Condomadlibs

I have come to realize that there is virtually no combination of items that can be bought with condoms that don't inspire jr high laughs. I have written about buying the combo of condoms and padlocks, buying the combo twice in two months time because I am constantly forgetting combinations. I have read several accounts of similar experiences, my favorite was condoms and 20 pounds of catfood.

This weekend I bought them with a money clip, a USB JumpDrive, two batteries and three padlocks.

No matter what you buy it's like you are smirking saying 'that's what she said' to some random comment.

But while we're talking about it, Trojan Ultra Thin has made some sort of improvement and I highly recommend them. I actually had to stop and check it, thinking it had come off.

Doctor Erik and The Germ

I made a new friend; his name is Germ. He's a cop and the lead singer in a punk band. And his girlfriend's a drag queen.

'They're going to put our adventures,' he told me, 'in comic books.'

'They already have,' I said.

Things I like about Chicago

There are bus stop benches all over the city that read:

YOUR AD ON THIS BENCH

And nearly every one of them, as if the city as a collective whole decided it was a typo, has been amended to read:

YOUR AD ASS ON THIS BENCH

Though my favorite one reads:

YOUR AD CUNT ON THIS BENCH

---

At the hospital, someone put up a handwritten sign by the elevators on each floor that read:

I lost my dark brown
backpack. Please call.

and on each floor, in different handwriting, it's been amended to read:

I lost my dark brown lover
backpack. Please call.

Sometimes I wish that I could stop me from talking...

one

After the rugby game, someone's complaining that he was told he had manboobs. (which he did)

He asked a group of us if we though he had manboobs, lifting his shirt slightly above his nipples as he did so.

'Yeah, you have'em,' I said, with buzzing honesty, 'but they're not huge. They're like a French girl in an independent film. I wouldn't worry about it.'

two

I'm talking to someone about gay people and the difficulty of creating an identity that doesn't center around their sexuality.

I'm talking about how I was spared some of this difficulty because I have gay father. Oddly, at some point I try to make a comparison to the newly rich and refer to gay people who don't have a gay parent as 'nouveau gay.'

Every Song is a Comeback

When we first get to Pritzner Pavillion at Millennium Park Wilco was not going to go on for about 40 minutes. So my friend Steven Soderbergh (no relation) and I laid down in the lawn and are looking at the sky blue sky (it was, really) and chilled out, eyes half closed. Both of us had worked a long day--I in the clinic, he running delicious wines about the town.

The lady next to us leans over and asks, 'do you have any more of whatever you guy's just did?'

'I just had a big bowl,' I tell her, 'of fettuccini alfredo.'

'Well, I suppose,' she says, 'that would do it, too.'

Watching the show in our hoodies as the sun goes down over the Chicago skyline, the day's cool and reminds me that fall's almost here. And, like Jennifer Grey, I'm having the time of my life.

one month

I haven't even told you about joining the Rugby team yet, have I? Things have been so busy and full the past couple of weeks.

I got back to Iowa for a reunion with my cousins and had a great time. We went canoing and mountain biking up at the farm.

A judge struck down a law prohibiting same sex marriage and my father and his partner of 30 years got married--my sister and I lit the candle at the beginning of the church ceremony. A stay was placed on the order to permit same sex marriages and though they have their marriage license, the clerk was not permitted to record it--so they are in limbo until the state supreme court reviews the appeal.

I went to see David Bazan with my friend Johnny at The Beat Kitchen last Saturday. I've said before that when you think you are the only person in the world who cares about something or are trying to figure out if we have any obligations to anything, Pedro the Lion's voice beckons you out of your wilderness. David Bazan dropped the moniker of Pedro the Lion, but is still standing sentry. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone opened for him. Watching him set up his sound boxes and devices was more interesting than most television.

I also joined a rugby team, the Chicago Dragons. We practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That keeps me pretty busy--it's surprising how much two nights a week takes of your time. We also go out after practice--on school nights. So Wednesday and Friday I typically nap after work. It's just as well though, cause after practice I hurt from working out weird muscles. My shoulder was terribly sore for about 10 days.

More later...

USA! USA!

According to new numbers released by the Census Bureau, the life expectancy of Americans is now less than the life expectancy of 41 other countries. We have fallen from the 11th place we held 20 years ago.

But before you get all excited and point to our lack of a single payer system as the cause (it's lack of insurance, not who's paying for it, that is likely the largest problem) let me refer you to Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, who sited our obesity rates as a factor in our rating drop:

"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy. We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

Woo hoo! USA! USA!

Take that, Micheal Moore!