures and even the briefs. Looking at these old pictures I see now where I developed my appreciation for the male form. This probably explains why I have no affinity for the twink aesthetic. You best have bulging muscles or you're invisible to me.

Looking at this composite I'm stunned to see that there were so many female characters in the show. I honestly don't remember them and was obviously fixated on the male characters. When I was about five or six years my parents got me a She-Ra to go with my He-Man collection of action figures. I was so disgusted with the "doll," as I referred to it, I went outside and launched her onto the roof of the garage. There would be no women in my version of Eternia! I shouldn't say that I didn't remember all of the female characters. I do remember the one dressed in the bird suit. Her name is Sorceress and He-Man always went to her for advice. She's obviously his drag-queen-guardian-fairy-godmother.

I never had any sexual feelings for any of the characters when I was a child but these are some hot male cartoons. He-Man is pretty fucking studly with his harness and fur briefs. His buddy Duncan (the green dude) looks like he has a nice eight pack underneath all that armor. I certainly never once for a minute had any inclinations toward Skeletor but he looks fucking stacked. I really don't mind that his head has no flesh on it really. Its nothing that a brown paper bag can't fix.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Consumer Slop

The Consumer Electronics Show is happening this week in Las Vegas. Being a person that lusts over technological gadgets and gizmos, especially ones that I would never really need, I have read about many of the latest and greatest creations coming to the market. Although I lust over many of the items coming to the market there are those items that elicit a sarcastic guffaw.

Take for example these items:

SUV
This may look like an ordinary gas guzzling SUV but its not. If you look closely there is a large antenna on the roof that allows one to have high speed internet just about anywhere via satellite. Now isn't enough that we're engaged in a war over oil so that people can drive their SUVs to the mall? The least they could do in return is give their kids a fucking book to read while they're on vacation so that there is some hope for the species. I cannot imagine how fat and stupid the offspring of those that buy this device are going to be.

ceShure
Next are these lovelies. The Shure E500 sound isolating earphones priced at a very affordable $499. I have to admit that I myself have a pair of Shure headphones and I did pay more than I think one should for something the size of a nut. However this time I think Shure has taken it too far. Apparently these are the ultimate in exterior sound reduction and are equipped with three speakers inside each bud: two woofers and a tweeter. For $499 they could have made it an option to get your monogram in bling on each of the buds don't ya think? Not only that but the phones have microphones on the exterior so if someone wants to talk to you, push a button, music is switched off and outside noise is piped in. My excuse of not being able to talk to someone because I have my iPod on with earbuds jammed into my ear is worth far more than $499.

Nethrone
Here is the ultimate. The Nethrone. Its a throne for the internet. Lets get real though its a sex terminal. Someone wasted precious mental energy designing this piece of crap. I feel really bad for any ad agency that has to come up with a campaign to promote this item. Look at it! It screams "come masturbate on the internet." I cannot fathom how many of these are going to be found at garage sales years from now. Somehow for me this is analogous to sunken fire pits that can be found in homes built in the 70s.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

A New Look. Kinda.

I now have a proper title banner for my blog! I made it with Adobe Image Ready with a photo I took of a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture. I have finally, after several years, gotten the concept of layers and how they work. Now that I know about them I think its so amazing and I can't imagine making a graphic any other way. I would have liked to have redone the entire look of the blog and have something that looks as cool as Nathan's blog but my attempts were leading to horrific results. Not only does he have perfectly coifed body hair but his blog is a paragon of design as well. One thing I've learned is that HTML is so lame because everything is a box. No rounded edges, just boxes. So boring!

Now that I'm back to work I'm not cooking like I was when I was home. We've been subsisting on meals-in-a-bag. They're actually quite tasty and not too bad in terms of fat and calories. We especially like the Bertolli-brand variety. If my mom knew I was eating frozen Italian food out of a bag she'd get so depressed. In any case eating the meals in the bag keep a handle on the portion sizes which is good since I've been a real slacker about going to the gym lately. This week I'm a loser so I have to go to the gym next week or I'll be a fat loser.

Regarding my next podcast. I am waiting until I receive my new headset that I purchased earlier this week to do another cast. Once I get the headset I'm planing on doing some joint casts over Skype with some fellow bloggers/podcasters.

Let me know what you think about the new artwork. I'm off to bask in the return of Project Runway after its Christmas hiatus.

Today I'd Rather Be...

Here
IMG_0038

Here
IMG_0155

or Here
IMG_0174

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Back To Work!

I was standing in a dry river bed in the desert with a group of people. The river bed was deep enough so that the ground of desert was just below eye level, around the height of my neck. In the river bed there was a press conference given by an olympian athlete regarding some kind of an affair he had. Someone mentioned cross dressing but I wasn't paying too much attention because I was distracted by the rustling on the ground in the distance. I attempted to fix my attention on the olympian in front of the crowd but kept getting distracted.

I looked over after hearing a disturbance in the brush and saw a small lizard charging at me from the desert kicking up sand and dirt as he drew nearer. I was fascinated by what I was seeing but at the same time knew I had to move so I shifted my position but just enough so that I could still witness the lizard running toward me. It didn't matter. The lizard changed its course and as he got closer I saw that it was a Gila monster, the only poisonous lizard in the world whose venom is quite potent. As he approached the ledge of the riverbed he leapt and attached himself to my neck with his mouth. I felt a small pinch on my neck and then something hot going into my flesh. I threw the lizard off me and onto the ground. I had damaged him enough that he seemed to be writhing somewhere between death and paralysis. I took my pen that I was using to take notes on the press conference that was still happening without interruption, and stabbed the gila monster through the heart.

When I arrived at the hospital there were only residents in the ER. I explained to them that I had been bit in the neck by a gila monster and needed antivenin immediately. After hearing my request the residents erupted into pandemonium. They had no idea how to prepare or administer the antivenin. They opened package after package trying to mix component A with component B and only achieving a pink sludge that looked hardly suitable for injection. In the midst of the pandemonium, in which I was remaining rather calm, I picked up a sheet of instructions on the floor, still folded neatly for packaging. It read:

Cool component A and B on ice for five minutes. Mix both components
on ice until a free flowing liquid forms, about two minutes.

I went up to one of the residents who was covered in sweat trying to mix A and B at room temperature. I told him what the directions said but he turned to me, sweat dripping off his brow, and yelled "You know NOTHING!"

I turned and left the hospital. The pandemonium had spread to other floors and empty boxes with direction sheets were showering down from the windows above me. All the while I was feeling my neck where I was bit. It wasn't tender or sore and I figured that the problem had solved itself.

Somehow I found myself at a baseball game sitting with a group of people who acted as if they were my coworkers. They were happy to see me once I arrived and asked my why I was so late. As soon as I sat down a maitre d' with slick black hair a pencil mustache wearing a white coat and extremely tight black pants approached me and asked me what I wanted to drink. Without me even replying he handed me a glass of white wine that was push away by one of my coworkers who said, "You can't give him a $75 glass of wine! Bring us a pitcher of strawberry shakes and some glasses." Instantly a pitcher of what looked like strawberry daiquiris appeared in the waiter's hand and he poured each one of us a glass. I took a sip of my daiquiri, which was quite delicious and refreshing, sat back and fell asleep from the boredom of watching a baseball game.

Then my alarm went off and I woke up to get ready for work.

Last night as I was trying to get comfortable on our way past its prime twelve year old mattress I drifted off into a half ass state of sleep that resulted in the dream I just described above. I never sleep well the night that precedes my return to work after a weekend or a long holiday.

Monday, January 02, 2006

1986

I remember the year and exactly where I was when it first occurred to me that time only moved in one direction. It was the fall 1986, I was six years old, I was in the car with my mom on Staten Island in front of a house we called the Tomb of The Pharoh due to its unusual ancient egyptian style. I asked my mom, "When will it be 1986 again?" For some reason I thought that time was cyclical. I don't know why. My mom seemed confused and asked me why I had asked that question. I replied to her, "I like 1986, its been fun. I want to know when I can do it again." She smiled and told me that it wouldn't ever be 1986 again but there would be more fun times ahead. It was then that I learned that time only moved in one direction. I was partly devastated.



I have to admit I felt something similar tonight when I saw Kelly LeBrock on the season premiere of Celebrity Fit Club 3. Here was the woman who was concocted as the perfect woman by the horny protagonists Gary and Wyatt in one of my favorite childhood movies, Weird Science. They meticulously ironed out every detail of her body on Wyatt's computer whilst donning bras on their heads and she appeared to them in a cloud of pink mist in nothing but a pair of blue boy briefs and a cut-off tee. It was the only time I think I'd ever been aroused by a female in a movie. However the contemporary Kelly LeBrock is old, twice the size of the one I knew from childhood and it isn't because she's lost her sex appeal that I'm no longer aroused by her.

Truth be told Kelly doesn't look bad. She has a little extra weight but she's not out of control by any means. Its just weird to see how much she has changed. I don't think I've fully reflected that its been twenty years since I first saw her as that perfect woman. She's since gone through many changes and so have I.

JJD on Gay Empire put it best: "It's not that I hadn't yet experienced time. But I'd experienced it unreflectively, and changes came as sudden jolts in my existence."

Sigh, when will it be 1986 again?

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Happy New Year: KrebsCast#5

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LISTEN to me in stereo sound. Don't forget you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes as well.

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