Pambassadors?

I had previously posted that a research/tourist facility in China was seeking several international panda care-takers. Looks like they found the ideal candidates for the panda keepers...and didn't take my recommendation of using the news team from Anchorman. Sad.

They chose 6 candidates from 61,615 applicants, spanning 52 countries and regions in the world. Talk about competition!

See the story here, for more Pambassador goodness.

One thing in the article struck me, however. China Daily referred to one of the winners, Wang Yu-wen, as being from Taiwan. I don't ALWAYS read the China Daily (I probably should) but I was almost certain that most mainland Chinese, and especially state sponsored media, feel that Taiwan is still part of China. Maybe I'm wrong.

Smurfing around...

Okay, this is amazing. I want to go an entire theme park based on Smurfs.

When, you ask? When are you buying my plane ticket?

Jean Logic

Brilliant.

As seen on Groupon.

Shurikens and kunai, oh my!

Bloomberg reports that Steve Jobs was stopped at an airport and had to throw away shurikens in his luggage. Shurikens?

And I thought I was an anime nerd.

Although now I know what I want for Christmas...hint hint.

Antisocial networks?

The commodification of sex in Manhattan is a truth of the place. Put so many people on a tiny island and some aspects of life just become...expected.

Nowhere is this as true as with gay men.

But when online hook-up websites (Manhunt, Grindr, craigslist, findfred...the list goes on) make finding sex as easy as ordering take out and become normalized, it stunts the development of healthy sexuality as a whole.

Maybe it is the anthropologist in me talking, but with the availability of sex 24/7, the proclivity of gay men toward multiple partners, rising drug use and the arrival of a new generation of millennials that grew up during the Bush years where abstinence only sex education programs deprived them of the importance of safe sex, there is a scary convergence of dangerous components out there that all point to the rise of sexually transmitted diseases.

Add to the fact that most of the men that are out there are emotionally undeveloped? Prospects are not so good.

Ugh. Talk about depressing... how is a single gay man supposed to navigate this minefield?

Very carefully.

Quote of the day

"Can we look ourselves in the face and say we have given proper weight to the Miley Cyrus-Hannah Montana dichotomy? I don't think so."

--David Brooks, discussing the lack of bi-coastal American pop-culture coverage over at the NYTimes with Gail Collins. So snarky!

Sharing the love for life

I guest blogged over at You Might As Well... a site started up by my friend Amanda and her friend Kelly.

Check it out, some of them are quite funny.

Moving havoc

So I decided to stay in New York City for Labor Day weekend and it turned out that a friend was moving. So as my plans were suddenly vacant, I offered to help. I'm a swell friend, aren't I?

We started Friday night but couldn't get motivated. It was Friday, after all! We're sitting in his room, I brought over supplies (a bottle of vodka, some club soda) and we were contemplating what/how to do aka watching True Blood.

Needless to say we didn't do much but enjoy True Blood and the vodka, and then of course listened to some Justin Bieber. Who can't love that kid? I'll tell you, me.

All of his songs are so materialistic and fluff: baby this and baby that, I'll buy you a diamond ring and the finer things, themes that drive tween girls and gay twinks wild. Also, I'm aware that he is an excellent singer, having seen his YouTube covers of pop songs, but why the heavy hand of AutoTunes!? Just make him sing it til he gets it right! It didn't help that 4 of his songs were in a playlist that only lasted two hours. Needless to say, my friend is stuck in twink mode.

But we had fun, got pretty drunk, and ended up going out. Not much moving got done.

I crashed there and the next day we made a trip to Staples/Manhattan Mini Storage and packed up just about everything in his room and the kitchen/common areas. One of the easy things was that he was keeping the same roommate so we didn't have to divide up the goods, even though most of it was his anyway.

We finished up around 3am - we seriously took our time - and I made the trek back to Brooklyn craving nothing more than a shower and my own bed. I was not staying there as he had wrapped up his bed already and planned on sleeping on the couch. He had hired movers to actually move the stuff Sunday morning, and I figured for my own sanity it'd be best if I stayed home and waited to help him unpack in Queens.

I again set up his kitchen. Only one bowl broke in the move. I consider that a success.

All in all, he seemed happy to have it over with. Our mutual friend Laurence tasked himself and I with keeping him sane through it all. In a text last night, he described what I felt...

"Mission accomplished ;-)"

And to think, I could have gone to Asbury Park instead...