What kind of cable TV package do you New Yorkers out there have? Matt and I are trying to decide what to get from our provider, Time Warner Cable. We only want TV – we don’t need Internet access, because our DSL is paid for by Matt’s employer.

I’d be fine without digital cable, except that according to the channel lineup, some of my favorite channels are only available on digital, such as Turner Classic Movies and TV Land; so are BBC America, which Matt would love to have, and LOGO, the new gay TV network.

Of course, the TWC website doesn’t make it easy to find any of the cheaper packages; I actually had to call Time Warner Cable to learn that the digital package, without premium channels or any other bells/whistles, is about $56 per month (plus whatever fees they tack on, I guess). There’s a pricing chart online, but it’s rather confusing.

Anyway, what do you get from TWC, and about how much do you pay for it?

So tomorrow morning, at about 7:30-8:00 a.m. Eastern time, the winner of the 2012 Summer Olypmics will be announced. It will probably be Paris. I hope so. Please let New York lose.

Stephanie Coontz, in today’s Times, makes a point about marriage that’s worth remembering:

Traditional marriage, with its 5,000-year history, has already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however, didn’t spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

But it’s easier to blame gays and lesbians for ruining marriage, because we’re The Other. Religious conservatives like James Dobson know that banning gay marriage will play much better than banning birth control, making women stay at home, forcing wives to submit to their husbands, or re-criminalizing adultery. Many people who wouldn’t think of enforcing those rules, because those rules might someday apply to them, have no problem banning gay marriage.

People will never proscribe their own liberty, but they have no problem proscribing that of others.

Wow.

So it’s not New York (whew!), but what an upset!

I haven’t really had a chance to blog today, but my thoughts are with all of you in London.

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London:

What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

This is London. We’ve dealt with your sort before. You don’t try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.

All you’ve done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don’t get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, as your MO indicates, you’re an al-Qaeda group, then you’re out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we’ve got news for you. We don’t much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We’ll deal with that ourselves. We’re London, and we’ve got our own way of doing things, and it doesn’t involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that’s because we’re better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we’re going to go about our lives. We’re going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we’re going to work. And we’re going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.

I’m hanging out at home today, waiting for the cable guy to come and give us cable TV. I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately, and work has been busy, but now that I have some free time I can catch up on some things I’ve meant to blog about.

I started taking a 10-week fiction-writing class this week. The first class, rather introductory, was all about words — particularly, nouns. He had each of us make several lists of nouns in different categories.

One list was nouns that we like the sound of. I wrote down velvet, damask, vanilla, silver, quinine and clasp.

Another list was nouns that we like looking at (the words themselves, not the objects). I wrote down xylophone, earthquake, kevlar, jackalope, reflex and exchequer. I guess I’m fond of high-scoring Scrabble letters. (Given more time, I might also have written down quizzical.)

Another list was nouns that we find personally meaningful. I wrote down sex, neurosis, isolation, pressure, time and space. Don’t ask.

Anyway, the instructor’s great — very friendly and easygoing. I like him. The class should be fun.

I never wrote about our recent Fourth of July festivities. Matt and I went to a party at our friend Marc’s place on Third Avenue in Village to have drinks and food in his apartment and then watch the fireworks from his roof. (Marc is the boyfriend of Matt P.) We were, of course, able to walk there from our new place – yay! We had a terrific view from the roof. At one point, before it got completely dark, the Fuji blimp was almost directly above us, looking huge. As it got darker, the roof filled a crowd of families and kids and adults. Then the fireworks began, and we watched them while listening to the accompanying music over someone’s radio — Sousa, Gershwin, John Williams, etc. I stood with my back against Matt’s chest and stomach, and he put his arms around me, and we watched the multi-colored display with some of our friends nearby. It was a real treat and probably one of the better Fourths I’d had in a while.

Although I consider myself to have officially moved, my lease on my old place has not yet ended, and I still need to move all my stuff out of there. I’m selling most of the big pieces of furniture, but I’ll still need to either rent a small U-Haul or borrow my parents’ car to move my two six-foot-tall bookshelves and my 27-inch TV and accompanying TV stand. In the meantime, though, out of impatience and a desire to lessen the burden when I move the big stuff, I’ve occasionally gone back to my old place with a suitcase and loaded it up with CDs or whatnot. I have a few hundred CDs, and in two trips I’ve managed to move over half of them, but I’ve still got two trips left. And I’ll probably take my CD stand on the PATH train with me on that last trip as well.

The coolest thing I’ve done so far, however, is to move my computer, which I did a week ago. I thought it would fit in my suitcase, but it didn’t (I should have measured beforehand), so I had to borrow Matt’s, which is bigger. I took Matt’s empty suitcase to my old apartment, unplugged all the computer stuff, wrapped the CPU in a towel and put it in, along with the keyboard (also wrapped in a towel), the mouse, the computer speakers, and the assorted power cords. I fortunately have a flat-panel monitor, so I managed to stuff it into a big backpack (after sticking it in a towel and then a plastic bag). So I walked to the PATH, rode the PATH, and walked to the new place lugging a very heavy suitcase and wearing a computer monitor on my back. Matt was somewhat shocked, but he shouldn’t have been, as I really wanted my computer.

The new apartment has a small room with shelves that we’ve turned into a combination walk-in-closet-and-Jeff’s-Study. Matt helped me set up the computer on a desk we’d stuck in there, and then he strung together a bunch of wires to connect it up with his Internet router. I put together an extra IKEA chair that belongs to the building, and voila, Jeff has a study, with a small window, even. I was worried that I might have damaged the machine by pulling it in a suitcase along bumpy sidewalks, but it emerged unscathed.

Matt and I really needed two computers. When I was unofficially living with him at his old place, we had only his, which was difficult, because we’re both Web addicts. If he was using the computer and I wanted to as well, I had to find something else to do. Now we can both do computer stuff at the same time.

And if I get really lazy, it’s nice to know I’ll be able to IM Matt across the apartment.

I’m selling some furniture. If you’re interested, let me know.

I had my second fiction-writing class last night. I’m finding it hard to get enthused. Three years ago I took a screenwriting course through the same organization, the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and it filled me with such energy, inspiration and hope. There was this story I’d been trying to tell for so long, and I finally found that the medium of screenwriting helped it blossom. Over the 10 weeks of the class, I wrote a complete first draft of a screenplay. I had hope that I’d be able to revise it and sell it and pay off my student loans. But I eventually decided that it was a pretty ordinary story, nothing special, and that I didn’t want to put what would probably be fruitless effort into trying to sell it.

Now I don’t even feel the inspiration or desire. The focus of this course is on short stories, and I don’t care about short stories, either reading or writing them. I like novels, although not all kinds, and I don’t like novels exclusively. Whatever feelings of excitement and hope I felt during my screenwriting class are now gone.

(And if I have to sit through one more writing-course lecture about the protagonist and the antagonist, the desire and the obstacle and the conflict, I’m going to scream.)

I was talking with my therapist last week about the particular plotline I’ve been trying to get down on paper for the last 12 years. She asked me to describe it to her. It’s not really a single plotline but two similar ones: the story of Kirk and the story of “Scott”. What I want to get down on paper is that sense of excitment and discovery and romance I felt when I was in college and dealing with my attraction to guys. Both of those stories involved me confiding my soul and my secrets in a fellow gay student. There’s just this sense of innocence and expectation. And of lost opportunities.

The story of “Scott” (okay, his name was actually Ron) is, for me, the definition of “regret.” I regret ending that night prematurely, and I regret not giving his jacket back to him in person. I regret that I hadn’t gotten to know him earlier that year. I regret that I came out to my parents too soon and spent that year, and the next four, repressing my sexuality. Not dating, not meeting other gay guys, being too concerned with analyzing my position on the Kinsey Scale instead of realizing the dumbly obvious fact that I should just do what made me happy. Had I not come out to my parents so soon (stupidly, impulsively), I would have preserved that safe space within which I could have continued to explore myself and my desires without worrying about retribution.

My obsession with rewriting the stories I mentioned above is a desire to rewrite history, of course. To somehow go back in time and do it over. But you can’t. You can only look ahead. I wound up compressing my 20s into about three and a half years, and now they’re gone. But that’s okay, I guess. Age 31 isn’t bad, and my life right now is pretty nifty. Even if those years had turned out differently, they’d still be in the past by now. But maybe those years would have been richer and permanently rewarding.

I’m not sure what my point was here. I guess I was writing about my lack of interest in fiction writing. Sometimes I just want to reap the reward of writing — that is, the admiration you get from other people. I’ll get jealous that someone else I know has a book out, and I’ll assume that person’s getting all these accolades, and I’ll want those accolades, too. But accolades usually turn out to be evanescent.

My motivations are murky.

Back when Matt was single, his friends used to say that his TiVo was his boyfriend. Now, of course, I’m his boyfriend, although we and the TiVo have had almost nightly threesomes. But last night I finally brought my own TiVo from my old place over to our new place, and we hooked both TiVos up to the TV. So I’ve decided that my TiVo and Matt’s TiVo are now officially boyfriends.

I hope you’ll join me in wishing them much happiness together.

Someday, of course, they’ll decide to get married, and the Religious Right’s nightmare will have come true at last.

I sent the following letter to the New York Times today – not intended for publication, but simply to express my views.

Dear Editors,

You MUST hire Sarah Vowell as a full-time op-ed columnist. Each of her guest columns has been wonderful, and wouldn’t it be great to add another woman to the mix? (She could even replace John Tierney, whose problem is not his political views but the fact that he is boring.)

Do what you have to, but please bring on Sarah Vowell permanently!

Thanks,
[me]

I’d never read her before her guest columns started appearing in the Times last week, but she’s fantastic and original. Love her.

“Turning Off Gays”: Salon.com presents the first of a four-part series on “reparative therapy” and the “ex-gay” movement.

Bush will announce his nominee tonight at 9:00. Darnit, I’ll be in the middle of my class then.

Interesting that he’s doing a prime-time announcement. I don’t recall that happening before. It’s probably to get maximum viewership and maximum deflection from the Rove/Wilson/Plame story.

WTF? Now it’s not Clement?

I’m so confused. And now I’m worried.

For some reason my TiVo decided to record one of the final episodes of “Happy Days.” While checking online to see how close to the end of the series it was, I stumbed upon this: Chuck Cunningham syndrome.

Chuck Cunningham syndrome is a jargon used by TV critics; it refers to a TV series in which a main character or a character otherwise important to the show’s plot is dropped with no explanation. If a recurring character disappears under realistic circumstances (i.e. a waitress at a diner stops showing up) it is not a case of the syndrome.

Contents
* 1 Origin
* 2 Examples of Clear Cut Chuck Cunningham syndrome
* 3 Examples of Lazarus Chuck Cunningham syndrome (where ‘Chuck’ comes back)
* 4 Examples of Near Chuck Cunningham syndrome (where ‘Chuck’s absence is briefly addressed)
* 5 Chuck Cunningham syndrome in reverse

Tons of examples follow.

I have way too much shit.

Today I finally moved the vast majority of my belongings out of my old apartment and into our new place. Matt helped me, and even more importantly, so did my dad. I took the bus out to the New Jersey ‘burbs to borrow my parents’ SUV, but because I hadn’t driven in more than a year, my dad decided to drive it instead. We managed to move most of the stuff in two trips. (My brother might help me move the rest of the stuff, which is not very much, next weekend.) When we dropped each load off at the new building, the on-duty guard and the superintendent both helped us unload the car and bring stuff up in the freight elevator. The 27-inch TV that Matt and I struggled to carry down my steps with our combined strength? The guard carried it out of the car and into the lobby by himself. By 1:45 pm we were done unloading stuff, and Matt and I spent the rest of the day setting things up.

We set up my TV and TV stand and my two six-foot-tall bookcases, and we laid out and vacuumed a couple of faux-oriental carpets. I set up my CD collection and unpacked all my books, which is what the first line of this post is all about. I have way too much shit. My books don’t even all fit in the bookcases – there’s a big overspill here in my computer room. And my CD collection is too big for the 450-CD rack I bought several years ago.

I don’t know why I have so many books. Some of them I haven’t even read. Some of them I’ve read and will never open again. But it’s so hard to part with books. And my collection overflows despite my loading up a big cardboard box with books that I’m planning to donate or leave on the street next weekend when my lease ends.

But books are comforting. They’re here for me, with their eclectic multicolored spines, waiting to be read or consulted. Fiction, history, biography, reference, self-help, gay issues, Tolkien. A world – no, an intellectual universe – awaits.

If only I didn’t have to move the damn things whenever I switch apartments.

Someone emailed me a link to an audiofile (I have not yet warmed to the inaccurate word “podcast”) of Jackie Hoffman telling two funny stories.

The guy who came to my old apartment last night to buy my bed was hot. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt and had tan, smooth, muscled arms (one with a tattoo), a swimmer’s body, and glasses. He was totally straight – his girlfriend was the one who first contacted me – but I get a thrill out of thinking that he’ll be having sex in my bed.

(And yes, I’ve already thought of the joke about asking him if he wanted to test it out first.)

The guy who’s picking up my couch on Saturday is cute. He came by the other night to take a look at it. He’s very tall, also with glasses, and was shy and quiet and friendly. He’s straight, too – it was his girlfriend who first contacted me about the couch.

Everyone else who’s buying my furniture is female, so no thrills there.

How Stuff Works: The Space Shuttle. This makes me feel like a kid again.