Rainy days and rainy nights

From the RED CHAIR…

Today is 15 June 2011:

Miserable weather in Nova Scotia. Mostly heavy rain for the last 24 hours. We’ve seen very little sunshine this Spring, but when we have, it’s been G.L.O.R.I.O.U.S!!!

I’ve broadened my job search to lower-echelon positions – two reasons:

1. I don’t want the head-honcho jobs any more. I’ve done those for a long time. I need neither the status/glory nor the headaches.
   
2. I like working with the public, and it would suit me just fine to work a cash register at a supermarket like Sobeys or Pete’s Frootique. I can stand all day, and I’m good with money-handling.
   

I had a screening phone call from Coles Books today. I had completed rather arduous résumé – and psychological-profiles on-line. The pay is poor, but I don’t need to earn a lot to make a big difference in my day-to-day finances as I have a decent pension from my 25+ years out west in the big post-secondary institution.

We’ll see what happens from here.

Tonight, the Vancouver CANUCKS play the Boston Bruins in the last game for the Stanley Cup. Here’s hoping the Canucks take it.

Tomorrow, my sister Carmen, her husband Victor and brother Roy (who is visiting from Vancouver) will come over for dinner. Should be a pleasant evening.

Michael from… /redCHAIRdiaries

What I’m doing today

28 May 2011

 

From the RED CHAIR…

Not much going on today. I’m working on some youTUBE recordings:

Mission: IMPOSSIBLE opening title sequences, part 2.

The AVENGERS – the 1960s British TV show, not the comic book. I’ll be doing a treatment on my love for the show, and I discuss how the title sequences evolved over about six seasons.

I will also do a youTUBE on “what I watched last night” which will be about BLADE TRINITY, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It was formulaic, but an action picture that is movie 3 of a trilogy about a vampire hunter has to meet both the expectations of what went before, but also add something fresh. Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds were the fresh elements. The use of Vancouver and New Westminster was also fresh and I did not find the locations familiar to me to seem overly familiar as happens with some movies.

 

Michael from… /redCHAIRdiaries

ELTON JOHN: Songs of yearning, songs of love, songs of living, songs of dying.

Elton John’s music has been a part of my life for almost 40 years; and on average he’s released more than one album per year since 1969.

His persona was also a part of my life, as I recall reading one, perhaps two quickie biographies of him in the early 70s. Even with my nascent gaydar, before I myself came out in ’74, he always seemed different, distinct from other artists of the times – in style and in ethos.

The second week in October celebrates Coming Out Day on the Monday, with the rest of the week as a cushion of thought, rhetoric and activities in the spirit that being out and proud is indicative of strength rather than marginalization. Among other activities, I wanted to mark this week with an appreciation of just a small part of ELTON JOHN’s voluminous output. His charitable works are well documented; let’s get back to the music.

The songs discussed in the attached video are songs of yearning, love, living and dying. The yearning is universal as at some point unrequited (for insecure young gay guys, unnatural) love is a rite of passage from puppy love to hopefully something more fulfilling and mature. Songs of living are a multiplicity for JOHN, as he has chronicled his childhood, his adolescence, his drug-addled adulthood and ultimately his redemptive maturity and domestic partnership. And two of his most poignant  songs are memento mori to the murders of John Lennon (EMPTY GARDEN) and young gay victim Matthew Shepard (AMERICAN TRIANGLE).

 

An embarrassment of riches – a second Masters in Business

After leaving a doctorate in business program, I was offered an MBA in Advanced Management Studies. I had done all the course work and had spent a total of four years before ditching the dissertation preparation.

While the Masters is actually redundant for me, it is still something I did a lot of work on, and I really did earn it. This is the first time one of my degrees is designated summa cum laude. But I still don’t have a job!

Don’t drop the soap – DON’T ASK DON’T TELL, c Oct 2010

Job-search woes… October 2010

Still no job.

People with little education still manage to get good jobs in the public service and at universities – largely because of unions. I have long said that anyone working in a university that processes files or interacts with faculty and students should have a post-secondary education. Anything else is a mockery of the ‘product’ on sale at the university.

It gets better – comments on bullying

With the death of the young man at Rutgers, and even younger guys committing suicide in the past few weeks, I prepared a video for the youTUBE campaign IT GETS BETTER. There are now 100s, if not 1,000s of similar messages of hope on youTUBE.

Many of us (and I don’t restrict this to nascent gay or gender-confused youth) face varying degrees of bullying when younger – it is almost an expected passage of youth. Personally, I did not undergo relentless bullying, as I had older tougher brothers to in turn put fear into bullies. But I did face intermittent verbal taunts and occasional in-your-face threats. But compared to the stories of many of today’s youth, it was nothing. To be honest, I think I was more fearful of going to mandatory gym class than walking home from school – I did not have an athletic-competitive gene and being reticent or shy on the soccer field was worse than a physical assault.

I also suffered more from occasional taunts from my own  siblings and father – I fit no mold of standard masculine behaviour in my rowdy and randy household. But as the videos say – IT GOT BETTER. Going to college and getting away from the template of oppression that is high school – fondly-remembered high school was the domain of the handsome, the pretty, the athletic, the moneyed and to a great extent, the self-absorbed and parochial – was the real beginning of my life and this still applies today. Post-secondary education, whether in the arts and sciences or the trades, offers space to create one’s persona.

But if one can’t get away, and many cannot, then the bullied must find even more reserves of strength to rely on. As an adult, it does get better, but you need physical space or inner strength – combinations of both, perhaps.

Michael from the RED CHAIR diaries

twitter.com/redCHAIRdiaries

youTUBE.com/MICHAELmail

BOSS-holes are just assholes with business cards

In this talky-blog, I ruminate on a word or designation new to me, from an article in the GLOBE and MAIL.  We’ve all worked with boss-holes at one time or another, and some of us may even be boss-holes.

Aspects of loss – people, health, and jobs

Remembering my Mother, mooning over my career, and pondering my health.

the ITCHY & SCRATCHY show – fighting with psoriasis

I’ve had middling patches of psoriasis over many years, but lately it’s getting out of control. It’s now on an eybrow, in my ears, all over my legs, all over my scalp and parts of my face, as well as in more intimate areas of the body.

I’m trying a new dermatologist and other topical medicines… perhaps even a detox to see if that helps. It’s not a fatal illness, by any means, but can best be characterized as a condition of inconvenience. It does limit how often I even wear shorts in the summer. And the dusty powder left on furniture as I scratch my head may not be dirty, per se, nor contagious, but it is still rather disgusting. It’s like dandruff maximus.