Another of those posts where I can't organize my thoughts enough to focus on a single topic

• I'm going to avoid offensive posts for a while. I don't really like Confrontational Master Fob. Well, and even more than that, I don't like dreading the next comment from people I'm likely to have offended.
• Bawb mentioned Pandora on his blog a while back but I hadn't checked it out until a couple days ago when an instructor told us to all go home and take a look. Pandora creates personalized radio stations by finding music that matches qualities of the music you like. I'm intrigued by the database and ranking system it's using. Each song in the database has hundreds of tags describing the instrumentation, vocals, and lyrics, and apparently Pandora figures out which qualities you like as you add music to your list and then tell them you like or don't like songs they play. I find myself wishing there were an advanced mode that allowed me to sort through the list of qualities on a song and tell Pandora which of those qualities I'm looking for in new music. I also find myself wishing there were something this thorough for readers' advisory.
  
• A neighbor just called to invite me and S-Boogie to dinner tomorrow night. I'm not sure if I've met him before, but I was talking to his wife yesterday and she knows Foxy J from a BYU ward. I'm oddly touched by this little act of kindness, inviting me over to eat while my wife is gone. By "oddly" I mean more than I think I would usually be. I'm in a funky emotional state tonight.
• I seem to be more keenly aware of emotional deficiencies--particularly cravings for intimacy with men--when Foxy J is not around. I remember having this same empty feeling the last time S-Boogie was in the hospital with asthma and Foxy stayed the night with her while I came home. Perhaps some feelings are not as gender-attached as I tend to perceive them.
  
• I feel very closeted here in Seattle. It's not like everyone in Utah knows I'm gay, or that I even talked about it all that much with the people who did know, but there was a good number of the people I associated with on a regular basis who knew, and I found that comforting. I just don't like people assuming I'm straight. I find it a bit awkward, however, to say, "Hi, I'm Master Fob. I'm from Hawaii and I've been living in Utah for nine years and I got a bachelor's and master's in English from BYU and I'm sort of Mormon and I'm married and I have two kids and I'm gay but really I'm happily married and I'm not cheating on my wife or anything but I don't hate practicing gay people either and really, I'm every bit as politically liberal as I'm assuming you are based merely on the fact that you live in Seattle." Perhaps I just miss being surrounded by people who know me, not just casually but intimately. Perhaps I try to create the illusion that a lot of people know me intimately by writing publicly of intimate things because otherwise I would likely never open up to people at all.