Vote Now

Let's all just take a moment to admire today's houseboy before mrpeenee wanders off into another of my long-winded stories, shall we?

There, isn't that better?  Now for a story with wind of great length:

We are in a quandary.  Our dear friend The Fashion Sensation has had Parkinson's disease for several years; her condition has worsened dramatically over the last two years.  That would, of course, be enough to cause grave distress among her friends.  The quandary arises because of her wholehearted embrace of a string of what I think are crazyass bad decisions, to wit, quit her big shot, career defining Important Job, divorce her odd, but charming husband, and move off to a farm outside Toronto to live with some guy she met online last spring and with whom she has been conducting a torrid Skype-based affair.

And you wonder why my stories are long-winded.

I tried addressing my concerns with her, using small, firm words, particularly the one that living in Toronto would expose her to snow. But, since she grew up in some godforsaken state abutting Canadia richly supplied in frozen tundra, she apparently does not share my deep seated and wholly sensible suspicion of the stuff.

I would have expanded my objections to include the fact she has been considering this since April, but waited to spring on her unsuspecting hubby until two days before they were supposed to leave on a trip to Berlin (in January?) when he was sick in bed the fact that she has filed for divorce.  Uh, honey?  So making it hard for me to stay on your side.

Plus, I'm constantly distracted by her attempts to expand on the details of how Skype Love works between man and woman.  Why do straight women think gay men need tutorials?  I know how the plumbing operates; the rest does not need my attention.  Do I share the finer points of felching?  No.

So anyway, in a totally cowardly way, I have been avoiding conversations, even emails because I feel like if I really am convinced this is the Big Mess Express, I should have intervened and done so before now.  And tonight when she wrote to say today was her birthday and could we go out for brunch this weekend did not help the "I am Such a Bad Friend/Worm/Dog" sensation.

In my defense, let me remind the court that my good pal Brian once took me aside to warn me the guy over whom I was making a fool of myself didn't love me, would never love me, and that I should just move on.  You can see where this is going, right?  Yes, the guy was R Man and by ignoring Brian's advice, I opened myself to thirty years of wedded bliss.  I have ever since then been reluctant to hand out  advice.

Maybe this is The Fashion Sensation's big, last chance at happiness.  What do I know?

I'll tell you what I know.  The Canadian told her he wanted to take care of her.  Not was willing to.  Wanted to.  I took care of R Man at the end and it was awful, heart-breaking, exhausting work.  I'm glad I did it, for my sake as well as R's, but to say it's something you want?  Ick.  Plus he writes her long letters with darling water colours and drawings and pressed leaves and, I don't know, glitter rainbows.  Probably.  Behavior I expect more from a teenage gay boy.  Not some guy I'm interested in handing over an ailing old friend.

I was going to throw this open to a vote, should I or shouldn't I hurl myself into the breach with a loud "Get a grip honey,"  But really it's too late.  I'll just go to brunch and see what happens.

Instead, we can vote on which houseboy you prefer, Brock (above) or Santiago (below).

The Return of peenee

Yes, I'm back, thank you.  Secret Agent Fred and I had a lovely time in New Orleans, although I seem to remember more of it than Fred does.  Poor dear was just the teensiest bit too enthusiastic in celebrating the New Orleans sport of drinking oneself blind.

We also got to hang out with that bloggers' blogger, Jason, from Night is Half Gone and he and I had a very amusing afternoon eating beignets (there are some New Orleans cliches you simply have to embrace) and talking blogger talk, which essentially meant we were gossiping about you, our dear, dear readers.  My dears, the things Jason said about you.  Of course, I tried to defend you, but he was not to be denied.  For a fairly reasonable fee, I will forward you the filth he poured out about you.  Please allow sufficient time for me to make it up.

So we saw many cute boys, some of whom seem to be lost in Fred's bourbon fueled mists, but none of whom were this cute.

Now that I'm back, I've turned my attention once again to the L.A. Times' crossword puzzle which today included the clue:

"Rock from a Sock"

I was eventually able to chisel out the answer as being:

"See Stars" or possibly "Sees Tars"

Am I missing something?  I mean, I want my puzzles to be challenging, but including simple gibberish seems to be cheating.  Does this make sense to anybody?

Travel Time

Speaking of drinking, Secret Agent Fred and I are off for the bright lights of New Orleans on Saturday for a week.  Unless the world ends today.

Yall have a lovely Christmas and I'll be back on the Feast of Steven, deep and crisp and even.

This Just In:

mrpeenee is just the teensiest bit drunk.  We went out tonight with friends to see the one man show of Leslie Jordan, who is, as a side note, like mrpeenee also a 57 year old big sissy from the South, so a lot of his stories resonated, except for the ones about doing speed fueled drag as a teenager.   Still, it was pretty amusing.

The show required a two-drink-minimum, so I had a couple of Cosmos, because I am a Lady, and they were tasty, tasty, tasty, but STRONG.  So I'm a little drunk.

Back in the day, mrpeeenee was a Big Mess.  A Big Drunk Mess.  As loaded as I am at this moment was merely a brief stop on the Big Drunk Mess Line; it was the I Think I'll Have Another Pitcher of Margaritas stop.  So very much not happy times.  Let me just say how very glad I am to no longer be on that sloppy train.  Plus typing is hard when ones fingers seem slightly unconnected.

Instead, muscle pussy:

Just Answer the Question

Dearies, so sorry to be sort of AWOL lately (did you notice?  Shut up.)  Aunt peenee has been involved in a bad patch of neck-and-back aches and crouching over a keyboard to knock out a blog post was just so not appealing.

In the midst of my personal Hunchback Festival, I had to go run a bunch of errands.  Isn't that always the way?  On the list was a smog certification test for my car so I trotted on down to a typically grimy little garage fitted out with all those oily garage-type thingies, one astonishingly cute technician and the issue of W magazine that had a feature about Chris Hemsworth.  Of course.  I do so love living in San Francisco.

To kill some time, I limped over to a hideous nearby cafe.  Lit with mercury vapor lamps, it had the same charming ambiance of the New Orleans police department's holding cells.  How, you ask, does mrpeenee know what the inside of the NOPD lockdown looks like? Let's stay on point here, shall we?

While trying to find an empty seat for me and what they cynically claimed was coffee, I realized all the management, staff and clientele looked like their resumes (or rap sheets) would include the phrase "sheltered workshop."  Prominently.  Amazingly, the best available table was right next to two very good looking men even more out of place in the joint than I was.

It didn't take me long to realize it was a job interview.  In a skeezy cafe at 5:30 in a questionable part of town.  Hmmm.  The guy interviewing was using all those pointless questions H.R. teaches clueless management, like "If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would be?'  instead of "Can you do this job?" and "Will the petty cash box be safe around you?"  There was lots of pointless yammering about "team evolution."  It's possible the word "paradigm" was let loose.

Since the interviewee looked like this

except in a navy blue sweater, or as much of the sweater as could stretch over his massive massiveness, I briefly entertained myself by wondering if it was possible that he was shooting for a job in the pornography field.  It certainly seems like it would have been an excellent career choice.  Then I remembered that almost certainly a porn interview would have been much more along the lines of "Let me see it.  Hard."  Which would have been okay with me and probably the rest of the cafe.  Certainly the barista.  It also would have been more useful than asking "What do you think your personal weakness in a group dynamic might be?" although that could apply to the world of smut too.

I do so love living in San Francisco.

TCB

Christmas is upon us once again.  Perhaps you had heard?  Just in case you hadn't here is some Xmas  smut.  You know somewhere, someone has a freak on for this stuff cause, you know, a lid for every pot and all that.

At lunch today, I realized it's not even a week into December and I am already sick of holiday music, washed up singers (looking at you, Rod Stewart) puking up sickly retreads of tunes trying very hard to be ecumenical by not mentioning Jeebus Whatshisname during a holiday inspired by his birthfday.  It's not that I've grown sick of them, it's more that I reached my saturation point years ago and now the instant they roll back around, I am ready to do violence at the first tinkling strain I hear of Silent Night.

Who wants this crap?  Who thought it would be a good idea to see what Ella Fitzgerald could do with Little Drummer Boy?  I am fully prepared to give my business to any bar, restaurant or store that puts up a sign saying "Carol Free Zone."

As an anodyne to the Bangles covering Blue Christmas and all the other seasonal pap out there, let me offer the Verve remix of Nina Simone's Take Care of Business.  A few years ago, the venerable jazz label Verve shared their fabulous catalogue with modern producers and DJs who wanted to update these classics with some very mixed results.  This is, I think, one of the most successful.

I don't think you can refer to the lyrics as double entendres, they are so thinly veiled.  "O lawd, don't keep me waiting / Be as firm as can be" is more like a single entendre, or 1.5 at best.

The whole is very loose-limbed and crazy (with trombones!  And castanets!) especially for a Simone song, but then, Our Lady of Did I Ask You, Motherfucker? shows up to very firmly kick the project's butt into gear and the contrast makes things fascinating.

Take it away, Miss Simone:

Cat Tales

Secret Agent Fred has been staying at Chez peenee for a while and I'm helping him take care of his elderly cat, Steve, by administering doses of antibiotics while Fred is out being a SLUTTY, SLUTTY JEZEBEL WHORE FUDGEPACKING STRUMPET.  Not that I mind of course.

What's striking is the difference between Steve and my cat Saki.  Saki is a vicious little shit (he has a permanent big red "CAUTION" on his file at the vet's and two of my Thanksgiving guests ignored my sternly worded warning to leave him alone, to their later bleeding regret.  In their defense, he is adorable.  But vicious.) Steve, on the other hand, is the most amenable, affectionate, sociable cat I've ever run across.  But while I can always get medicine down Saki's gullet with nothing more than a general air of irritation from him, Steve turns into a whirling dervish, bucking and astonishingly adept at keeping the dropper out of his mouth.   He's fast for an old codger.  At least he doesn't try to scratch.  I shudder to think of the damage that Saki could dish out if he disliked getting dosed the way Steve does.

Also, I have a hard time blaming Steve; the medicine smells strongly like old bananas and seems to be upsetting his stomach.  Antibiotics do the same thing to me, so I'm sympathetic.  Still, his coughing sneezing fits sling cat snot widely, so the sooner all this is behind us the better.

Anyway, here I am granma peenee pottering around with the cats in a frumpy cardigan while Fred is out terrorizing queer bars.  NOT THAT I MIND.  Of course not.  It's just when I pictured minding pussy in my dotage I was thinking more along the lines of this.

I love the astonished look on that big lug's face when things get out of hand, so to speak.

Or this

Or something.