I forgot to write about the party.

I was going to wear a white short-sleeve ringer tee. But at the last minute I decided to wear a navy blue short-sleeve cotton button-down shirt, untucked, over a pair of jeans.

It was really fine, and, in fact, since it was a straight bar, nobody noticed anyway.

I have discovered that the Typical Straight Male Bar Outfit these days is a white Oxford shirt with vertical stripes, untucked, over a pair of jeans. My brother and his two roommates all wore this.

I had three drinks. First I ordered a Corona and was told that there was no Corona. What? What kind of a bar — oh. I was handed a list of beers, and they were all imported and unfamiliar. I ordered a Mexican beer called a Bohemian. It was served to me in a glass.

If a gay bar ever had no Coronas, there would be rioting. Tasteful rioting. And much air-snapping and neck-tilting.

My second drink was an Absolut Mandarin with cranberry juice, which has become my new favorite cocktail. It cost eight dollars.

My third drink was also an Absolut Mandarin with cranberry juice. This time it cost nine dollars.

I don’t get straight people, with their straight outfits and their straight beers and their straight economics.

I finally saw “The Matrix Reloaded” yesterday. Despite being confused as all get-out (and I saw the first one twice), I enjoyed it, and I didn’t think I was going to, given what I’d already heard.

Sure, the rave scene was long and pointless, and the movie was clunky. But I was willing to sit back and just absorb everything. I can’t tell if the Wachowski brothers actually have a philosophical worldview or are just making it all up as they go along, but whatever; the philosophy, or the simulacrum of philosophy, made my brain happy. If artists have something intellectual or philosophical to say, I’m usually willing to let them mentally masturbate and spew all over my chest. It’s kind of like how Infinite Jest was a big fucking mess of a book but was still amazingly entertaining and beautiful.

A couple of things in the movie confused me. Um, okay. So, this is the sixth version of the Matrix? And Zion has been destroyed five times before? But Zion isn’t part of the Matrix. Zion is real. So, was the Architect saying that the Matrix itself is within a Matrix? I’m lost. And then I zoned out during the last few lines of dialogue, because I didn’t realize it was the end of the movie, so I barely caught what was said. And by that point I’d forgotten what the three different missions were.

Why do movies always seem so much longer than they actually are? When I looked at my watch at the end, it was half an hour earlier than I’d thought. The movie felt like two and a half hours. Do movies seem longer because they don’t have commercials? Or are movies just too long? Or do I just have a short attention span?

Oh, look, bunnies!

For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department has banned the gay pride event that is held annually at the Department. The reason given was that the Bush Administration has never officially recognized Gay Pride month. Last year, the White House stated that Dubya does not believe in “politicizing people’s sexual orientation.”

I wrote a letter to the New York Times this morning in response to the above-linked article:

To the Editor:

Sexual orientation will no longer be “politicized” on the day when people stop punishing each other merely because of whom they happen to love.

I fear my letter doesn’t say anything new and has too much generic rhetoric, but I still hope they print it.