Obama announced Joe Biden as his VP this morning so I think we need some Joebama jokes.
I googled “Joebama jokes” and didn’t find anything so this is the start of a soon to be annoying internet meme! Right here!
Find some inspiration here.

I will start you off.

Joebama so fat, he ate the national deficit!

OK, this is a work in progress.

I got blood draw this morning to make sure I don’t have a bunch of painful diseases. 5 tubes! I’m not sure if I have any blood left. I got lucky with a skilled phlebotomist that didn’t have to go poking around. I can tell if they are good by their stick and aftercare. You do not bend your arm up after a blood draw! I don’t know how many years I was told to do that and would end up with massive bruising. Keep your arm straight and apply pressure. So I thought I would get lucky when I peeked under my bandaid and didn’t see a bruise. I pulled the bandaid off and it really pulled the inner elbow skin up when coming off. So now I have a tiny mark near the needle hole and a big bruise where the bandaid was. I can’t win.

I felt very knowledgeable at work today. I emailed the NIH contacts on the research program announcement my agency might submit an application for. The CEO wants to use this as a chance to revive an old HIV prevention program. I’m not so sure HIV prevention is what NIH is looking for with this program. Being sponsored by two different centers having to do with alcohol abuse kind of leads me to believe they want it to be a “Drinking is bad, kids!” program. Rather than be snotty about it, I took the learnin I gained at the research conference I attended and emailed the contacts listed to ask them. I hope I am right so I can go all RTFM on the CEO.

And now it is time for baking!

The coordinator at the GLBT health center contacted me and they finally have an LCSW supervisor for me! Having a goal will take away from the general dullness of my job. I’m doing data entry right now and I’m bitter about it.

I need to take advantage of more outdoor activities before summer is all gone. I went to Ginza festival at a Buddhist temple in Old Town. The temple is really big and had indoor and outdoor vendors, food and dancers. One of their priests (yes, this temple uses the term priest) did a Q&A session on Pure Land Buddhism and the temple. I felt cool because I knew the answers to some of the questions. I’m still liking Zen over Pure Land. I went back to meditation with a friend and will hopefully keep going and get past the horrible feeling of my entire leg falling asleep.

Favorite quote of the night from my Buddhism teacher:
Student: How are these precepts different from The 10 Commandments?
Teacher: You aren’t going to burn in hell.

Also, one of the articles we read today said that many people ignore the precept that says not to drink alcohol. Yay!
I had something I wanted to write last week about Buddhism but cannot remember what exactly it related to now. I know it ended with comparing Buddhism to The Song That Never Ends.

Back to festivals, after Ginza fest I went to North Halsted Market Days. I watched the ROTC perform (Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps), found an awesome new toy in Tulip that I desire and got into a huge argument/discussion with my friend over transgender people. I already knew she was more conservative/less understanding than I was concerning GLBT issues especially related to fluidity of sexual orientation and gender roles.
I believe sexual orientation is fluid (see Kinsey Scale) and that it would be super awesome if gender roles would move more in that direction.

She spouted some pretty ignorant statements about 1 homosexual encounter=100% homosexual, transgender is OK but not in my house!, bisexuals are just greedy and don’t really exist, it’s not OK for a straight man to feel comfortable around gay men…stuff that I haven’t heard/tolerated in some time. Maybe I do have friends that have similar beliefs but they know better than to voice these things around me. I will argue and in this case, I have many more facts to back me up.

The whole situation just pissed me off, reminded me of arguing with my parents when I was younger, crying when my dad said that the GLBT movement should drop transgender people because they were on the fringe of society, getting harsh feedback from a boss when attempting to educate high schoolers about Matthew Shepard. Even now, educating my coworkers about transgender people and realizing I have to start at “this is what GLBT is.” I have low expectations at work but pretty high expectations of my friends and even my family now. (My dad no longer holds the same opinion of transgender people and my PFLAG award is hanging in my old bedroom.)

So maybe the GLBT health center has good timing.

We gave my roommate’s cat to a friend tonight so we are on our way to become fur free! I am cruising Craigslist for a new desk chair and maybe a new couch. Not that she messed up the couch but it is horribly ugly.

My mom gave me some vegtables from her garden and I made some awesome pico de gallo. I should make it more often, it’s really simple. The onions actually made me cry while cutting them! That’s never happened to me before so it must be because my mom has an awesome garden.

I’ve been kind of busy or maybe just slacking, either way here is my delayed Lollapalooza report. No pictures because all of my pictures turned out pretty bad. I was too far away, too short and my camera too old.
I went on Sunday with a friend that is equally averse to the sun (he sweats, I burn) so we arrived late in the afternoon. We saw Saul Williams rock out with his make up and band in costumes. He said he felt bad that we had to choose between seeing Kanye or NIN as headliners and with his music you don’t have to choose. Well, obviously he was not aware other bands were playing at the same time he was. We left toward the end of his set and saw some of Blues Traveler because my friend liked them in high school. After he got over his nostalgia, we went back over to Saul Williams and caught his cover of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”.
Next was Gnarls Barkley, dressed in some weird yellow suit jackets. Too hot for Star Wars costumes I guess. The first three songs sounded exactly like the CD. I could see them playing, they had live instruments but it was all oddly robotic. We lost interest a few songs in and went to see Girl Talk. Actually we got crushed by the Girl Talk crowd on the way to the disgusting toilets. So we kind of heard/saw Girl Talk while in line for the bathroom.
Then we wandered to Flosstraudamus for reasons I cannot remember. (Why, yes we do have musical ADD.) Flosstraudamus was like Girl Talk but not as good. A guy in the crowd asked about my tattoo and correctly identified it as not a sea creature. Then we went over to see The National, who were playing on the stage next to NIN. We sat in the very back of The National crowd which was the front-ish area of the NIN stage. It was an hour before NIN went on and already the front center area was filled.
As soon as The National finished, NIN started. I’ve liked NIN since high school and I have never seen them before so I couldn’t possibly dislike the show. They had an interactive LED fence of lights that changed from static, to logo, to boxes that Trent could poke and change color, to a close up of Trent’s mouth while he was singing. They played old and new, took an instrumental marimba interlude in the middle and then went into some of the harder new stuff. The 2nd to last song in the encore was Hurt and I stopped screaming along for that one and just silently took the song in. Also, Trent looked so good, all sweaty and muscley and rockin his mid-40’s.

I got my hair chopped short yesterday. I gave the stylist this picture and she did an excellent job at copying the haircut. We made some minor changes, a little longer at top of the back of my head so I can make it stick up. It’s a fun cut but probably one I should have had 10 years ago.

I extorted a nice boy into buying me The Dark Crystal and that’s what I’m watching tonight between cleaning and other boring things.
I remember being scared of the creatures in The Dark Crystal when I was little especially Augra and her removable eye. I looked at the package today and saw that the movie is rated PG but since it’s an older movie it doesn’t say why it’s rated PG. I guess if it was re-released the package would say something like “Fuck those creepy vulture things! Did that muppet just take out her eye?”
What happened to making up creatures for kid’s movies? Talking cars, cute robots, ninja pandas, smiley fish…does everything have to be a friendly recognizable thing? Dark Crystal is so cool because of the weird Henson creatures. Even though gelflings look slightly Asian and the Podlings are vaguely Eastern European, the other creatures are a wonderful mix of creepy and only slightly based in reality.

Unrelated, I’ve recently discovered Leonid Afremov’s paintings (noisy site) and I am totally digging them. Maybe I will get a print to replace the hula hoop in the living room when I get a new couch.

I love hearing the CEO of my agency talk to outsiders about the agency. It’s like listening to a preacher tell you the glories of the social work. Just like some preachers in current news, sometimes he slips up and says something truly WTF. He was telling a group of European counselors about the agency and he said “West Siiiide!” You know what I mean. Like he suddenly slipped from preacher mode to gangsta mode. Actually, he said it more than once. On purpose. I’m sure these counselors had no idea why he was talking like that, why the West Side is the best side or why these silly Americans are ethnocentric to think that a group of professional older Europeans would have any knowledge of West Siiide life.

Other fun things: we have a transgender client and I have been called upon to educate the management team. I volunteered myself for this task because I couldn’t handle the pronoun switching and the upset over which bathroom she would use. I guess it is pretty naive just to think that since we are an urban, non-faith based social service agency, that we would be able to handle a trans client. I have a lot of work to do. Every time someone uses the wrong pronoun or switches pronouns, I cringe and I am on the verge of developing a facial tic.

I burninated at Pitchfork on Sunday but it was well worth the redness. I had no idea there was a nice big park next to Cobra Lounge. I feel bad for the neighbors since one of the stages was right against someone’s backyard and I don’t think that neighborhood is too big on the indie rock. I saw Apples in Stereo, Les Savy Fav, Ghostface and Raekwon and a little of M. Ward. The rest of the time was spent wandering flatstock (gig poster sale) or sleeping under a tree. It was like the sun was sucking energy out of me.
Les Savy Fav was by far the most entertaining act. The singer had multiple costumes, threw a wireless web cam into the audience and displayed the bouncy results on the big screen, ran off stage briefly to reappear in a garbage can and told us stories about the Native American burial ground the park was built on. There was also music playing.
Ghostface and Raekwon were great but the crowd was annoying me. As you can guess the crowd was largely white hipsters. So hearing some guy with mismatched socks going “word,yo” in a not so subtle ironic way is annoying after the 10th time. Hearing some kid behind me explain to his friend that “these guys used to be in Wu Tang” just made me feel old. And wtf was with putting them on the small stage? It was packed which just added to my annoyance.

I just noticed the candy I’m eating says it has a bat signal in it and I didn’t see a bat signal. I may have ate the bat signal.

I saw Dark Knight on Monday. Wasn’t there a TV show called Dark Knight? I remember it being Canadian and the main character’s last name was Knight and there were vampires. If it wasn’t so late I would call my parents because I know they watched this damn show and IMDB is telling me its some medieval sci-fi show.

So the movie was awesome. But since everyone’s jerking off over this movie, I have to offer a few criticisms.
The movie was PG-13, why couldn’t Maggie Gyllenhaal’s breasts make an appearance?
Was Aaron Eckhart cast because they couldn’t get Denis Leary? Twinsies!
Where was the big flaming Batman logo?
And that’s all I can say without giving away parts of the movie.

The bacon chocolate chip cookies were a success!
The texture was kind of off when they were still warm but the next day when the cookie hardened a little it was better. Tiny pieces of bacon work best, bits not pieces. I had to experiment with the thickness of the maple glaze. It looked thick enough until I put it on the cookies and it spilled all over.

I took some cookies to a potluck last night and warned everyone of the cookie contents so I wouldn’t have any angry vegetarians. This led to everyone asking me about the cookies, where I found the recipe (roommate/Internets) and why the hell I would want to make such a cookie (why not?) so much of my evening was dominated by cookie talk. I’m building quite a reputation in this group. I brought Krispy Kreme bread pudding to the last potluck. There is a block party coming up and I think it’s time to make meatloaf cupcakes.

I finally showed my parents my newest tattoo. My mom kept asking why it has to be so big and took a picture of it to send to my grandma. She tried to pull the “but what about work?” question but I pointed out I can’t wear tank tops to work so no one will see it!
My family gobbled up the cookies, too. Later she poked my abdomen and suggested I get a girdle. When I came home, control top panties were in my laundry bag. Thanks mom!

I went to Buddhism class tonight and there was no teacher. Was this a lesson in self sufficiency? My classmate and I snooped through the temple office and found our teacher’s number. We were concerned since he is in his 80’s and drives from the suburbs to teach. His wife answered and cheerily handed the phone off to our teacher. It was his birthday yesterday and he had forgot..or was running late..or was celebrating. My theory is that he was drunk. I like my theory because I like the idea of an 80+ guy rockin out for his birthday and I like the idea that I can drink and still follow Buddha.

So that wasted about an hour but gave me a little more time to make cookies. I keep forgetting to photograph my cookie making but this one would have really done better with scratch n sniff than pictures. I’m making bacon chocolate chip cookies with maple glaze I had to run to the store to get more bacon because I underestimated the amount of bacon this recipe calls for. After I dumped in my mounds of bacon bits, it looked like too much. But who knows, the dough tastes pretty good even though its hard to get the bacon and chocolate flavor with uncooked dough.

The dough is chilling in the fridge right now and then will get cooked tonight and the glaze will have to wait until tomorrow probably. I’m not sure how all of this will work since my kitchen is super hot and the glaze probably won’t harden.
I will let you know how it turns out.