Voila!

What I overheard today coming from the next cubical.

Vi-0-la? Steve why did you send me an E-mail signed Vi-o-la?

Me. What?

Who’s Vi-o-la?

Me. Do you mean.. Voila?

No! you wrote Vi-o-la! (I wrote voila)

Me. Uh…... yes it’s my new pet name for you. Voila, Viola.

JEEP TIRES

I put new tires on the Jeep last week. I have to say that Discount Tire did a great job. I finally up-sized my tires to honkin huge manly Jeep tires. Woof. Grrrrrrr, woof. Now I look as if I’m ready to go off road, but this really means that I’m gonna drive shirtless around Chessman Park over and over. Now I think that the service offered by Discount was pretty great. The next day they sent me an e-mail asking how they did and I let them know what a great job they did. It’s been a week and they have quickly turned into the trick that won’t leave.
They have sent one or sometimes two e-mails every day since we tricked. They started off pretty fine, the “how was our service?” Then, “next time you need us please call.” They quickly turned to “Please… Steve think of us! Discount tire loves you Steve, do you think of us?“

Today’s e-mail went something like:
Your beauty is beyond compare,
With flaming locks of auburn hair,
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.
Your smile is like a breath of spring;
Your voice is soft like summer rain,
And we cannot sell tires to anyone but you, StevieB.
StevieB, StevieB, Stevieb, StevieB Please don’t go elsewhere just because you can.

So, Okay so they kinda sounded like a Dolly Parton song.
It was fun we put knobby tires on my Jeep. But that was all. Nothing more.
Damn it, don’t cry!
Really, I’ll call you again but when I need you. It was just tires.
Thank God for the spam file.

BMB Conundrum

That big muscle guy from Sell This House hit me up on Big Muscle Bear. Apparently he was going to be in town and was inquiring about the best gay gym in Denver. I just started to weep openly, how can I admit that Denver has no frickin gay gym. It’s like admitting that you have never watched Steal Magnolias, or have never been a gay cruise.
I watched in slow motion the death throes of Broadway Bodyworks, the bestest gay gym in the world. Sad to see the muscle-heads running in circles “where do I go to lift heavy things?” As I approached the Tax notice on the front door I remember yelling,
“Stevie Mad, Stevie Smash!!”
I’ve gone to 24 ever since, like an exile from Lenin’s site.
So when I read the notation from the A&E slab –o-muscle, it just brought this up one more frickin time. I would have responded with a helpful note…… if I had not of read it 2 weeks after he asked. But that really is beside the point. Really.
So if you’re coming to town hit me up, I be more than happy to tell the great things Denver has to offer. But no, we don’t have a gay gym. Stop asking already. We…we have to lift with…....straights!

I got gas

I would like to say that we live in a picturesque Colorado Mountain town. But the reality is far from that. The towns claim to fame is 8 Mexican restaurants and that hundreds of Japanese Americans were interned there during WWII. Put that on a tourism website.
Gas in Denver has reached $4.10 a gallon but in Denver’s hinterland it’s around $4.00. There are four gas stations in town, two of these are on opposite ends of the main “drag” both are at $3.82. What a frickin seal, right.
Fuzzy finally came out and asked why I kept driving past the You Pump It (makes me giggle every time) down to the new Kum and Go (more giggling.) Well, I said “their pumps don’t work.” He had a long pause while slowly turning this around in his head. “Why wouldn’t they work for you?” I responded with a DUH tone “they don’t have credit card swipers.” Fuzzy still kept a low, even tone.” You know that they’re older pumps you have to go in and pay.” Still not picking this up I responded “Go in and pay? That doesn’t sound right.” He then explained to me about this stuff called cash. People use it to purchase goods and services. He then inquired if I approached Coke machines with my credit card and just repeatedly jammed my plastic into any hole. “No, that only works with you. “ I calmly retorted.

Geek Dream

I woke up this morning after having a nightmare that the Cybermen were slicing me up. Man, I gotta lay off the DVR so late at night. I'm dreaming in geek.

Canada Time

What I overheard today coming from the next cubical.
What time is it in Canada?
Me. Uh, What?
You know, what time is Canada time?
Me. It’s always Canada time.
Steve! Tell me. Oh… they’re specific time.
Me. Yes, Canada is very specific about its time.

Jesus and Diet Coke

There’s this odd little room at work tucked next to the Woman’s restroom. This appears to have been a break room for a long dead mortgage company. This is also happens to be the only place where the Coke machine can survive. It’s kind of sad to see this soda machine whirring away its youth in this forgotten fluorescent break room. All alone but for Hermey.
Hermey is the creepy guy who sits in this room during the day and eats his brown bagged lunch. I call him Hermey because he looks like the elf that ran around with Rudolph. Of course 40 years later, his dental practice forced to close after Santa allows a Comfort Dental Franchise to open up at the north pole. His dental practice gone he took a temp job in Denver. Every day I run in grab my Diet Coke before he can say “I used to be a dentist.”
Yesterday I was going to grab my “big brown bottle of yummyness” when he started to speak to me. “Sir, do you know what time it is?” I stopped “yes, it’s about 1PM.” then he stammered “Sir, do you know Jesus?” OK….. So this is where on the Discovery Channel they explain the “fight or flight" response. The prey decides either that Diet Coke is worth fighting for or they need to run to save their cute, fluffy tails.
I kind of thought this would be funny. But mostly it happened so quickly I didn’t think it through. But just as he asked me this I stared at him a bit, then screamed “JESUS CHRIST” threw my arms up and ran from the room like my hair was on fire.
Not one of my best moments I agree.
Funny yes.
The only bad part is that I can no longer drink soda, that and as I ran from the room like MacGyver running from a critical warhead I ran into my boss coming from the Women’s restroom. I simply explained that all they had was Dr.Pepper.

I thought I broke my IPod today. As I got into the Jeep ready for another great commute across Denver I grabbed my IPod and plugged it into its holder. Later down the road I picked it up to change from Madonna to an Audio book when BAM! The IPod’s display was toast. This put me into a tail spin that David Sedaris’ new book wouldn’t pull me out of. I realized that this was the sign I needed that it was time for me to get the new IPhone. When I pulled and parked at my destination I pulled off my sunglasses and pulled out the IPod. The screen was fine. Okay, maybe it was just an early morning thing.
At lunch I plugged it back in and again quickly saw the damage. What the fuck is going on here. Just then I looked the display on my radio. It was hosed too. I stopped at an intersection to piece this together. That’s when I screamed. MY SUNGLASSES! I had just bought new shades. Polarized sunglasses, in polarized glasses horizontally polarized light is blocked by the vertically oriented polarizers in the lenses. They react adversely with liquid crystal displays (LCDs.) The problem with LCDs is that when viewed through polarized lenses from a certain angle, they can be invisible.
I’m glad I found this out, yet I lost my built in excuse for an IPhone.

Squirrels, natures little speed bumps

The other day I was behind a girl just waiting my turn when one of her friends came up on her left and surprised her. I could not hear what they were saying but I started to image they were talking about how long it had been, how great it was to see each other and if the girl in front of me had ever followed through in her plans on invading Poland to establish the master race. Ya know, stuff like that. They were chatting for a while and I was mesmerized when I realized that they like me were on the highway during rush hour traffic in Denver.
That’s when I proved my theory that there are two types of people. The “look-a-round and talk to your fellow motorists” people and the “Don’t look at me I’m driving” people. I happen to be in the don’t acknowledge me camp. Yes, I may have the top off the Jeep and have Madonna’s Hard Candy blaring, shirtless doing that side-two-side dance thing but I’m not looking over so you don’t either.
My friend Jeff was a “car cruiser” and I HATED this. He would roll down the window and start hooting and woofing at a hot guy next to us. My response was always “Do you think his wife and kids in the back really appreciate your advances?”
The Girls seemed unaware that traffic had pretty much disappeared in front of them all the way to Speer while they were chatting. These were that type to own pink Razors, T-backs with gem stones spelling out juicy or crispy and the type that talk loudly to each other in a movie, or westbound I25. Die you hateful Moo cows.
Why do I curse like a Sailor until I get behind the wheel?
Soon I tapped on the horn but this was interrupted as “I want to rip off your jaw and piss down your McMuffin hole.” I did the “hello! Drive! There are other people in the world” hand motion. And with that Ms. Tragic hair zipped off in her 13 MPG Durango. Madonna and I went back to our duet. Past Park avenue I saw a bumper stick that read:
Squirrels. Natures little speed bumps.

Dallas

I was walking down the sidewalk to our house coming home form work. As I crossed paths with my elderly neighbor she smiled and looked at the bouquet of flowers in my hand. “Making up for something?” She said knowing that Fuzzy and I live two houses down. I started to respond when she said, “ Your both still going to go the hell ya know!”

Two things went through my head at this point. One is that Fuzz feels bad that I refer to her as “the used vacuum cleaner bag.” The second being that I call our house SouthFork. Yes, after the show Dallas. No, not because it looks anything like the white ranch house that Sue Ellen pined away for. This is due to its geographical location to the city. You would have to be a Super-duper hyper gay nerd to actually know the geographical relationship of Southfork ranch to Dallas. I am just that gay.

In 2003 I convinced Dalton to go on a tour of Southfork ranch. This met with same response as if I said I wanted to cover him with blood and walk out into Galveston Bay to feel around for sharks. But at least at Galveston Bay we would get some sun. When we arrived at Southfork I casually noted that the weather was just like in Winds Of Vengeance. Dalton casually noted that if we made it out of there I should conceder myself dumped.

Just in case you didn’t already know, Southfork ranch is about 25 miles northeast of Dallas, as is our house is from Denver. Which makes it hard sometime to consider myself a gay-ghetto gay. What with the commute and all, but still if the man friend wanted us to sell our cute little bungalow and move to Castro, boystown or Chelsea it may take me about a nano-second to grab our flat screen tuck the Shar-pei and run. I was thinking of running out of this burb as the words the vacuum cleaner bag were still blurting out at me sunk in. “You need to find Jesus, young man.”
My response was “Who do you think the flowers are for?”