I can't with having no headphones!

I promised myself I wouldn't be one of those bloggers who only blogs about how they haven't blogged.

Last night my friend Adam slept over and this morning my headphones were gone.

He stole them! But I guess it was an accident. Apple iPhone earbuds are on every flaming homosexual in this town so it's natural that he would think that they were his when he left me this morning. They're practically a gay staple. At first I freaked out this morning not knowing where they had gone and searched everywhere for them before leaving the house. Was I ready to face the world without my headphones?! Without the one escape I get nowadays from the noise and bustle of the big bad apple?

Apparently not. Just walking to the 1 train from my building this morning was otherworldly without my music. Stepping in the train car, I was met with a fucking mariachi band trio, of course!! Why have I never seen one mariachi band on the train since my move earlier this year from Queens to Manhattan (or ColOmbia to ColUmbia I like to call it) until this morning? I actually took one of those free amNewYork papers to keep my mind occupied on my commute but it wasn't working. I was thoroughly distracted by all the people on the train, the babies crying, the school kids yapping, the ones with headphones blocking it all out, and I was silently dying inside.

I was secretly envisioning my world without my headphones forever. How would I watch TV at work and hear everything loudly without plugging my headphones in? How would I watch YouTube and the Biography of Diff"rent Strokes on my office computer? How would I work out at the gym? How would I run on the treadmill? How would I make trips out to Fire Island on the Long Island Railroad? What would I listen to on the beach?! What would I do?!

When I got to 42nd street to transfer to the 7 train going east I ran into my producer, Amita. She asked how I was feeling because yesterday I woke up with a nasty stomach ache and bad case of the runs. I told her I was much better but now I was obsessing about not having headphones. Then we had a nice kiki about the workday, the weather, the weekend, and all was forgotten.

I had made it through my headphoneless commute. There was even an article about the Jersey Shore kids getting into fights in the amNewYork I picked up that I would've missed had I had my headphones. Maybe I would've missed Amita too, and our nice little kiki. Maybe I should try to buy a book too. I see people reading on the beach and the train all the time. Yeah, maybe that's what I need, a nice book. Maybe one about the Jersey Shore.

And I should address that a lot has happened since I've been "gone". Tyra Sanchez is the new drag superstar (but JuJu will always be mine), I tried out for Big Brother, shaved my head, Whitney Houston's career is over, Lady Gaga conquered the world some more, I grocery shop now, I cook, Betty White survived SNL, my mother survived a health scare, $cientology is going down bitches, Kirstie Alley's show crashed and burned, I reconciled with a best friend, Naomi Campbell hit some more people, Wendy's still werkin it, Bethenny had a baby, Sandra Bullock had an Oscar AND a black baby, I go to the gym almost religiously, I can navigate the steam room just fine, Fire Island is moments away....within reach...I can feel it.

Wow, maybe I definitely shouldn't stay away so long. I should have my distractions taken from me more often.

I can't with getting old

I'm getting old. Being in my late mid 20's I think it's safe to face the fact that I'm no spring chicken.

But it sucks now that I'm starting to see the effects of this!

It started last week when I had a long hard look at myself in the mirror and noticed lines on my face I hadn't seen before around my mouth and under my eyes. In addition I also noticed the proverbial "bags" starting to form under my eyes and I decided it was time to do something about it.

I immediately started calling my friends who are older than me to see what they thought and was surprised to hear that they had the answers for me right there on the spot. Apparently they have been dealing with this for a while. Without naming names or going into too much detail and to make a long story short I was told to try a number of different things such as, cucumbers, preparation h, chilled green tea bags, an under eye stick from garnier that contains caffeine in it, under eye night cream from clinique, ice cubes, water, and sleep sleep sleep.

Sleep seems to be the big one and the one that I haven't been getting a lot of these days and should try to do more often. To make up for the lack of sleep I got last week at work I decided to stay in most of this rainy shitty weekend and sleep. I even put some spoons in the freezer a couple times and dozed off holding them on my eyes to ease the puffiness.

I have been noticing a bit of a difference since I started this over a week ago but I have to say I think it probably has a lot to do with heredity and genes and those are both things we can't do anything about. What I can do about aging gracefully is probably try to not stress over any of it. I mean I could go to town on every little thing that is wrong with me and I'm sure they would be noticeable to everyone. But I kinda feel like if I just go with the flow, sleep more, chill the fuck out, and let myself get older all will be done naturally and gracefully.

I kinda keep thinking that once the summer comes and I'm out on Fire Island and relaxed and tanned then all these under eye circles and bags will just fade into my skin and I'll be healthy and refreshed looking everyday but then I thought, hey, isn't the sun bad for our skin too? I'm sure if I just lay out and bake my skin off for my bags I'll start seeing lines a lot sooner in a lot more places and just start stressing about those as well. It's a lose lose situation when we try to take on Mother Nature. She'll kick our ass like Naomi Campbell. In the words of Truvy from Steel Magnolia's, "Time marches on...and sooner or later you realize it's marching right across your face!"



Maybe this is just my time to let nature happen. I'm the oldest today that I've ever been in my life and that's some hell of a feat! Hey, I think I deserve to take a nap for that one.

Maybe I should just go to sleep! I think I'll have a glass of water first.

I can't with my haircut

I can't with the haircut I got last night. I need a new barber.

I miss the Colombian guy I went to in Queens. :( People are telling me I should just go back to Astoria and see my old guy who was cheap and fast and painless. I literally could just walk in and sit down and not worry about a thing and he would hook me up. But is that crazy? To go all the way to Astoria just for a cut??

Last night I went to this cheap place around the corner from my job. I had been there once before when my Astoria guy was on vaycay and the guy in the window was Israeli and did just fine. Last night he wasn't there so I went to this other guy who was really rough and kept throwing me around and he completely shaved my hair all the way to the top, no fade at all, and butchered my neck and sideburns. OY!

My boss today sent me haircut place recommendations when he heard me kvetching all day about the cut I got and don't like. Maybe I'll check them out. Maybe I'll buy a flowbee. Maybe I'll shave my head. (No wait, I'm saving that for the summer)

Maybe I'll shut up and stop bitching cause it's just a haircut.

Good thing my hair grows quickly I guess! I wanted a cute cut for my housewarming party this weekend and that is what happened.

I look like a dominican Rosie O'Donnell.

Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me to stop cleaning up my look and start cleaning up the apartment! We got people coming over.

Ok time to paint the bathroom with Dane. Chowder!

I can't with the Snooki haters!

Everywhere I turn it seems that all I hear is people hating on Snooki and I'm sick of it!

People at my job make fun of me all the time not only for being a die hard "Jersey Shore" fan but for adoring its breakout star, Snooki, but seriously, they all secret love it and are just hating on the Snooks!! My boss called the whole show crap today and said Snooki looked trashy. I was cc'd on an email today with a group of people from a bunch of different companies and everyone was making fun of her. I was talking about her at the gym tonight to the manager who laughed when I said how much I love her.

Snooki and the gang were on The View last week and not only were Joy and Whoopi hating but I asked my friend who works for ABC to get me tickets for the show to see Snooki and he was all, "Wouldn't you rather go to a show with someone worth seeing?" Can you believe that?! Turns out he didn't even try to get me the tickets and I had to watch the show from my desk at work that day and it was the only time I watched The View where I actually liked Elisabeth and Sherri more than any other chick on the panel. I had no idea Elisabeth was such a fan of the mindless escape one gets from enjoying such a fantastic show and Sherri even proudly copied Snooki's signature pouf hair-do on the air and I was living!!

So what did Snooki ever do to anyone?

In case you live in outer space "Snooki" is Nicole Polizzi, the self-proclaimed "Princess of Poughkeepsie" who rose to prominence last year in the first season of MTV's smash hit "Jersey Shore." She was famously punched in the face by some goomba at Beachcombers, this local watering hole her and her housemates hung out at in Seaside Heights, NJ. She went on to recover from the fiasco and got drunk the next day and went right back on her perpetual quest for a Guido juice head gorilla to fall in love with.

Hasn't the girl been through enough?

I was thinking about the parallels between Snooki's life and my own and they are fascinating! I will now proceed to get all Madonna giving Michael Jackson's tribute speech at the MTV Awards on your ass:

Snooki was born in South America in the 80's. So was I.

Snooki was adopted by white parents and raised in upstate New York. So was I.

Snooki identifies more with the culture she was raised in opposed to the culture she was born in. So do I.

Snooki is short. So am I.

Snooki has faced adversity and has had to work harder to gain respect from people. So have I.

Snooki was a gymnast. So was I.

Snooki got punched in the face at a bar. So have I.

Snooki lives to dance and gets all tribal on the dance floor for attention. So do I.

Snooki loves pickles. So do I.

I mean if this is not enough proof to show that she and I are kindred spirits I don't know what more you need. As a matter of fact it was when I told my boss that she and I were kindred spirits that he mentioned she is trash. Hmm, I wonder what he's trying to insinuate.

The thing about Snooki is this - She tries her best with what she has been given and isn't apologizing for it. I gotta hand it to her because that is pretty fucking rad. Her bio on MTV.com reads as follows:

“Nicole is looking to meet the man of her dreams. When she goes to the gym, she goes in full makeup, hoping to make a splash with all the toned men. Her height has been as much of a strength as it has been an obstacle, and it will color her

summer at the Shore in a big way.”

Snooki embraces herself and life, making it colorful no matter what she's doing or where she goes. That gets a big thumbs up in my book. She's able to make fun of herself and recognize her flaws but she knows what she wants and she goes for it regardless what anyone thinks! She puts it all out there, the good, the bad, the ugly, but she's getting it out there and doing her thing and is fearless in it.

The fact that we share a lot of the same characteristics is rather refreshing to me and maybe that's why I can't no more with all the trash talking people seem to be doing on her right now. I mean honestly although Snooki is the most notorious cast member from the show her behaviors were quite tame and reserved compared to the rest. Sure she got drunk on the first day and made a fool of herself with her lesbo friend and The Situation in the hot tub but she wasn't having reckless unprotected sex every night with random strangers like the boys were doing. She was looking for love. True love.

Plus I believe she's the only one who is in school trying to get a degree while working as veterinary assistant helping animals on a regular basis. It's crazy that she's the most together person on the show but gets the worst rap and is the most hated on. I know that now that she's gotten a little fame she's everywhere but c'mon people let's not hate on a girl who's just trying to make a dollar and a cent in these crazy economic times!

I'm not saying the Snookster is perfect. And that's kinda why I love her. I'm actually certain that Snooki is still coming into her own and quite insecure about a lot still today but hey, so am I. So are you. So are we all. We're constantly finding our way in life but that's what makes us human and it's certainly no reason to hate on someone when they're putting it out there and owning up to who they are. Especially when they prove that they can get knocked down (or punched in the face in this case) and get right back up and keep on going!

On a side note, I'm very happy that Wendy Williams (my other kindred spirit) has given Snooki the star status and recognition she deserves for being a short, cute, little hot mess and sat down with her on the couch last month. Thanks Wendy for giving the people we want to see the airtime they deserve with interviews that don't highlight how little knowledge they have about high school level geography and mathematics. And we also don't want to hear Snooki's (or the rest of the cast's) 5 and 10 year plans like they were asking on The View!! Puhlease! We just want to see them have fun and enjoy their youth by being exactly who they are with no apologies and that's what you show us Snooki!

So, Snooki, you little juice head chasing, pouf-haired, adopted Chitalian, tonight I'm toasting this pickle to you, and I'm not apologizing for it girl!

I can't with my diet

So it's a new month and a new me. Operation diet for Fire Island is in full effect as of yesterday and I honestly have to say, I'm starving.

This winter I became quite accustomed to eating a lot of junk because I guess I had to face it, that's what I love to eat! McDonald's and Wendy's and Burger King are like my favorite ever! I like to get the Angus Bacon and Cheese burger with a side of fries and that orange kool-aidy drink and a chicken mcnuggies for an appetizer. I like pizza too and when Domino's had those 555 deals which were 3 medium one topping pizzas for 5 dollars each ohmigod that was the end for me.

The past few months I have been super bad and have been drinking a shit load of regular soda like ginger ale and coca cola and snacking regularly on chips and pretzels and chocolate and starburst! Starburst are my absolute fave. I like the baja california flavored ones but recently starburst put out this "FaveReds" pack where every starburst in the pack is red and aren't those really the only ones we really like anyway? It's a pack of Cherry, Strawberry, Watermelon, and Fruit Punch and I would run down to the deli in the middle of the night just to satisfy my cravings and practically be finished with them before I could even get back to my apartment.

Plus dont even get me started on the ice cream and desserts! Honestly for so long I wouldn't say I avoided sweets but I just never had much of a taste for them. The past year however I started buying ice cream and loving it. When cakes and pies and cookies and stuff used to be around I used to be like, "No thanks" not cuz I was watching my weight or anything but mainly cause I just didn't want any. That was then, this is now. Nowadays whenever someone busts out some homemade treat at work watch out because I'll probably be knocking you over to get at it and whenever it's someone's birthday I love the little cupcake rituals we have in the greenroom not to mention all the times I've been going to Billy's bakeshop outside of the office. My friend Roger is the manager there and gives me treats for free and I can never resist their carrot cupcakes with the cream cheese icing and pecans on top. Mmmmmm.

So it's probably a good thing that my final Fire Island share payment for 2010 was due yesterday and while writing and mailing the check I was able to reflect on all the amazing yet so oh fattening treats I've been enjoying the past few months and recognize a change was in order, in a big way.

Since I've told people I've been "going on a diet" for the most part their reactions have been "What are you talking about? You're crazy, you're thin!" Although some queeny bitches have been like "Girl get in gear and lose that flabby tummy pronto, the summer's almost here!" (Even though they feed me chubby hubby on Thursday nights and get mad when I go to the gym instead of their place to watch Project Runway. No shade) But I guess saying I'm going on a diet is more my way of saying that I'm going to change my eating habits through omissions and healthy substitutions and make an effort to stay active more than usual.

So what exactly am I doing? Here's a rundown:

1. Water - Ok so I very rarely if ever drink water but I hear that's what really helps people lose weight and look great. In one of the early seasons of America's Next Top Model when Yoanna House won I remember watching an interview with her where she discussed how before she made it on the show she used to be a fatty and when they asked how she lost all the extra poundage and what she did to look so great she said she drank gallons and gallons of water everyday. So that's what I'm gonna do too. Thanks Yoanna!

2. Diet Soda: When I'm not gulping water and want a treat I'm only going to drink diet soda instead of all the regular stuff. I've found that Diet Sunkist really serves up a refreshing taste while not tasting so diety and although I've never really given it a chance I'm going to buy some Diet Dr. Pepper too. I remember those commercials where they said that "Diet Dr. Pepper tastes just like regular Dr. Pepper" so I'm gonna buy some of that and decide for myself once and for all. Plus even though I'll be switching to diet soda I'm still only gonna make it a treat for myself like a can with lunch or something, not all the time.

3. Special K: So I've always heard a lot about this special k diet and decided to somewhat try it. I bought the cereal and the cereal bars and will be having this for breakfast in lieu of my bacon, egg, and cheese's and bagels with cream cheese. I wont be doing the 2 bowls of cereal a day thing and sensible dinner though but I will be enjoying it some mornings (always with skim milk) and sometimes with fresh fruit here and there to spruce it up. The cereal bars are 90 calories and that's a lot better than the breakfasts I'm used to!

4. Coffee: Not only being more water in my body but coffee also helps to speed metabolism and gives more energy. I don't put milk or cream in my coffee anyway, just one sweet and low so it always makes for a great low cal drink.

5. Snacks: While at work in the middle of the day I'll usually grab a soda or some chips but now I'm now going to be stocking up on healthier alternatives like a banana, some almonds, a skim milk polly-o string cheese, or carrot sticks. I mean totally gross I'd obviously rather have the junk but more junk means more junk in my trunk that I'm gonna have to work off at the gym so since Im lazy I'll just cut out the junk I guess, at least til next fall.

6. Ripped fuel and whey protein shakes: So I bought metabolism boosting ephedra-free ripped fuel from the vitamin shoppe and I'm taking 2 pills before each meal. Hopefully it will help erase any calories I do intake and give me more energy for my workouts. After a workout, I'm also drinking a whey protein shake to build muscle mixed with 8oz of skim milk. Not sure how either is gonna work out but stay tuned.

7. Cooking: Dane and I are going to make conscious efforts to cook more and only healthy stuff. So far I've grilled up some boneless skinless chicken breasts on his lean mean fat-reducing george foreman grilling machine and made some spinach. I have had some pasta too but am trying to cut that out more as I go on. We'll see what happens.

8. Work out routine: I'll be trying to go to the gym every other day AT LEAST, and do more cardio like running, not the dumb elliptical. Considering I've been basically avoiding the gym for the past 3 months ANYTHING is an improvement at this point. My friend Derek teaches bikram yoga too at some place (I cant remember the name) and he said he could get me some free passes and I could even crash some of his classes sometimes so that's major. Plus I completely hate doing my abs too but I'm gonna try to do crunches a lot more and 8 min abs on youtube and abs at the gym, ab machines I don't use, ab classes, abs abs abs abs. GRRR

9. Dance: I love to dance and I think that it's an excellent work out! I will make an effort to go out and dance more! Hey, maybe I'll dance walking down the street and on the subway too. It's a small price to pay for a hot beach bod!

10. CUT OUT THE JUNK!: I will be staying away from fried foods, and fast foods, and regular sodas, unnecessary chocolate fixes, diners at 2 am (unless I'm drinking coffee), billy's cupcakes, $6 burgers from the blarney stone, pepperoni pizzas all to myself, and late night starburst runs.

So I guess that's my plan. I'm sure it's flawed but hey, so am I! I'm sure in many ways I'm doing something wrong but that's how we learn. Will it work? Will I fail? Will I succeed? At least I lived and I believe, no matter what they take from me they can't take away my dignity!! The time has come for me to lip synch............FOR MY LIFE!!!

What do you think?? Can I get an AMEN?!!

I can't with my new mac

So I finally did it. I bought a mac.

After spending a whole lifetime on PCs I decided to make the switch. Now I can blog again and I can stop stealing Dane's computer all the time. I even managed to get an illegal college student discount for this lovely MacBook Pro and the girl who sold it to me went to high school with me! Isn't that just the absolute most?!

She said I look exactly the same as I did in high school and haven't aged a bit! Aww isn't she just such a sweetie!?

I don't know why I have been so afraid of using macs my whole life. So far so good. After my stupid PC completely crashed and wouldnt even turn on I had a mini freak out that I had completely lost all my files and music and videos and photos and docs but thank god everything managed to be recovered from my hard drive and put onto this nifty macbook.

WHEW!

I look forward to discovering all the magic that is mac....

Stay tuned.

I'm totes gonna write more, I just wanted to check in.

I'm not dead. I've just been computer-less. Til now, of course.

MUAH BITCHES

I can't with New York Sex Club

I have finally joined a gym! New York Sports Club.

Dane and I joined together the other night. The guy who helped us was young and cute and gay and Colombian from Queens who happens to be born one day later than I was. Go figure! Two leos! Anyway, I guess I'll be seeing him around. Whatever.

What I really wanted to talk about is how much sex seems to be going on at this place! I came from Queens, (Astoria as you all know) and you would never catch this type of behavior at my old gym, the very fabulous Club Fitness. I do miss that gym very much. It had a gorgeous waterfull and a pond and laser light spinning classes. I felt like I was Ivana working out at Trump Tower. Not to mention the people that went there were mainly Greek and Italian blue collar Queens guys who were no nonsense juice heads that liked to get in, pump some iron and get the fuck out.

The last time I lived in Manhattan I had a gym in my building so New York Sports Club has pretty much been my first foray into Manhattan public gyms and lets just say, it's sleazy! I worked out for the first time today and all was going well until I went into the little personal training area upstairs behind all the machines where it's a little closed off from the rest of the gym and this latino guy comes over and even though he had all the space in the room to look in the mirror he came up directly next to me, about a foot away, lifted up his shirt and started feeling his body in the mirror. He put his hand down his pants!! I was like, umm i dunno if im ready for this, at least not at the gym.

Then, later on in the locker room, this white guy comes in from the gym and starts to get naked all the while looking at me change while Im getting ready to leave and he starts playing with himself right in front of me. Not to mention there were other people in the locker room. I immediately got nervous and turned around to where I heard these guys talking to see if they were noticing what was going on but I couldnt see them. The guy who was fondling himself peered over to see that there were people on the other side of the lockers so put his towel on, looked at me, and smiled as if to say, "Hey baby, come with me into the shower"

At that point I zipped up my hoodie and walked out.

Hey don't get me wrong, I'm a single gay male in NYC and I'm up to my own tricks for sure. I just dont know if I'm ready for these things to be happening at my gym. Maybe I'm old fashioned when it comes to working out. Maybe I just like to get in, pump, and get out, like those mediterranean goombas at my old gym. I do have to honestly say though that these little encounters completely took me by surprise and I wasn't expecting them at all.

Believe me, I've heard multiple stories about the saunas and the steam room (the low self-esteem room as I like to call it) but I didnt expect someone to fondle themselves in the weight area while I'm doing bicep curls.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic and it's all just new to me. Maybe one day i'll turn into one of these gym sluts like everyone else in NY but call me a prude, I guess I prefer real gay love in this town, the kind you can find online.

I can't with Kirstie Alley!

Earlier this month The Today Show ran a story about how helpful Scientologists are being in Haiti!

Today at work we edited a piece about John Travolta "helping" with the relief effort in Haiti!

Kirstie Alley is taking over A&E with her new show Kirstie Alley's Big Life! And what is she gonna do with her big fat A&E paychecks now!? You guessed it. Spend it on more OT Level VII auditing! (And by the looks of it, some pastries as well)

Who would've thought that lovable duo from Look Who's Talking, Look Who's Talking 2, and Look Who's Talking Now would perpetuate the goals of a sinister cult and unload more evil into this world!?

Listen John Travolta, you and $cientology are not fooling anybody. Your "relief" efforts have repeatedly proven to be nothing other than tragedy profiteering behind a VERY thinly veiled guise of minions in yellow t-shirts implementing pseudo scientific techniques with absolutely no empirical evidence to back it up. The PR videos released by your cult of you passing out food and water with your wife from the back of your plane are a disgusting reminder of the brainwashing tactics that must have been used on you to help you forget that you are supporting an organization that killed your son. It is no secret (as it was made public in undercover BBC recordings last year by top ranking ex-members of your cult) that "Volunteer Ministers" with the cult of $cientology are put in disaster areas to recruit and create "Protective Shields" around disaster victims so as not to expose them to "dangerous" psychological and psychiatric attention from qualified medical practitioners.

And you listen to me too Kirstie Alley. Seeing posters of your fat ass everywhere now licking cupcakes is making me nauseas. The only "reality" show that should be accurately made of your life and your "struggle" to get back on top should be about how you are trying to escape the nefarious clutches of a Orwellian sect that has been raping your mind and wallet for years. I don't care how much of a sense of humor you want to pretend to have on camera for a paycheck about being fat, you should use your platform in life to speak out about the crimes of the organization you have unfortunately chosen to support. Valerie Bertinelli is and always will be cuter.

I never liked you anyway for being the only Cheers member to not appear on Frasier either because it portrayed a psychiatrist in a positive light.

Kirstie, you claim Narconon got you off drugs, girl? Interesting being that Narconon employs $cientologists with no medical training nor any therapeutic practices in addiction recovery and education. What they are educated in is sales tactics and recruitment methods and I guess it seems to have worked wonders on you babe as they fully convinced you that they are the ones responsible for helping you kick your cocaine habit. You should have them help you learn how to kick your butter habit too.

"Life. Lick it."?! Lick this, bitch.

I can't with no computer

Hey y'all. Oy my computer broke. Can you believe?! It's been a whole week now without one. Good thing I moved in with Dane, right? I'm using his now while he's out dancing on bartops. Shhh! K?

And when I say broken I mean like the thing is loaded with spyware, gets pop ups all the time, it's 5 years old, and the screen actually cracked and like the bottom half of it sometimes goes black so I have to make all the windows small and pull them to the top of the screen so I can actually go to webpages. The thing is janky boo and it's time for me to get a new one. The other day I went to turn it on and it won't even do that anymore so I might as well put it out with the rest of the trash around here.

Speaking of all that trash, I have to say that the clean up at the new apartment has been going a lot better this week then last. Dane had a buncha crazy spells where he stayed up all night being cracksy but hey at least she cleaned and straightened the place out while she was going through it. The place looked like hoarders last week and now it's just a little cluttered. Hopefully next week it'll be as fresh as The Situation's abs after his daily GTL routine baby.

I had a mini GTL experience of my own today when I dropped my laundry off around the corner from my place for the first time. I couldn't believe it when the laundry lady weighed my 20lb bag and said it would be $23.50 for the load to be washed. That comes out to a little more than an dollar a pound!! In Queens, the laundry was like 60 cents a pound! So I move to manhattan to find cheaper rent and more expensive expenses, go figure!!! Time to start changing my dollar bills and saving quarters baby. I guess I should buy some laundry detergent too. Preferably on sale.

After my Laundry experience, it was off to a little lunch at a rather cheap but quite good place right down the block that I discovered today. I'll definitely be going back. I still haven't joined a gym yet up here but today after brunch I toured a little gym on 106th street called Body Strength Fitness. The place was a little small, a little ramshackle but it seems to be the only local gym around here and it's quite reasonably priced so I think I might join. I mean the gym for me has never been much of a social outing and I don't feel like traveling to Chelsea for Junior Vasquez on the turn tables and Amanda Lepore on the elliptical next to me while I work out.

With summer right around the corner I've been walking around with this overwhelming sense of guilt for eating whatever I want lately and not going to the gym at all. At least when I had my computer I could do my little recessionista workout in my bedroom on my yoga mat with 8 minute abs, 8 minute buns, and 8 minute chest playing on YouTube on my laptop on my bed. I used to do it late at night and the music that plays in the background is reminiscent of 90's Cinemax softcore porn sounds so I can only imagine what the neighbors thought I was watching. At the end, the trainer in the videos would say, "You did a great job! I'll see you in 24 hours!" to which I would reply back to my laptop, "No! I'll see YOU in 24 hours!" Ugh I need to get a new laptop (or a real life trainer) stat!

After the little gym tour today I purchased curtains from the home store and hung them in my room. (ok so maybe Taylor hung them for me) but I helped a lot and provided entertainment for him while he worked. I think they came out rather nice and I'd love to show you a pic but I can't upload anymore til I get a new computer. Now at least the neighbors in the back of the building dont have to watch me get naked all the time. It seems as if every room in the apartment has a direct view of a different neighbor. I'm laying on the couch in my living room right now looking at the neighbors across the airshaft hanging out the windows smoking joints and lighting bowls. They're looking at me and thinking, "What's a cute boy like that doing home on the couch on his computer eating Doritos on a Saturday night? Why isn't he over here getting high with us? Maybe he's online looking for love, Oh wait, it's Valentine's Day too. I bet he needs a hug. Poor thing. Is he watching Lovers Lane weekend on Lifetime too?!"

Oh whatever!! What do they know?! They're a buncha potheads! They have the munchies and are jealous of my Doritos. Go smoke your pot, stoners!!

We definitely need to buy some curtains for the living room next. After my new computer of course.


I'll see you in 24 hours!

I can't with living in hoarders house

Oh my god! I haven't been blogging. I know I know but listen queens, I moved! And it was a mess! It still is. Then I got told by this cute guy I was hanging out with over text message that he didn't want to hang out anymore. And I even lost the lotto again! Can you believe all that happened in the course of a week? Plus all this great TV has been on to distract me. I know, no excuse. I'm back.

Seriously tho, I've been totally living out of boxes; I don't know where anything is. I'm still sleeping on the floor (on my matress at least). Our new place is covered in junk, our junk, but junk all the same. We still need to sort through it all and it's a non-stop seemingly neverending process. I had to go back to work too. I had taken Monday off to paint and organize and stuff but honestly, Dane and I coulda used the whole fucking week off. (I wound up painting my new room "Chocolate Milk", a light light brown which was left over from the living room in my old apartment and Dane picked out "Oat Straw" for his which is a light creamy almost sage color)

The move went smoothly for the most part I guess. Blake and Dane came to my old Astoria apt at 8am Sunday morning. We loaded the truck with all my shit and were done with my place around 9:30. The landlord came to inspect my place and was totally giving me grief over my yellow kitchen wall and I was all, "Look, yellow is a light color bitch!", so they let me go. We then drove the truck to Dane's, loaded his stuff, stopped at Le McDonald's to treat Blake to a lovely lunch which we ate in the truck while Dane's fish George almost died. (He managed to pull through though.) We then made our final schlep across the 59th street bridge up to the UWS to greet our new home.

We hired some movers to drag all our stuff up 3 flights of stairs to our 4th floor apartment and they were supposed to be at our new place at 1 but didn't show up til around 2 at which point exhaustion had set in from me being up all night packing and I completely checked out. I just stood in a daze pointing out places to them where stuff should go but all I wanted to do was nap. Finally the move was over at 5pm. All of our stuff had made it safely upstairs but was now in heaping piles of merged belongings completely covering every inch of the tiny little apartment I would now be sharing with Dane.

Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do.

I feel like I am living on that A&E show Hoarders and I need help. Hoarders is this fabulous show about people who can't throw anything out and completely engulf themselves in their homes with clutter and garbage and junk. Then the family comes in and is like, "Look queen, you are a hot mess!" Then the hoarder is all, "Oh it's not that bad, it's just a little cluttered." Then a clinical psychologist specializing in compulsive hoarding comes in and is all, "Actually no honey! You ARE a hot mess, BUT there's help!" Then 1800 Got Junk comes to save the day and throws out a lot of their stuff while the hoarder has mental breakdowns and anxiety attacks watching them clear dead animal remains and dirty diapers out of their living rooms.

Sometimes when I would get sad Hoarders would be the only show that would make me feel better. Lately it hasn't been helping!! :(

I need 1800GotJunk pronto! At least to bring some of this trash back down the 3 flights of stairs it came up on. Time for a major downsize! I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel but it's gonna take time, a little bit of patience, a whole lot of trash bags, and a couple mental breakdowns and anxiety attacks myself before I'll finally see that there is a life beyond this clutter. Fortunately I did laundry before I left Queens because I can find clean clothes and underwear in my laundry bag at least to wear to work. Dane has been great too. When he's not caulking, grouting, polishing and sealing the floors in my bedroom, he's cleaning a lot and putting stuff away and slowly the piles are getting smaller and smaller.

Hey, at least we're not finding dead cat carcasses and diapers at the bottom of the heaps.

Throughout all this mess, I was told by a boy I liked on text to go away right in the middle of my post-move nap on Sunday night. Fortunately I've had my DVR to help me through it and a slew of shows that I am completely living for including Bitch Fashion Goddess Kelly Cuttrone in her new reality show Kell on Earth. (I made sure time warner was here to set up the cable the moment we moved in of course) Ru Paul's Drag Race is also back in it's second season, plus the return of Shear Genius, and tried and true faves, The Real World DC and Project Runway and Miss Wendy every morning. So, I've been finding solace in trash TV for me to draw parallels to my life from and sometimes that's all I need to keep me going.

I have had moments of feeling a little lost in my new element the past week. The commute has taken some getting used to. I miss the N and W train terribly and it's weird not going home to Queens every night. I've been recalling that Jewel song lately where she hears the clock, it's 6AM, she feels so far from where she's been. I can relate Jewel. I feel far away from my comfort zone of outer borough living. I've got my eggs, I've got my pancakes too. Got my maple syrup, everything but you (Astoria).

When we painted on Monday I also got my orange wall in the living room and was relieved that the apartment was starting to feel personal and a little like my old place in Astoria. We decided on a cheeky shade of orange we found at Home Depot called Autumn Orange which to me looks more like Summer Orange but she's cute and the place is starting to feel like a home. I also found out yesterday that Dane and I moved in above the only gay bar on the Upper West Side. It's called Suite and he and I ventured there together tonight where we hung out with cute karaoke Columbia kids and transexual bartenders and fat drag queens and I have to say it was nice to be amongst the normal people and have this area start to feel like a neighborhood.

It's supposed to snow this weekend too. Maybe we'll be snowed in and actually whip this apartment into shape some more.

So in the meantime, I'll break the yolks and make a smiley face. I kinda like it in my brand new place. Oh where have you been Jewel!?!

I can't with being a lotto loser

So I didn't win the millions. It wasn't in the cards, or in this case, the ticket.

I got all ready in my apartment for the moment they read out the numbers and I would become a millionaire. I ordered from my favorite chinese takeout place Golden Dragon and set it up on my coffee table and turned to channel 7 at exactly 10:59PM. (I thought to myself, this will be the last time I eat a $7 combo plate again!! From now on it's class central!) The whole thing happened so quickly. I couldn't even register the numbers the guy was reading out loud but they flashed them on the screen again at the end for me to cross check my ticket. 38-7-39-8-48 with a mega ball of 22.

I wasn't even close.

Oh well. What I did win tonight however was a chance to dream. Besides who wants to win all that money anyway?! Money makes people crazy! I watched an E! true hollywood story once called "Lotto Losers" and it was about all these people whose lives were torn apart from winning the lotto. Some of them made bad investments, some gambled it all away. Some had death threats made against them, some had people hounding them for money, some got beat up, extorted, lost it all to drugs, sex, even murder, you name it! I could see people now being like, "That Glenn was sure on a good path, until he won that mega millions and it all went downhill from there!"

I also recalled a movie from the mid-90s called It Could Happen to You. In it, Nicholas Cage is a cop married to Rosie Perez who does nails and they live in Queens. Nicholas Cage plays the lotto one day (i dunno if it was Mega Millions) and goes to a diner after and doesn't have enough money to tip Bridget Fonda, the waitress. So he makes a deal that if he wins the lotto he will split his winnings with her. That night he wins 4 million dollars and keeps his word to Bridget Fonda and when Rosie Perez finds out she goes all Queens Puerto Rican boriqua crazy on his ass!! She has massive shopping sprees at Tiffany's and Bendel's and wears fur and gets red paint splashed on her and gets big breast implants and then runs off with some investment banker who steals all her money and in the end she's left broke living with her mom.

Is that who I want to wind up like?! Rosie Perez?! I don't think so. Could you imagine? And that's just the sort of thing that could've happened if I won tonight so it's probably for the best that I'm right back exactly where I started.

Thank you for helping me realize my dreams though Mega-Millions!! And for keeping my life still in tact.

p.s. my fortune cookie tonight says, "Why not treat yourself to a good time instead of waiting for someone else to do it?"

(Maybe that means I should play again.)

I can't with the mega-millions

Tonight I did something I never did before. I played the lotto. It was the New York State Mega-Millions jackpot which I kept hearing about all day and decided I would play.

A few things helped me reach that decision. A. I'm broke. B. With a lot of things changing in my life recently I figured, "What the hell - I'm feelin' lucky!" and C. I put on eyewitness news today at work and heard Sade Baderinwa talking to Lee Goldberg about it and they both said that they were taking their chances on it as well and that completely sealed the deal for me. If Sade and Lee were going for it, I would too. We would be in this together. (Diana Williams must've taken the night off)

I told my producer Amita at work that I was thinking of playing and had never done it before and didnt know where to get a ticket. So a little while after she left for the day she called me to tell me about a bodega she passed on 44th street and 3rd avenue with a big mega-millions sign outside and I should go there to get my ticket. I packed up and left the office and headed to the bodega ready for my chance at the millions!

When I got there I walked right up to the middle-eastern guy at the counter and said, "HI! I've never done this before but I'd like to play the mega-millions lotto jackpot and don't know what to do!" He didn't seem too impressed by my naive eagerness but handed me a orange lotto slip (my favorite color! a good sign!!), pointed to the back of it for me to read the directions, and made a motion and a kind of grunty noise for me to get out of his face and step aside. I walked over to a little area in the bodega where I saw people were hard at work scratching tickets and penciling numbers and put my ticket on the counter to read the directions. A nice black woman who saw that I was new here said, "Hey baby all you gotta do is check the quick pick boxes and the machines will pick the numbers for you. Or you can choose your own five numbers on top, and one number at the bottom as the jackpot number." I thanked her so much for helping me out and decided that I would let the machine pick the numbers for 3 of my games and I'd randomly pick some numbers for the 2 other ones. (I wanted to feel like I was at least in a little bit of control) There were 5 total on each card at a dollar a pop. I filled them out, paid my five dollars, got a print out of my soon to be winning numbers and put them in my bag and went on my way.

As I left the bodega and went skipping to the train on my way to the gym I started thinking to myself of all the things I was gonna do with the money. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow and I'm still paying off my visit to them from the last time I went. With my winnings from the mega-millions I'll surprise all those girls in the dental office with a big hunka cash and order the braces and veneers I wanted to get but couldn't afford. I'll fly to the next leg of Lady Gaga's tour in the UK and Ireland next month and have front row seats and backstage passes for all her shows. We'll meet backstage and take lotsa pics and I'll be like "I'm putting these on facebook Gaga!!!" and she'll be like "Do it you little monster!!!" and I'll be like "I'll tag you girl!!" and she'll be like, "I need photo approval first bitch!" and I'll be like, "Oh ok, anything for you Gaga!!" and when I meet her I'll finally be rocking that perm I wanted to put in my hair but didn't get because I wanted to save money!

I'll definitely buy vacations and presents for my family. I might even share with some of the people I work with who supported me in my first time playing the lotto. We'll go out to lunch and I'll hire the Jersey Shore cast to come with us because everyone in my office is obsessed with that show and would adore a lunch with JWoww and Pauly D and Snooks. (I dunno if I'd want Sammy and Ronnie there though because it would be too much drama!) They're all in contract disputes with MTV now anyway so they will need the cash!

I'll sail around the world! I've never even been on a cruise! I'll go back to Colombia where I was born and stay in really nice hotels and sightsee all of South America. Then I'll go to Iceland and New Zealand and Egypt and everywhere else I have wanted to see. I'll buy an apartment in Manhattan and let my friends stay there while I am away on my travels. I'll get a dog and name it Schnickers! I'll buy a house on Fire Island and let everyone stay there in the summers for free! I'll put money aside for my new nephew's college fund. I'll be a hero. Everyone will love me.

When I got on the 7 train to head back to Queens I could feel the winning ticket burning a hole in my bag. I looked around to see if anyone was eyeing me and noticed some lady looking right at me and my bag. "What do you think you're lookin at lady!?! Get your own mega-millions ticket!" I thought to myself.

It made me think of Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder one kids) when he wins the last golden ticket and the guy pulls him from the mob scene crowd that begins gathering around him in the candy shop after he wins. The candy shop owner manages to scurry little Charlie on his way and screams "Run home Charlie!! Run straight home and don't turn back!!" I had to get home with this ticket! I had to make it back to my place safe and sound before a mob scene descended on me and the winning ticket in my bag.

I bet Charlie was as hopeful then as I am now. I guess this why those regulars today in the bodega play the lotto all the time. It gives them their dreams to think about on the way to the train. It puts hope in their heads as they imagine all they'll be able to do for themselves and the people they love once they become a "winner". It's worth it to them for a brief instant on a train ride back to their home in Queens that just possibly they could be holding onto something worth 121 million dollars and not have to worry anymore.

Whether or not I win tonight remains to be seen but the feeling I've been given to realize my dreams this evening has been fantastic.

I better check what channel to watch tonight! (What am I doing?! I really should be packing! Oy!) If I win, I'm totally paying people to pack for me.

Hey, ya never know.....

I can't with the white

Today I painted my walls white. Well, navajo eggshell white from Benjamin Moore. I said goodbye to the orange halls I love so much and left my place white washed clean for the next person who moves in.

I also painted the red wall and column in my bedroom. I left the living room tan, and the kitchen bright yellow (one wall). They'll deal with that. I never did get around to deciding on a color for that pesky bathroom so it's been white the whole time I've been here.

Technically i didn't have to paint any of these rooms back today because I never gave my landlord a security deposit when I moved in here in 2008 but I felt bad because I asked to paint after moving in and they said okay as long as I promised not to paint any dark colors. I said fine which was a big lie because the next week my walls were deep orange and crimson red. Much of today was spent covering these dark colors in my life with a coat of primer and second coat of of the eggshell cream white. I was like fine, I'll leave this place with it being bland and boring and neutral again and so NOT me. Whatever.

The whole process today marks just another step in my moving on process. I didn't paint it alone and had some friends come over to help (thanks to you all. you know who you are.) which was probably best because I have to say I got a little emotional watching the first stroke of white primer hit my gorgeous pumpkin patch orange walls. After getting over the initial jolt of the symbolism behind covering up this colorful era of my life with a coat of boring white, I pressed on and we managed to complete the whole place in a few hours. I turned it into a little party and ordered pizza for my helpers.

When I first moved in here I was quite adamant about doing each room in one of my three favorite colors, orange, red, and yellow and I wanted each shade to be vivid and vibrant and knock you down when you saw it. So I did. I wanted people to know that I lived here when they walked through the door and I believe I achieved the desired effect. My friend Cameron told me my house looked like a circus freak show tent but she's a bitch so I don't listen to her half the time anyway. I've been quite happy here in my circus freak show tent and loved the colors and personalities of each room.

Today I noticed something quite interesting though. When all my colors were covered up and the apartment existed with just these "boring" neutrals and soft whites I actually found it rather soothing and mellow and kind of liked it. While I was already browsing through bright vivid swatches for my next apartment I think I might wanna go a more toned down route. Maybe I can with white. My circus freak show tent is now a dreamy creamy and I'm kinda living.

Why is this kinda painful for me to admit? Am I becoming boring? Maybe I'm more toned down and mellowed out. Maybe I'm more comfortable today existing in life without an erratic color palette and being so in your face all the time. I'm content just giving you soothing eggshell realness and I'm learning that's okay too!

I'm definitely getting older that's for sure. Tonight while taking out the trash I bent over to lift these heavy paint cans I was leaving on the street and I pulled something in my back and it hurts and I have lower back pain now in my mid 20's! Hey but I was actually throwing out the extra red, orange, and yellow paint I found in the closet while cleaning thus further ending that period of my life. I thought for certain these would come with me should we want to use them in the new place but now it appears they're junk.

At the end of today my apartment came out new and fresh looking just as I feel I will be a week from now when I say goodbye to this apartment and now apparently also to the wild color schemes of my life.

So what will we paint the new place? Will I even want to paint at all? Stay tuned....

I can't with more aquarium death

So I came home tonight and the last remaining frog in my tank is dead. Dead. Just two days after Lee Goldfish died, Diana Williams kicked the bucket.

And so marks the end of my little aquarium adventure.

I had never asked for this aquarium. Last August for my birthday my sister came to visit me and instead of getting me a cute american apparel gift card she thought it would be cuter to buy me an aquarium with a filter and gravel, the whole nine and 2 swimming frogs. I have always been a huge fan of frogs and have them peppered throughout my apartment. There's one suctioned to my shower wall, a crystal one in my bedroom, ceramic frogs lining my bathtub, frog magnets on the fridge, frog salt and pepper shakers, you get the gist. So anyway, my sister last year thought "oh glenn just LOVES frogs, i'll buy him some"

But they were alive, and swam, and ate, and pooped and instantly I felt this added pressure in my life one feels when they have to take care of something. Being faced with that new responsibility I immediately thought to myself that I would've rather had the cash.

And now they're all dead. I wonder why this could all be happening just as I am ready to move back to manhattan. As if they weren't meant to take the trip. Maybe the trip would've killed them. Maybe they can't with manhattan and never wanted to leave this place. I spoke to Dane about having them in the new apartment and the whole thing being a big pain in the ass between the feeding and the cleaning and buying supplies and he said he would take care of them for me just make sure I keep them alive for the move. So much for that idea. It's as if he knew they wouldnt make it either.

The other day someone told me the gay bar down the street from my apartment out here in Astoria closed recently too. It was called Lavish Lounge and was a complete disaster but sometimes had cute go-go boy strippers and fun poppy music that I liked to dance to. I could smoke hookah there too when I was still a smoker and enjoyed a few dates there and nights with friends. Hearing that it closed also seemed symbolic to me because I remember it being brand spanking new when I first moved out here and now it is gone too, just as I'm ready to be gone myself.

What could it all mean? The frog is dead. The fish is dead. The gay bar is dead. I guess things really do occur in threes. Or does this all cosmically mean that it really is my time to move on. My stint out here in Astoria has run its course. The death card in tarot decks doesnt necessarily always mean a death but it symbolizes the closing of one door and the opening of another.

Jersey Shore on MTV ended tonight too! The guidos and guidettes all said their goodbyes and will move on to bigger and better spin-off reality shows just as I will be moving on to a frog-less, fish-less, 2 bedroom in the sky, in a new neighborhood with a different local dive gay bar. It's like my own little spin-off reality show of life. If only I had Snooki to keep me company!

Closure seems to be occurring in many ways around me at the moment and I can't help but take notice. I'm a bit sad that my aquatic friends all bit the dust but it seems as though it was their time.

I should have Mason read my tarot cards. She's been a real Miss Cleo these days. I wonder what else might be in store for me.

So R.I.P. to Diana, Sade, Lee, Lavish, & Jersey Shore. This fist pump's for all of you, wherever you may be.

I can't with murdering my goldfish

In last night's blog I wished my goldfish dead. I came home last night and he was. I killed him. I killed Meteorologist Lee Goldfish.

Well I didn't necessarily wish him dead as much as I ended my entry with saying that I don't love him. Which was not the truth. But how does that song go? Youre nobody til somebody loves you. And let's face it, if you're nobody you might as well be dead. Sometimes that's all that keeps us going, the love of others. And last night I said I have no love for him and came home to find him belly up being sucked up by the filter. I had to fish him out (whoa, i never noticed that pun) and flush him down the toilet.

His life was a short one but I guess long by goldfish standards. (right?) He was given to me by my friend Jim last October, on the night I decided to have a game night at my apartment with no games. No one even brought games either, they just brought me soda and snacks and a goldfish. I added him to the tank I already had with my two frogs, Diana & Sade. (Named after Diana Willliams & Sade Baderinwa from Eyewitness News on ABC 7)

My friend Bill who works at ABC wanted me to take a picture of the whole tank for him so they could air it as a little story about a jewlombian in Queens who has an aquarium with exotic creatures named after their anchors and weatherman. Just as I was getting them ready for their close-up Sade died. I found her belly up and Mason (who was living with me at the time) had to handle that situation for me and dispose of her properly. Sade always ate all the food in the tank and never let anyone else eat so I think she ate herself to death. So for about 2 months now it's just been Lee Goldfish and Diana.

Now Lee Goldfish is dead. I was wondering how I was gonna move him to the upper west side anyway. He never did get his piece of the pie.

So what can we learn from this? Don't say you don't love a living thing when you don't mean it. You never know when they might go.

R.I.P. Lee

I can't with my cubicle nightlife

Here I am. After midnight. Sitting at my office desk. Sometimes my job requires me to work late at night in a edit where we put together an actual show and hopefully when done we have a finished product that tells an interesting life story of some ultra glamorous person. Tonight it was Charlie Sheen who beats his wife, threatens her at knifepoint, and has a lot of sex with people other than her but makes people laugh (so ive heard) on Two and Half Men so all is forgiven I guess? Check your local listings. Whatever.

Anyway, I'm sitting here and I'm actually like not tired at all. I've been here since noon today and probably should be exhausted but I just put on my music and am surprisingly alert. I dont think I mind working nights at all I just kinda cant with being in an office. I just went into the xerox area and thought the lights in there were motion activated like the bathrooms around here but they're not and I wound up jumping and dancing around like an idiot until I went looking for the switch.

It's very quiet here. Not even security is in the building. Just moi. Thank god I have a tv at my desk tho. Shania Twain on idol tonight was major.

Recently I was talking to a few people about my need for a part time job working in a club doing something bar-like. I have never worked in any sort of place like a bar, or even a restaurant but it seems simple enough and i could really use the extra dough rey mi! Plus I'm up late, I work well at off hours, I like talking to and meeting new people and why not? I think I have just the right chutzpah for the job! I would totally be like a coat check boy or barback or money taker at the door. (I don't even know if those are the right terms for these jobs) I just don't wanna do drag or anything. That would not be pretty.

My parents would always tell me to get little part time jobs when I was in college making no money and when I was out of college making no money but to be honest I always thought that idea was really beneath me. I actually thought that being broke and sinking further into debt with all my expenses was SO "in" and being responsible and having enough money to live comfortably and pay your bills was so NOT the look.

My I guess times have changed. When people start off in a career, such as myself now, I think it's very popular in this new decade of recessionista glamor that we also have some sort of supplemental income on the side doing something where we're getting out there and in the thick of it, meeting people, hobknobbing, and taking coat tickets, taking cards, taking names! This is nyc baby! Plus I love music and I live to dance. But not by myself in Xerox rooms at 1 in the morning to turn the lights on. Anne Murray sang that even tho we aint got money I'm so in love with ya honey. She was singing to her son in that song I think. Cuz she loves him so who cares if she's broke. I don't have a son, or even a dog. I have a frog and goldfish and sometimes i don't love them. So i need money.

Why is this all just apparent to me now? Thanks Anne Murray. Canadians are so wise.

Anyone hiring?

I can't with the goodbye

Today I told my barber I was leaving Astoria. He's been cutting my hair since I moved here 2 years ago and I love him. He's Colombian like me so at first he was confused why I didn't speak spanish but then he got over it and fell in love with my jewlombian ass. His haircut is cheap, quick, around the corner, and right next door to the greek lady I drop my laundry off at. I told her I was moving today too.

Then I went to the gym and when my workout was done I canceled my membership with Club Fitness Astoria. I told the girl at the front desk I was moving and needed to cancel and then she pointed me to the lady who canceled it for me and I told her I was moving and how much I would miss Astoria and my awesome gym. I told time warner I'm moving, and the post office, and con-ed, and the guy at the bodega, and my neighbor the other day who lives across the hall. I keep thinking about the Bangladeshi guys who work at Subway who I see all the time and having to tell them because they've seen a lot of me once I became broke and the $5 footlong came around. How will they take it once I break the news?

Do any of these people care? I feel like their reactions of gasping and forced frowns about me leaving are obligatory but people move. Life is very transitory. We pick up, we move from place to place, we experience experiences with people we need in our life everywhere we go, no matter where that is. (I already saw the new Subway I will be going to for my $5 footlongs while I was touring my new upper wide side hood)

Tonight I was reading an article about rich manhattanites who live primarily in their high rise apartments in the city and have weekend getaways within the confines of the city. It seems that in this city you really can get everything, including a break from the city. A midtown stock broker can take a $30 cab to an island off brooklyn to enjoy his escape from the city. A subway ride takes another manhattan millionaire to her beachside retreat in Far Rockaway when she needs to "get away". Perhaps even though i'll soon become a manhattanite myself again it feels good to know a piece of me is still a train ride away in a familiar little community i've formed in my time here. It has definitely been my escape from the city. If i ever miss it, I can always come back and visit. It'll soon be considered my little staycation destination.

Some of these people might miss me, some might not, some wont even know I am gone. I left the bum who hangs out at the broadway station a bottle of wine a coworker gave to me around the holidays once but he was sleeping so didnt see it was me who left it. He doesnt even know who I am. But he's part of my routine here and i will miss that part he adds to my day just a little.

Whether these people wil miss me or not, I may never know. But still, saying goodbye to them lets me feel like I will be missed and that I was at one point noticed. It's nice to feel like you were noticed.

Maybe I'll come back for my haircut. We'll see.

I really can't with $cientology

Something you should probably know is that Scientology is a dangerous and greedy cult masquerading in plain sight as a church. Last night I was walking along 46th street in front of the theatre where The Addams Family is gonna be minding my own business and this really tall gangly blonde girl with huge glazed bug eyes ran up to me and shoved a dianetics flyer in my face and asked me if I was interested in seeing a movie.

I can't with her. This girl was a not a stranger to me and i recognized her immediately. I know what movie she was talking about too. I had met her almost a year earlier when I took a friend to visit the scientology building in midtown when he expressed interest in finding out more about this controversial "religious" movement based on non-scientific self-help principles developed in the 40's and 50's. We watched the movie (aptly titled Orientation) and took a mini tour of the basement where the very same blond girl pressured me to buy a book and proceeded to warn us of the dangers of psychotic drugs. She accosted me then and was now accosting me again and although normally civil to them I decided to entertain her yesterday evening in a discussion about her beliefs.

B.S.(Blond Scientologist or BullShit, take your pick) "Are you familiar with the book Dianetics or interested in seeing a movie right now?"

ME: "Yep I have read Dianetics and Science of Survival as well as a number of other books"

BS: "Oh yea? Ok what is Dianetics about then if you say youve read it?"

ME: "It's about the reactive mind and the analytical mind but like I said I have also read a number of other books about your church"

B.S. "Such as?"

ME: "Such as Blown for Good, The Scandal of Scientology, My Billion Year Contract, The Complex. They're really great reads written by ex-members that you should check out."

B.S. "Oh yea and why do you think I should read any of that?'

ME: "You're asking me to read a book AND watch a movie and I'm not allowed to make any reccommendations to you? That seems unfair."

B.S. "Yea but all those were written by criminals and murderers and rapists"

I LAUGHED then said that.... ME: "I think that a lot of that information is perpetuated within your church and fed to you as facts. The real criminals are located in the senior management of your organization"

She cackled so loud at that like a crazy person then said... B.S. "Dianetics is the number one best selling self-help book of all time!!! I gotta go over there, someone is waiting for me"

ME: Chowder!

The bottom line is that this girl is probably a very decent person. Most scientologists are. But when one gets involved in a cult, they are insulated so fully that they only hear the ideas and concepts manufactured by individuals within their close knit community. While physical contact with the world around them is inevitable (unless detained in Scientology prison camps known as the RPF) mental discussion about scientific flaws in their formula and factual evidence proven in supreme court about the crimes of their cult are considered strictly verboden (called Entheta in the cult) for which if they are exposed to they will have to be rehabilitated back from (go to Ethics or RPF). And any scientologist who wishes to remain in good standing within the church is trained to literally run away from all entheta for fear of being considered a potential trouble source (PTS) or even worse, a suppressive person (SP)

I have never been in scientology myself but have always been fascinated by the workings of the mind and more specifically, cults, and have done my fair share of research both in favor of it and against it. So what the fuck is it?

Scientology is the idea that the soul is an immortal spiritual being (a thetan) and the body is a vessel that is being used by this thetan. The mind of this body being used by this thetan is made up of 2 major parts, the analytical mind and the reactive mind. Scientologists believe that the reactive mind records all our harmful past shit - surgeries, break-ups, alcoholic parents, rape, homosexual thoughts (which is considered low tone in the church), blah blah blah. Experiences such as these, stored in the reactive mind are called engrams. (i know)

What scientology claims to do is a method to erase these engrams to achieve what is referred to in scientology as a state of "Clear." A clear is said to no longer be using their reactive mind (they also claim clears can fly, move mountains and objects, control minds, and control the universe.) This method they use is called auditing which is really just basic hypnosis. It is very expensive to achieve this state and takes years of auditing (aka years of mind fucking hypnosis). Their sole goal is to "clear the planet" and control the world's money and minds. Once clear (completely hypnotized and mind fucked) you move on to upper levels of the cult, (OT levels they are called, or Operating Thetan) which is when all the alien space opera stuff comes in and dont even go there with me right now.

Along the way (the "way to happiness" they call it) they steal your money with this phoney garbage, order you to disconnect from your friends and family not in scientology, subject their members to harmful torture within the church rehabilitation programs should one decide to get out of line, command a militant army (known as the sea org) who have signed billion year contracts to the church (remember your soul is immortal, your body is worthless), and have clauses in their teachings which allow them to get away with lying, cheating, stealing, and murder in order to further their way. (Yes this is all available for the reading - See their Fair Game Policy) It is a crude mafia more than a religion and is able to operate publicly through litigious threats, bribes, scams, and lies.

The notion that people are entitled to believe whatever the fuck they want is fine. Believe in aliens! (I do myself, duh!) It's the fact that scientologists use hard sell tactics in their recruiting techniques designed to sell you (literally for thousands of dollars) an invisible product based on false science to people when they are at their lowest that makes it wrong. They recruit in prisons through their program Criminon and in drug rehabs through their Narconon program and on the streets in your town by telling you what your problem is, how they can fix it, and then how much it will cost, even after lying to you at first by saying it will cost nothing. Free Stress Test anyone??

A huge earthquake occurred in Haiti a few days ago and our hearts go out to the families affected. While looking at donation sites for relief funds it was brought to my attention to beware of scammers who have set up false accounts around the world looking for your money under the guise of helping people in Haiti in need. The idea that someone would set up a personal account to receive aid funds might sound diabolical to a lot of you but this is sort of how scientology operates. They look for eager people who are willing to help with changing the world in a positive direction and then steal their money by making them believe they are contributing to the greater good.

I do believe this blonde girl the other night on 46th street is inherently a good person who wants to change the world for the better. But she is fed lies by her church about the world around her and given a language and code to live by which is only understood by a small number of people (other scientologists) forcing her deeper and deeper into the comfort of her sect, a secluded world which manifests a clear aura of paranoia about the world around her and the motives of outsiders.

It is very hard to leave scientology when it is all you know. Such is the way with a lot of things in life; It is an investment. When we invest our time and energy and money into something it becomes increasingly easier to convince ourselves that its good and we dont want to hear it can be bad, even when it might be the truth. I watched the lovely bones on dvd last weekend for free and it was complete junk! Had i paid $12.50 to see it in the theatre i think i probably wouldve told myself it was a lot better than it actually was.

Why do I care so much? Because asking for help is a huge personal hurdle for people and is what helps us get better. Psychiatrists and psychologists who treat the mind WITH PROVEN SCIENCE have been able to help myself, and countless others, get through difficult periods in our lives. The fact that an organization is not only denying people opportunities to get checked out by medical professionals in their times of need but also charging them thousands of dollars for useless , non-scientific services is not only morally and ethically wrong but criminal and should be prosecuted. (Plus they're wildly homophobic but that's for another day)

If that blond girl ever does ask me for help, I would be there for her.

R.I.P. Jett Travolta

(I'm so getting sued, lol)

The following is graphic, so be warned.http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/

www.xenu.net