Thanks to everyone who offered advice on how to perform a wholesale deletion of comments from Movable Type. I eventually figured it out - all I had to do was modify the Export template by removing the MTComment tags. The server no longer choked on the database of 150,000 comments, and I was able to rebuild the Export text file with no problems.

If you ever experience the same issue and would like more details on how I removed the comments, just shoot me an e-mail.

Anyway, I'll be moving the site over to Typepad in the next few days, so bear with me. See you then.

Posted by Toby at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My blog is crippling under the weight of spam comments - 149,453 comments to be exact. That's more than an average of 180 comments per entry. The large majority of the comments are spam, and I've no idea how to get rid of them.

I'm looking to transfer my site over to Typepad. But as things currently stand, the Export text file is too large for Typepad's Import mechanism to handle, due to the spam comments.

Is there any way to easily delete all comments from my blog? I don't really care about salvaging any of them. It's just causing so many problems. Please e-mail me if you have any advice.

P.S. I am not interested in learning about spam filters, etc. I simply want a method for the wholesale deletion of comments from Movable Type. Thanks!

Posted by Toby at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. Tonight's leftover pork chop with a honey and balsamic reduction, which I'll be eating for lunch tomorrow. (Yes, I made it myself.)

2. Weekend nights, when I withdraw $100 from the ATM and jump into my favorite jeans and try — try — to stay one drink behind everyone else.

3. Weekend mornings, when I wake up in a familiar place that isn't my bedroom.

4. The sty maturing on my left eyelid.

5. My new featherbed and down-filled pillows, which should arrive any day now from Overstock.com.

6. Impending credit card bills, tarnished by bar tabs and Chipotle crispy tacos and new suits.

7. The moment when Amy Grant's Christmas album becomes seasonally appropriate.

8. The bottle of shiraz-cab in our liquor cabinet.

9. Finishing "Icy Sparks" and beginning "The Great Gatsby" or maybe "Jarhead."

10. Having kids. (Don't read into that — I've just run into a lot of gay couples these days who have recently adopted kids, and it got me thinking. But the fact remains that I can barely take care of my Teflon grill pan, let alone a child.)

UPDATE: I am aware of the 500 Internal Server Error that you get when you try to post a comment. I think it has something to do with the mt-comments.cgi file - even though I try to change the attributes of the file to 755 in my FTP program, it still remains 000. What the hell! I use Movable Type (ever since updating to the new platform, I've been having problems), so if you think you can help me out, just e-mail me. Thanks!

Posted by Toby at 09:26 PM | Permalink

There are a lot of things to like about Halo. The two-for-one happy hour drink special is one of them. The clock strikes five and, presto, a lone $12 Hanger One martini becomes two $6 Hanger One martinis - and, presto, Toby is wasted. This is a very economical happy hour option for me, but it's important to keep in mind that drinks are thusly consumed in increments of two. Sign up for one martini and you're committing to two. Get a third and you better have it in you to get a fourth. Although, you could probably pass off the bonus drink to a friend, but that's cheating - something an A-team drinker like me doesn't do. If you can't handle that fourth martini, then welcome to the B-team, bitch.

Another good thing about Halo is the no-smoking policy. Like many lowercase-L libertarians, I'm pretty much against government regulation of human behavior, but when a bar chooses to ban smoking on its premises, that's fine with me. So whenever I go to Halo, it's pretty much guaranteed that a) I won't smell like cigarettes when I leave, and b) I won't smoke cigarettes, which I typically do whenever I'm drinking and the situation presents itself. Augh - how the hell did I start smoking! Oh, that's right, it was when Britney started to publicly smoke Marlboro Lights. And I'm not even joking.

So, all of those things about Halo are great, but the BEST thing is... Well, you are going to think I'm the gayest person in the world, but the best thing about Halo is the lighting in the men's bathroom.

Seriously. The lighting in the men's bathroom is awesome. I excused myself from the group three times just to go to the bathroom and look at my perfectly lighted reflection in the bathroom mirror. It looked something like this:

How can I get this lighting in my own bathroom! If anyone works for Halo and knows the kind of light fixtures in the men's bathroom, please e-mail me immediately. Thanks.

Anyway, it's become quite obvious to me that I am no longer Washington's premiere gay blogger, because last night at Halo, some clown recognized Jamie but had no idea who I was! I'm sorry, but if it weren't for me, Jamie would be nothing. I paved the way for you, honey, and don't you forget it. (Oh my god, I'm sounding like Bradford, and I'm not even 32 yet!)

Posted by Toby at 05:11 PM | Permalink

Having spent Saturday night with more than 3,000 gays and lesbians at the HRC dinner, I felt that a Sunday afternoon at the Virginia State Fair would provide necessary balance to an otherwise homo-oriented weekend. After all, if there is any antidote to the whimsical hope for gay equality, it's fried foods, racism and other traditional values.

I enjoyed the fair as one might a colonoscopy - after some initial discomfort, I relaxed and allowed myself to learn something about a region I knew existed but had never seen up close before. Sure, I could extend this metaphor indefinitely, but suffice it to say that the sights, sounds and smells of the South taught me a lot. In fact, more than I ever cared to know.

For instance, Southerners are all about the Confederate flag. My friends and I at first made an effort to tally all Confederate flag sightings, but we were easily and unexpectedly overwhelmed by the mass of Southern Cross-emblazoned t-shirts, bandanas, tattoos, buttons, stickers, belt buckles, thongs, and home decor that greeted us at the fair's entrance. It was funny at first, but the sight of a barefoot child dancing around with a corn dog in one hand and a Confederate flag in the other was just scary. Perhaps the symbol no longer stands for racial intolerance, but there were a lot of black families at the fair, and I didn't see any of them wistfully recalling the days of the Confederacy.

Hmm, let's see, what else did I learn? Well, there were a lot of overweight individuals, many of them bound to a wheelchair. I'm not sure what use I can derive from this scientific observation, but I'd be willing to advise these people to lay off the fried everything for a while. However, in the interest of empathy, my boyfriend and I did indulge in a shared "elephant ear" - fried dough with sugar on it. We ate it while watching small children ride a mechanical bull. One of these activities is surely worse than the other, although I will leave that up to debate.

Like all violating experiences, our day at the Virginia State Fair eventually came to a merciful end. Highlight: The pig race, despite the "evil" potbellied pig being named Tyrone, and the announcer calling only one dark-skinned child from the audience to be among the 20 children who participated in the race. Lowlight: The discomfort of being in my own skin, of holding my boyfriend's hand, of simply touching him. Oh, I dared not do any of those things. Perhaps my fear was irrational, but having just been exposed by Southerners to so much culture, I wasn't really in the mood to return the favor.

Posted by Toby at 05:11 PM | Permalink