Just call me "Uncle Beefcake."

It's 80 degrees in Westhaven! Sort of a miracle even for summer. I'm going out to check out some potential local office spaces.

Things have been good. Work is a little harder when I'm not in the office. There are social dynamics I can't keep spinning when I'm out of town. In the long run these plates need to spin themselves (with the aid of ye olde partners) but in the short term it looks like I'm the secret sauce.

Personally I'm still recovering from a hell of a weekend. Good, but left me feeling a bit dazed and behind on things. I had a real live date though -- a fulfillment of my "power-dating" mandate, even -- which went pretty well, although with schedules being what they are who knows when a second rendezvous might occur.

I have a shit-ton of photos from the party too. If you're on facebook you can peep them there. I'll try and get something up on Flickr too. Lots of excellent knuckle tats.

Anyway, apologies in advance to everything I'm behind on. I will be playing catch-up over the next week/end I'm sure, but you're all in my heart and thoughts.

In brief. I've lived to see the ripe old age of 29. My mom has been having a lovely visit. The Country Soul Carmival Speakeasy was flawless victory (pictures a-plenty, for a change), and they have Jalapino Poppers on the menu at Larrupin, where I took the momster for her special day (poppers wrapped in bacon, natch).

Exhausted now, but in a very good and soul-satisfied way.

So, Kellymundo has a subscription to Vanity Fair, which I happened to pick up (RFK cover story) in the bathroom today. This happens to be the issue with the crazy Miley Cyrus Photos!!!!! ZOMG BARE 15-YEAR OLD SPINE!!!!

Sometimes I'm ashamed of America. Sometimes it's because we start pointless wars of choice that kill thousands and leave millions homeless and destitute. Sometimes it's because we're so collectively sexually confused, repressed, frustrated, nervous, and (updated inre Joe's point in comments) desperately depraved, we can't fucking tolerate the challenge of, you know, Art.

Annie Liebowitz is the real thing, and this photo is completely respectable.

America, you're crazy baby but I love you.

Bonus Liebowitz: Sting portrait, and homo Arnold.

God we're stupid sometimes.

Soon the sassy bastard will be mine: squid w/monocle. Want your own? Talk to the boss-lady

Bonus pic!

Gotta do a lotta work today, but here are some quick hits:

• Anna got her camera charged: photose from Mooste Estonia. Children carving soviet-era soap. Awesome.
• RIP Hunter. Memorial notebook, charity fund here.
• Google (and a bunch of less-cool companies) will try to bring the US back to the level of Estonia in WiFi access. The major players here are actually Sprint and Clearwire, so who knows how this will pan out.
• Obama consoladates the PBR vote.

Last night seems to (finally) have cemented it for Obama. Black President here we come. For those of you who've been in the trenches, Mike Lux has some good next-steps laid out. For those of you waiting for this nomination process to be over, well, it may take a few more weeks before it's officially over, but you should start thinking about:

• How to explain to people that John McCain is a warmongering child of privilege who has no respect for women, no plan on healthcare, no grasp of economics, no idea how to address global climate change, and who's publicly stated he wants to pack the Supreme Court with more extreme conservatives.
• How to explain to people that Barack Obama is not a terrorist, or a communist, or even (too bad) the second coming of FDR with extra melanin, but might in fact be just the guy to prevent Miami from being underwater in 100 years, keep Wall St. from completely fucking over homeowners, do something creative about the 2 million people we're letting rot in jail, get some needy kids food and medicine (in the US as well as elsewhere), and prevent Comcast, Verizon and Rupert Murdoch from taking over the internets.

I have high hopes that Big O will close it out in Mighty Oregon. That would be solid.

Oh, and this:

Update: whoa.

Subcommondante Kos says Oregon should be the clincher:

If Clinton were to drop out this week, we'd face an uncomfortable situation in West Virginia, with Clinton likely crushing Obama. That would look terrible for the presumptive nominee.

Better than that would be to garner enough superdelegate commitments this week, so that Oregon can push Obama past 2,024. That way, it isn't the supers who clinch it for Obama, but actual voters.

Mighty Oregon!

Real quick, I uploaded some photos of Coachella to flickr.

New tag. Drupal set message "Power dating." Backstory on that is here, and I'll elaborate with new thoughts now.

Well, actually, first I start with self-quote, to illustrate just how sisyphusian this feels at time. From my report back from Baja, which feels like another lifetime:

I realized, for instance, just how blatantly I’ve been keeping myself out of range of romance out of fear more than anything else. Sex and love have always been intertwined in my experience, and avoiding one is a pretty good way to skirt the other. Much as I bemoan my lonely state, it’s my own choices and habits of action that render it so. I’ve been rationalizing this to myself as a kind of jaded maturity, but now I think that’s just bluster.

The truth is I’m afraid of what might happen: of getting hurt, of hurting someone else, of getting into unknown territory where the possibility of both those things just gets greater. It’s weak sauce, really, because this is what life is all about; but as they say the first step towards finding a solution is admitting you have a problem. So there’s that.

I also realized in conjunction with the above that I’ve been looking backwards a lot, for similar reasons, when really I should be looking forward. The possibilities of the future are almost literally endless, and when I begin to entertain them I feel a real true gut-level sense of trepidation — “don’t make plans; don’t invest; shit doesn’t pan out, remember?” — and it feels like it might be that good kind of Allen Ginsburg brand of fear. The kind I know I should pursue.