My coerced move also means that if you want to post at Nocturnal Admissions, you have to have upgraded to the New Blogger. Which sucks, but I have absolutely no control over that crapola.

I’m going to try this out for a little while and see if it gives me any trouble. If not, I might stick around. If I so much as spend a second cursing over some new crap I don’t like — like my feed getting all screwed up — I’m gonna start shopping.

Yes, I am that shallow, to stay with an unreliable and downright pushy platform for purely cosmetic reasons.

My goal was to just avoid switching to THE NEW BLOGGER (I tried several times while it was in Beta and was always told that my blog couldn’t be moved; I was excited about the changes to dynamic publishing and labeling and whatnot) since I’d heard so many people having trouble with their feeds and other frustrating stuff.

But today when I logged in, I got a warning I’d not seen before: SWITCH NOW OR GO TO YOUR DASHBOARD (YOU CAN ONLY DO THIS ONCE!). It made it sound as if I could only bypass the switch process one more time before I’d be required to do so. Not cool, Blogger. I don’t respond well to being pushed around.

So if I am indeed required to switch to THE NEW BLOGGER, I’ll be hopping platforms as well. I do love WordPress (I’ve got an experimental blog on that platform) and my trial with Squarespace went unused, so I’m not sure how I feel about them, and I’m kinda meh about Typepad. I think what it will come down to is that I’ll have to go with WordPress and just get my own frigging domain so I can do what I want with my template.

And if that happens, I might have to consult the Exodus Master if I get stuck. Okay, when I get stuck.

Project 365

Perhaps I could learn something about social interaction by observing sytems other than my own. We heterosexuals think we have the best “hunt and gather” method on the planet. But what if we don’t? These are things I needed to know.

Apparently Ralph thinks that these elusive lesbian creatures go about dating in a completely alien manner that has, I surmise, heretofore been hidden to him because he has had no need or desire to pay any attention to members of the species who aren’t open to having sex with him. And, while the High-Vulvar Lesbian Elder Committee decided many years ago that the community should drop the whole late-night-dancin’-naked-and-fat- around-the-fire-chanting-’Death-to-willies’ mating ritual, it had never really caught on in this generation anyway, because everyone is too self-conscious for naked cavorting and chanting.

But it’s all good, cuz Ralph eventually assuages his skittery audience’s fear by assuring us that despite their important function as society’s extreme Other, lesbians is good people.

Did I learn anything about dating at the lesbian bar? Time will tell. Their system of romancing seems pretty similar to our’s. They’re good people.

Thank God Ralph stumbled into the Local Lesbian Bar^TM to clear that up.

HT: NiT

INSTANT UPDATE: I don’t mean to imply that observing the dating techniques of various groups of people is not a worthy topic of inquiry, because obviously there is sociological value to it (though I guess you could argue about to what degree). My beef here is with the tone of the piece — the wilfully weirded-out hetero man venturing into that scariest of territories to him: A place where the women won’t fuck men. It’s sad and typical and pathetic and, frankly, played out.

This weekend I made it up to Nashville to visit Tamara for a couple of days. We sipped our way through several bottles and several varietals — of all colors and consistencies — and damn near broke her corkscrew when we came to the final corked bottle (thank God for screw-tops). We drove up to Percy Priest Lake to take photos and gaze out over the lake in the late afternoon sun. We giggled at M*A*S*H episodes. We baited the cat into shredding our hands. We ate brie and gouda and crackers and fruit. We sipped on plastic cups of Big House Red while watching Pan’s Labyrinth at the Belcourt. We ducked into and out of stores in search of a working bathroom. We endured a surreal moment of pure WTF-ness as a convenience store clerk practically molested Tamara’s gloved hand. We grimaced and grumbled at the Girls Gone Wild bus that settled into a parking spot in front of the sports bar beside Boscos. We watched as much of the Puppy Bowl as we could stomach.

It was a fantastic weekend.

Thanks for being such a good host, TB.

I spent a few hours at the parents’ on my way back to Memphis today. Of course this involved me running around with my dad’s camera and photographing everything that moved. Or sat still. But as much as I love taking little intimate still-life shots, it’s always fun to get outside and get the dogs riled up so they’ll make somewhat entertaining shots.

Johnny, the one-eyed bandit, takes less shit from people now that he has fought a car and won:

Nickel recalls fondly his childhood, which was spent inside the house:

Tanna, smelly and old, but so pitifully sweet:

And Timber, professional screen peeker and fetch diva:

Project 365

Casa Fiesta in Antioch has neat stuff to look at and pretty frickin’ yummy food, even if I’m still not sure exactly what I had.

Project 365

By the time we got down to the rocks we could barely move. Little nippy that day.

More pictures of Percy Priest here.

Project 365