Bobservations

A couple of years after buying this house, we had it painted but, for some reason, we never had the “barn”—folks around here say barn, we say shed—painted. Recently Carlos began giving English lessons to a Hispanic couple in kind of a bartered deal; lessons for painting the shed.

This week the barn shed went red, and it looks, I know, like a little barn. Carlos also wanted the interior painted white so he could see better when he went in there and we cleaned everything out.  But before putting things back, I suggested we thin that shed herd a bit and began separating things into piles of Keep, Toss, Donate.

There was an old fireplace screen we removed from the house. Habitat for Humanity. Check. Old boxes. Trash. Garden tools? Keep. A small tabletop charcoal grill. He says keep; I say donate. But, he says, we use that, and I say …

“Tell me one time in the last twenty years we used it, and remember, we don’t have charcoal or lighter fluid or anything for it.”

I think in Miami I cooked chicken on it once.”

So, sometime, over fourteen-and-a-half years ago, you slapped a chicken on the grill and you think we still need it?”

“It can go.”

This hoarding sense of his explains the cluster of 80s silk shirts in the back of the closet that he doesn’t wear but needs to keep … just in case.

PS She's kina purty now, isn't she?

Tuxedo never went to school, and so he doesn’t know from mathematics, but even he can see how this seems all kinds of wrong!

Last weekend the San Francisco Giants became the very first Major League Baseball team to incorporate LGBTQ+ Pride colors into their on-field uniforms.

In honor of Pride month, players will sport an SF logo Pride Patch on the right sleeve of their home jersey as well as a custom cap with the 11 colors of the Progress Pride Flag, which incorporates black, brown and the transgender pride flag colors with the original six rainbow stripes.

Bravo!

Why don’t these anti-choice politicians and states just use “thoughts and prayers” to stop abortions. I mean, that’s what they do when people murder actual live children in schools.

Just a thought.

The twice-impeached, one-term loser’s blog, where he shared his thought [singular] after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms, has been permanently shut down.

His people made some excuse about it being planned to shut it down, but it had only been a month and was getting less traffic than my little bloggy thing here.

Sorry not sorry.

JP Morgan Chase & Co will resume making political donations to U.S. lawmakers … but not to any Republicans who voted to overturn President Biden’s election victory.

Good. Hit ‘em in the only real place their care about, their wallets.

In other Thing #45 news, he is set to do a series of rallies around the country will fellow sexual assaulter Bill O’Reilly that I have dubbed Sexual Predator-a-Palooza.

And I hear Matt Gaetz is going to open for them.

This week, during a House Natural Resources hearing, Texas Representative Louie Loonie Gohmert asked if the Forest Service or the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] can alter the orbit of the moon or the Earth in order to fight climate change.

Gohmert represents 725,000 Americans, just so you know.

Alex Sewall is a 30-year-old model from Chicago, and a former football player at Indiana State University, who played for a brief time in arena football before beginning a modeling career.

Alex also is very smart, noting that his ass … and it’s real and it’s spectacular is “is usually the thing that gets the most comments and compliments” and he has no problems showing skin.

He seems to love his country, he seems to love music, and he appears to like the sports ball things. Plus, any man that can pull off a hat, after pulling off everything else, is all right in my book.

That’s all.

Things I Like #6

Once again, in a post inspired by, or stolen from, Mistress Maddie, here are some things I like that are around the house.

One of the things I like best about the house is how it’s changed from when we bought it, to how it looks today. When we bought the house, the crown molding, chair rails,  window trim, French doors, and baseboards were wood, but stained a hideous brown, and the living room walls were light blue above the chair rail, and a whisk broom painted effect in a darker blue below.

I hated it.

I painted three walls a gray, and one longer wall a darker gray; I removed the chair rail, and then painted the crown molding  and baseboards an ivory. I had a friend whose home had no such moldings and she painted “moldings” on the walls. I thought for a moment, and thought how to make our crown and base look a bit more dramatic, and the solution was to paint a stripe, in the same ivory, below the crown molding and just above the baseboards all around the room.

I like it.

I also—after much debate with Carlos, painted the mantel in white, and once that was done, we opted to switch out our Old—emphasis on old—west ceiling fans for something cooler … like a wooden airplane propeller. There are two in the living room and they look great and circulate the air better than those four-paddled monstrosities of yore.

More to come …

Out With The Old, In With The New

These are the old ceiling fans in the living room at Casa Bob y Carlos. We never liked them but could never agree on what kind to get, until Carlos spotted some online.

Cut to today and the ones were installed ... much more retro-modern than just retro-old, dontcha think?

Plus ... no husbands were hurt, or suffered hurt feelings, during the installation!

Random Musings

A couple of weekends ago Carlos and I laid tile … and by that I mean we laid tile in the bathroom. Get your minds out of the gutter, people. I wish I had pictures to show, but our computer has decided to stop reading the camera’s picture card and until we buy a new computer — because we need one, not because of this picture snafu — I’ll have to hold off uploading personal pictures.

Anyway, we found some cool 16x16 gray tiles that look like burlap and I thought they’d go well with the man’s pinstriped suit look on the walls, but when it came time to create a pattern I was perplexed. I wanted to set  in even rows, very modern looking, but no matter how I measured we’d end up with small tile at the end of each row and that looked off to me. So, I tried a running bond pattern where the grout lines don’t match up, and this created small sections of tile at the opposite ends of alternating rows, and that was what we, er, I, er, we, picked.

And, for our first tile setting it went quite well. We borrowed a tile saw and, once we learned to run the tile through the saw in the proper direction, it all went rather smooth, though there were some hiccups, like explaining measurements to Carlos. Who knew I would be the Math Master when it came to measurements? Not me!

And so we cut tiles, and mortared the floor, and set tiles, and we were very nearly done when I took a look in the room and said, not so quietly, “F**k.”

The last row of tiles were not laid in a running bond pattern, but set in a regular square pattern, and I told Carlos we’d have to take them up and switch the sides — small tile to the left-side now, and then work backwards to get the running bond pattern.

Carlos, bless his heart, said, “No one will notice, it’s gonna be behind the toilet and under the sink pedestal."

I said, in my best Martha Stewart-Joan Crawford-Adolf Hitler voice, “I’ll notice.”

The tiles were switched. And it does look better. And soon, hopefully, there will be pictures.

A few new hot guys on The Tube this week, starting from the upper left and working clockwise.

Keegan-Michael Key, of USA’s Playing House. Not your classically handsome man, and quite adept at making the funny faces, but there’s something about him on that show that just tickles my funny boner.

Ian Anthony Dale from TNT’s Murder in the First. Smoldering, I say, smoldering. And, of course, with Taye Diggs as the star of the same show, the hotness quotient is quite high.

Last, Omari Hardwick from Starz’ new show, Power. He’s a drug lord trying to get out of the business and, well, he has the finest ass I think I’ve ever seen, and I saw quite a lot of it last Saturday night.

Just sayin’.

Another school shooting in Oregon last week and still we do nothing about gun control — not taking guns, but controlling who has them.

Good for us.

They’re saying the demise of the Tea Party has been greatly exaggerated after ‘Bagger candidate Dave Brat upset rightwingnut incumbent Eric Cantor.

Here’s my take: the Republicans in Virginia were sick and tired of Eric Cantor and just simply voted for the Other Guy. That doesn’t mean the Tea party is on the rise, it just means the Republicans in the state wanted Cantor gone.

We’ll have to see what happens come November, and hopefully the people of Virginia will send Dave Brat packing as well.

Still, it was a joy to see Cantor fall, thus becoming the highest-ranking Republican to lose renomination in one of the most stunning primary defeats in congressional history.

In other primary news, openly gay candidate for Governor of Maine, Mike Michaud is one step closer to becoming the nation's first governor to have been out at the time of his election.

Michaud will face incumbent GOP Governor Paul LePage in the general election and, as of now, the two are in a dead heat.

Fingers crossed.

In the Crazy Category: Mariah Carey made a personal appearance at the St. Regis Hotel in New York this week to announce the release of her new beverage.

Beverage? WTF? But, yeah, Mimi is getting into the beverage game with Butterfly, a carbonated beverage described as a “melodic beverage inspired by the magic of Mariah Carey.”

Side effects are that your boobs balloon up and you begin to wear sequinned dresses three sizes too small.

This made me smile.

When marriage quality became legal in Wisconsin, on the first day of same-sex wedding, police officers in Madison showed up at the courthouse with cakes for the newly married couples.

Gotta love that, eh?

And speaking of Wisconsin — nice segue, eh? — there’s this:

When Milwaukee resident, Christopher Graham and his partner, Andrew Capelle, heard that same-sex marriage was legal in Wisconsin, they hightailed it down to City Hall to make it legal. And., after the ceremony, the two men and some friends went to Transfer Pizzeria & Cafe to celebrate.

And the best part, other than finally being equal in America, was when the bill came and Graham and Capelle learned that the bill for their wedding dinner had been taken care of by the staff at the restaurant.

If I ever get to Milwaukee I know where I’m having pizza!

But, in other receipt news, there’s this:

Amira Gray says she went to Bistro 18, a Washington, DC hookah bar, in August of 2013 with some friends and, after receiving terrible service from the wait staff was shocked to see the name “Gay Bitches” on her receipt.

A friend showed the receipt to the manager, after a picture had been taken, of course, and the manager grabbed it away and returned with one missing the offensive language.

Still, I know where I won’t be going when I head back to DC.

In more crazy news, this is a new trend: short suits.

Fashion folks say it’s the way to beat the heat this summer, while I say it looks like what I wore to Easter services when I was six.

I’ll pass.

And since we began with a Carlos story, before we get to Tweet of the Week, let’s have one more.

Last Thursday Carlos had an appointment to have two wisdom teeth extracted; they had never bothered him before, but now, well, yeah. So, the week before he mentions his dentist appointment and when I ask what it’s for he says “pulling teeth.”

I immediately tell him I’ll take the day off from work and drive him, and he tells me it’ll be fine. I tell him he’s having wisdom teeth pulled and he will not feel like driving himself home, nor will he be able to; so he relented.

Cut to Thursday, I’m sitting in the reception room, waiting, reading In Cold Blood, and finally after about an hour, Carlos comes out. He seems perfectly fine; he says there is hardly any pain, even though he just had a local anesthetic.

Well, whatever. I drive him home and he takes a brief nap, after which he says he still feels fine, but could I make him a bowl of oatmeal. I do, and as he eats it, we are sitting in the living room and he’s trying to tell me, via clenched jaw, that it really doesn’t hurt and that he’ll be going in to work the next day.

I hold my hand up, and bring my fingers down in a ‘Don’t talk’ gesture.

He says, “I’m not supposed to talk after the extraction.”

I say, “You can talk, but you’re bugging me.”

My motto is, and always has been, make ‘em laugh, er, make me laugh.

Random Musings

We are still in the throes of Powder Room Remodel 2014, but here are some more pictures of the progress.

Next up, priming the walls, and then a painstakingly detailed man’s suit style pin-striping of the walls, some new tile that looks like burlap, and then the installation of all new fixtures, top to bottom.

It’s a process.

Sad news to report....

White Collar, the hit USA series starring Matt Bomer, my Husband-In-My-Head, and openly gay sex bomb, is going to end after the upcoming sixth season. The six episode final season will pick up after last season's cliffhanger that saw Matt‘s character Neal Caffrey get abducted.

All I can say is: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Is anyone else over this MH 370 story about the missing Malaysian flight? I mean, I like the news, I want to know what happened, but seriously, this is not an all-day, every-day news story, especially when the reports are nothing new, or news. Seriously? A black hole swallowed the plane?

Now it seems like there is a credible lead on the missing plane, but I imagine this will spin out of control, too. Don't give me conjecture, give me news; and if there's no new news, then zip it!

Poor Ted Nugent. Even people in Texas find him too offensive.

He might be something of a folk hero among the far far right, particularly in wack-a-doo red states, especially places like Texas, but it ain’t necessarily so.

The city of Longview, Texas has canceled Nugent's scheduled performance for their second annual Fourth of July Festival and has said they will eat the $16,000 fee they paid to Nugent to ensure that he wouldn’t come to town.

Snap.

Oh, the Drag Race!

This week was the reappearance of one of my favorite RuPaul’s Drag Race episodes, Snatch Game, a take-off on some old-timey game show called Match Game with the queens impersonating celebrities. As for the catwalk, the queens had to create a look inspired by none other than Mama Ru. It could have been good, and it could have been bad — it was actually a bit of both — so let’s dish …

#1 [again!] BenDeLaCreme. I loved how, when telling Ru that she would be doing Maggie Smith circa Downton Abby, she played like she didn’t think about the English accent, or how to make the Dowager Countess funny. Her response to the questions and to the other queens was faboosh and funny and spot on: when questioned by another queen that she didn’t understand English, BenDeLaCreme-Maggie-Smith-Dowager-Countess sniffed, We originated the language.

Brazilliant, and BenDeLaCreme gets her second win!

#2 Adore Delano, if only for her spot-on Anna Nicole Smith impersonation. My favorite was her spelling of “vodcah.” On the runway though, she was less Ru and more Adore, and kinda Anna Nicole, in a big blond wig.

#3 I loved Bianca Del Rio’s Judge Judy because, like Ru and Bianca, I watch me some Judy every day. Bianca had the catchphrases and she even had a Bird the Bailiff puppet that nearly made me spit-take! And I love Bianca for taking down some of the other girls a notch or two with her quick wit; I do loves me some sarcasm, amirite? But, I didn’t get a lot of Ru on the runway from Bianca, so she gets points off for that.

#4 I’ll give Joslyn Fox points for really channeling Real Housewives Teresa-of-the-One-head [instead of a forehead? Get it? I’ll stop.] I also laughed out loud—and no, I won’t say LOL’d—when she said, "prostitution whoreses!" And she was one of the few who Ru’d the runway to a T.

Onto the not so successful….

I like me some Darienne Lake but she looked less like Paula Deen than I do. Some of her jokes were cute, but cute don’t win Snatch. And, well, she isn’t Ru, ever. Courtney Act’s Fran Drescher was a snooze. Where was the Drescher laugh? And the wig was the wrong one. Milk … ah Milk … her Julia Child was one-note and it was flat. But, while some people were miffed that her Runway Ru was Boy Ru, I thought it was a shockingly good choice. But I get the “That’s not a drag queen” sentiment.

Let’s toss in Trinity K. Bonet’s Nicki Minaj. Not funny. Just because you slap on pin k hair doesn’t make you Nicki; the voice wasn’t there, and the funny wasn’t either. She blew a perfectly good chance for a Mariah joke. Sad. And Laganja Estranja’s Rachel Zoe? Rachel No! It was so bad; didn’t sound like her or look like her. 

Luckily for Laganja, Gia Gunn’s Kim K was awful—though I imagine her original choice of murdered pop star Selena might have tanked far worse. She didn’t hit Kim at all, and on the runway she was wonky-eyed and sloppy.

Sashay away.

What did YOU think?

You gotta love Ellen Page.

In response to reading a Tweet from fill-in-the-blank anti-gay pastor saying that Page didn’t really “believe” she was gay and was struggling with it, and that she needed to embrace God, Page Tweeted this response:

Ooh yes!

One of the great worries about rebuilding the WTC after 9/11 was security and there were all kinds of promises about a so-called "ring of steel" around 1 World Trade Center.

Yeah. Not so much.

Justin Casquejo, a sixteen-year-old New Jersey teen, snuck out of his home one night, crawled through a hole in a Ground Zero fence, got a lift up the tower from a clueless union elevator operator — even though he had no ID — to the 88th floor, hiked the stairs up to the 104th floor and scurried past the "ring of steel" — actually a sleeping guard — to climb to the top of the spire at the top of the building.

After spending two hours atop the nation’s tallest building snapping photos, Casquejo was finally caught by a construction worker as he made his way back down. He has been charged with misdemeanor trespassing. 

The sleeping guard has been fired.

And now, in the "What Were They Thinking" segment ...

Two CNN producers, Yonatan Pomrenze and Connor Fieldman Boals, also tried to breach security at the WTC in broad daylight and were arrested.

The two men were seen repeatedly trying to get into the building, presumably trying to test the security at the site after two recent incidents in which a teen broke in at night and climbed to the top, and three BASE jumpers and an accomplice made a daredevil skydive from the tower.

A CNN spokesperson said Boals and Pomrenze 'were not asked to sneak onto the World Trade Center site.'"

But you just know that footage would have aired on the network if they had been successful.

Last year I started to watch Da Vinci's Demons on the Starz channel. It was colossally stupid and badly written and acted, save for the delightfully evil, and devilishly sexy Blake Ritson as Count Riario.

When I heard the show was coming back I didn't even bother to set the DVR, until I learned that the producers of the show had seen what an asset Ritson was to the show and have enlarged his role.

And so I'm watching. And, while searching for a picture of Ritson, I came across this one which made me see why I find him so handsome ... he looks like Carlos' long-lost brother.

On the other side of the TV screen, we have Mixology, a show which got off to a wonderfully madcap start and then failed to live up to that promise.

But, it does have one redeeming quality: the beautiful Craig Frank. Very cute, very sexy, hot smile.

Sadly, I don't think his show will last.

What the %#&%@*!&#?????

The Christian relief agency World Vision announced that it will hire Christians who are in same-sex marriages.

Baby Jeebus say what? Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, a humanitarian-relief group, announced the hiring change for the United States in a letter to staff. Stearns said the World Vision board had prayed for years about how to handle the issue as Christian denominations took different stands on recognizing same-sex relationships:

“I want to reassure you that we are not sliding down some slippery slope of compromise, nor are we diminishing the authority of Scripture in our work. We are the same World Vision you have always believed in.” 

Except we just wanna get some married gays up in here now ... but then ...

UPDATE: Less than 48 hours after that announcement, World Vision crumbled in the face of vicious condemnation and boycott demands from anti-gay hate groups and major evangelical denominations.

No married gays, ever!

Suddenly Seeking Attention.

After last week's Instagram photo of Madonna cleaning her shower with her tongue, she decided to post a picture of her hairy armpit for the world to see.

Keep in mind, she's somebody's mother, and not merely an attention-seeking fame-whore.