This is what I tell people: Life is often beyond my control, and I accept that. I am not obsessive about the things I cannot change. I have learned to give in and let nature take its course.

This is the truth of the matter: In my old age, I have become complacent. Lazy, even. When I was younger and more energized, I kept my physical and emotional lives in rigid order. Nothing out of place. And while I’ve come to see that there’s a lot of chaos in the world, and I know that sometimes that’s interesting and even productive, the fact of the matter is that if I weren’t so lazy, I’d be trying to amend things to suit my needs. I’d also be driving myself crazy and giving myself ulcers. (I had my first at age nine, but that’s another story.)

In the photo above, on the left, you see what I see every afternoon: shadows of the Virginia Creeper climbing across my shaded kitchen window. On the right, you see the Virginia Creeper in question and that it is not only climbing across the window, but also inside it. Our house is being invaded, covered, slowly but steadily. And I have yet to do anything about it.

I suppose if it were a life-threatening kind of thing–if, say, those were poisonous asps instead of vining tendrils–I’d probably have addressed the problem by now. But they’re not asps, and I’m lazy, and just look out that window: do you see our neighbor’s yard, which is one giant mass of aggressive, insidious flora? It is daunting, to say the least.

Maybe I need a nap.

I am becoming my grandmother.

I’ve noticed it before, creeping up on me in little ways, little mannerisms. The look I give people when I know they’re full of it. The way I sigh–lovingly and exasperatedly, but mostly lovingly–when Jonno, propped up in bed on most of the pillows, asks me to fetch something just as I’m sliding under the sheets. My willingness to smack reptiles on the head with a garden hoe. Those were some of my grandmother’s most endearing traits, and I’m happy to adopt them. I’m less happy about the thought I had the other day, which involved some pocket change and the Vegetable Man

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, the Vegetable Man cruises the streets of the Marigny, Bywater, and Treme neighborhoods of New Orleans, singing through a megaphone mounted to the top of his truck: “I got bananaaaaaas, I got tomatoooooes, I got cauliflooooower” and so on, depending what he’s got to sell that day. I’m kind of a fruit nut (insert pun here), so I’ll sometimes run outside and flag him down for a couple of pints of strawberries and a few plums, since it’s convenient and his prices are cheap.

Anyway, I was at the hardware store over the weekend (I also have a fondness for caulk), and the cashier was out of fives, so she gave me a wad of singles. And I thought, “It’ll take me days to go through these. I ought to just put them in a little box by the front door so I’ll have money when the Vegetable Man comes by.” And then I thought, “OMIGOD, I HAVE JUST BECOME MY GRANDMOTHER.”

Because that’s what elderly people do, right? They have their little quirks, their little time-savers. They keep all the rubber bands from their morning papers in a Mason jar on the end table, or they save the twist ties from broccoli bunches in a little tray in their junk drawer. Well, in a split second, in one quick, strange thought–one that I’d never had before–I joined their ranks.

I am getting old and quirky. I am already cantankerous. Please do not put me in a nursing home. Not yet.

Update: As per Tiff’s request, I’ve taken down the link to her videogame, which she says isn’t quite ready for prime time. (Not that sturtle.com counts as “prime time”, but you know.) Patience, my sweet, patience.

Also of note: apparently that game is not her first, but, in fact, her fourth. The first–which has sadly been taken down thanks to Disney and its battalion of over-caffeinated lawyers–involved taking naughty photos of Miley Cyrus. Topical and sassy. That’s my girl.

Recently, in my inbox: “Ron Jeremy is now your friend on MySpace!”

THINGS THAT OCCUPIED MY TIME THIS WEEKEND
WHEN I WASN’T WRESTLING WITH A VIDEOCAM
AND ITS FEROCIOUSLY ANNOYING FORMAT ISSUES

Playing my sister‘s first commissioned videogame, the awesomely titled Rock and Roll Space Monkey. Even if that sort of thing isn’t your cup of Tab, the graphics and the soundtrack are totally sweet. Update: see here.

Pondering my lack of interest in traveling to Spain, when there are at least five good reasons to do so. Clearly, I haven’t been paying attention.

Coming to the realization that it’s all been said (or screamed) before.

Reacquainting myself with The Lawrence Welk Show and the fabulous creature known as Anacani.

Mulling the limits (and limitlessness) of videogames.

Shooting some film sequences for our next show, A Place in the Sun. Which ultimately led to hours of weeping in front of my laptop, but, you know, vengeance will eventually be mine and stuff. Do you hear me, Canon? Vengeance. And stuff.

Forgetting that it was Pride weekend until it was too late.

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK BE PRIDEFUL

Selections from Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria

FACT: There is nothing quite as comfortable or cozy as a cloudy midday in June, coupled with the distant sound of rolling thunder.

ALSO FACT: There is nothing quite as disturbing as a sudden torrential downpour, coupled with gale-force winds and a barrage of hail the size of shooter marbles.

SOURCE OF THIS MORNING’S COFFEE/KEYBOARD DEBACLE:
THE CHART OF CREATURE BADASS-NESS

[via Kotaku]

Trolling the news feeds this morning, I learned that yesterday, June 23, was an important day in GLBT history–and geek history, too. For yesterday was the birthday of Alan Turing, the mathematician and cryptologist whose work during World War II cracked the Nazi’s secret code and put a major nail in the Axis coffin. He was also directly responsible for computing as we know it. And he was gay. I’d write a homage to the man myself, but Robert Dumas has already done so–and far more eloquently than I could ever do:

Alan Mathison Turing was born June 23, 1912. He developed theories in the 1920s about a “digital computer” which would be a machine that could answer just about any mathematical problem. He helped crack the Enigma code. He is the father of computer science. He was persecuted (and prosecuted) for his homosexuality. He committed suicide just before his fifty-second birthday by eating a poisoned apple. He is the biggest single reason—more than Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates—that you are reading this very sentence.

— via RobertDumas.org, courtesy of BB

(FYI: Tyler penned a great bio for Mr. Turing over at GLBTQ.com. Totally worth your time.)

There was a brilliant, if rather stagy, Masterpiece Theatre biopic of Mr. Turing called Breaking the Code made in 1996 with an outstanding cast that included Derek “Claw-Claw-Claudius!” Jacobi, Prunella Scales (of Mapp and Lucia fame), and one of the 20th century’s most important playwrights-cum-actors, Harold Pinter. If you haven’t seen it, a very industrious young man has hacked it to bits and posted it to YouTube. Episode 1 starts here:

Enjoy your daily computing, courtesy of the Gays.

Here’s the way it usually goes: around 9:30pm, I start to fade. I nod off for a couple of seconds, jerk back to life, realize it’s too early to go to bed, walk around the sofa a couple of times, and try to hold my head up until Adult Swim is underway. When I just can’t take it anymore, I’ll shuffle off to the bedroom, typically leaving the TV on. (It keeps the hounds company–though it may annoy the housemate.)

In the morning, I’ll stumble into the living room, coffee in hand, and flip to the local news, which I leave on mute for most of the time because it’s just so damn folksy and peppy. But this morning, my fingers were especially fat, and instead of going to the news, I went to the mildly bizarre LA-based ARTS Channel, which is kinda like MTV, but for weird art stuff. So instead of a couple of perky newscasters, I got this:

Fernand Leger’s Ballet mécanique, part 2

Which was perhaps better than the coffee at waking me up (seriously, Kiki of Montparnasse rules the school), but admittedly not what I’m used to at 6:41am.