No Phone

Lately, I have been hating my iPhone 4 with a passion. Set aside that I don't have Siri to boss around and I am still left with a phone that has unexplained glitches for days at a time. I went to the Apple store to have them explained and all I got was some bullshit about how if 2 or more errors happen at the same time yada yada yada. All I know is that every time a new iPhone is about to be released, my old one gets a little wonky. Steve Jobs is flippin' some mass kill switch from the grave that forces us (or mostly me) to upgrade. September cannot come soon enough.

To top off my iPhone woes, Hubby's iPhone's power switch was jammed and he had to take it into Best Buy for a replacement. We have Black Tie Coverage and all he has to do is take his phone in and they give him a new one, but it takes 2-3 business days as they ship them in. Until then (hopefully Wednesday), he is stuck with this antique Samsung that's quite hilarious. Actually, it's somewhat new and modern, but light years behind the almighty Apple wunderkind. 

His lack of awesome apps to assist him with, well, everything, has made me cherish my POS 4 a bit more. It's stopped it's ridiculous reboot cycle and though I will be the first in line when the 5 is released in September, I thought I would take the opportunity this Monday to show you my Must Have Apps.

In no particular order, these are my top 10/most used apps that I cannot live with out (or just don't want to).

Spotify

Totally awesome music app. For only $7.99 a month, I get all the frigging music I want and it's available offline (who ever goes offline?). It has radio, play lists and you can share shit with your friends. I swear by it. If the price seems to steep, I reasoned it with myself this way: I spent way more than that each month on iTunes.

Google

Hubby prefers to Google everything via Safari, but I loves me my google app. It has everything in one. It even keeps me logged into my Gmail and remembers shit I've searched for. Anything I use google for is accessible here. From Blogger to translate to my calenders. Saves me from having to download all the separate apps.

TWC Max

The Weather Channel Max is the best weather app out there. It gives detailed weather info and an hour-by-hour breakdown. Don't settle for the weather app that comes with the phone. Get this one!

Instagram

I had Instagram before it was available on Android and way before it was cool. Okay, I'm done being a hipster. Instagram is by far the coolest filter/social media app. Just trust me and get it, because I am not putting up screen shots of all it's cool features because then I would be showing you pics of my friends and I don't have their permission. You get a shot of my kindle. Deal with it.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual pin board where everything amazing in the world comes together. It's also mobile and prevents me from getting much done.

Drop 7

This is my favorite busy game. It's pretty entertaining once you get the hang of it and is my go to "try to exhaust my brain" app when I can't sleep. I'd explain the way it works but that takes to much time and effort.

Brave Temple Run

Who plays Temple Run? I did...until I found the Disney Brave version! It has everything the original has but with targets you have to shoot arrows at! Stop bragging about your plain old Temple Run high score and get on my bad ass level.

TMZ

I have real news apps, but TMZ is my celebrity news app. And they're always right and have the best sources. For those of you who like that sort of thing, this is the app to get.

Netflix

Netflix mobile is actually easier to use than the website. And as you can see, I am seriously reliving my teenage years with some melodramatic Dawson's Creek. Joey is still a whiny bitch, Dawson is still a pussy, Jen is still the coolest chick ever and Pacey, well, I'd still hit that.

Fandango 
Never wait in line at the movies again. Seriously, for a small convenience fee per purchase, you can buy your tickets online and print them out at the kiosk at the theater. There is NEVER a line at our theater kiosk, probably because Sun Citians aren't that bright.

Pimp Your Screen
Last but not least (and also a bonus #11) is Pimp Your Screen. It allows you to customize your home screen and lock screen and add all sorts of cute/cool features. Here is my page 2 so you can see the folder outlines.

What apps are my fellow iPhoner's rockin'? I'd love to add to my daily faves. Let me know in the comments!

Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For The Both Of Us

Can I just tell you how rockin’ my drive to school was tonight? Spotify was definitely on point tonight. Especially when “You’re Gonna Go For Kid” came on. People may have stared, but I sang and rocked out all the way into New Mexico.

Maybe if I had put that much energy in to getting my shit together as I left the house, I wouldn’t have left my note cards at home. I had to spend all my pre-class time handwriting new ones and listening to Fat Alberto and Typhoid Maria talk shit about me in Spanish. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.

The Deputy came in as I was feverishly writing and said “Oh Tiffany’s gonna kill it tonight, huh?” I ignored him and kept writing. He didn’t take the hint and repeated it. Juarez Teenager Female had just come in and she tapped me and said that he was saying something to me. I begrudgingly looked up and asked him to repeat himself as if I had not heard him. “I was just saying that you’re gonna kill it tonight, right? You’re gonna have the best presentation. You always do.” I smirked and said “Well, it’s a team presentation, so I am only as strong as my weakest link.” He said, “Oh, yeah, that’s nice.” That was meant to be an insult; maybe I’m losing my touch.

I didn’t have time to study for the quiz before class, what with all the note cards. Ms. Frizzle left the classroom and Katniss and I basically discussed the answers. Who needs to study when it’s so easy to work as a team? Isn’t that what University of Fictitious Bird wants us to do?

The Deputy has already announced that his group will go first. He said they might as well because they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about anyway. Peircy Pauly made the presentation and then didn’t come tonight. I guess they want the teacher to know they did nothing and didn’t prepare. Not like Ms. Frizzle would know the difference anyway.

Boy is this a bad one. You can’t see the text because it blends in with the photos that they used to make the background. We’re supposed to pretend we are a special committee presenting to the state legislature our recommendations for the juvenile justice system and it’s future. Except he just spent five minutes talking about teaching kids to use guns. For the next portion, he said “This was PP’s part and she’s not here and she was supposed to do law enforcement.” He then proceeded to read her portion word for word off of the slide and then stated the same thing in his own words.

Here’s what I don’t get: if you worked on this as a team, shouldn’t you know all of the portions? I mean, I made our team presentation without input but I sent my team the whole presentation, not just their part. It’s important to see the whole thing so you know what you’re talking about. Maybe that’s just important to me. My bad. Doppelganger Housewife is up and boy, she’s good. And by good I mean terrible. Her slides are 12 pt font and full paragraphs. I also just realized that they don’t have the presentation in slide show mode. Wow.

We had offered to go second but Typhoid Maria said “NO! We are going second.” Going second won’t make your shit better. They started off with an idea bubble of sorts. The center said “Youth Juveniles” and then all this random shit spurred out of it. She said that those are the many things involved with juveniles in a community. One bubble said “Psychedelics.” No explanation. Those are some hardcore communities. Her voice keeps raising to a shout every other sentence. It’s very jarring. She had some of the audience read her slide and she also has note cards. Honey, copying my swagger isn’t going to get you an A. I don’t read from my cards verbatim, I use them as an aid if and when I need them. And her cards weren’t speaker’s notes. They were exactly what the slides said. She’s got them glued to her the front of her face. When she finished her portion, she looked at me with this smug smile. Yeah, you nailed it. I’m super intimidated.

Moobs went next. That’s their other team member’s official blog name. He has man boobs and they are perky. Thanks for the name Katniss. He talked about how kids are violent to cops. I didn’t comprehend anything he said. But Fat Alberto is up and I cannot type fast enough! He said that kids, you know, do things, you know? He talked about kids getting shackled and needing to be nicer. The slide said “Proposal: Easy sentencesing for 1^st time offenders, even for felony or violent crimes.” I’m ignoring the spelling and going full force into the last portion. Violent offenders should get easier sentences…or sentencesing? Wow. I hope they make you their victim next.

“Halfway houses is what they use, they use them you know for juveniles that don’t want to change, you know, but they put them in the halfway houses you know.” He is telling us a story of a 15 year-old-girl who was an “Unwanted mother” and the church made her go to this house that was a halfway house because she was pregnants, you know. “She saw all these bad things she saw and she didn’t need to be in this halfway house because her only crime was a moral crime, you know.”

During break, Katniss and I had a long convo with Moobs about how his group works. I needed an insiders take on the mind of Fat Alberto. It was very enlightening. He said Fat Alberto dolls out the work, but only does one paragraph himself. Then he puts it together without showing anyone the final result. Moobs said Fat Alberto tries to boss everyone around because he’s a security guard. Yep. That makes him the authority.

We went and The Deputy was correct, I killed it. My girls did well too, but oh to see the look on Typhoid Maria’s face. She looked like a pissed-off adult Dora the Explorer. In the words of Charlie Daniels in that one Geico commercial “That’s how you do it son.” Fat Alberto, or the dad from Dinosaurs, just kept nodding his head like he understood. No, you didn’t understand. There is no need to pretend.

After we sat down, Ms. Frizzle said “Very good job!” then paused, and added “…for everyone else too.” That just made TM even more furious. Her scowl got tighter and her eyes screamed “KILL THEM!” 

We have to go over the topics for tonight’s class, though she said she’d be brief. Which means we will be here until 9:45. We talked about gangs and I told them about how gangs are using the military to get tactical training and for recruitment. I gave an example of a man who was beat to death in Germany, whilst getting jumped in. The gang originated here at Ft. Bliss. That’s all Fat Alberto needed to decide he was an expert. Except, he just repeated my opinion plus some you knows. Even The Deputy had to jump in and echo my military gang knowledge. I guess they sat in the same flight intel briefings I did. I don’t remember seeing them around the squadron in Germany, but they say they know so they must. Here I was thinking I added to the conversation, but alas, I just told them what they already knew.

Ms. Frizzle is now telling us stories of Sun City gangland past. Back in 1993, this city was overrun with gangs. Graffiti covered everything, tons of drive-bys; she’s making it sound like a post-apocalyptic Sun City. Everyone is nodding their head with somber looks on their faces like they lived through it. Sun City was hard, yo.

Doppelganger Housewife/Mother of the Year had to add her two cents. Her son picked up his friends in his car, but they had just gotten done tagging a wall. The cops busted them and her son was guilty by association. She said “I knew my kid didn’t do it because I always told him, you want to do that shit, here’s some paper and crayons. And they knew.” She has a solution to every juvenile delinquency problem, this one just happens to be coloring. Maybe she can solve the problems in the Middle East next? I'll ask.

The entire class (excluding our presentation time) Blond Sonja read People magazine. It must have been pretty darn interesting, as she didn’t look up once. She just finished and held it up to me and said “You want to read it now?” I declined, but I have to admire her commitment to failure. She then pulled out her NOT iPad and played Angry Birds for the remainder of the night.

Next week I have a brand new class with these folks and also an online course. Intro to Film. My first assignment is 300 words on why I like movies. Little Bug is going to write it for me.

See you tomorrow!

Don't act like you don't see it.

Funky Chicken

I tend to refer to my dear friend Nic when it comes to all things gay. I've known him since middle school and we've had some grand adventures. We would ride around for hours in his Jeep Cherokee and do all sorts of silliness. We even protested the choosing of hot pink as our junior class color by forming Junior's Against Hot Pink (JAHP). It was just us two, but we made the yearbook bitches. I always knew he was gay (though he didn't tell me until later) and it never bothered me. Even being a regular (forced) church-goer, it just didn't seem wrong to me. He is who he is and he can love who he loves and that's all that matters.

Nic also served in the Air Force (before I did) and while I was in basic, he sent me the funniest letters telling me to keep my head up and where to sneak candy from. He sent me pics of him acting a fool at his job (photography) and told me he was proud of me. I once asked him how he felt about "don't ask, don't tell" and he replied with something along the lines of "If the Air Force can't tell I'm gay then that's their problem!" He served his country honorably, probably more than a whole lotta straight folks.

So it should come as no surprise that in the midst of all these people condemning Chick-Fil-A for their CEO's personal beliefs, I would defer to Nic. I have my own opinion on it, of course.

I think a man who runs a privately owned company can donate to whomever he pleases and praise whatever god he chooses and think marriage is between a man and a woman all he wants. That's what the 1st Amendment is for. It doesn't only apply to liberals. I don't have to agree with him (and I don't), but I don't think mayors of any city have the right to say that a business that will employ it's residents can't operate there. In this economy, you take jobs where you can get 'em. Chick-Fil-A employs gay people, they serve them food, and they have NEVER been accused of discriminating against them as a company. You don't want to eat there? Fine. But by threatening to pull your business until they change their beliefs is...what did the ACLU call it? Oh yeah. Viewpoint discrimination.

But I digress. I asked Nic to write a guest blog about where he stands on this issue. He was more than happy to oblige:

You know that old saying “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?” This phrase is, without a doubt, completely and utterly true for me. A tasty and delicious meal can put me in the happiest of moods, and a crappy or bland meal can leave me winning the day’s official Sour Puss award. People could tell me the worst things about certain types of food, but I would still eat it. I would just laugh in their face while I stuffed my mouth with a KFC Double Down chicken “sandwich”. If it’s good, it’s good.

Why do I open with this pearl of wisdom about my love of food? Because as a gay man, I am supposed to hate Chik-Fil-A. With every glitter-covered fiber of my being, I am supposed to think that this is the restaurant that the devil frequents when he needs a quick bite, or when it’s 3AM and he is jonesing for something tasty to soak up all that evil alcohol he’s been consuming. But what I’ve been told, really, is that I am supposed to completely forget every time I’ve licked the inside of a French fry container because the lingering taste from the consumed fries taunts me from the inside of the package. I am supposed to forget every time I’ve stuffed my face with more than enough food, stopping to think “If I have another bite, I could explode” but then realize that it’s worth it and finish the rest of the sandwich. More so, I am supposed to forget the wonderfully cheerful people that have always helped me, and while they are paid to smile and be friendly and not look like they’re judging me for my large order, I know that a small part of them is really nice and friendly and not judging. Yes, I am supposed to forget all of this because the man that signs his name to all the Chik-Fil-A checks decided that it would be a good idea to give money to the Anti-Gay Campaigns.

To begin with, I would just like to state that this man is an idiot. I mean, why did he think it would be a good idea to make these contributions from the corporate account? He could have easily made them from his own account. While it would still be partially associated with him, as he is the President of the company, it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal (like it is now). This route would have saved the company a whole lot of bad press, and all of the anger would have been pushed directly to him. I mean, he seemed to be very pleased with the outcome of everything, since he was happy to accept the blame of the situation (made apparent by his “guilty as charged” remark). Though, I must say...way to be so proud of yourself while still being a complete douche. Kudos to you Mr. Cathy.

I haven’t been to a Chik-Fil-A in years. I think the last time was when I was in Ohio, and I think I went there to console myself and make me feel good about being in Ohio. Lord knows I needed something. I remember it being so tasty and good and a mini-escape for me. But that was forever ago. The closest location to where I am is 48 miles away in Fairfield, which is worse than Ohio (and yes, that is possible!) So, that’s the reason that I haven’t been in a long time. But if there was one closer, I would probably go there. And I know that I would have a shit-load of people screaming at me, “What are you doing? They don’t support gay marriage!” I understand that there needs to be solidarity in boycotting things, and that the power of the customer’s dollar is incredibly important. I understand this, and I know that my eating there would be horrible. But I sincerely and honestly believe that my stomach is more powerful than anything. I don’t really get into politics, but I do get into food. So now you know.

Now, aside from this company having some yummy food and completely hating gays, what else do you know about them? Probably nothing, because what’s the point of knowing anything else besides what is in the media and what is important? Do you know what the WinShape Foundation is? It’s the foundation that was created over 20 years ago by the original owners of Chik-Fil-A, Truett and Jeannette Cathy. The WinShape Foundation does a lot of stuff:

·       WinShape Homes - currently operates 11 foster care homes in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.

·       WinShape College Program - at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, this is a co-op program offering joint four-year scholarship funding to incoming freshmen of up to $32,000.

·       WinShape Camps - offers boys and girls summer programs at the college, which will be attended by more than 15,000 campers in 2012.

·       WinShape Retreat - offers a sequestered setting for marriage support and counseling and other gatherings on the Mountain Campus of Berry College.

·       WinShape Wilderness - an outdoor adventure program that facilitates experiential learning for all audiences in ropes course settings as well as canoeing, rock climbing and backpacking venues. Helps people use adventure to equip people to experience real change, not just in a team setting, but also through personal transformation.

·       WinShape International - mobilize leaders to transform young people and communities around the world.

Aside from all of this, they also provide $1,000 college scholarships to restaurant employees, with over $30 million dollars in total. But, aside from all of this, I’m guessing you still think that they’re completely horrible no matter what, right? Just because someone doesn’t agree with you about something, doesn’t mean that they’re completely wrong or evil or bad. It just means that you don’t agree.

Do you know how people are “fighting back” against this gay-hating corporation? They’re not going to allow them to build new locations. Seriously, the mayors of several towns throughout the US have decided that since they don’t love their gays, then they don’t want them around. Uhm...am I the only one to think this is a bit crazy? I mean, sure...it’s pretty bad-ass that some mayor is like, “Hey...gays are awesome. You don’t like them, then you can just get the hell out of here!” I think that’s pretty neat, but I also know that it’s pretty illegal. Or at the very least, it should be. Here’s why. Do you know of the Catholic church or the Mormon church or pretty much several other churches who happen to think that being gay is an abomination and that they are going to hell. What happens when one of these churches decides to build a new location, or a community center, or anything else that is church related? Nothing happens except that they get to build it. But why is that? I mean, they too hate the gays, don’t they? So why aren’t they being bullied as well? 

Perhaps the mayors of these towns should institute a new department of City Hall, called the Business Owners for Gay Love (or BAGL). Every time an individual was interested in opening a new business, they would have to come before BAGL employees and provide several references to their connection with the gay community and how much they love them. Photographs, letters of recommendations, and any other items are accepted. Yes, I’m being a complete smart ass about that, though if it gets created I am totally going to shit myself. Cause that would be so ridiculously awesome.

I think this entire thing has gotten out of hand, and continues to overwhelm the news every day. Many important stories are being overshadowed or pushed to page two because Chik-Fil-A is such a big thing right now. How about you report the story, as was done forever ago, and then let that be it. Having articles that state “Chik-Fil-A Still Hates Gays” does nothing. If, by the miracle of whatever entity you believe in, they perhaps change their mind, then you should report that. Otherwise, let the news be filled with things that are new, and not just a recap of what’s been happening and reported on for 6 months.

Here are my final remarks on this: (1) Chik-Fil-A is a restaurant that makes delicious food, and as such, should be judged on their food and nothing more; (2) the President of Chik-Fil-A is a douche, though with a name like Mr. Cathy, I would probably be as well; (3) while Chik-Fil-A has made a contribution to an anti-gay campaign (which is oh-so-wrong in the current times) they’ve also made some considerable achievements in other areas of philanthropy; (4) the news needs to stop reporting on this, as the story is completely old and over with, and we’ve already decided which side of the fence we stand on with this; (5) if I could, I would be eating a gallon of Chik-Fil-A fries right now, because I’m a Fat Bottomed Boy and my stomach is more important than politics. 


Nic (who is awesome) currently resides in the City by the Bay and will remain my go-to-gay for as long as I live. One day he will take my daughter out and tell her all the awful things her mommy did when she was younger, but she'll be better and wiser (hopefully kinder) for it.