COMING SOON: A BRIEF HIATUS
I don't want this to sound melodramatic, but TRL is about to undergo a brief hiatus. Like, in a day or two. Or maybe three.

No, I haven't been Dooced. I'm not bored with blogging. I'm not terminally ill. I'm not crying out for attention. I am not being stalked. And, above all, I am not trying to be trendy... 'cause anyway, stepping away from blogging is so 2004. I just need to tuck the blog away for a while.

Speaking of which, does anyone using Blogger know how I can do that without losing 29 months worth of entries? I have poked around a bit, but if the answer is obvious, I've missed it.

Oh, and just in case I suddenly vanish, you'd better take down my brand-spanking-new e-mail address: ByrnesRCJ@gmail.com.

Yes, g-mail. Maybe I am trying to be trendy...

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR II
Oh dear. Here we go again. Would someone please keep Cranky Madonna and Cranky Elton away from each other?

Refresher: Part One.

FLAUNTING IT
I don't usually discuss politics here, but now that the elections are over I need to get something out of my system.

It's all about New Jersey, folks.

The recently-resolved gubernatorial campaign was nasty, vile, and dirty. Both sides engaged in allegations of corruption, flip-flopping, and incompetence. Both sides went negative. And you know what else?

Both sides went totally, over-the-top... heterosexual.

My friends, it was an abomination. First came accusations that the divorced Democrat, Jon Corzine, had given thousands hundreds of thousands millions of dollars to a female he dated! Then married Republican Doug Forrester trotted his opposite-sex partner out in front of the cameras to assure the voters that her opposite-sex spouse would never let New Jersey down. And then Corzine's female ex-wife went wild, and claimed that her former opposite-sex bed-partner would let the state down, because he had let his family down! And then everyone was accusing everyone else of sex sex sex!
It was just too much. It was all penis-and-vagina, all the time.

You know what Corzine and Forrester were doing? That's right. They were blatently flaunting their heterosexuality. At every opportunity, they were parading around the state with persons-of-the-opposite-sex... practically throwing it in our faces! It was nauseating. All I could think about while they engaged in this virtual orgy of unfettered sexuality was how hetero they were, comparing their private parts as they traveled the length and girth of the state of New Jersey.

When I look at candidates, I do not want them to make me think about their bedroom habits. And yet, there they were. They may as well have just gotten naked with Christie Todd Whitman on the local news! The whole campaign was just that bodily-fluidilicious.

Frankly, I held off commenting, because I would have thought some of the GINOs and their opposite-sex-attracted allies would have wanted to jump in, given how they tend to feel about the open acknowledgment of sexuality in politics. But they have not spoken, so it is up to me to shout out "Stop waving your dick at me, New Jersey! Hide your partners and your sexuality, like the good gay boys and girls do!"

There. I feel better now that that's out of my system. I can get back to business and...

OH NO!!

NEW QUOTE I AM ABOUT TO OVERUSE

It's quite simple really: if you don't want to
be mocked, then don't do mockworthy things.
--KipEsquire

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Having a stake -- in fact, having a financial stake, professionally -- in the cleanliness and upkeep of New York, I do not agree with the traditional Gothamist take on graffiti. They consider it 'street art;' I consider it an eyesore that costs time and money to remove. So it goes without saying that I totally disagree with their take on the arrest of a woman who was defacing light poles in the East Village.

Regrettably, Gothamist committed a bigger crime in reporting the story by posting this headline:

Pointless Arrest of the Day: Sticker Perp Busted on 2st Ave!

Hmm. Now I've taken two Gothamist jabs recently. And they say that the 3th time's the charm...

UPDATE: the link to the Gothamist article has changed. Fortunately, the typo remains, 'cause I hate it when people ruin my good times. Better yet, the typo is now incorporated into the link. Yes! And Bloomberg thinks he's having a good day.

And while I'm on the general subject, go here. (I like it when TMFTML gets all passionate, and that's usually not a quality I look for in a straight guy.)

THE LITERARY BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Yes, we all know that Laura Bush's pet cause is combatting illiteracy... and, yes, we all appreciate the irony of her cause juxtaposed with her husband and daughters. But this entry isn't about gratuitous Bush-bashing, so put that right out of your mind. I have come to praise the Bush-Cheney Administration, not to condemn it.

Because the Bush-Cheney Administration may be one of the most literary in United States history. Not only that, but these administration figures aren't writing dry policy tomes. Oh no! They are all about taking chances with the racy fiction. As a novelist, I commend them.

You remember Second Lady Lynne Cheney, of course, who gave the world the sizzling, Sapphic novel Sisters. As one Amazon reviewer notes:

Incest, cattle rustling, lynching, the chaste female-female love that dares not speak its name, dognapping, running away from a convent school to join the circus, the New York-Washington publishing scene, women's suffrage, a runaway mother, the mysterious death of a sister, circus freak shows, troubled nieces, a hunky widowed Scottish brother-in-law (rrrrufffff!), contraception, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the frequent introduction of gophers--either merely dead, or dead and putrefying--spice the never-a-dull-moment plot of "Sisters."

Gophers! Hot!

Anyway, roday -- via Fark -- I learned that future prison-rape victim Lewis 'Scooter' Libby is also a novelist! From the very same Amazon reviewer:

The hair-raisingly prurient parts of this book have been excerpted extensively elsewhere, so I'll not repeat them. However, Libby appears more than approving of the explicit education that the very young girls in "The Apprentice" receive. Not in typical school subjects, no, but from instructors whose teaching tools include caged bears (yes, bears, trained to couple with children), wooden dildos, and incestuous relatives who painstakingly instruct little girls to "satisfy many men in a night."

With three years left to go, who knows what other works of fiction lurk in the heart of Bush-Cheney officials? Karl? Condi? Harriet? Your reading public awaits you.

See you on Amazon.

THE JUDE THADDEUS MARINA MARKS ITS 16th MINUTE OF FAME IN A SINGLE DAY
From this morning's New York Post:

Struggling city businesses got stiffed by a federal loan program intended to spur economic recovery after the 9/11 attacks —"This is not a loan that I received under [9/11] pretenses," said Jude Thaddeus, who says he unwittingly got a $1.3 million loan through the Business Loan Center in the city to finance a marina in Glen Cove.

From this afternoon's AP wire:

A fire damaged at least three boats at a 250-slip marina on the north shore of Long Island on Monday. There were no immediate reports of injuries... The fire at the Jude Thaddeus Glen Cove Marina originated aboard a 45-foot boat...

Nothing that another $1.3 mil shouldn't fix. Somebody get the SBA on the phone!


Update: This entry was slightly altered after posting, because despite what the Post wrote, there doesn't seem to be an actual human Jude Thaddeus... outside of the Saint, that is. At least not in Glen Cove, Long Island. I'm sure the Post regrets the apparent error, especially because that means there aren't saints running marinas on Long Island, which -- you have to admit -- would be sort of cool. And while I'm apologizing for others, I'm sure 365gay.com regrets not reporting the error first.

ROOTS
Here's a little something from the mailbag. Thanks Mike, fka Mboto!

I don't talk about my hometown very often, but this captures it vividly in 36 bullet-points. Also, it gives me content on a day when I don't have time to create content. And that, my friends, is what we call a win-win situation. So sit back and take a brief journey with me...



You know you're from Rochester, NY when...
1. "Waking up with the Wease" doesn't mean that you have a respiratory infection.
2. The thought of eating a "garbage plate" makes your mouth water.
3. The only thing at the annual May Lilac Festival is snow.
4. The worst four-letter word you could say is "Fuji".
5. You can't swim at the beach.
6. You thought that you had figured out that alternate-parking thing, but wind up with a ticket anyway.
7. Toronto is about 70 miles away, but it takes four hours to get there.
8. The name "Greater Rochester International Airport" is bigger than the airport itself.
9. There's an 800 number to report a pothole in the road.
10. You know that a "Can of Worms" is not something that you take fishing.
11. Your baby's first word is "Wegmans".
12. You ask lifetime residents where the George Eastman House is, but they don't know either.
13. In a city where it snows at least 90 inches a year, they build a new sports stadium with no roof on it.
14. It can be 70 degrees one day, below freezing the next, and you think nothing of it.
15. Your mother is buying outfits to wear to Wegmans.
16. Your low-fat diet is never low enough to exclude an Abbott's custard.
17. You order a white hot and a pop, and the counterman knows what you're talking about.
18. You can travel from Egypt to Greece in about a half-hour by car.
19. D&C is a newspaper, not a medical procedure.
20. There are no hamburgers, only ground steak.
21. You can go to any mall on a Saturday and see at least 5 people you either work with, went to school with or dated.
22. A musical comes to town 10 years after its Broadway premier and the entire town goes nuts! (e.g. Miss Saigon)
23. You awaken from a deep sleep, look at the clock and see that it's 6:00, but you have no idea whether it's AM or PM.
24. When 18+ inches of snow falls overnight, but you never thought of NOT going to work.
25. You are perplexed when friends from other cities come to visit and want to "see the sights".
26. A flagpole strung with white lights seems like an acceptable alternative to a municipal Christmas tree.
27. In winter if the temperature hits 45 degrees and the sun comes out, people walk around downtown wearing shades and no jackets.
28. There are places at the poles that seem to get more sunlight during the winter months than we do.
29. Wegmans is somewhere to go on a Friday night, for entertainment.
30. You know who Vinnie and Angelo are.
31. You define summer as three months of bad sledding.
32. You think that people from Pennsylvania have an accent.
33. Halloween is snowed out with great regularity.
34. You have experienced frostbite and sunburn in the same week.
35. Your year has two seasons: Winter and Construction.
36. Half the change in your pocket is Canadian, eh.

Ah, nostalgia. And I'll be back in just a few weeks, where a four-day visit will drive every last ounce of nostalgia out of me.

Oh, and not that you've gone through Rochester 101, you'll better apprciate this article... from the D&C, of course. Enjoy!

IT'S NICE TO BE RECOGNIZED. I GUESS.
Over the past few days, I've been seriously thinking about changing the focus of this blog. I want to emphasize writing, and the writing life, more than the drive-bys I've been specializing in lately. In other words, less 365gay.com bashing, more substance. On Monday, I even resisted posting one of the most tortured metaphors I've ever read. (Don't ask, please; I have very weak will-power.)

That having been said, when this popped up in my referrers, I caved immediately. So much for substance.

But, yes, I am so proud.