N.B.: I’m futzing with my template. If I’ve linked to your blog in the past and the link seems to have disappeared, don’t worry–I’m in the middle of figuring out how to bring it back in a slightly different format.
After a whirlwind weekend of travel to places like New Paltz and Long Island–where I was part of a group that someone actually addressed as “youse” today–I have finally counted the votes for the Blogalike Contest.
Here are the results:
Sixty-eight people cast votes. Coming in in third place, with eight votes (12% of the total votes cast), is entry #7:
Today I am the happiest man on earth.
This is because I just found out that The Golden Girls is being released on DVD. It’s just the first of seven seasons, so it’ll be a while before I have all 175 episodes (at which point I will host a marathon), but still–my heart is leaping for joy within my breast.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that this may be just the impetus I need to finish the Golden Girls version of Clue that my ex N.T. and I started developing. The characters were the four girls, of course, as well as Dorothy’s Eastern European cousin Magda, who visited the girls and fell in love with capitalism, and Dorothy’s friend Jean, who visited the girls and fell in love with Rose. The rooms were the girls’ bedrooms, the kitchen, and the lanai. It was the murder weapons that stymied us in the end. We came up with four that seemed to us to make the grade: a cheesecake knife (obvious but necessary), a St. Olaf story (with which the victim was bored to death), poisoned Spierhoeven Krispies (the St. Olaf treat that stank to high heaven but, if you held your nose while you ate it, tasted more delicious than anything you’d ever eaten in your life, although in the episode in which Rose makes them, the plate she’s holding is actually empty and the girls are miming putting things in their mouths), and the Curse of the Strega (performed on Dorothy by Lena Pacerelli and reversed by Sofia’s kissing a fool, helping a holy man, and revealing betrayal of a loved one). Options that we dismissed as not being funny enough were Shady Pines pamphlets (with which the victim was paper cut to death) and one of Dorothy’s fat dresses (strangled and/or smothered).
Clearly, though, we were on to something. And once I get those DVDs, I’ll pick the two remaining murder weapons, convince Parker Brothers to put this game out, and watch as I become fabulously wealthy when every gay man on earth buys it.
And if you try to stop me, the next Spierhoeven Krispie you eat may be your last.
—
Coming in in second place, with twelve votes (18% of the total), is entry #11:
I am paralyzed by indecision.
Ordinarily, of course, this is so commonplace an occurrence as to hardly bear mentioning (unless I begin to post such observations as Gravity continues to hold my furniture to the floor of my apartment or Breathing sustained life, so E.S. and I took oxygen into our lungs according to our custom.)
No, today’s dilemma is all due to a numerologist.
In my continuing quest to understand the complexities of my dog, A., I have consulted veterinarians, groomers, and an animal communicator. A friend had recommended a numerologist (for me, not for A.), and I thought perhaps the mystical art of numerology could reveal her innermost drives and urges. Or at least, shed some light on what drives A. to such heinous acts as peeing where I’d prefer that she not.
The consultation was over the phone, with a woman apparently based somewhere in suburban Connecticut. I explained that this reading was not for myself, but for my … friend. Somehow I choked on the phrase, “This is for my dog, who is lovable but maddening,” and instead said that I was trying to improve a relationship which has had a mystifying series of ups and downs. After supplying A.’s relevant numbers, we were off to the races.
I was astounded at how well the numerologist, Y., seemed to understand A.’s multifaceted personality. Apparently, her essential number is 5, which is ruled by the planet Mercury, making her gregarious, energetic and fun-loving, but also somewhat fickle, and … well, mercurial. After half an hour, I was overjoyed, at last having some further understanding of A.’s changes of mood. Of course, I thought. She’s a 5.
“She follows her impulses, although she may often regret them later,” the numerologist said.
“Exactly,” I said. “When she pooped in my knitting bag, she was very apologetic.”
Silence.
“Excuse me?”
After a mortifying moment which seemed to last approximately a week and a half, I confessed that, no, we were not talking about my friend so much as my pet.
“A. is a dog?”
I stammered that indeed she is.
“The numbers are completely different for dogs. I have to recalculate. I’ll need to charge you another hour.”
Now to the paralyzing dilemma: do I tell A. that she is a 5, ruled by Mercury, fun-loving, curious and fleet of intellect? Or do I tell her that she is instead an 9, ruled by Mars, making her active but prone to jealousy and aggression?
And that in either case, I’d prefer that she stay out of my knitting bag.
—
And in first place, with eighteen votes (26%), is entry #3:
I have previously mentioned that one of the few and yet highly lamentable downsides of having a boyfriend in the first year of his medical residency is the loneliness I suffer during E.S.’s overnight stays at the hospital. You can imagine my excitement when I hit upon a way to alleviate my anguish: the documentation of our bedroom activities for later perusal at my leisure. As a bonus, any materials produced could provide an inexpensive alternative to my recent patronage of TLA Video, which has reminded me that we gay men are charged appreciably more for our onanistic aids than our heterosexual brethren. E.S., as is so frequently, surprisingly, and wonderfully the case, was game. After the procurement of my brother’s digital camera (allegedly to be used for “landscape photography”), a photo shoot was quickly arranged and went off without a hitch.
E.S. and I almost instantly uploaded the photos to his computer, at which point I came to a terrible realization.
The entire idea was a disastrous mistake.
And I need to go on a diet immediately.
—
I will keep you in suspense no longer. I wrote entry #7.
I came in in third place in a contest for people to write like me.
Even if I had gotten her vote (and by the way I don’t know how I could possibly have forgotten about the red ink and Fernando, but I will be forever grateful to you for reminding me and getting me that much closer to the fulfillment of my dream), it still wouldn’t have made a difference. I would still have come in third.
Even my therapist voted for somebody else.
The second place entry was written by this man‘s boyfriend, who has been a good friend for almost seven years and has confessed that he knows I would have no qualms whatsoever admitting to a numerologist that I’d consulted her to figure out my dog.
And the winner of first prize, and a gift certificate to Powell’s City of Books, is a man who, unfortunately for you, has no blog for me to link to and whom, unfortunately for me, I have never met. My first contact with him came a couple years ago when I responded to his hysterically funny Planet Out profile; in his response, he revealed that he was a friend of my brother’s from college. My brother, who keeps in touch with him, mentioned my blog a few months ago, and our winner has apparently read enough of it to out-me me.
Congratulations, mister.
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