Once upon a time, I uploaded a picture to Flickr.  A really nice guy commented on this crappy camera phone picture and I was so dumbfounded and dumb and didn’t say anything back.  Because I’m socially retarded.  Anyhow, while looking at his photos I kind of come to the conclusion that he is gay which is something I find beautifully reassuring.  Myself, a hulking spaz of a gay man crowing over his new kitchen appliance gets a lovely comment back from a complete stranger online who also happens to be gay and loves the same kitchen appliances.

A handful of things came of this.  I finally figured out how to organically link through to find new photographers on Flickr.  I began browsing through the people he follows and knows and I find that I have been kind of touched by a member of this big’ole group of handsome, rugged, disgustingly talented photographers who happen to be gay.  (Touched in a metaphorical way, not actually touched.  I wish.)  I then became completely overwhelmed by the beauty of the work by some of the photographers on Flickr, as well as the beauty of some of the photographers on Flickr.  (sigh)

Anyhow, one of these photogs is a dashingly handsome man who has recently revealed that he is starting a relationship with someone who lives thousands of miles and an ocean away.  They are using Skype to keep in touch and have plans to spend time together later on in the year.  My head exploded from the adorability of it all.  Ridiculously handsome men finding one another and being all involved with each other on different continents.  Wow.

I learned a lot from this little jaunt into cyberspace:

• I must either figure out how to woo ridiculously handsome men via Skype or move to Canada or the UK or someplace where these ridiculously handsome men live.  (I jest!  Or do I?)
• We are more connected than we can fully comprehend and I’m part of a beautiful extended family of gay men the world over.
• Beautiful and unexpected things can happen in this world for people you have never met and know nothing about.
• Being terrified of playing with photography because there are ridiculously good looking people out there who are ridiculously great artists is understandable, but essentially silly and counterproductive.  (Yeah, I didn’t really tie that one in well with the post, but I’m throwing it in here anyway.)

Lastly, though this is an area in which I have not lost or given up hope:

There is always hope and the possibility of finding a handsome man out there who is will be just as jazzed about me and I will be thrilled about him.  Maybe even I will stumble onto the prince charming of my dreams and we will date via Skype and I will move to whatever foreign land he hails from and we will live happily ever after THE END.  Or maybe he’ll move here and live with me and happily ever after blah, blah…  Or maybe some other fun adventure awaits?!

No matter what, there is an adventure out there to be had, and I will have it!

Yes, it is supposed to look like that.  It’s saturated and contrasty and rather awful.  I blame it on the MacBook I was using at the time.  And exhaustion.  I had originally mutilated this image in January/February of last year to to showcase the logo which I proudly made for this site.  The outcome was this:

Apparently I cut back on the blur, but spared no contrast or saturation.  This remained my masthead for quite some time until I grew to hate the template I was using.  It was too dark and didn’t feel very welcoming so I updated the template to the lovely and more sparse one you can see here now.  After getting the new theme up and running I ran out of steam.  By the time I got around to updating the default masthead with my logo I had upgraded my OS which caused me to lose compatibility with several older programs I was using and had loved.

(The theme you see now may or may not be the one I’m talking about here for those of you reading this post in the future.  For those of you who travel about in blue boxes which are bigger on the inside, you also may see something dramatically different.  If you are viewing this at a time/place/dimension where I’ve made some very different stylistic choices, please just imagine a very simple white background with black and greyish-blue sans-serif typefaces.)

This week I finally started to get set up on my iMac and quickly mashed together the red thing you see at the top of the page.  I took that picture with my iPhone and Hipstamatic a while ago and I liked the red color.  I’m not totally sold on it for the long-term but we shall see what happens.  Any thoughts on the one below?  Do you like it better or worse than the current spicy red thing?

Seconds after taking this picture, the very young manager of Pier 1 came over to see what I was so amused with. He smiled wanly, obviously assessing damage, wondering how long it had been there, and debating whether it should be fixed immediately or if it could wait. Five seconds later he was calling associates over and tring to fix the new decorative labels before going to get a wet cloth to finish the job.

Nothing says, “it’s going to be a great morning!” like a quad-shot grande iced caramel machiatto. Okay, maybe an extra shot would get the point across even better. Or at least quicker.