Who knew?

I have a free on-demand cable channel that broadcasts Jewish and Israeli films and other features.

Other discoveries while exploring the “upper end” of the cable box:

I kind of like the new Hawaii Five-O. Maybe it’s because it’s so stunningly gorgeous in HD. More likely, though, is that it’s the closest thing to a 1970s cop show on broadcast TV today.
Golden Girls reruns look a lot better in standard definition 4×3 than they do in the weird stretched, zoomed version WeHD sends out pretending to be 16×9.
OK. That’s all I really discovered. Or at least all I can be bothered to write about.

Changes

Since there haven’t been nearly enough major changes in my life lately, I decided that major changes in my computing environment were in order as well: installing an OS upgrade, reviving the G5 as a audio/video import station, and migrating to a new MobileMe account (divorce, y’know?).

And yesterday, I decided to move my office into the basement. It has several advantages. First, it makes the old office upstairs “show” a lot better (assuming we ever have another showing). Second, the basement (being a basement) is much cooler. Third, I feel a little more comfortable spreading out and working on things down there; I get to feel like I have one spot in the house where I can actually live without feeling like it has to be perpetually “staged”. I guess the stairs provide a little extra exercise, too.

And yes, that’s pretty much all the insight I’m going to provide into my personal life today.

Bi-coastal

Evidently I’m as bi-coastal as the next guy. Or at least my phone is…

Zoom in:

Da Burgh

Looks like Mark and I may not own a house in Pittsburgh much longer. We put it on the market last week pretty much two years to the day after we closed on it. There was an offer today that seems promising.

So that’s that, I guess.

Me, Myself, I

For better or worse, I’ve always been a solo act. That’s my nature, and it took an extremely special exception to induce a temporary deviation from that state. It seems unlikely to me that there will be a repeat anytime in the foreseeable future. Hence my (very polite) rebuff to a (very well-meaning) coworker who suggested I start dating and sampling all that exciting gay nightlife in Winston-Salem.

As far as I can tell, the sum total of Winston-Salem’s “exciting gay nightlife” consists of one big disco that doubles as a venue for drag shows on Friday nights. In short, it’s every Southern ghetto queer bar I ever hated in my twenties and thirties all wrapped up in a package that fills me with nothing but fatigue and a sense of impending doom now that I’m in my forties. Having spent a supremely miserable couple of hours in a smaller version of the same bar about six months ago, I can tell you that this scene appeals to me only slightly more than that vacation in Libya I’ve been dreaming of for so long.

I’m a little torn right now. I’ve never in my life felt as alone as I do right now. I have some very good friends in my life and they’ve been a really big help to me in the past few months. But they’re not here. There’s no one here to listen to me talk about my insecurities, my regrets, and just how shitty I feel about everything that’s going on in my life right now–and it’s not just the breakup. No hugs, no crying on anyone’s shoulder, almost no human contact at all. I speak to my parents and my coworkers all the time, but only in the most superficial way (see first paragraph above) and always through my brave, happy face. In fact, I haven’t even told my parents about Mark and me yet, for a number of reasons. And yes, I understand that I boxed myself into this isolated little corner.

To be honest, a big part of me sort of wants to be alone right now. It’s hard work talking about this stuff and it also opens me up to having to listen to other people’s stuff. And I need to feel a little self-absorbed right now. But yeah, I need to build some local friendships.

The last thing I need in my life right now, though, is to be hanging around late at night in some wretched queer bar of the damned, sipping a Coke, choking on bad cologne smells, and listening to some of the worst music ever recorded.

What I probably need even less than that is to be “dating”. I never enjoyed that when I was voluntarily single and I don’t imagine I’d find it any more appealing now that I’m involuntarily so.

Not, mind you, that I expect to be fielding many offers to begin with…