Since You Asked…

As a brief follow up to this post:

As I wrote, when I was in high school and an aspiring architect(ural student), I’d often spend time wandering through the homes under construction just to the west of our house. One afternoon, while I was checking out one house at the end of that block, I heard a truck pull up outside.

That in itself was kind of odd. It was a contractor with a truck full of aluminum windows. He started unloading them, bringing his first load into the house I was standing in. I guess I startled him when he walked in and this kid standing there. I hastily explained why I was there, “I’m going to be an architect,” and he nodded. As I was walking out the front door he said, “Hey, you wanna make some money? I’ve got a bunch of these windows to bring in.”

Now in the context of what he was doing—as odd as it was that he was there afterhours—that may seem like an innocuous question under the circumstances, but the vibe in that he was giving off in that unfinished house was anything but innocent—even to a still mostly naive seventeen year old. I don’t remember him being bad looking, and if I’d had a few more years under my belt I might’ve taken him up on what he was obviously offering, but as it was, I made some excuse about having to get home for dinner, and as they say, skedaddled home.

Even though I knew exactly what I wanted at that young age, he was not going to be my first.

That would come a few years later in my dorm room at the University of Arizona…

(to be continued)

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Today’s Architectural Nightmare

Well, perhaps nightmare is a little strong.

The plan actually isn’t bad. While the plans were presented without any exterior renderings, the semi-circular end bays are certainly interesting, and would suggest anArt Deco exterior. As I said, I have no exterior views, and while I could, I’m too frightened to ask AI to generate one. So we’ll just go with what we have.

I lied.

The interpretation isn’t pefect, but after five tries I gave up and told the AI while it still wasn’t perfect, although good enough for my purpose.

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Offensive

I drive past this sign every morning on the way home from getting coffee. Considering what’s happening with Palestine, I find it incredibly offensive. Protect Jews from whom? It seems that history repeats and oppressed have become the oppressor.

Unpopular opinion: I support the Israeli people and have no animosity toward them, but—much like our own—their government leading the Palestinian eradication has to go. Like, yesterday.

So this morning I stopped to snap a photo in order to make some changes. I had to do it manually because ChatGPT refused because of its built-in guardrails. My first thought was to ironically compare Jews to Nazis in this context. But not all Jews, obviously. I don’t consider myself the least bit anti-Semetic and didn’t want to come across that way. But at the same time, genocide is genocide, no matter what the group doing it is called.

But I didn’t think what I was trying to express was clear with such a ham-fisted allusion that very people were likely to pick up on. So I went off in a slightly different direction and just called the fuckers out.

Calling out Israel explicitly—and by definition the Israeli government—I think I got my point across.

So now the question remains, how many readers will I lose with this post?

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One Thing I Noticed…

…for about a week or so after the Russian Bot Farms were taken down is how quiet my spam filter was! No more pages-long lists of comments (most of which were in Russian). And no more attempted attacks to breach my firewalls!

Slava Ukraini!


Unfortunately, over the past couple days, the bot comments and attempted break-ins have resumed. Interestingly, however, they are not coming from Russia, but rather (of all places) India!

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A Moment Of Silence Please…

Even though these “upgraded” and now fully undoubtedly sanitized for your protection restrooms had been locked, bolted shut, and fully out of commission since the early 2000s, can we still take a moment of silence to mourn the passing of the last active gloryholes along the I-10 corridor in Arizona?

Not that I ever knew anything about that. 😈

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Bad Boy From A Parallel Universe

Such a bad boy.

And before y’all start your scolding, as I’ve explained to several of you privately over the years, I know smoking is a vile habit; something I never took up in my youth and most assuredly would never take up now after seeing what it’s done to friends and family. Plus, if I did start smoking in my youth I’d look like hell now and no doubt would’ve ended up with a much worse variety of cancer than what I did. That being said, I can’t deny the attraction it elicits with some guys. To paraphrase a line from Parting Glances, “Your dick knows what it likes, and you go for it.”

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Morning Tunes In Honor Of Its 50th Anniversary

Elton John – Blue Moves (1976)

Like many others, when  Blue Moves first came out—and for many years after—I had a love/hate relationship with this album. The sound was so different from all of Elton’s previous work, and yet still so fresh. It also annoyed me no end back in the day that all four sides of the album wouldn’t fit on a standard 90 minute cassette tape, requiring that you buy a notoriously thin and prone to breakage and entanglement-in-the-player 120-minute cassette.

Now, of course half a century later and the initial shock of it has long worn off, I think this collection is brilliant.

Favorite tracks to play at bleeding-ear volume: One Horse Town, Boogie Pilgrim, Crazy Water, Shoulder Holster, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, If There’s a God in Heaven (What’s He Waiting For?), and Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance).

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