CVS Sells Cockrings

The day after Cherry broke up with me, I awoke to find a threat of physical violence against myself as her younger brother’s facebook status. I was already depressed, and this public declaration of what was already a very intense private pain made it quite a bit worse. I spent most of the morning being dejected and staring off into nothingness.

During the breakup, I had told Cherry that I wouldn’t contact Millie, and therefore hadn’t, but now that we were broken up I felt free to contact her on IM, which led to a phone call, which led to me buying plane tickets to go see her in Portland, OR.

The trip from my work to Portland was long and difficult. Every part of me except for my gut told me not to do this. I was scared that things would be different between us, we would feel estranged and I would be somewhat stranded in Portland. I was worried that Cherry would somehow try to contact me while I was gone, and I would be forced to tell her where I was. I was worried that following through on such an impetuous act was so unlike me that it would cause me to lose my grip on reality and end up as a crazy homeless person on the streets.

But as soon as I arrived and saw her face, I began to calm down. And holding her helped even more. And staring. And kissing. And then I felt better. And then I had a completely amazing weekend.

We started the weekend on the Midnight Mystery Ride, riding a tandem together that she had borrowed from a friend. We proceeded to meet so many of her awesome friends: Simon, Clown-Porn Boy, Bhajan, Mars, Kerri, Petra, Lidiana, Janessa, Rob, Zach. Millie is surrounded by amazing people, and yet still has a place for me. We also spent a good deal of time just riding around Portland, seeing different parts of the city: vegan everything, drinking on a stoop, grilled cheese on a bus, food carts, The Tube, mimosas on a swing, Alice’s hookah garden, beer on the same swing, a yard sale made of magic, a park in the center of an intersection, a fair, the world’s most perfect park filled with the world’s most serious foam rubber swordsmen. And we did everything and nothing, we stared the shit out of each other, and then Millie gave me a craphawk and it was awesome.

Portland is a magical city, and I had an extraordinary weekend there. Can’t wait to go back.

The trip home from Burning Man was incredibly challenging. I had just met this woman who I was completely crazy about, and I couldn’t imagine how I might ever see her again. You see, at the time I had a girlfriend back home, and I know she wouldn’t take this news well. I was considering lying to her outright, and keeping Millie a complete secret, but that felt wrong and it seemed it would probably drive a permanent wedge between us. I considered telling her a half-truth, e.g. I met this cool new friend, Millie. But this already sounds suspicious, and then how to explain wanting to visit her alone. What I finally landed on, with the help of both Millie and her ex Joe, was telling my girlfriend the truth. This was an incredibly difficult thing to do, and it caused us both a significant deal of anguish, but I still believe it was the right choice.

Shortly after telling Cherry what happened with Millie, she broke up with me, which only makes sense. I wish I’d had the courage to do it myself, instead of having to rely on Cherry to patch up my mistakes, but I was very proud of her for knowing what to do and following through with it so clearly, despite how hard it must have been. This makes my streak of never having broken up with anyone still ongoing, which I think is a really pathetic way to be. I wish I could just once muster the strength to pull the trigger.

A rather strange and wondrous thing happened to me at the burn this year: I fell in love.

I never expected this to happen at all, and I certainly wasn’t out looking for it, but when it happened it was kind of magical.

Since I started studying PUA, I’ve learned to be more confident around women that I find beautiful. When I was a younger man, the site of an attractive woman would lead to a sort of dear-in-the-headlights moment of panic, but I’ve since learned to be more comfortable and normal around pretty women. But for the first time in a long time, I felt that dear-in-the-headlights moment again when I first saw Millie at our camp. My heart skipped a beat, and I then did my damnedest to avoid coming across as weird.

Later that evening, I found myself dancing with her in front of a giant spinning cage of fire.

And two days later, I found myself in a cuddle puddle as she gently played with my hair. When it was suggested that we all share the stories of our first impressions of each other, I felt like I really didn’t want to. But I went forward with it anyway, and Millie got her chance to hear how powerfully she had affected me. And then later, on our way back from the world’s most shortest adventure, she reached over, grabbed me, pulled me in and gave me the sweetest kiss I could possibly imagine. It was one of those, “I can’t not be kissing you anymore,” kisses that just feel oh so good.

This led to a four day fantasy adventure through the dreamworld of Black Rock City, in which we spent 24 hours staring at one another (both sober and inebriated), stayed up late enough to see each and every sunrise, invented Tacoing, did the same thing in as many places as we could find, stared at the ping pong balls, got redrunk, were saved from a complicated situation by complicated costumes, and were gifted heart-glasses for being new.

The end of the week was incredibly sad, and we both had to have a good cry. For me, the thought that made me stop crying was, “I would do it all again. No matter how much I hurt right now, this was all worth it.” For Millie, it was the thought, “This is the story of how Millie met Colin.” I think that’s kind of wonderful; it holds so much promise for the future. I can’t wait for all of the amazing adventures I am sure to have with this incredible woman.

That weekend was so good that I’m actually blogging about it.

I sent out 25 postcards full of random thoughts I had while on the trip, and will post them here later.

More details to follow.

Rite Aid has one-upped CVS. [via boinboing]

My good friend Sarahdipity pointed out to me on Thursday that my mom, traditionalist that she is, might not know what kind of tattoo to get with her coupon. She suggested that I turn to my audience for suggestions, and so I shall do. I suspect that there are fewer than 5 people reading this blog, myself included, but if you have any suggestions, please do post them in the comments.

Thanks.

It all started with my desire to get my mom a tattoo for her birthday:

Make your own.

Yesterday, I found this feed while searching for a way to be automatically notified when a new issue of a comic book that I like is available.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite get the job done. For one, it presents all comics published on the same day as a single post. Also, as a result, it is very challenging to filter out the comics I don’t care about.

I wrote some code to parse the feed to give me an rss feed with posts for each comic, rather than one post for all comics:

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#!/usr/bin/perl
 
use XML::Simple;
use XML::Writer;
use Time::Local;
use Date::Format;
use Getopt::Long;
use strict;
 
my $generator = "ComicsFeedParser.pl @ARGV";
 
my $publisherfilter;
my $comicfilter;
my $pricefilter;
my $filter;
my $feedtitle = 'Published Comic Books';
my $silent = 0;
GetOptions(
    'publisher=s' => \$publisherfilter,
    'comic=s' => \$comicfilter, 
    'price=f' => \$pricefilter,
    'filter=s' => \$filter,
    'title=s' => \$feedtitle,
    'silent!' => \$silent,
    );
 
my $curlurl = 'http://feedproxy.google.com/comiclistfeed';
my $curloptions = $silent ? '--silent' : undef;
my $data = `curl $curlurl $curloptions`;
my $xs1 = XML::Simple->new();
 
my $doc = $xs1->XMLin($data);
 
my $pagelink = $doc->{channel}->{link};
 
my $writer = XML::Writer->new();
$writer->xmlDecl();
$writer->startTag('rss', 'version' => '2.0');
$writer->startTag('channel');
$writer->startTag('title');
$writer->characters($feedtitle);
$writer->endTag('title');
$writer->startTag('link');
$writer->characters($pagelink);
$writer->endTag('link');
$writer->startTag('description');
$writer->characters('Newly Published Comic Books');
$writer->endTag('description');
$writer->startTag('pubDate');
my @now = gmtime;
$writer->characters(strftime('%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z', @now, 'GMT'));
$writer->endTag('pubDate');
$writer->startTag('generator');
$writer->characters($generator);
$writer->endTag('generator');
 
foreach my $item (@{$doc->{channel}->{item}}) {
 
    my @gmt;
    if ($item->{title} =~ /(\d\d)\/(\d\d)\/(\d\d\d\d)/) {
 
        @gmt = gmtime(timelocal(0,0,0,$2,$1-1,$3-1900));
    }
    else {
 
        @gmt = gmtime;
    }
    my $date = strftime('%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z', @gmt, 'GMT');
    my $link = $item->{'feedburner:origLink'};
    my @lines = split("\n", $item->{description});
    my $publisher;
    my $publisherlink;
    foreach my $line (@lines) {
 
        $line =~ s/\s+/ /g;
        my $itemlink;
        if ($line =~ s/<a href="(.*)">(.*)<\/a>/$2/) {
 
            $itemlink = $1;
        }
        if ($line =~ /<p><b><u>(.*)<\/u><\/b>/) {
 
            $publisher = $1 unless ($1 eq 'PUBLISHER');
            $publisherlink = $itemlink;
        }
        elsif (defined $publisher) {
 
            my $comic;
            if ($line =~ /(.*)<br \/>/) {
 
                $comic = $1;
            }
            elsif ($line =~ /(.*)<\/p>/) {
 
                $comic = $1;
            }
 
            if ($comic) {
 
                my $title;
                my $price;
                if ($comic =~ /(.*), (.*)$/) {
 
                    $title = $1;
                    $price = $2;
                }
                else {
 
                    $title = $comic;
                }
                my $comiclink = $itemlink;
 
                my $filterresults = 1;
                if ($filter) {
 
                    $filterresults = eval $filter;
                    if ($@) {
 
                        warn $@;
                        $filterresults = 1;
                    }
                }
                if ((!$publisherfilter || $publisher =~ /$publisherfilter/) &&
                    (!$comicfilter || $title =~ /$comicfilter/) &&
                    (!$pricefilter || $price <= $pricefilter) &&
                    $filterresults) {
 
                    $writer->startTag('item');
                    $writer->startTag('title');
                    $writer->characters("$publisher: $title");
                    $writer->endTag('title');
                    $writer->startTag('link');
                    $writer->characters($comiclink || $publisherlink || $link || $pagelink);
                    $writer->endTag('link');
                    $writer->startTag('description');
                    $writer->characters("$publisher: $title, $price");
                    $writer->endTag('description');
                    $writer->startTag('pubDate');
                    $writer->characters($date);
                    $writer->endTag('pubDate');
                    $writer->endTag('item');
                }
            }
 
            if ($line =~ /(.*)<\/p>/) {
 
                $publisher = undef;
                $publisherlink = undef;
            }
        }
    }
}
 
$writer->endTag('channel');
$writer->endTag('rss');
$writer->end();

As you can see, there are a variety of filter flags that allow me to create customized feeds.

For example:

• ComicsFeedParser.pl −−comic “Buffy.*Season Eight” −−title “Buffy Season 8″
• ComicsFeedParser.pl −−publisher MARVEL −−title Marvel
• ComicsFeedParser.pl −−comic Powers −−title Powers
• ComicsFeedParser.pl −−comic Fables −−title Fables

Obviously, the generic filter flag behavior would have to be changed before I could make this available to the public (−−filter “fork while true;”, for example, could be a problem). But it suits my purposes for now.

I have discovered the greatest bit of javascript ever created, in the history of javascript: .

I have to agree with Clay Shirky when he says: 

“The internet is done, we can all go home and congratulate ourselves on a job well done.”

Go forth and cornify, dear reader. I highly recommend adding the javascript link as a bookmarklet; it makes the whole internet better.

In my life, I’ve met two types of men:

1. Circumcised men, who can’t imagine why anyone would ever want a foreskin, and
2. Uncircumcised men, who can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to be circumcised .

So who is this product for exactly?

I guess there are a lot of foreskin restoration sites out there.

And when you really think about it, who wants to live with mangled, incomplete, unnatural genitals?

I’m thinking about getting circumsised just so that I have a need for this product, tho. Or perhaps there’s some way in which I could use a spare?

[via boingboing]