Came thisclose to getting a Freddie Mercury tattoo

I remember crying my heart out when he died. Seriously almost got the tattoo, and even today when I hear "Too Much Love Will Kill You," I get misty and think about it. But I now know the pain and expense of having laser treatments to remove poorly considered tattoos.

Remember being a kid and having absolutely no idea what the band name referred to? We used to do the hustle to "Another One Bites the Dust" in sixth-grade P.E.

It's been years since I had a cassette player in my house or car, let alone a turntable, and I had "Killer Queen" on vinyl and "Greatest Hits" on cassette. So when I went totally digital with music and tried to replace my Queen on mp3, I was pissed off to find that the surviving members won't sell to iTunes. I resorted to getting all the songs from Limewire, which really makes me feel guilty so I only use it as a last resort.

Apparently, the latest version of iTunes segregates non-iTunes mp3s and won't shuffle them in a playlist or sync them to iPods.

I went to Barnes and Noble just now and put the gift certificate my boss gave me toward "Classic Queen" on CD. I uploaded it and am now rocking out to "Tie Your Mother Down."

Of all the gay men and rock stars I have loved in my lifetime, Freddie Mercury, 16 years after he left us too soon, still makes my little-girl heart flutter.