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My friend, Elizabeth, tipped me off to this tidbit of info about my home state’s recent shenanigans:

One week after complaints were made about an unclear highway sign, state transportation officials have made it easier to understand by adding one punctuation mark. Recently, members of a veteran’s group said they had received complaints about the highway sign advertising the Mississippi Vietnam Memorial in Ocean Springs. The sign originally read “Miss Vietnam Memorial,” causing some to wonder if there’s a woman named “Miss Vietnam” and why the city has a memorial for her.

—Duluth News Tribune

Note, however, that I had to go all the way to yankee territory to get the full story: there was nothing to be found on any of the major Mississippi-based websites. Could this mean that my fellow Mississippians are finally shedding their cavalier, “Hell, that’s the way we do things around here” ways and developing a sense of shame? Or is it merely another example of folks not being able to laugh at themselves?

Side note: if I were ever to become a full-time professional drag queen, I’ve always thought I’d assume the name of “Miss River Bridge.” Here in New Orleans at least, I’d get lots of free publicity.

Recent Experiments

Mixing absinthe and root beer

Sober before? Yes

Sober after? Yes (sadly)

Inspiration: Ran out of bourbon, vodka, Tab, Fresca; not up for beer

Dork rating [1 to 5]: 4 — Only dorks regularly stock absinthe and Tab

Idiot rating [1 to 5]: 2 — Frankly, it still seems like a reasonable drink

Success rating [1 to 5]: 2.5 — I’m alive, but the aftertaste, she lingers

Lesson learned: Drink anisettes straight; root beer is a crappy mixer

Substituting pork rinds for croutons on my salad

Sober before? Yes

Sober after? Yes, but drunk on deliciousness

Inspiration: Hunger; boyfriend unwilling to venture to grocery store

Dork rating [1 to 5]: 2 — I guess it did look a bit silly

Idiot rating [1 to 5]: 1 — More pork on a salad? What’s dumb about that?

Success rating [1 to 5]: 5 — After I call Wendy’s tomorrow, I’m gonna be rich! Rich, I tell ya!

Lesson learned: a Southern upbringing has its rewards

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So I’m getting a little camera-happy around the house and garden. So sue me.

What? Just because I have a few problems with Decadence doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the festivities…

So, yeah, that thing I said about making just one post about Decadence? I lied. What I have bemoaned so often in private, I have officially gotten off my own chest. Now if only the thousands of squealing, sterroided, hemorrhoided, semi-nude homos flooding the restaurants, shopping plazas, and streetcars of my fair city would just put something on their own (chest, that is), I could sleep soundly.

Straight from left field

I have made peace with Paris Hilton. I now appreciate her selfless, Florence Nightingalesque efforts to drag little Nicole Richie up from the bowels of obscurity into the duodenum of semi-obscurity. As of today, I applaud this benevolent, well-dressed creature that walks among us–well, among some of us. Rock on, gold dust woman! (Call me, Par, if you need help on that last allusion–it’s a tad before your time.)

Long before Amelie wondered it aloud to the world, I often asked myself: “How many people in my neighborhood are having orgasms right now? Is the frequency such that you could say that I’m never more than a block or two from someone in ecstasy? How big a geographic area would I have to include to make such a statement? Uptown and downtown? Orleans parish? The Greater New Orleans Metro area? How far do I have to go to make sure that someone in my vicinity is always going over the edge?” I like the thought of one continuous, sexy, sometimes-awkward, sometimes-painful, sometimes-onanistic, screaming orgasm. I like thinking that, if I had the ears of Superman or Spiderman or whichever one could hear shit, I could always tune in to someone yelling “Ohmygodohmygodhereitcomes!” I’m less gleeful at the thought of applying the same idea to people dying (one continuous, final exhale) or automobile wrecks (like a 24/7 Mel Gibson movie with real blood).

Yo, it’s official: the New Orleans Metroblog has officially launched, featuring yours truly and ten folks he’s never met. Of possibly interest: my first and perhaps only comments about Southern Decadence 2004 and the curiously coincidental Southern Baptist convention.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting–a very long, not very engaging meeting with colleagues from around the state. Not surprisingly, about ten minutes into it, my mind began to wander.

Just before we broke for lunch, one of my co-workers turned to me and asked “Are you all right? You keep wincing like you’re in pain.” She was absolutely right: my eyes were all squinty and I was biting my lower lip. It’s the same face my gastroenterologist would see if he carried out his examinations in the missionary position.

But I wasn’t in pain. I was wincing at something else–or rather somethings else. Since I had nothing better to occupy my attention during the afternoon session, I used that time to catalogue these facial tics into four different groups, based on their various points of origin:

• Wince Type #1 was the result of recollected embarrassing moments. This happens quite a bit when I have nothing better to think about–I start dwelling on drunken passes I made, or drunken statements I made, or just generally being drunk. My favorite half-memory involves passing out in the men’s room stall of a restaurant and having to be carried out by my friends after the place closed. (Hey, it was college.) Ouch.
• Wince Type #2 was the result of me contemplating sex with some of my peers. Now, in a similar situation, normal people might glance about the table, focus their attention on an attractive man or woman, and commence daydreaming. Not me. For some masochistic reason, when I do it, I pick out the most unappealing folks in the room. My horrific sexual fantasies are like flabby, pasty, clammy train wrecks: disgusting, but I’m compelled to look. Eww.
• Wince Type #3 came from imagining the body odors of the folks inspiring Wince Type #2. I mean, if you can’t reach it, how can you clean it?
• Wince Type #4 was of a different sort altogether and involved cell phones ringing. There’s nothing like a hideous ringtone going off in the middle of a quiet conference room to make me cringe–mostly in embarrassment for the phone’s owner. Ringtones are a marker of taste/class, and there’s something inherently sad and declasse about folks who still use the ‘Ride of the Valkyrie’ ringtone in 2004. As they rush to the hallway to take the call, I imagine them saying to themselves, “Damn, I gotta upgrade to a phone that plays chords.” Of course, none of this would be a problem if they’d just set their phone to “vibrate” like sensible people.

Richard is getting very old and very gay. How many signs of bitteroldqueenitis can you spot in the following story?

Last night I was painting the living room windowsills a creamy, high-gloss white (1) in preparation for hanging the drapes (2) Jonno and I had custom-ordered (3) from a lovely, damask-y gold stripe pattern (4). After Antiques Roadshow (5), I began flipping through channels and landed on the Video Music Awards.

I happened to tune in just as Christina Aguilera was beginning her number, and the first thing that struck me, apart from the ease with which she straddled the baby grand piano, was her gold halter-dress (6) — or rather, what was underneath: a pair of red, spandex, mid-thigh-length shorts. “Who the hell dressed her?” I wondered aloud (7). “And that wig (8)! Did the stylist (9) hang it out to dry on a clothesline?”

The performance was followed by a virtual parade of all things lame (10) –including an over-long, un-funny script with Queen Latifah, Jimmy Fallon, and the announcer, as well as a stupendously unspectacular “spontaneous” skateboarding festival avec Tony Hawk. This was all backed by some LED stage dressing that scrolled green light a la The Matrix, which in itself was pretty lame.

Not long after that, I turned my attention back to the windows and the curtain rods I was hanging, which came complete with oak leave finials (11). As I prepared to hang the draperies themselves, I pulled them from their container — which hadn’t been opened since we picked them up from the shop — only to find that they had been cut completely wrong (12). Which led to my pondering of the age-old question: if a queen throws a hissyfit in an empty living room, does anyone hear her screech (13)? The answer, given a sudden burst of laughter from the sidewalk below my window, was apparently “yes.”

Just before retiring for bed, around 10pm (14), I got a phone call from friends inviting me to a party, but all I could think was “A party at 10:00? On a school night?” (15). I brushed my teeth and hit the hay (16), finishing only a page or two of Uncle Mame (17) before I fell asleep.

Just in case you missed it: Doctors Grow New Jaw in Man’s Back.

Um, ewww.

And with that, I’m off to Mississippi, where, thanks to generations of inbreeding, such feats of physiology really aren’t that bizarre.

I don’t know how it happened, but apparently I’ve got a heart.

Now, when I was little, I was a total softie. I hated to see anyone suffering or even sad. Once, after we’d gone fishing up at my grandparents’ farm (yes, I spent half my childhood on a farm), we’d stopped at my grandfather’s general store to grab a Coke* for the drive back (yes, my grandfather owned the town general store). In the truck bed, there was a five-gallon bucket filled with bream we’d caught, which we were taking home for my mom to clean and cook. But while my dad and brothers were inside rehydrating and goofing off, the thought of those poor little fish being gutted got to me, so I grabbed the bucket, dashed across the road, jumped a cattle gap, scaled a couple of barbed-wire fences, dumped the entire bucket into an unused pond, and made it back to the truck before anyone had noticed. Afterward, my brothers were furious, but my dad and grandaddy just kinda laughed.

Since then, I’ve become considerably more bitter and jaded and impatient and aloof. I no longer have the time or patience for people who can’t manage on their own. That includes the queen of disaster magnets, my mom (adoptive, not biological).

So what a shock it was when I got an email the other day from a friend I hadn’t seen in years–a friend who grew up with me, who played on my little league baseball team, who spent a lot of time encouraging me to squeeze a tad more out of life than I ordinarily would’ve. It seems he’s come home to Mississippi, sort of at a low point. Now, I know him well, and I’ve seen him hit slumps before, and I know he always bounces back. Still, he sounded so sad…

Well, long story short (Ed note: a little late for that), like everyone’s favorite holiday greenie-meanie, my heart grew three sizes that day, and I cancelled as many plans as possible so I could drive up to see him this weekend. It won’t be a long visit–just an afternoon–but I feel like I’ve just got to make the effort. Fact of the matter is, he’s the polar opposite of Kirstie Alley: he’s one of those people you can’t help but love.

Don’t that just beat all?

*For non-Southerners, “grabbing a Coke” does not necessarily mean purchasing an actual Coke. It could be a Sprite, a Tab, a Fresca, anything. Below the Mason-Dixon Line, “Coke” is the linguistic sibling of “Xerox,” “Jell-o,” “Dumpster,” and “Rollerblade.”