It Happened Again!

While kicking ass on the treadmill this morning, listening to Madonna's "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret" live album, I was straining to sing along (out loud) while sprinting a 8.30 minute pace. All of a sudden this big muscular guy walked into the Colonial Homes workout room. I was totally caught!!!!! The only thing I could do was smile and pretend like the whole thing didn't happen!

Sadly, this isn't the first time this has happened to me! Why haven't I learned this tough lesson yet :)

Car of the Week

My first car of the week is the 1989 Merkur Scorpio! Woo Hoo!!!!

The Merkur Scorpio was a North American version of the European Scorpio Mk. The car was offered at select Lincoln-Mercury dealerships from 1988–1990. It was offered as a luxury executive type car. However, the Scorpio was also plagued by auto transmission troubles, electrical gremlins, and a wide range of reliability issues which hurt its luxury image with consumers. The failure of the Scorpio can be blamed on the Mercury Sable, as it looked very similar, was sold on the same showroom floors, and was considerablly cheaper and just about as equipped. Ford dropped the Merkur nameplate altogether after 1989. The car continued to sell in the UK and went through several name changes and design updates.





It was my dream at one point to go overseas and buy the latest redesigned Scorpio model.

I choose it as my first car of the week because it was the first car I ever bought. I got it for $2500.00! Well technically, my dad helped me pay for half of it, but I did end up paying him back. That car saw me through some tough times during my first semester of college! I pampered that car more than anything else in my life! No joke! On the weekends, I would condition the leather, vacuum the interior, and wash the outside. I used to take an ATM card, wrap it around a paper towel, and go through every nook and cranny of the car and remove all traces of dirt. I even changed the engine coolant on my own. However, I did it in the parking lot of my school, which is actually illegal. Sadly, the car started to suffer from my love of driving it. The electrical system started to break down, and there was something terribly wrong with the front wheel axle. It eventually needed about $1500 worth of work to keep it going, and as a freshman in college I certainly couldn't afford it. So one dark night, I went online, posted an ad to sell the car, and had a "cult"-buyer contact me within one week. I sold the car for $3000. I made a quick $500.00 on the sell, but I had to give $1,000 back to my dad, and $1,000 to my mom (b/c of a phone bill I wracked up during my first months at college!!). But I got to keep $500 of it!! And bought myself a Gateway Computer!!!

A&F

So at the beginning of the quarter, Abercrombie & Fitch came to PC to present students with the opportunity to apply for an internship. We had two days to learn what the guys at A&F learned in 2 years! Needless to say it was a lot of information to take in at once. But I think as a whole, everyone did a pretty good job. Here are the shirts that I did.

This past weekend I took a little time to myself and indulged in one of my favorite movies EVER: The Transporter (1 and 2). These movies are not about the plot line or the acting. No. These movies are all about the CARS! Transporter 1 featured the 1999 BMW 750iL (however, in the movie the car is referred to at the BMW 735iL).



Transporter 2 featured the 2005 Audi A8--a very sexy car!





Watching these movies reminded me of how much I really love cars. And that got me thinking about when I first started to learn about cars:

it was 1994 and I was living in Newport, RI (one of my favorite places to have ever lived!)



I was a freshman in high school and really didn't know much about anything. One afternoon, a few of my friends and I had stayed late after school, and we were all waiting to be picked up. My good friend CJ's mom was the first to pull up. Her mom drove a very classy 1994 Jaguar XJ.



I had no idea what a Jaguar even was or what it meant. My friend had to tell me that it was a very expensive car. That's really when my awareness of cars in general began to come about. In June of 1995, we moved to Yucca Valley, CA.




One night, I was with my siblings at the local grocery store (VONS) and picked up Consumer Report's best/worst cars for 1996. I ended up buying the magazine and reading it cover to cover. This was really the first time I ever remember being completely engaged with something so intently. From there I started buying Motor Trend magazine. Eventually my mom got me a subscription to it. I pretty much had a Motor Trend magazine with me at all times. We used to have to travel all over Southern CA for my younger siblings soccer games and I would always read the MT magazine while on the road. It was exciting for me to read about the latest and greatest BMW, and then actually see one on the road!

This was also the time when I began my driver's training/education. Naturally I assumed that my parents were going to get me a car of my own. I used to read the car ads in the Sunday paper and try to convince my parents to buy me cars. The summer of my Junior year in high school, I pitched a huge fit because my parents would buy me a BMW 318ti!






It was the cheapest BMW you could buy at the time. It retailed at $19,999. And somehow, in my little mind, I thought: "well it's under $20,000! it must be affordable!" Clearly, I had no concept of money, and my parents would just laugh every time I brought it up. I used to call up car manufactures and ask for brochures. They would usually send them, and I would take them apart and hang up my favorite car pictures all over my room. I even "designed" all of my school notebooks with collages of my favorite cars.

So all of this said. I have decided to start a weekly posting called: Car of the Week. Where I will blog about whatever car I like the most for that particular week. Or whatever car I hate the most for that particular week!

I have a Paris Hilton song on my ipod.

Yes. Its true. Slightly shameful. But true.

I like to think that my music selection is pretty eclectic and diverse. I have everything ranging from the Bram Stoker's Dracula Soundtrack to Mary J. Blige to....well Paris Hilton. Music has always played a big role in my life. Remembering a song is like holding onto a memory. I associate ALL OF my music with something from my life. I even have certain songs that I can only listen to during a certain season. For example, Tori Amos's From The Choirgirl Hotel will forever remind me of driving my 1989 Merkur Scorpio home for my first winter break during my freshmen year of college. The connection with that album is so strong, that it can sometimes make me feel cold. It's really amazing.

So in what capacity will this Paris Hilton song have on me? Well... for starters, it currently resides in my FIFTH work out mix on the ipod. It's the second song on the playlist. The pace of the rhythm fits perfectly with the beginning phase of my work outs. It's up beat, not too clubby, and generally happy. I kid you not-- listening to this song while running, actually helps with the releasing of endorphins! The only downfall to this is if i listen to it too much, then it will loose its affect hence my on-going search for fun, not too clubby workout music. I usually have to make a new work out mix every couple of weeks to keep things interesting! Madonna has come out with some great live albums, which are REALLY fun to listen to when working out. I find the loud applause to be particularly inspiring!

If You Can't Say Something Nice About Someone...then blog about it

Okay not really...because if you do blog some bad shit about someone, I'm sure it'll come back and bite you in the ass....

But I woke up this morning just itching to blog about New Roommate. For those who don't know, my old roommate and I had to part ways, as his beautiful fiance has relocated herself and her life to Atlanta, and the three of us in one Colonial Homes Apartment (plus two cats) just wasn't going to work. So they now reside in their new apartment at Peachtree Park--complete with large kitchen, two bathrooms, and all new appliances! I have to say that despite the inconvenience of switching roommates and the changes involved in that, it's pretty cool to see how the two of them are starting their life together.

So I am now reinventing the wheel with New Roommate. I've never really had a major problem with roommates. Living up in Washington, DC with a just-out-of-college-salary required me to learn quickly how to get along and live with strangers. My favorite roommate was the guy I lived with in DC. I rented a room in his beautifully renovated townhouse for a whopping $800.00/mo (for a ROOM!) To this day, he is someone that I consider to have had a pretty positive impact on my way of thinking. He was very wealthy for starters. He made a boat load working as some type of computer program consultant, but also had a bit of blue blood in him! But you would never know it if you just saw him on the street. He lived a very "under the radar" type of life. He also helped me get a job interview up in NYC at BBDO! Turns out his ex-bf is an AE on the Mountain Dew account! He showed me the ropes of the gay-dc life. He was pretty much like an older brother to me. He now lives in Hells Kitchen in NYC.

After my stint with DC life, I switched jobs and ended up in the suburbs of DC--or "outside the grid" as some of the more pretentious dc gays refer to it.... It was here that I got a chance to live in a $1 million home. I rented a room for $775 and had my own bathroom. It was pretty nice. All of the other roommates were gay (three total), but we all pretty much kept to ourselves and had very different lives.

Then there was one of my most favorite roommate that I had when I lived in Fairfax, a place that is in the deeper part of the suburbs of DC. She and I met when I worked for the agency that I was let go from. She and I have the exact same sense of humor and got along great--which is interesting because I typically don't get along well with girls when I live with them. It's almost always ended on a bad note.

So now there is New Roommate. What can I say!? Well nothing really, because it could easily come back and bite me in the ass! But if you have further interest in getting a feel of what New Roommate is like check out the Arrested Development, and pay particular attention to Buster!

Modern Marvels: We're All Gonna Die

I made the mistake of watching the History Channel's documentary about the prophetic end to time and the world as we know it. Complete with computer animation, ominous music, and a deep-voiced narrator, this macabre infotaining television program informed me of my own demise. My first thought: "well I guess it really won't kill me to have a Wendy's #4, no onions, with a coke because the earth will pretty much swallow me whole!" The "documentary" went on to inform me that the Mayan calendar actually stops on December 12, 2012. There is also an ancient chinese book called the I Ching (not be confused with iching) that also stops on this same date. Scientists have predicted that the earth will engage in a polar shift causing the entire inside of the earth to quake and turn. It's safe to say that after hearing about all of this I was pretty much freaked out because this would all take place when I'm 32!

Then again, there have been prophetic predictions of the world's demise for as long as stupid people are willing to believe other morons. We all remember the Y2K scare!? But to further illustrate this point, here are a list of other dates that world was supposed to have ended, according to an article in the New York Times Magazine by BENJAMIN ANASTAS (7/1/07):

Gnostics predicted the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom as early as the first century
Christians in Europe attacked pagan territories in the north to prepare for the end of the world at the first millennium
The Shakers believed the world would end in 1792
There was a “Great Disappointment” among followers of the Baptist preacher William Miller when Jesus did not return to upstate New York on Oct. 22, 1844.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have been especially prodigious with prophetic end dates: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994.

I even found the "official website" of the world's end: www.december212012.com And be sure to check out the online store, where you can purchase several well designed t-shirts that say things like 12.21.12 or "Shift Happens"--I wish I could've sat in on that meeting!!! Also available on messenger bags, baseball caps, tank tops, and jersey-shirts that looks like old baseball uniforms. Unbelievable!







I can just picture some dumbass at an amusement park wearing one of these shirts and eating a giant turkey leg!

Blog? What Blog...

So it's been 2 1/2 months...... pretty much all of third quarter since I've blogged. It was a generally shitty quarter, and that's all I have to say about that!


Let's discuss the latest assignment in the Cross-Cultural Innovations class, or CCI--if you want to sound like a government employee, which is always fun for me!!!

So first, some back-story on the class: We have weekly assignments, and we never know what they're going to be. So far, we've had to go to a random place in Atlanta, do some ethnographic research on a classmate (MY FAVORITE!!!!), and bake a cake of our ambition. This is class is amazing! It challenges my thought process on a daily basis.

The assignment that I am currently working on now is by far the biggest and hardest, and has taken me to a place in my emotional mind that I haven't been in a long long time. Basically we have to identify our greatest fear, and come up with a way to make peace with that fear.

FEAR

So my greatest fear is the fear of rejection. Which really comes from feeling that I'm not good enough. This fear has constantly held me back in many ways. But it's affected me most in my approach to relationships, or lack there of. I always pursue relationships from the sidelines and never get into the game. That's got to be the least productive way to do anything. (and maybe one of the most cliched analogies EVER)

AN HONEST SEVEN YEARS

My father's behavior towards me growing up could easily be classified as abusive. I know that it felt like he had destroyed my soul and really taught me how to hate myself. But whenever I start thinking about this, which is happening more frequently these days, I always have to stop and remind myself that my father loves me. I say that because I know I have to. I know that his behavior wasn't malicious, or hateful. It's not like he woke up one day and said, "man I hate my kids, let's see if I can go break their spirits today"..... it just sort of happened, slowly.

If he ever got mad, or stressed out, that emotion would often turn violent or angry very quickly. He would do something to get it out, throw something, hit something, or cuss and then it would be over, and we would act as if it had never happened. For example, one night when I was a senior in high school, he wanted me to write an essay for a scholarship that was being given away by our church. The essay had to be about what God means to me and how religion has influenced my life. I remember thinking that God really didn't mean much to me--it was my father's version of religion that was forced fed to me to the point that it stopped having meaning, and eventually became a chore. It was never about feeling spiritual. So I told him that I wasn't going to write it. He got mad, we both started yelling, and he ended it by slamming my back into the thermostat in the hallway. I don't know if he knew that's what he had done. But he was angry, he had to get it out, so he did. And then went on like nothing had happened.

So the past seven years have been about rebuilding myself and changing the inner dialog I have from my father's voice to my voice. Not a lot of people know this about me. My family knows the least about it. It's hard. And it's because of this rebuilding of myself, that I haven't felt that being in a relationship was the right thing. I've been re-establishing a better relationship with myself. I know I'm a lot better off today then I was this time of year, seven years ago. And I do feel like I have a lot more to offer someone now then before. But this fear of rejection continues to hold me back. So does this mean that I'm going to ask out one of the many guys I find myself attracted to in an effort to move past where I am now, and offer a truce to my fear!? well.... no.... at least I don't feel ready yet. But to be honest, I know there's nothing that can happen to make me feel more ready. All the spray-tan in the world couldn't make me feel ready. It's really just one of those things that you have have to do. It just scares the shit out of me.