Assuming from the Internet

I'm supposed to be working on my piece about the pride parade for Worldwide Hippies News & Stuff, but I've been eating tamales from Trader Joe's and working on getting a ticket to Burning Man with Pinko.  Actually,  Pinko has been doing all the work.  For a nanosecond it looked like I had just gotten a ticket - but then there was some issue with the link due to the internal workings of the online ticketing system.  That's all good because I'm leaving this whole Burning Man thing in the hands of the Universe - which doesn't even have hands.

It has occurred to me that Pinko might be the "player" who is getting tired of playing I was thinking I needed a while back.  That thought occurred to me because of this photo on the internet which was taken at the turn of the century:

Photos often give us ideas about people - but the thing is that the moment captured in a snapshot may not capture the person at all.  To illustrate this point further, consider a photo I like to call, "Velvet and the Bitches."

For reasons I've never understood, boys Velvet's age were all into Pimping a couple of years ago.  Maybe they got it from Grand Theft Auto or something equally as goofy.  Velvet had dressed up as a fellow named Gaspard Auge´for Halloween.  He's in a band called Justice, ergo: Velvet was not pretending to be a pimp for Halloween.  Those girls weren't pretending to be Hos either.  I'm sure they're all nice girls with clean panties and good grades because Velvet has good sense in that area (and we all remember how I went on a tear about Gayle's panties some years ago (Stonerdate 02.16.08).

The point is that the only thing you might be able to tell about Velvet from this photo is that he's high.  If anyone looked at his grades that semester, they could figure out he was high.  For the record, this photo was taken in the dorm shortly before that fateful night at Hookah House when Velvet became King of the Halloween Party (Stonerdate 11.04.09) I'd say more about it now except it's come to my attention that my parents are reading the blog again, and Mother would choke on her coffee.  That would fuck up her mac, and we can't have that.

It's interesting, to me anyway, that about a week after this photo of Velvet was taken - when I went up to Treehugger U to find out exactly WTF was going on and drag his ass to the administrative offices where he was supposed to have gone a month earlier to arrange for all the tutors and note takers and whatever other services he was allegedly going to receive from Treehugger's office of Academic Success (which were so inadequate that somebody should really take them to court, but that's another story), Velvet told me over a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's that he believed he was never meant to be an engineer.  He believed he was meant to be a DJ at raves.  As it happens, Pinko's career trajectory seems to have been directly influenced by being a DJ at raves.  So somehow, somewhere - there's something similar about Velvet and Pinko.

I am compelled to state that I am in no way interested in mothering Pinko.  For one thing, Pinko has a mother (I think.  He talks more about his dad, so maybe his mother has passed.  But either way, it's not my job), and (2) I grew out of being Wendy to Peter Pan back when I was in college.  I was cleaning the toilet at one of the Band Houses my buddies from High School inhabited when the garage band gigged at Raul's on the drag in Austin, Texas.  That house would have cured the Wendy tendencies in any young woman - but I was having a big Halloween party myself and if it's one thing I learned in college, it was never have acid parties at your own house (sorry, Mom).

Anyone who saw my grades that semester will know why I didn't really mind about Velvet's grades that particular semester at Treehugger.   The difference is that my GPA at the time was so high that I could get a 0.065 for the semester without my average dipping below a 2.5.  Velvet's GPA never reached 2.0 the whole time he was up at Treehugger.   Now that he's a liberal arts major and going to school here in town, Velvet makes As all the time.

We can all credit Cupcake for much of Velvet's recent academic success because Cupcake tends to all the administrative tasks that slip Velvet's profoundly ADD mind - such as registration and remembering passwords.  They are both working at the Hippy Dippy Quaker Camp this summer.  Velvet had been gone all of three days when Cupcake was lamenting about missing Velvet so much to one of her girlfriends that the friend said, "Why don't you go visit?"
Cupcake said to her friend, "Why don't I work there?"  The Hippy Dippy Quaker Camp is perpetually understaffed up until the very last moment because most people don't want to live in cabins without electricity in the woods of Vermont to make very little money for working all summer.  Velvet had been spreading the word to his peers that they were looking for helpers in the kitchen.
Cupcake has now been working in the kitchen for a couple of weeks - but if I'm remembering correctly, the campers just arrived last weekend.

The point I'm making, though, is that you can't tell anything about the reality of someone by looking at random pictures on the internet.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any pictures of me marching down Christopher Street toward Stonewall as a marshall in the LGBT Pride Parade last weekend with the Sirens Women's Motorcycle Club - but if there were a photo of me in that situation floating around the internet, some folks might get the idea that I'm a lesbian.  I don't care if they do.

It's hard to say whether or not that would enhance my chances at getting a date with a man in my demographic because some men always seem to think that they're capable of turning a lesbian straight with the power of their penises.  Some men are stupid.  In fact, so many men are so stupid that I quit dating all together.  The guy who reminded me of a Lawn Gnome comes to mind - but the point is that you can't tell anything about somebody from of a couple of pictures on the internet.  Lots of people some people at the Pride Parade thought Gigi was Harry Belafonte's daughter just because she's half black, beautiful and was walking by Harry Belafonte's car in the parade.

Harry Belafonte was a Grand Marshall this year, and as it happened, the cars for the Grand Marshalls were on the same block as the Sirens while everybody was lining up for the parade.  Harry Belafonte has been an inspiration to Gigi all her life.  I like him because of the Muppets and because he gives Obama the shit he deserves - but Gigi finds him an inspiration and her aura of calm authority is such  that Harry Belafonte's real daughters were grateful to discover someone who could support them during the chaotic, noisy pre-parade organizational moments as they got their daddy in the car.
He's pretty old these days and from where I stood, he looked a little creaky getting into the position on the backseat of the convertible.

Gigi is accomplished at assisting celebrities, and the next thing you know, she was off with Harry Belafonte and his grateful daughters.  I didn't see her again until after the parade was over because the Sirens ride before the Grand Marshalls.  We clear the street.  I did get a chance to say, "Hello," to Harry before the parade.  I took the opportunity to tell him we sing one of his songs to the kids at my school all the time.

I even got to sing a chorus of Turn the World Around with Harry Belafonte himself.
How cool is that? 
Harry Belafonte thought Gigi and I were partners.  Plenty of people are under the impression that Gigi is my daughter which is an assumption one of the technicians at our regular nail salon made back when Gigi and I were both red heads.  Just goes to show that when you know a little bit about someone, you really don't know shit.

Here's the backside of Gigi at the Parade:

Gigi was going to wear a rainbow bandana around her head - and she looked kind of like a cute little pirate in that little white dress (she's the one with the short, blonde hair).  She also looked enough like Butterfly McQueen to be concerned that Paula Deen may try to get her to work a plantation themed soiree.