tyflyguy

A Summer in Review

September 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

What a summer.  I mean really.  It started with the break-up in May.  June was filled with lots and lots of work and one kick-ass gay pride celebration.  Pride weekend was sort of like my official re-entrance into the social world.  I was able to hang out with lots of friends, reconnecting to many people who I just lost contact with along the way.  Saturday night of Pride weekend I had a spontaneous cocktail party.  It was so much fun.  I just played bartender and enjoyed having my apartment full of drunk flight attendants.  (not unlike many layovers throughout the years…)

Flight Attendant Pride Party

Flight Attendant Pride Party

In July I decided to take a vacation by myself.  I haven’t been on many true “vacations.”  And this needed to be a true getaway for me.  After basically working myself into the ground in June, I needed to take it easy.  So… New York.  I’ve been to New York a bunch of times, but I’ve never gone by myself.  I liked the sound of it. It seemed like the right thing to do as a single guy.  I didn’t want to go to a place that I knew lots of people, because the trip would be about seeing everyone.  I wanted to completely operate on my own whims and schedule.  And I did!  I found a great little Midtown hotel online called the Pod Hotel.  I flew out for free on Virgin America. (my airline has a reciprocal agreement with them) The trip was absolutely perfect.  I geeked-out at several museums.  I went to one very powerfully emotional musical.  I roamed Manhattan.  I had lots of sex.  Like I said, the trip was perfect.  I even started to joke about the trip by calling it my sex-cation.  ;-)

On that note, I have to admit that I was actually surprised by how uptight New Yorkers were about sex.  Maybe it has something to do with living in a city that embraces sexuality in so many ways.  I thought I would take a very direct approach, this was NYC after all.  They invented the art of getting to the point.  However, it seemed to scare off a lot of guys.  The internet has created a very sterile approach to sexuality.  People try to weed out every guy that isn’t perfect in every way.  But, perfection doesn’t truly exist.  So, most guys just play around online.  They chat.  They cam.  They spend a lot of time alone with their hand.  Maybe I should write a whole post just about these issues.  I’m a-gonna.  For now, I’ll move one.  Regardless, here’s a couple pictures from New York.

at MoMA, in the "mark your height" room.

at MoMA, in the "mark your height" room.

on Broadway! I was just trying to give a Broadway pose. I just look crazed. It was fun trying to get this shot...

on Broadway! I was just trying to give a "Broadway" pose. I just look crazed. It was fun trying to get this shot...

having a drink with old friends and meeting new ones

having a drink with old friends and meeting new ones

In August I went home to Iowa to visit my family.  Since I haven’t been home since February of 2008, and I am trying to get back to Iowa more often, this trip was essential.  I went for seven whole days and had an incredible time.  My friend Phoenix joined me for a few of those days.  We spent the weekend in Des Moines at the Iowa State Fair and went to Des Moines’ gay bars.  The gay bars were disappointing, but the Iowa State Fair absolutely lived up to it’s reputation.  I’m not just biased, having grown up on the ISF.  It really is truly amazing.  Great food.  Great entertainment.  Great eye candy, which is why Phoenix joined me. ;-)   If you are a size queen, it’s one of the country’s largest fairs.  Just Google it to see why everyone needs to visit it before they die.

Also, while I was in Iowa, my grandmother had her 88th birthday party.  But the real surprise for me was the night I spent at the 2009 Sprint Car Nationals.  Um, yeah, you heard me correctly.  It went against everything that I believe in, and I had an truly incredible time.  Sometimes you just have to say, “Fuck it. I’m gonna relax and have fun.”  It was awesome.  I’m not sure I’ll ever go again, but I’m glad I went this time.  Overall the trip was great.  I spent a lot of time with my grandma, and I finally met my youngest nephew Cash.

Phoenix and I, posing with the Iowa State Fair Ribbons.

Phoenix and I, posing with the Iowa State Fair Ribbons.

Here I am posing with a sprint car. Don't you think I fit right in?

Here I am posing with a sprint car. Don't you think I fit right in?

That just about sums up my summer.  Be sure to check out all my photos on flickr.  So far, I just have the NY ones loaded.  The Iowa ones will be up soon.

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Just the news…please.

July 23, 2009 · 1 Comment

Not too long ago, I had a ritual.  I would wake up, stumble to the corner café, read the news, and get high on coffee.  Coupled with the amazing people-watching, it was a spiritual experience.  I don’t know for sure when it happened, but something ruined my high.  I still go to the café and get high on coffee, but I can’t tolerate reading the news.  It’s not just that it’s so negative.  It’s that, on top of the negativity, the news has been dramatized.

It has been said that I enjoy drama.  This is a truth.  I do love a great drama.  But the joy of escaping into an intense drama (books, movies, or otherwise) has always been deeply tied to the inevitable return to reality.  That’s what makes the drama enjoyable–it’s not reality.  But, I need reality.  We all do.  We all need to be connected to the reality of the world around us.  The problem is that we no longer can get the news without the drama.  Front page articles in major US newspapers are reading more and more like editorials and op-eds.  Less and less it seems that we are just given the facts and allowed to develop our own opinion.

The result is that I must read a wide variety of articles covering the same topic in order to get all the facts.  This isn’t a bad practice.  It’s just time consuming.  And, it means that I have to also sift through a lot of crap.  And, let’s face it, I just want the news.  I don’t want a writer’s opinion of the news.  Or a worse trend, writers filling their space with opinionated quotes from people.  Just the facts, please, just the facts.

I think this is a huge part of the downfall of American journalism.  They’ve lost the ability to investigate or report.  The newspaper companies like to blame the internet.  But, in reality, the newspapers are failing because they are crap.  People no longer trust them for the news.  The very fact that papers can be clearly divided into a liberal or conservative groups, is proof that good journalism is dead.  In addition, the belief of the reader that they can only read papers that have the same political sway as them is proof that we’ve settled for this truth.  Journalism is dead.

The whole situation has left me feeling frustrated with and apathetic about the news.  We don’t need to make the current issues seem any better or worse than they are.  They are what they are.  So please just report them that way.

This is just my opinion.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Current Events · Food for Thought · Rants

Stinky

July 21, 2009 · 2 Comments

I must have mentioned before that my least favorite part of my job is not dealing with difficult passengers.  It’s dealing with difficult flight attendants.  The passengers come and go, but when I work with someone that is difficult, I’m stuck with them for 3 days.

Usually the problem is laziness.  It’s like pulling teeth to get certain co-workers off their asses to do anything.  They just want to sit and read.  Or worse, stand in the galley and talk about themselves.  They’ll make sarcastic comments like, “Oooo, look at the super stew.” This is the response I get for answering a call button immediately instead of letting the passenger sit and wait and re-ring it several times.  To their credit, they are so tuned-out that they didn’t even hear the call button.  But, this wasn’t the problem with a male flight attendant who shall be known as Stinky.

Stinky falls into the category of flight attendants who have personal hygiene issues.  Stinky is a nice guy.  He really is.  I have flown with him before and enjoyed it.  Clearly, for Stinky, things have changed.  On my way to the gate, I saw Stinky and didn’t even recognize him.  His hair is grown out and rather unkempt.  He has a beard.  And the uniform…  Oy.  Ill-fitting and dirty.  He was wearing slip-on athletic shoes that his roommate left behind, “They looked fine to me, so I took ‘em.  They did have an odd smell though…(chuckle, chuckle)”

And did they ever.  Stinky was wearing what I can only assume were decades-old, white socks.  I’m not sure if the smell was coming from the socks or the dirty brown shoes.  But, he was completely unfazed by them.  He insisted on crossing his leg with his foot pointing directed at me.  Despite my vigorous fanning with a safety information card, he never seemed to get the clue.  I like this guy, actually, and I just didn’t have the heart to practice my recent decision to be more direct.  I tried.  I just couldn’t tell him.  What can I say, I’m a work in progress.  That’s why I blog.

On top of the shoes, Stinky used an old-school brown hanky to blow his nose into and then stuff back into his pocket.  He did this several times a flight.  That is something my grandpa would do.  I thought it was gross then, and now it just seems downright unsanitary.  Although, considering that he picked his nose on the jump-seat and hocked loogies into the trash while he was pouring drinks, I don’t know why I didn’t expect him to also reuse the same hanky for three days.  I mean, it only makes sense.

I totally forgot the best part about stinky.  He cross-dresses.  Talk about an interesting mix.  He is an über-dude with a mountain-man beard, unkempt hair, poor hygiene, who likes to duct-tape his man-breasts together to make some cleavage and put on a fabulous pair of pumps.  eh-hem. Nobody puts baby in a corner…  or a box.  Stereotypes be damned!  Maybe this is why I like the guy.  He just is.  Take him or leave him.  Although, that doesn’t mean he has chosen an appropriate career path.

My airline is in the process of changing our uniforms a bit.  They are making the futile attempt of making the flight attendants look nicer.  One of the changes is that we can no longer wear brown dress shoes, only black.  Stinky informed me that he had a nice pair of combat boots at home that he probably was going to wear.  They were black after all.  Oh Stinky, he’s trying.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Flight Attendant · Humor · Rants
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Shit, Fuck, Asshole, and Other Various Stress Relievers

July 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Shit, Fuck, Asshole, and Other Various Stress Relievers.  That was my first attempt at titling this post.  I immediately rethought my choice of words.  Not because I have a problem with putting swear words in the title of a post, hell no. It just seemed a little, eh-hem, how to do I put it nicely…well, gay sexual.  Obviously, I don’t have a problem with gay sex.  But, I didn’t want to mislead readers into thinking that I was writing about how sex can relieve stress.  I’ll save that for later.

I’m once again writing about swearing.  I found a very interesting article online.  It discusses the reasoning behind our swearing.  Check it out.  In case you don’t care to read it, let me break it down for you:  Swearing helps relieve pain and stress; the benefits decrease if you do it too much.  There you have it.  FUCK!

I sure do feel better.

I should perhaps refer you to one of my earlier posts on swearing entitled, @$%#! It’s one of my all-time favorite posts.  And, it gives you a little history of me and swearing.  SHIT! Sorry, I was feeling a little tense all of a sudden.

I think that swearing is one of the biggest guilty pleasures of most Christians.  Many won’t admit to it.  But, it is an amazing stress reliever.  When I was in Bible College, my friends and I would throw out a “shit” or a “bitch,” possibly an “asshole” every now and then.  You know, behind closed doors.  It was a guaranteed laugh.  There was something just wonderfully inappropriate about it.  Oh yeah, another great stress reliever that many Christians will not admit to enjoying is porn, soft and hardcore.  But that really should be saved for another post.  :-)   I can’t wait to see if anyone is brave enough to admit to that one in my comment section.  And not in a “I used to struggle with porn” sort of way, but a “yeah, I like porn” sort of way.  I doubt it.

Now that I’ve officially offended, pissed off, or lost half of my readers, I can safely say this, “Congratulations, fuckers, you made to the end of my post.”  Don’t hold in that nice and juicy expletive that has been building up for days.  Get creative with it.  It very well may be the remedy for what ails you.  SHITFUCK, ASSHAT, BITCHY BITCHERSON!

And, no, thank you very much, I do not have Tourette’s.

p.s. I decided to leave the title as is. It just gave me too much joy.  Which, in turn, is another great stress reliever.

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Give me that phone…So I can whack you over the head with it!

July 12, 2009 · 2 Comments

I’ve been rather silent on my blog lately.  We’ve established that.  For those of you that remember, I have lots of issues with electronics–cell phones in particular.  I love electronics, but I hate the way people abuse them.  Instead of linking you to my past posts, I have created a nice bullet list of my biggest peeves…

  • Please, please, please do not talk on your phone while you’re in a public restroom.  Especially if you are two feet from me, don’t say, “No, I’m not doing anything…”
  • If you’re going to text, at least have the consideration to step to the side of the sidewalk.  Definitely don’t try to cross the street and text at the same time.
  • Why would you ever drive and text?  I don’t care how good you think you are at multi-tasking.  eh-hmm.
  • Just because you are talking on your private cell phone does not mean that you are in a private place.  Conversations, including break-ups, should wait until you are alone.  The worst place to break-up with someone over the phone is while you are on a public bus.
  • If you are in a movie, just turn the fucking thing off.  Really? You are going to pay $12 to watch an average movie, not to mention the $10 for snacks, and you are not even going to watch it?

Oh, that always feels so good to get it out.  Good therapy.  I’ve really been working at just minding my own business.  I really have.  This one issue just gets under my skin.  It’s the worst on the airplane, which is probably source of these issues anyway.  I’ve taken to just ignoring those who ignore me.  If you have your cell phone to your ear while you walk on the plane, talk to ya later.  If you aren’t willing to take your earbuds out of your ears when I am trying to get your drink order, and you just keep saying “what?”  Next. If I have time later, I’ll come back.

I’ve decided that since I can’t change anyone else’s behavior, I’ll change mine.  It’s my goal the next time someone decides to talk on their cell in the neighboring stall to develop a bad case of the dry heaves.  I mean gut-wrenching.  That’ll shut him up, right?  If someone wants to talk about their girlfriend’s weird-shaped vagina on the J-Church MUNI train, fine.  I’m going to record it with my new voice recording app on the iPhone.  And, yes, there’s an app for that.  I may even post it on this blog, we’ll see how juicy it gets.  Perhaps that was a bad choice of words…  I totally just grossed myself out.

I’ve already asked numerous people in the row in front of me to stop texting or talking on their phone during the movie.  If that doesn’t work, I move.   I’m up for suggestions.  I think we are a creative bunch of people.  Let’s take down these rudey-rudersons one cell phone at a time!  The one thing I would like to do the most is grab their phone out of their hands and whack ‘em over the noggin with it.  But, that would be rude.

Don't Do It!!! :-) Seriously.

Don't Do It!!! :-) Seriously.

UPDATE:  I no sooner finished this post when I came across this gem.  MSNBC reported on a girl who fell into an open manhole while texting.  I’d to hear your comments on this one–both raunchy and G-rated.  The possibilities are endless.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Flight Attendant · Food for Thought · Rants
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