I think the more time I spend living alone, the wackier I get.

I have started a new habit of talking to the television. I usually offer words of encouragement to characters in movies, and I sometimes sass talk newspeople that I don't agree with or who are telling me things I don't want to hear. I watched the movie "Dungeons and Dragons" on TBS on Saturday--I know, I know, please don't even BEGIN to ask me what I was doing--and I found myself having an ongoing conversation with the characters. I finally realized how stupid I was being when I just *had* to tell one actress, "That guy may be beating the shit out of you, but DAMN your makeup looks good..."

So if that weren't bad enough, tonight I hit another low. I was browsing through the dating service that I'm on, and, like usual, everybody looked ugly or stupid. (Most people on this service are fortunate enough to have both qualities wrapped up in one delightful package...) So I decided that I need to expand my boundaries beyond Minneapolis, to see what other places have to offer. But to do a search, you need to enter a ZIP code. So I entered the only other ZIP code I know...

90210.

And can I just tell you that people in Los Angeles are GORGEOUS?! I am so tempted to pack my bags and move. Fuck the fires, screw Schwarzenegger. Almost everybody I knew in college moved to L.A., and I'm sure somebody has space on the floor for me. I sort of want to go just to see if the hype is really valid--can there really be 500 young, attractive, successful, single gay men living in L.A.?

I was slightly put off, however, when I noticed that tons of the guys had pictures of themselves on the beach, usually in some state of undress. See, here in Minnesota, guys go into their bathrooms, take off their shirts, photograph their pale, flabby, hairy bodies in the mirror and then post that with their profile. In L.A., guys go to the BEACH, have their FRIENDS take the picture, revealing their TAN, MUSCULAR, FIRM bodies. The difference may be subtle, but can you see it?

So I don't think I could make it in L.A. I'm not a beach person. I don't think my nipples have seen the light of the sun since I was two years old. The only gym I've been to in the past five years is Gymboree at the mall. I don't even pluck my eyebrows, much less wax them to perfection like the guys seem to do in L.A.

So I guess I'll stay here in Minneapolis, locked in my drafty apartment, writing bad poetry and wincing when the sun happens to poke through my mini-blinds, drinking highly-caloric beer with reckless abandon.

But thank god for the Internet--I guess it doesn't hurt to look.....