Additionally, I have a Very Big & Important Thing which I’m working on for work.  It’s very BIG and VERY important.  Because I don’t talk about my work for a vast multitude of reasons, I’m not able to go into much detail other than it’s consuming a very large amount of my time.  I’ve handled a similar Thing for work in the past which basically took 80 hours a week for over the course of more than a month to take care of, though this time around it’s not been quite so rough (so far *knocks on wood*).  This Very Big & Important Thing will take up a lot of my time through mid-late April.  Very Good things could happen as a result of this going well, but nothing is set in stone.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be a slacker here for a bit.  The Hulett Plumbing Disaster will be concluded this week, I swear upon my iPhone that it will be done.

Blerg.

This sequence, and most importantly the song, were replaced recently with a new opening theme.  The new theme is a song which was written by The Chambers Brothers, “Time Has Come Today“.  I may be a premature fuddy-duddy, but I think that this is far from the most appropriate or stirring music for the scope of American Experience.  “Time Has Come Today” is a good song on its own and has therefore been used extensively all over the media and television for thousands of different things.  But these thousands of different fleeting things are not American Experience, which I feel will stand the test of time for generations as quality media and film-making.  I submitted feedback on the program’s home page at PBS and I hope that it will be considered.

I’ve always enjoyed the exceptionally high quality of the subject material, writing, editing, photography and music on American Experience.  The program provides some of the most enriching content available on television, and now online, today.

It may seem trivial, but one of my favorite parts of the program has been the opening sequence.  Like a good palette cleanser before a fine meal, the two previous sequences helped clear my mind and prepare for the program set before me.  They were both exceptionally stirring and worked with the sublime images to pull me from my current surroundings into the story I was about to enjoy.  Those themes were classic and timeless and will never age or do injustice to the content of the films shown on the program.

I would politely request that you reconsider the use of “Time Has Come Today” as the theme music for the program.  I understand that it is more contemporary and that may have been a deciding factor for its use.  I argue that contemporary song, which is often overused for television and radio promotion, does not suit the depth, breadth, and richness of the films presented on American Experience.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to the continued excellence of the films and documentaries which has not changed.

In any case, I strongly recommend that you head over to their site now and watch some of their programs.  There are dozens available online in their entirety.  If you have never seen American Experience you need to drop what you are doing this instant and go watch a film right now.  I would recommend their program on Walt Whitman for your consideration.  I cried multiple times.

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.

But more than anything I realized that the biggest issues I have had with Facebook were caused by the ways I was choosing to use it.  It just wasn’t working for me.  I would self-plagiarize and waste material I would have otherwise spun into posts here to create one-liner status updates dedicated to getting responses.  I was allowing myself to become engrossed in the ebb and flow of the updates and posts by my contacts that I was losing track of my own personal communication and life.  I realized I was the defective one in the “relationship”. (Boy, isn’t that always the case!)

I was referred to an interesting article from TIME about, of all things, reality TV by, of all people, Santino Rice on Twitter which I found very interesting:

And the personality becomes the persona. Every time you sign up for a new social-networking service, you make decisions about, literally, who you want to be. You package yourself — choose an avatar, pick a name, state your status — not unlike a storyteller creating a character or a publicist positioning a client. You can be professional on LinkedIn, flippant on Facebook and epigrammatic on Twitter. What’s more, each of these representations can be very different and yet entirely authentic. Like a reality producer in a video bay, you edit yourself to fit the context.

It’s so true and I have to confront the fact that I’m a control freak!  I didn’t like the level of control Facebook was giving me to portray the person I feel I am.  I like to have the ability to pick and choose what I tell people dynamically and not have it expressed through automated scripts or online communal behavior.  This is something we do naturally in the course of a personal conversation.  My hangup is that what happens naturally face to face, melts away in the new world of social networking with these larger “whole life” sites like Facebook.

I had been recently contemplating the decline in my usage of text messaging over the last year.  I used to send and receive in the neighborhood of 6,000 text messages a month.  That number has fallen by two thirds.  I used to very directly communicate with the people who I consider important in my life and have been getting lazy by just browsing status updates and had lost a true dialogue with them.  I need to re-kindle that level of communication with the people I care about.  It takes more effort, but it is worth it.

So is Facebook the evil and awful thing I was unsuccessfully writing about previously?  Yes and no.  They have made choices to strip away layers of privacy, which infuriates me.  However, in light of the Google Buzz debacle, Facebook really aren’t so bad in a lot of ways.  Google, please re-read your own tenets of privacy and kill Buzz.  I have realized that the real problem was the fact that I was having issues with everything.  Facebook may be the facilitator for a lot of those issues, but I was the only one who was being affected, so therefore it was my problem.  It took a small ah-ha moment for me to realize I had the ability to choose to not participate and I’m really okay with that.  Even if all the cool kids are doing it.  And their moms.

A delightful restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City. Mister Frisky approved!

The most powerful moment I remember took place on one of my birthdays when I was probably around the age of 10.  Though I don’t remember which birthday it was, I will remember the details forever.  My brother and I have birthdays which fall within two days of one another and for our birthday dinner, my mom took us to Sizzler which was a very special treat at that time.  We had waited in line and made our way to the counter to order when I noticed the boy behind the counter.  This wasn’t the person taking our orders, just an average guy who was filling glasses to take to people’s tables.

He was skinny, average height, medium length hair and something about him completely entranced me.  I was watching him as he was emptying the dishwasher behind the counter and stacking the glasses, I couldn’t tell if it was how he was moving or looked or what but I couldn’t look away.   I watched him grab the last glass from the dishwasher, setting it under the soda dispenser to fill it and watching the glass suddenly explode.  He apologized to his superior, looking startled and upset, and began cleaning up the mess.  The trance was broken in that moment and I was completely overwhelmed by this unidentified emotional response and a desire to reach out to him.  Not because the incident had been upsetting but because in an unknown way I felt like we shared something in common.

Another strong moment I remember was the first time I watched To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar starring Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo.  The characters are men.  Men who like men.  Men who have the audacity to live out their lives the way they see fit in the face of mainstream culture.  The story takes these amazing drag queens (and drag princess), a subset of the gay minority, and throws them into a situation where they couldn’t possibly be any less discordant with their environment.  In spite of that they go on to promote the values of self-worth, strength of character, respect and true compassion.

By looking at them as queens, not just as gay men, it took the concept of being gay and made it appear to be incidental to the process of living a life you are proud of and choosing to be real and true to yourself.  The first time I watched this it took everything in me not to bawl, the whole damn movie was a religious experience for my young teenage self.  I felt this emotional response which told me I was less alone than I felt and that I would be able to find comfort and greater personal understanding if I could only figure out what I was missing.

Later in life I found myself.  I connected with all these feelings which had been laying dormant for all those years.  I can’t describe to you the sense of calm, comfort and strength I felt when I realized I was gay because I knew that I was not alone.  There were real people doing real things in real places who were gay.  There were stories written by and about people like me and people with dreams beyond my own which gave me reason for hope and happiness.  There were a multitude of other emotions and fears and worries that bombarded me in the following days and weeks but in quiet moments I still felt the calm, comfort and strength in understanding that I was not alone.

I’ve been sick for the last week and have been forced to take time off combat a sinus infection and to recuperate.  The final (?) chapter of The Hulett Plumbing Disaster will be coming this week along with a new seasonal series this which I’m retardedly excited about.  That is, of course, if I am able to get my house cleaned up and get some studying done for a work related project.  When these posts do hit though, both will contain some twists, turns and surprises which I hope you will find as interesting and exciting as I have.

P.S.  Am I the only one who’s home seems to fall completely to pieces and become an epic disaster when sick?  Hopefully I’m not alone here, otherwise I may have to figure out how to capture and market this amazing talent I have.  It looks like a bomb went off and I don’t even know where to start.

My life pretty much rebooted four and a half years ago when I came out and the events which took place over those first months left me in a state where I had to start my life over from scratch. I had almost literally nothing. My car was totaled, I had no job or money, I was living in a new and unfamiliar place, and I felt very much alone in this world. All I really had were my laptop, cell phone and a month of rent paid up front. This was the beginning of my very literal renaissance, my rebirth.

Four and a half years later I have a lovely home that is my very own. I have a great job which I’m now beginning to see as a career. I have a reliable car which is something I’ll never take for granted. I have good friends who I love dearly and have been there for me more times than I can count. All of this adds up to make my full and satisfying life which, in many ways, is still just getting started.

Tomorrow I will be 25 years old and as implausible and extraordinary as that seems to me, taken in the context of my implausible and extraordinary life, I suppose it makes sense.

It turns out that the raccoon was actually a rather amazing cluster of roots which was astounding.  In November they had pulled out a small wad of roots which had seemed reasonable and everything went back to normal.  Since that time what was left in the pipe had most likely been cut loose in November and had come together, Megazord style, to create a bigger and badder beast than before.  Even more amazingly, despite the sheer volume of material which had been brought up, my sewer line was still completely blocked.  Still.  Plumber B seemed to be convinced that we were on the final stretch, just another run of his magical machine and we would surely get it all fixed. Huzzah!

I went back to watching Netflix as the noises started back up and I took a deep breath, relieved to think that I would most likely be back in business shortly.  I could go back to normalcy and all would be well.  About 30 minutes later, I began to wonder why I hadn’t been drinking more as the noises changed and the machine stopped and Plumber A started making frantic sounds and Plumber B ran out to their truck for tools.  I ventured in to the bathroom to see them trying to put their mighty auger machine back together.  Their nearly brand-new mighty auger machine was no match for my home and I was informed that my entire sewer line was most likely completely gone.  But, if they could get their machine repaired and get the 80 feet of auger out of my sewer line they would try one more time with a different size blade.

Wait… what?  I need to replace my entire sewer line?!

What little amount of my soul which was left at this point was beginning to wither and die.  They eventually got the auger repaired and retracted after much huffing and puffing and muttered curses and started to run it one last time.  It promptly bypassed my sewer and shot straight up the vent line and come out on top of my house.  Plumber B, was starting to crack around the edges.  He was a really nice guy but I could tell this was uncharted territory for him and he was starting to get edgy.  After they managed to get the whole damn thing reeled back in I was brought into the bathroom for the results.

“Um, I hate to say this, but you are probably going to want to call the city or something tomorrow.  Or, ya know, you could call another company with a bigger auger,” Plumber A said while staring at his hands, wiping them in a nervous and exhausted manner.  “We would run the camera down there, but ya can’t really see anything if the line is full.  From what I can tell, it looks like that whole thing is gone.  If ya can get it cleared or they can scope it, let me know what they quote ya to replace the line and I’ll beat their quote.  A lot of guys’ll try and charge too much.”

My sewer was dead and the plumbers I had called out to my house weren’t able to fix it, or even kind of jury-rig it so I could take a sponge bath.  What’s more, they were certain I needed to replace it all and I got the impression that I was screwed until that happened.  I thanked them for their time and saw them out as the desperation started to settle in.

My friend had to go home as he had work in the morning and I was then left to my own devices.  My bathroom looked like the gates of hell had opened up and sprayed the remains of the most ancient rotting souls onto every conceivable surface, I could still see water sitting in the sewer line where my toilet was usually perched and I felt dead and empty on the inside.  In the quiet, the fetid smell of wet iron and decay started to hit me and I wanted to just go far away from my home and never return.  For a week I had been taking showers with just a couple gallons of water as the drain was slow.  That morning I hadn’t been able to shower at all before work and I wasn’t sure I could do it again.  At this point, I couldn’t even relieve myself in my own house.

I didn’t even have enough energy to cry at that point, though I really wanted to, so I started on the hunt for another plumber.  I called Roto Rooter, who had been recommended by the original plumbers and they said they would dispatch someone to my home within two hours.  I curled up on the couch and just sort of sat there in numb silence, my head buzzing with the numbers and terrifying idea that I need to replace my sewer line.  I would be ruined.  I was facing a financial hurdle, which I had researched as a worst-case scenario, that I wasn’t sure I could get over.

To be continued…

I’m in love with the iPad. It rather neatly resolves the dillema I’ve documented in the past regarding my computing needs. I have always disliked the idea having more than one computer. I like elegant gadget solutions as I can’t afford to buy different devices frequently and I’m amazingly OCD so I don’t like overcomplicating things. I’ll be saving a huge amount of money getting an iMac and iPad instead of an iMac and MacBook Pro.

The vitriol about what the iPad isn’t has been unending and I think the haters are all just missing the bigger picture. iPad is great, people who don’t like it aren’t required to like it. The people who weren’t planning on buying one anyway need to shut the hell up already, obviously it wasn’t made for them. I had a huge post coming together about this and even I began to get bored with it so I will let far more eloquent and geeky people say it all for me.

TUAW’s amazing Erica Sadun, writer/developer/geek extrordinaire, wrote In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view. Jon Armstrong over at Blurbomat.com made an excellent case for Casual Computing and very clearly explains Who’s Gonna Buy That?

We are not apologists. (I’ve been clear in criticizing Apple in the past and just recently discontinued my subscription to MobileMe.) We are lovers of technology, geeks, who can see a device for what it is and it’s amazing potential as it has been realized.

P.S. Flash is the devil, HTML5 will save us from Adobe’s ever-bloating evil. I’m willing to wait for more widespread adoption.

P.P.S. The Hulett Plumbing Disaster Part II coming tomorrow!!!