So, correct me if I'm wrong. Quantum particles aren't just particles but waves and well, strings or something that meander off into God knows where but are continuous instantiations of their essence - dependent on the dimension they're expressed.
Is that so? Do you ever ask youself that? Do you wonder why mathamatics so elegantly describe the universe up close but the rules go ka-flooey when totality is held up to the light? Really, is that so?
Or are you worried about the next big dinosaur-killing comet? Trenchcoats in the restroom, wrenchcoats in the testroom, creepy street people and corporate clowns? The Next Big Thing that will turn us into fertilizer? Is the Brown People threatening our way of life or are they our kind of folk just eager for the opportunity to clean the swimming pool? Because by God ya gotta remembah tha hep, speshully on Xmas. Give em sumpin shiny shuh-gah, fascinates em for dais.
Anyway, we were discussing doubts or skepticism or sting theory of fears or something dumb and that's just why you come here, right?
A little fear and string theory on the grill - ksssssssss....
All my fear is about the unknown; some unknown threat leading to losing something I already have (i.e. my life, after some loon in a hockey mask hits me in the jugular with a hatchet) or not getting that which I think I deserve. And that's it. Think about it too and I doubt you'll come up with something outside that.
Really, I've thought about this for about 15 years and have yet to find that anything else composes my fear. Some junkie was on a nod in my bathroom and I wanted to understand his need for obliteration, his need to jam a spike in his veins and go, essentially, out.
"No fear," he mumbled, shook his head and smiled, "no fear."
"That's it?" I asked, "Just that - no fear?"
"That's who I am, man, the man won't let me be anything else."
It was one of those Zen stick in the head type moments the awakening that masters call that Zen stick in the head type moment. His, ours, mine, all our fear summed up in two simple concepts. I've continued to wonder, almost daily, whether there's anything outside not getting ours or losing what we already got.
As far as string theory, I have no clue, figure it out for yourself.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
I didn't want to write this
Something of a "shhhh" that happens this time of year. Nine years ago yesterday - this.
Something of a "shhhh" because as much as I don't want to remember, I want even less to forget.
Something of a "shhhh" because as much as I don't want to remember, I want even less to forget.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Lucky numbers
Life is a crapshoot, really. I recall Aristotle saying something about one must be virtuous, industrious and lucky - all things I’m not - to truly succeed in life. No sweat. Aristotle never stood in my way on a mountain path nor siphoned gas out of my car. There’s very little in my life that I can’t count on but the few that I have are big and generous and all that really matter anyway.
Among the gems amidst the mud is the blessing that I could not have asked for a better Big Sister than Lilly. She glimmers, Sirius she says (her favorite star); serious yes but still shining, opulent, grabbing light and sending it back into the ether a ten-fold. Not too thrilled with The Hunter and his cut of cloth (killing animals) but OK with his dogs. All dogs are wolves after all and as wolves were once puppies, sister and brother were once babies. With that knowledge, Lilly knows she’s the Alpha. Having that power she could be The Supreme Bitch but she is so much The Loving Mother.
It was not always that way. When Marni came along I remember the first born attitude, “Nice. Another baby. So… when do we get rid of this and get an actual puppy?” After six months, she was still expecting to give that yawping, mewling thing to those who would have her because for God’s sake, no one would have that thing, she insisted. It’s noisy, it takes up way too much time and ewwww, the stink no matter how much lotion and powder you throw on the thing.
The Thing grew up and so did Lilly. Fortunately, The Thing worshiped Lilly (still does), making the transition almost seamless. Three-way worship beats two ways but I don’t think that's it, I really think her mommy urge is huge. She wants to save the world, take it under her wing so we can stop all the killing; empathetic, philosophical, enamored with the written word. Not my mother but the mother of all things good and beautiful and eternal – love, unconditionally given amidst the music of the spheres.
When Zeke came along she advised her little sister: “It’s not going away, trust me, get used to it.” And though little sister loathes little brother, Lilly thrives, blossoming. Among those many little gems is watching her become, her grace and beauty and her silly side, smart as hell but often times lazy, sometimes bossy but more often sweet, loving, compassionate to a fault. sometimes hurt that, yes, not everyone is that way.
Whatever she is becoming becomes more and more wonderful every day. A becoming beyond words and concepts, that which we can’t describe, eluding us and still driving us on our own inevitable drive to evolve.
It’s all her. My own guidance is whatever capacity of love I have for her to own and share, all that and the infinite thoughts of others, available on books and tape,
So another little gem (they're small but I have plenty): her lack of concern lends to my own. A couple weeks ago I talked about Zeke's Buddha nature when I mentioned his birthday. Lilly has no less Buddha nature but where Zeke's is more rarified joy, hers is all love, sometimes tortured, becoming, the bodhisattva.
No Buddha nature with the second child. She was Blue but now she's Aqua Marie and flamboyant and wicked smart, scheming between the the two Buddhas who have two birthdays in the same September and get all those presents.
Little gems won throughout this crapshoot and now wise enough to realize I have too little and too much to risk on luck or Aristotle. Laugh as I remeber the last lucky roll when those last numbers hit, last friday, three and eight.
Among the gems amidst the mud is the blessing that I could not have asked for a better Big Sister than Lilly. She glimmers, Sirius she says (her favorite star); serious yes but still shining, opulent, grabbing light and sending it back into the ether a ten-fold. Not too thrilled with The Hunter and his cut of cloth (killing animals) but OK with his dogs. All dogs are wolves after all and as wolves were once puppies, sister and brother were once babies. With that knowledge, Lilly knows she’s the Alpha. Having that power she could be The Supreme Bitch but she is so much The Loving Mother.
It was not always that way. When Marni came along I remember the first born attitude, “Nice. Another baby. So… when do we get rid of this and get an actual puppy?” After six months, she was still expecting to give that yawping, mewling thing to those who would have her because for God’s sake, no one would have that thing, she insisted. It’s noisy, it takes up way too much time and ewwww, the stink no matter how much lotion and powder you throw on the thing.
The Thing grew up and so did Lilly. Fortunately, The Thing worshiped Lilly (still does), making the transition almost seamless. Three-way worship beats two ways but I don’t think that's it, I really think her mommy urge is huge. She wants to save the world, take it under her wing so we can stop all the killing; empathetic, philosophical, enamored with the written word. Not my mother but the mother of all things good and beautiful and eternal – love, unconditionally given amidst the music of the spheres.
When Zeke came along she advised her little sister: “It’s not going away, trust me, get used to it.” And though little sister loathes little brother, Lilly thrives, blossoming. Among those many little gems is watching her become, her grace and beauty and her silly side, smart as hell but often times lazy, sometimes bossy but more often sweet, loving, compassionate to a fault. sometimes hurt that, yes, not everyone is that way.
Whatever she is becoming becomes more and more wonderful every day. A becoming beyond words and concepts, that which we can’t describe, eluding us and still driving us on our own inevitable drive to evolve.
It’s all her. My own guidance is whatever capacity of love I have for her to own and share, all that and the infinite thoughts of others, available on books and tape,
I don't like your fashion business mister
I don't like those drugs that keep you thin
I don't like what happened to my sister
So another little gem (they're small but I have plenty): her lack of concern lends to my own. A couple weeks ago I talked about Zeke's Buddha nature when I mentioned his birthday. Lilly has no less Buddha nature but where Zeke's is more rarified joy, hers is all love, sometimes tortured, becoming, the bodhisattva.
No Buddha nature with the second child. She was Blue but now she's Aqua Marie and flamboyant and wicked smart, scheming between the the two Buddhas who have two birthdays in the same September and get all those presents.
Little gems won throughout this crapshoot and now wise enough to realize I have too little and too much to risk on luck or Aristotle. Laugh as I remeber the last lucky roll when those last numbers hit, last friday, three and eight.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Another Box of Wonders and my wonder continues to confound
More love arrived at my door yesterday, a big box with several books and loads of snacks and even beads – a care package for My Kids. Books meticulously chosen for their craft and content, goodies for their taste as well, doo-dads for anarchic potential, lovingly packed and mailed for the simple grace of giving love.
The generosity of the friends I’ve made through this little blog is astounding. As I mentioned a couple posts ago, Vicki from Outside In sent a box full of goodies for my kids, again, an act of grace with power far beyond the things in the box and the act of sending it. It should go without saying that the package for My Kids came from the goddess Mamacita, she of infinite grace and goodness. She did not send it for this feint praise or to endear herself to me but for the simple fact that My Kids could use the power of the gift. Given and done not out of obligation or heavenly reward or as a tick on a line on a tax form but because the giving is more than enough reward and done without thought of that reward.
Yes, my kids need to feel that power, to experience it, to understand it. Some are well on their way – they’ve come to know it in the months they have been at the center, working through their “trust levels.” Others are experiencing it anew, the loving gestures of many hands and hearts as foreign to them as breakfast in Paris. For most of them, as they finish their program and either reintegrate back into families or the foster system or emancipate into the adult world, they will have had the lessons of compassion and giving to guide them; they will have learned the value of simple, loving acts that call all of us to something larger than ourselves. Hopefully, a few will step out of the cycle of destruction forever and will return what they have learned to mend some broken part within their spheres.
Unfortunately, not everyone can be touched and among My Kids are those who are lost, damaged to the point that no amount of love and attention and prayer will redeem them. Although no one throws up their hands with these kids and we certainly do not start with them thinking that they are “lost”, eventually we have to acknowledge that the welfare of the other kids is more important than continuing to spin our wheels with a child who cannot or will not move beyond the bondage of self to learn the virtue of loving without condition.
My latest problem child is oppositional and unlikable, offensive to his peers and even the staff working with him. His Zyprexa causes GI disturbance and he can reek with his gas but it’s also his sudden turns of paranoia, confused rage, irrational conclusions. With most of My Kids you get a sense of the child after a day but no so with this one. This one stays in the dark, snarling and snapping, shivering, consumed with fear and hunger.
Tonight he shared some of his “poetry” with me. Meandering monologues spelled out phonetically in the clipped dialect of eastern Nevada, fears presented in sparse clumps of words scattered across an improbable landscape. His imagery was all void and loss with the standard abstraction of salvation tacked on at the end in that characteristically adolescent way. But where other kids allow Salvation to swoop in Deus Ex Machina and serve as a ladder, his angels were just bits of undefined matter stirred up in a dust devil, spiraling and ascendant far outside the void.
It was like trying to understand an alien with only emotion and gestures giving a sense of what’s being said. Exaggerations as semiotic signposts, this is pain, this is frightened, this is not understanding or never understanding, was there ever really any understanding or even toy cars and rocket-ships and stories and a soft bed and a night-light? No sense that there was seven-years old once, not even that there was any child at all but only confusion, empty movements, expressions screaming for coherence and understanding.
His case history helped me sort through his words, to interpret the gist that there was only a cold, crimson taking away. The inevitable logic of his language, everything defined tautologically, circling in on three brief moments all occurring within an hour. Screaming and yelling and anger followed by gunshots, blood sprayed everywhere as daddy fell silent onto the carpet; screaming and crying and confusion, soaked from holding the unspeaking head, wishing; the police arriving and the taking away.
In his void, the only lights are flashes from those three moments, bang, bang, bang, followed by shadows, menacing and indecipherable. To flee the shadows is to forsake the lights, to forsake the lights to flee back into the shadows. Nothing makes sense except the inescapable logic of staying there and staying scared forever.
He had an issue with his roommates, threatened them, his twisted logic leading him to threats such that we decided it was best he was moved out of his room to sleep in the common area. Yes, his roommates had provoked him, teased him, pushed him to the threshold of his mental illness to the point he’d react – teenage boys do that. Especially boys with Conduct Disorder, they’ll light a firecracker anytime, anywhere just to see it explode but mostly to see how it pisses off the most people possible. The Zyprexa farts are unbearable and so I can see why the roommates conspired to set sparks flying.
My Kid admitted his part, confessed that yes, he said he’d kill him and his family, with the same pencil. For his part, I think he was glad to be away from them and just wanted some peace. Zyprexa also makes one very sleepy.
I watched him as he curled himself up on the couch, still and serene, safe. His blanket was twisted up around him as he pulled at it in his sleep. Suddenly he was alive to me, real, not shrouded by his fear. Just a boy sleeping, his energy spent.
Among all the boys, he’ll be the one most dismissive of Mamacita’s gifts, the one with the most sense of entitlement, and the one most likely to be cheated out of things by the other boys. Among all the boys, he’s the one who would benefit the most from the power of that gift. If he has any chance of escaping the void it is by taking hold of the spirit of that gift and allowing it to carry him to the light. However (and I hope I’m wrong), I don’t think any power or spirit will save him from his endless terror.
Not all is lost. Mamacita, you touched eleven other boys and that power and spirit will touch them in a way that will continue them on their path to being loving adults, big hearts entering into a world where heart is diminishing faster than oil reserves. The love and goodness shared by Mamacita will expand exponentially in those hearts, a gift given in infinite kindness to be manifest in infinite results. As usual, Mamacita, your love is felt far beyond the horizon.
The generosity of the friends I’ve made through this little blog is astounding. As I mentioned a couple posts ago, Vicki from Outside In sent a box full of goodies for my kids, again, an act of grace with power far beyond the things in the box and the act of sending it. It should go without saying that the package for My Kids came from the goddess Mamacita, she of infinite grace and goodness. She did not send it for this feint praise or to endear herself to me but for the simple fact that My Kids could use the power of the gift. Given and done not out of obligation or heavenly reward or as a tick on a line on a tax form but because the giving is more than enough reward and done without thought of that reward.
Yes, my kids need to feel that power, to experience it, to understand it. Some are well on their way – they’ve come to know it in the months they have been at the center, working through their “trust levels.” Others are experiencing it anew, the loving gestures of many hands and hearts as foreign to them as breakfast in Paris. For most of them, as they finish their program and either reintegrate back into families or the foster system or emancipate into the adult world, they will have had the lessons of compassion and giving to guide them; they will have learned the value of simple, loving acts that call all of us to something larger than ourselves. Hopefully, a few will step out of the cycle of destruction forever and will return what they have learned to mend some broken part within their spheres.
Unfortunately, not everyone can be touched and among My Kids are those who are lost, damaged to the point that no amount of love and attention and prayer will redeem them. Although no one throws up their hands with these kids and we certainly do not start with them thinking that they are “lost”, eventually we have to acknowledge that the welfare of the other kids is more important than continuing to spin our wheels with a child who cannot or will not move beyond the bondage of self to learn the virtue of loving without condition.
My latest problem child is oppositional and unlikable, offensive to his peers and even the staff working with him. His Zyprexa causes GI disturbance and he can reek with his gas but it’s also his sudden turns of paranoia, confused rage, irrational conclusions. With most of My Kids you get a sense of the child after a day but no so with this one. This one stays in the dark, snarling and snapping, shivering, consumed with fear and hunger.
Tonight he shared some of his “poetry” with me. Meandering monologues spelled out phonetically in the clipped dialect of eastern Nevada, fears presented in sparse clumps of words scattered across an improbable landscape. His imagery was all void and loss with the standard abstraction of salvation tacked on at the end in that characteristically adolescent way. But where other kids allow Salvation to swoop in Deus Ex Machina and serve as a ladder, his angels were just bits of undefined matter stirred up in a dust devil, spiraling and ascendant far outside the void.
It was like trying to understand an alien with only emotion and gestures giving a sense of what’s being said. Exaggerations as semiotic signposts, this is pain, this is frightened, this is not understanding or never understanding, was there ever really any understanding or even toy cars and rocket-ships and stories and a soft bed and a night-light? No sense that there was seven-years old once, not even that there was any child at all but only confusion, empty movements, expressions screaming for coherence and understanding.
His case history helped me sort through his words, to interpret the gist that there was only a cold, crimson taking away. The inevitable logic of his language, everything defined tautologically, circling in on three brief moments all occurring within an hour. Screaming and yelling and anger followed by gunshots, blood sprayed everywhere as daddy fell silent onto the carpet; screaming and crying and confusion, soaked from holding the unspeaking head, wishing; the police arriving and the taking away.
In his void, the only lights are flashes from those three moments, bang, bang, bang, followed by shadows, menacing and indecipherable. To flee the shadows is to forsake the lights, to forsake the lights to flee back into the shadows. Nothing makes sense except the inescapable logic of staying there and staying scared forever.
He had an issue with his roommates, threatened them, his twisted logic leading him to threats such that we decided it was best he was moved out of his room to sleep in the common area. Yes, his roommates had provoked him, teased him, pushed him to the threshold of his mental illness to the point he’d react – teenage boys do that. Especially boys with Conduct Disorder, they’ll light a firecracker anytime, anywhere just to see it explode but mostly to see how it pisses off the most people possible. The Zyprexa farts are unbearable and so I can see why the roommates conspired to set sparks flying.
My Kid admitted his part, confessed that yes, he said he’d kill him and his family, with the same pencil. For his part, I think he was glad to be away from them and just wanted some peace. Zyprexa also makes one very sleepy.
I watched him as he curled himself up on the couch, still and serene, safe. His blanket was twisted up around him as he pulled at it in his sleep. Suddenly he was alive to me, real, not shrouded by his fear. Just a boy sleeping, his energy spent.
Among all the boys, he’ll be the one most dismissive of Mamacita’s gifts, the one with the most sense of entitlement, and the one most likely to be cheated out of things by the other boys. Among all the boys, he’s the one who would benefit the most from the power of that gift. If he has any chance of escaping the void it is by taking hold of the spirit of that gift and allowing it to carry him to the light. However (and I hope I’m wrong), I don’t think any power or spirit will save him from his endless terror.
Not all is lost. Mamacita, you touched eleven other boys and that power and spirit will touch them in a way that will continue them on their path to being loving adults, big hearts entering into a world where heart is diminishing faster than oil reserves. The love and goodness shared by Mamacita will expand exponentially in those hearts, a gift given in infinite kindness to be manifest in infinite results. As usual, Mamacita, your love is felt far beyond the horizon.
Monday, September 18, 2006
The mullahs told me it was time for a new mixmania! and so I made a bomb out of several tuna fish cans and lighter fluid
So what songs scare you?
Really scare you. Sets you to shuddering under your blankets or screaming into the night. I know that's sloppy criteria - Hanson sends me screaming into the night - so make of it what you will.
Think of this as the disk you'll play at your Halloween party, whether you want to keep them drinking and dancing or whether you want to answer the door all night and hand out candy. Or both. Or whether you're putting this mix on three glasses after you heard someone spiked the punch with acid.
The rules are simple: sign up, make the mix, send it to the person you're matched with. Likewise, someone will get your address and you won't know it's them when you get your disk. It's up to you and the RICC (or RIIC or reisen or RICO or whatever) to figure out the rest. I'm tired of posting up pointless rules that no one follows. If someone flakes and doesn't give you a disk, speak up, you'll get something, not just an apology.
If you're intention to play is reflected in the comments but you haven't emailed me, you won't play; there's too much work in this thing for me to chase down your information. If you can't figure out how to email me - geez, I don't know what to tell ya'. However, if you want to play, you have until October 10 to let me know. I'll email you your match on October 15 and you'll mail your mix on October 20. Everyone will post their list October 31.
BTW, as a reader pointed out, I've yet to post the links for the people who mixed 9/11 disks. Here it is now. You'll see some fine lists and excellent essays on what that day meant. You'll also see some folks never bothered to mix a disk or post a list (duh) and you have my permission to give those schmucks a passel of shit.
The wonderful Mamacita
Waltzing Mathilda
I Hate Cows
If you can't say something nice...
Punchbuggy Blues
Soiled Dove Inn
The Daily Bitch (oh, so sweet!)
Tobedeus
The Ice Palace
The Journey
Ekroblog
Evil Mommy
Got Cow?
If it's not one thing, it's your mother
Life in the sticks with all boys
Duble, duble, toil and mumble
Draw Circles
Mini-obs
Thespinlights
No fish, no nuts
Sterfish's Place
A few notes - I don't know what's up with Avrowife's site; when I click there I get some bible study site. (Update: link fixed - thanks, Ster!)
Special thanks to my goddess mamacita, the uber-gorgeous ~d (tilde) and my good friend Sterfish for sending me copies of their mixes (Sterfish also sent me copies of several other excellent disks - thanks man!). Generous friends like ya'll make the headaches of mixmania! worth it.
OK, get to emailing and mixing. Maybe I'll kick out a real post one of these days.
UPDATE: I dumped MyBlogLog because it was making my blog take forever to load. I don't know if it's an issue with just Blogger (I noticed other Blogspot blogs using MyBlogLog were also taking a long time to load) and although it was a nifty tool, it wasn't worth making my blog take all day to come up in a browser. I hope they fix their issue but I'm done with them.
Really scare you. Sets you to shuddering under your blankets or screaming into the night. I know that's sloppy criteria - Hanson sends me screaming into the night - so make of it what you will.
Think of this as the disk you'll play at your Halloween party, whether you want to keep them drinking and dancing or whether you want to answer the door all night and hand out candy. Or both. Or whether you're putting this mix on three glasses after you heard someone spiked the punch with acid.
The rules are simple: sign up, make the mix, send it to the person you're matched with. Likewise, someone will get your address and you won't know it's them when you get your disk. It's up to you and the RICC (or RIIC or reisen or RICO or whatever) to figure out the rest. I'm tired of posting up pointless rules that no one follows. If someone flakes and doesn't give you a disk, speak up, you'll get something, not just an apology.
If you're intention to play is reflected in the comments but you haven't emailed me, you won't play; there's too much work in this thing for me to chase down your information. If you can't figure out how to email me - geez, I don't know what to tell ya'. However, if you want to play, you have until October 10 to let me know. I'll email you your match on October 15 and you'll mail your mix on October 20. Everyone will post their list October 31.
BTW, as a reader pointed out, I've yet to post the links for the people who mixed 9/11 disks. Here it is now. You'll see some fine lists and excellent essays on what that day meant. You'll also see some folks never bothered to mix a disk or post a list (duh) and you have my permission to give those schmucks a passel of shit.
The wonderful Mamacita
Waltzing Mathilda
I Hate Cows
If you can't say something nice...
Punchbuggy Blues
Soiled Dove Inn
The Daily Bitch (oh, so sweet!)
Tobedeus
The Ice Palace
The Journey
Ekroblog
Evil Mommy
Got Cow?
If it's not one thing, it's your mother
Life in the sticks with all boys
Duble, duble, toil and mumble
Draw Circles
Mini-obs
Thespinlights
No fish, no nuts
Sterfish's Place
A few notes - I don't know what's up with Avrowife's site; when I click there I get some bible study site. (Update: link fixed - thanks, Ster!)
Special thanks to my goddess mamacita, the uber-gorgeous ~d (tilde) and my good friend Sterfish for sending me copies of their mixes (Sterfish also sent me copies of several other excellent disks - thanks man!). Generous friends like ya'll make the headaches of mixmania! worth it.
OK, get to emailing and mixing. Maybe I'll kick out a real post one of these days.
UPDATE: I dumped MyBlogLog because it was making my blog take forever to load. I don't know if it's an issue with just Blogger (I noticed other Blogspot blogs using MyBlogLog were also taking a long time to load) and although it was a nifty tool, it wasn't worth making my blog take all day to come up in a browser. I hope they fix their issue but I'm done with them.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
The Box of Wonders brightens my otherwise dismal weekend (revised)
I had - HAD - a very sweet post about how well-behaved my kids were while I was sick all weekend and how a box sent by Vicki from Outside In brought such a bright spot to us as we all huddled in our hovel with daddy sucked into the couch with his crud. Ah, it was a sweet post.
and now it's gone, dispersed into the ether, a non-post, nothing I said preserved for posterity. Firefox overwhelmed by fucking Google and all the damned loose ends they can't seem to tie up. Because if anything is going to crash my browser, it's either Blogger or goddamned Gmail and all the happy horseshit they're throwing into it in their race to compete with Microsoft.
So instead of getting a sweet post about the munchkins and Vicki, you get me screaming at Google, "Get your shit together, gnat brains. Quit coding shit that crashes my browser!"
Guess I'm kicking myself as well because I grown accustomed to how well the gang at Google has managed to replicate the Monty Python "Upper Class Twit of the Year" sketch. In this day and age of Google's talent for fucking up a bowl of cereal, I've taken to composing my blogs in Word, having no faith in the Blogger template's ability to actually publish what I've written. However, hopped up on cold meds and half-assed silly with the buzz, I decided I'd give Blogger the definite of the doubt.
And it screwed me. Holy Christ on a Wheat Thin, set your expectations low with the lot at Google because they're going to stir up a big steaming pot of fuckup and spill it all over the carpet. Shitheads.
So thank you, Vicky. I wish this was a sweeter post but it pisses me off when a thousand some words go traipsing off into Nowhereland.
And fuck you, Google, fuck you very much.
and now it's gone, dispersed into the ether, a non-post, nothing I said preserved for posterity. Firefox overwhelmed by fucking Google and all the damned loose ends they can't seem to tie up. Because if anything is going to crash my browser, it's either Blogger or goddamned Gmail and all the happy horseshit they're throwing into it in their race to compete with Microsoft.
So instead of getting a sweet post about the munchkins and Vicki, you get me screaming at Google, "Get your shit together, gnat brains. Quit coding shit that crashes my browser!"
Guess I'm kicking myself as well because I grown accustomed to how well the gang at Google has managed to replicate the Monty Python "Upper Class Twit of the Year" sketch. In this day and age of Google's talent for fucking up a bowl of cereal, I've taken to composing my blogs in Word, having no faith in the Blogger template's ability to actually publish what I've written. However, hopped up on cold meds and half-assed silly with the buzz, I decided I'd give Blogger the definite of the doubt.
And it screwed me. Holy Christ on a Wheat Thin, set your expectations low with the lot at Google because they're going to stir up a big steaming pot of fuckup and spill it all over the carpet. Shitheads.
So thank you, Vicky. I wish this was a sweeter post but it pisses me off when a thousand some words go traipsing off into Nowhereland.
And fuck you, Google, fuck you very much.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Vanity of the Carnivals Friday for the severely retarded
I had a pic of a kitty in a chimp suit but I think I deleted it. Either that or I downloaded it into my porn file and, well, I never look in that thing.
Since Tuesday night I've been battling a virus that dealt out body aches, fever, congestion, and a desire to die. I wanted to post (especially considering I spaced posting mixmania! links) but preferred to groan and roll around in my own sweat. Oh wait, that's a video from my porn folder.
So let me catch you up:
Tuesday I meant to blog on the fact that the Back Yardigans bring more traffic to my blog than any other random search. The damn Back Yardigans - God love em'. Random search result posts are pretty lame though, so good thing I was sick and dying.
Wednesday I was going to bitch about airline nuts ("What's up with that?") or something, I was hallucinating so I'm not sure if the blue bats circling my bed did not eat every morsel of my brain. Some of you who read me will ask, "You mean there was something for the bats?" and I'll ban you, bygodallmighty, I'll make sure your snot ain't shook on my grass again.
High on cold meds, I shook my socks at the neigbors, shattered the walls with Hall & Oates blasted, shaved my Hoo-hah.
Thursday - is that today? no? it's Friday? shit - I was going post another 100 things about me but this time only include those things I've done while wearing a dress.
Today I met Cam fron Trusty Getto and I must say, the young man is impressive. He's articulate, smart, and the lady's love him. No matter where we went (and we were in the finest clubs in the Springs, drinking madly), Cam was the center of attention, swamped with babes. Getting his castoffs was the high point of my afternoon.
Seriously, I had a great time and as we parted I commented, "We need to get together again when we can get seriously trashed." It went that well. Like sitting down with an old buddy and everything picks up from where it left off. It was hard to let him go.
OK, so what do I win?
------------
UPDATE: Cam posted his thoughts on his visit and shamelessly horked my attempt at teh funny. Unfortunately for him, he also posted a pic of me and that's sure to send folks screaming away before reading his obvious libels against me - ha ha!
Since Tuesday night I've been battling a virus that dealt out body aches, fever, congestion, and a desire to die. I wanted to post (especially considering I spaced posting mixmania! links) but preferred to groan and roll around in my own sweat. Oh wait, that's a video from my porn folder.
So let me catch you up:
Tuesday I meant to blog on the fact that the Back Yardigans bring more traffic to my blog than any other random search. The damn Back Yardigans - God love em'. Random search result posts are pretty lame though, so good thing I was sick and dying.
Wednesday I was going to bitch about airline nuts ("What's up with that?") or something, I was hallucinating so I'm not sure if the blue bats circling my bed did not eat every morsel of my brain. Some of you who read me will ask, "You mean there was something for the bats?" and I'll ban you, bygodallmighty, I'll make sure your snot ain't shook on my grass again.
High on cold meds, I shook my socks at the neigbors, shattered the walls with Hall & Oates blasted, shaved my Hoo-hah.
Thursday - is that today? no? it's Friday? shit - I was going post another 100 things about me but this time only include those things I've done while wearing a dress.
Today I met Cam fron Trusty Getto and I must say, the young man is impressive. He's articulate, smart, and the lady's love him. No matter where we went (and we were in the finest clubs in the Springs, drinking madly), Cam was the center of attention, swamped with babes. Getting his castoffs was the high point of my afternoon.
Seriously, I had a great time and as we parted I commented, "We need to get together again when we can get seriously trashed." It went that well. Like sitting down with an old buddy and everything picks up from where it left off. It was hard to let him go.
OK, so what do I win?
------------
UPDATE: Cam posted his thoughts on his visit and shamelessly horked my attempt at teh funny. Unfortunately for him, he also posted a pic of me and that's sure to send folks screaming away before reading his obvious libels against me - ha ha!
Monday, September 11, 2006
A screaming comes across the sky
Sometimes I wonder if I'm just dreaming, a recurring nightmare with planes flying into buildings, people jumping hand in hand to certain death, the WTC erased from a skyline that had become as much a part of my consciousness as Mr. Peanut or Tony the Tiger. Like a Ketamine trip where mental constructs swirl around the rim of a black hole's event horizon, skating precariously between obliteration and infinity, sucked in and shot into another dimension as streaming sub-atomic confetti. Denial still simmering beneath the surface, distrorting the placid face of what was and is, them there that what, a tick from the bottom that didn't just destroy two towers but threw a nation into utter chaos.
Then I realize that if it was all just a dream, my two youngest kids would also be chimera and who the hell else would have made this mess in my house?
All us kids and our house a mess. Bloated corpses of poor people drifting along in fetid water, the Constitution in shreds, chickenshit pettiness pitching us against ourselves. Our house at war with each other and against another house.
Instead of just going after a few bullies we decided to kick in the doors of some house somewhere down the road, tear up shit and kill people. Didn't matter that not only were the bullies never there but were never even welcomed there. But well, the people in that house were brown-skinned like the bullies and they spoke the same gibberish and even believed in the same goofy God. So they were asking for it, we reasoned.
Later, standing amidst splintered furniture and shattered walls, bloodied clubs in hands, we strutted around the damage rationalizing, boasting, blathering, brushing away canardy and craven justification with lies, hubris, and the belief that if we fuck something up really bad that the bullies will leave us alone. Done this, set fire to the lawn and punched out the windows, we never figured the neighbors might, you know, disapprove or anything about us destroying a house on their block just because we thought it would make us feel big and bad.
My "Chickens have come to roost," comment almost led to blows with a neighbor pissed that I'd dare to say that then, there, as if I'd the temerity to remind someone what an essential asshole the gussyed-up stiff was decaying in the coffin. Fortunately, no punches were thrown because history was on my side, oppression and a habit for over-looking a lack of democracy for the sake of oil, evident to even the most unctuous Republicans amongst us. At some point facts overcome the spin and the asshat has to lay back, defeated, imploded, admitting that yes, you have me there.
Hopefully you'll see that these mixes have me there, questioning and angry at the lack of answers. This is the first time I haven't given a play-by-play on the cuts I chose. You'll notice the mixes are scattered, emotionally and thematically. Several cuts are just what I was listening to that day. There were times during that day (and the following weeks) that I had to turn off the chatter on the news and play some music.
Working backasswards, opposite of the way the disks are meant to be played. Just because this is an anniversary of the topsy-turvy; so many lives changed forever, so many lives lost then and since then, so much mindless destruction that day and continuing to this day (and unfortunately, beyond), as I've diagnosed - national PTSD. So scattered we are, aren't we?
Disk 3 - "9/11/06"
Constructed from parts of greater mixes, this disk describes how confused and conflicted I still am, five years later. There's some part of me that still wants to see pictures of Osama bin Laden, his sorry carcass stripped and strapped to a board, jumper cables clamped on his nuts, attached to a truck battery. That so many have been stripped and strapped to a board, with God on our side, troubles me greatly. This disk is all over the place, a jumble.
Still confused but certain the crew in charge five years ago has done nothing but stumble around on fuckups like ice cubes spilled on a parquet floor (BTW - where's Osama, George?).
There's optimism and anxiety on the disk, hippie-esque blissful wishing and barely controlled rage, talking bout' the barely believable and the banal
Disk 2 - "9/11/01: PM"
Points to those who know the role of Nimrod (cuz God knows, people come here to collect points); I saw it coming, frankly, clear as a gigantic slab of Prime Rib rolling down Boulder Street, war, Afghanistan first but we'd be in Iraq very soon, Junior was itching for revenge. And good golly gosh, we find out a few days ago that Saddam had zilch to do with 9/11, Osama, or much else aside from his plan to make nuclear weapons out of a few sticks, mud, and aluminum tubes suited to making righteous bongs. As soon as they jailed Tommy Chong, Saddam had to be next.
Autumn was creeping up on us, what was nine-thirty a month ago was seven-thirty then, night in the wings ready to leap out and say, "Hah, it only gets darker." There we were, standing together as Americans, drinking beer and smoking dope, wondering what our country would do, wondering how, as country, we'd respond to the attack we'd just experienced. As I said, my impolitic comment almost caused a fist fight but only because I spelled out all the facts so logically, so tight, so succintly.
The idiot in charge swore that day would bring us together and it did, for a few days. My PM is a hangover from the AM, the reason 2004 was a WTF moment, why we put this shithead back in office. Even my most Republican friends admit "If I'd thought this dumbacc would be back in office, I'd have never pulled the lever."
If you pulled the lever, you get what you got.
Go to sleep, hope it's all a nightmare, soaked in a cold sweat tossing and turning wondering if the papers trickling through the skyline weren't just orogami doves, that gray people running for their lives from complete collapse suddenly wondered if a Starbucks wasn't wuch a bad place to be.
So goes our tenuous hold on life.
Disk 1 - "9/11/01: AM"
I don't remember thinking about what a beautiful day it was at first. Just had to get to work and chew up shit to spit out and let someone else eat the results. One of those pit in the stomach everyday on the drive to work jobs, the kind of job where you lay awake and wonder what you'd need to do to murder people and get away with it. Coding a database for a call center amongst a born-again crew, proselyetized every damn day, preached at, shut out of the basic sense of what was what because I wasn't buying issues of a comic book called Jay-zuss-ah. I'd do the work and see I'd never get anywhere within the crew as long as I wasn't with them that breathed deep and held hands in a circle, glad the King had blessed the Company and Free Enterprise and other Godly endevours, all that and the Free gour,et coffee in the break room. Every goddman day. "You want to pray?" they'd ask and "No," I'd say, "But can you bring me some of that Blessed coffee."
The call center was still dark when the first report came in; I had just loaded in a bucket of New York calls to the telemarketers. Honestly, I took the first plane as a fluke, figured it was some weird-ass shit, a two-headed alligator from Arkansas or laundry spontaneously catching fire in St. Paul. I hoped, I thought, damn that was bed news but um, I had a job to do. Frantically, I tried to pull northeastern area codes from other data buckets so I could pull what I'd loaded previously but the prayer group vetoed me - "It's God punishing those New York inta-leckshulls," my boss told me.
About two-point-five seconds later Holy Shit, the second tower was hit. A hundred eyes that had been rolling moments before were suddenly stolen forward, staring with the realization that it wasn't just Yahweh slinging some stupid random act of veangance but violence, brutal, bestial. Still, I could see tumblers turning, minds riveted to abstractions, columns, balance sheets. Sociopaths with being Born Again as a rationalization for being slimy shit pools. One genius suggested that we just take mortheastern area codes "to not offend those prospects" because, after all, we still had a half hour before Central standard could be called.
"We're under attack you fucktard," exasperated I was, breathless by the utter vulgarity. "If anyone's offended it's because you caught them on their way to hide their ass in the basement."
I stepped outside for a smoke and was struck by the silence. NORAD nearby but - nothing scrambling, no jets crisscossing the sky to protect us from planes used as missles - hell, it was eerie. This is a place where a screaming across the sky registers as much interest as a finch.
Graveyard silence everywhere I went. Even as I stood in front of the TV screen and watched it happen, again and again, plane, tower, people jumping, the Pentagon, a field in Pennsylvania, again and again. I remember picking up my daughters and holding them tight but in those memories there is no sound to those images. Just the life I held and the death I watched, again and again.
Then I realize that if it was all just a dream, my two youngest kids would also be chimera and who the hell else would have made this mess in my house?
All us kids and our house a mess. Bloated corpses of poor people drifting along in fetid water, the Constitution in shreds, chickenshit pettiness pitching us against ourselves. Our house at war with each other and against another house.
Instead of just going after a few bullies we decided to kick in the doors of some house somewhere down the road, tear up shit and kill people. Didn't matter that not only were the bullies never there but were never even welcomed there. But well, the people in that house were brown-skinned like the bullies and they spoke the same gibberish and even believed in the same goofy God. So they were asking for it, we reasoned.
Later, standing amidst splintered furniture and shattered walls, bloodied clubs in hands, we strutted around the damage rationalizing, boasting, blathering, brushing away canardy and craven justification with lies, hubris, and the belief that if we fuck something up really bad that the bullies will leave us alone. Done this, set fire to the lawn and punched out the windows, we never figured the neighbors might, you know, disapprove or anything about us destroying a house on their block just because we thought it would make us feel big and bad.
My "Chickens have come to roost," comment almost led to blows with a neighbor pissed that I'd dare to say that then, there, as if I'd the temerity to remind someone what an essential asshole the gussyed-up stiff was decaying in the coffin. Fortunately, no punches were thrown because history was on my side, oppression and a habit for over-looking a lack of democracy for the sake of oil, evident to even the most unctuous Republicans amongst us. At some point facts overcome the spin and the asshat has to lay back, defeated, imploded, admitting that yes, you have me there.
Hopefully you'll see that these mixes have me there, questioning and angry at the lack of answers. This is the first time I haven't given a play-by-play on the cuts I chose. You'll notice the mixes are scattered, emotionally and thematically. Several cuts are just what I was listening to that day. There were times during that day (and the following weeks) that I had to turn off the chatter on the news and play some music.
Working backasswards, opposite of the way the disks are meant to be played. Just because this is an anniversary of the topsy-turvy; so many lives changed forever, so many lives lost then and since then, so much mindless destruction that day and continuing to this day (and unfortunately, beyond), as I've diagnosed - national PTSD. So scattered we are, aren't we?
Disk 3 - "9/11/06"
Constructed from parts of greater mixes, this disk describes how confused and conflicted I still am, five years later. There's some part of me that still wants to see pictures of Osama bin Laden, his sorry carcass stripped and strapped to a board, jumper cables clamped on his nuts, attached to a truck battery. That so many have been stripped and strapped to a board, with God on our side, troubles me greatly. This disk is all over the place, a jumble.
Still confused but certain the crew in charge five years ago has done nothing but stumble around on fuckups like ice cubes spilled on a parquet floor (BTW - where's Osama, George?).
There's optimism and anxiety on the disk, hippie-esque blissful wishing and barely controlled rage, talking bout' the barely believable and the banal
- Dandy Warhols - Pills
- AC/DC - Who Made Who?
- ELO - Mr. Blue Sky
- Lee Dorsey - Working in a Coalmine
- Da Pack - Vans
- Steely Dan - Bodhisattva
- Elvis Costello - (What's so Funny Bout')Peace, Love, & Understanding
- Ziggy Marley - Brothers & Sisters
- Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
- Smash Mouth - Why Can't We Be Friends?
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground
- The Vandals - Urban Struggle
- Dead Kennedys - Police Truck
- Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
- John Prine - Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
- Mouse on Mars - Yippie
- Gorillaz - Feel Good, Inc.
- Otis Redding - Coffee & Cigarettes
- Les McCann & Eddie Harris - Compared to What?
- Grieg - Morning
Disk 2 - "9/11/01: PM"
Points to those who know the role of Nimrod (cuz God knows, people come here to collect points); I saw it coming, frankly, clear as a gigantic slab of Prime Rib rolling down Boulder Street, war, Afghanistan first but we'd be in Iraq very soon, Junior was itching for revenge. And good golly gosh, we find out a few days ago that Saddam had zilch to do with 9/11, Osama, or much else aside from his plan to make nuclear weapons out of a few sticks, mud, and aluminum tubes suited to making righteous bongs. As soon as they jailed Tommy Chong, Saddam had to be next.
Autumn was creeping up on us, what was nine-thirty a month ago was seven-thirty then, night in the wings ready to leap out and say, "Hah, it only gets darker." There we were, standing together as Americans, drinking beer and smoking dope, wondering what our country would do, wondering how, as country, we'd respond to the attack we'd just experienced. As I said, my impolitic comment almost caused a fist fight but only because I spelled out all the facts so logically, so tight, so succintly.
The idiot in charge swore that day would bring us together and it did, for a few days. My PM is a hangover from the AM, the reason 2004 was a WTF moment, why we put this shithead back in office. Even my most Republican friends admit "If I'd thought this dumbacc would be back in office, I'd have never pulled the lever."
If you pulled the lever, you get what you got.
- Dixie Chicks - Sin Wagon
- Pixies - Nimrod's Son
- XTC - No Thugs in Our House
- The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry
- Alicia Keyes - Fallin'
- Tanita Tikarim - Twist in My Sobriety
- War - The World is a Ghetto
- Soul Coughing - Unmarked Helicopters
- Front 242 - Headhunters V 2.0
- The Cure - Killing an Arab
- Thomas Newman - Six Feet Under Title Theme
- Metallica - Seek & Destroy
- The Ramones - Gimmee Gimmee Shock Treatment
- The Minutemen - Little Man With A Gun in His Hand
- Brian Eno - Driving Me Backwards
- Camper Van Beethoven - Might Makes Right
- Jay-Z - H to the Izzo
- Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
- James Brown - Cold Sweat (Pt.s I & II)
- Radiohead - Go to Sleep
Go to sleep, hope it's all a nightmare, soaked in a cold sweat tossing and turning wondering if the papers trickling through the skyline weren't just orogami doves, that gray people running for their lives from complete collapse suddenly wondered if a Starbucks wasn't wuch a bad place to be.
So goes our tenuous hold on life.
Disk 1 - "9/11/01: AM"
I don't remember thinking about what a beautiful day it was at first. Just had to get to work and chew up shit to spit out and let someone else eat the results. One of those pit in the stomach everyday on the drive to work jobs, the kind of job where you lay awake and wonder what you'd need to do to murder people and get away with it. Coding a database for a call center amongst a born-again crew, proselyetized every damn day, preached at, shut out of the basic sense of what was what because I wasn't buying issues of a comic book called Jay-zuss-ah. I'd do the work and see I'd never get anywhere within the crew as long as I wasn't with them that breathed deep and held hands in a circle, glad the King had blessed the Company and Free Enterprise and other Godly endevours, all that and the Free gour,et coffee in the break room. Every goddman day. "You want to pray?" they'd ask and "No," I'd say, "But can you bring me some of that Blessed coffee."
The call center was still dark when the first report came in; I had just loaded in a bucket of New York calls to the telemarketers. Honestly, I took the first plane as a fluke, figured it was some weird-ass shit, a two-headed alligator from Arkansas or laundry spontaneously catching fire in St. Paul. I hoped, I thought, damn that was bed news but um, I had a job to do. Frantically, I tried to pull northeastern area codes from other data buckets so I could pull what I'd loaded previously but the prayer group vetoed me - "It's God punishing those New York inta-leckshulls," my boss told me.
About two-point-five seconds later Holy Shit, the second tower was hit. A hundred eyes that had been rolling moments before were suddenly stolen forward, staring with the realization that it wasn't just Yahweh slinging some stupid random act of veangance but violence, brutal, bestial. Still, I could see tumblers turning, minds riveted to abstractions, columns, balance sheets. Sociopaths with being Born Again as a rationalization for being slimy shit pools. One genius suggested that we just take mortheastern area codes "to not offend those prospects" because, after all, we still had a half hour before Central standard could be called.
"We're under attack you fucktard," exasperated I was, breathless by the utter vulgarity. "If anyone's offended it's because you caught them on their way to hide their ass in the basement."
I stepped outside for a smoke and was struck by the silence. NORAD nearby but - nothing scrambling, no jets crisscossing the sky to protect us from planes used as missles - hell, it was eerie. This is a place where a screaming across the sky registers as much interest as a finch.
Graveyard silence everywhere I went. Even as I stood in front of the TV screen and watched it happen, again and again, plane, tower, people jumping, the Pentagon, a field in Pennsylvania, again and again. I remember picking up my daughters and holding them tight but in those memories there is no sound to those images. Just the life I held and the death I watched, again and again.
- Grieg - Morning
- Pink Floyd - In the Flesh (Pt. II)/Run Like Hell
- The Beatles - Good Day, Sunshine
- Donovan - Sunshine Superman
- Eve - Blow Ya' Mind
- The Doors - The End
- Velvet Underground - The Black Angel's Death Song
- Stabbing Westward - I Don't Believe
- Black Sabbath - War Pigs
- Wilco - Ashes of American Flags
- Siouxsie & the Banshees - Cities in Dust
- Sisters of Mercy - Black Planet
- Dave Matthews Band - The Space Between
- Bob Dylan - Masters of War
- Tom Waits - Dust in the Ground
Sunday, September 10, 2006
My bittersweet day away from my little man
Two days ago he was fighting to crawl up on my lap and snuggle while the girls were fighting over the remote. He was having none of the conflict raging before us preferring to sit in daddy's lap where the love was, the warmth, the strong arms to hold him.
He's my little Buddha. Yes, he even looks like the Laughing Buddha, the little pudge, arms in the air with the expression of utmost joy and a smile as wide and authentic as the ocean but it's not just the resemblance that makes him my Buddha. From the moment he wakes up until the time he drops immediately to sleep (with that sleep that we can only dream of), he is the happiest child I have ever seen. Blessed with happiness in abundance and an enthusiasm for the here and now, his ebulliance is breath-taking. If I could bottle his spirit to sprinkle on the wounded souls I work with, I'd be the richest therapist in the world.
Today he turned four, a big boy now. It broke my heart that I couldn't be there but it's X's day and I make it a rule not to infringe on her time. Besides, I had My Kids to attend to this evening so there was just no way I could spend my time the way I wanted. All I could do was phone it in and assure myself that we'd have our time together later.
Four years ago I didn't have to phone it in and I remember every blessed moment, him screaming and squealing as they lifted him from the womb, cutting the umbilicle cord, the interminable wait outside the nursery before I was allowed in, caressing my angel's cheek as another boy in the next room howled through a circumcision (assuring my boy he would not have to endure that unimaginable pain). What endures from then was firmly on my mind today, tonight and I'm not sure if I was all there for My Kids as I kept thinking about my little man turning four today. Phoning it in, yes, much like this post.
My little man's milestone demanded that I write a little something to mark this day. The little red fire engine I bought for him will probably end up being sold in a garage sale some day but someday, these words will remain. This is my real gift to him, to say, "I love you, you are the world to me, you are my teacher, my Buddha."
He's my little Buddha. Yes, he even looks like the Laughing Buddha, the little pudge, arms in the air with the expression of utmost joy and a smile as wide and authentic as the ocean but it's not just the resemblance that makes him my Buddha. From the moment he wakes up until the time he drops immediately to sleep (with that sleep that we can only dream of), he is the happiest child I have ever seen. Blessed with happiness in abundance and an enthusiasm for the here and now, his ebulliance is breath-taking. If I could bottle his spirit to sprinkle on the wounded souls I work with, I'd be the richest therapist in the world.
Today he turned four, a big boy now. It broke my heart that I couldn't be there but it's X's day and I make it a rule not to infringe on her time. Besides, I had My Kids to attend to this evening so there was just no way I could spend my time the way I wanted. All I could do was phone it in and assure myself that we'd have our time together later.
Four years ago I didn't have to phone it in and I remember every blessed moment, him screaming and squealing as they lifted him from the womb, cutting the umbilicle cord, the interminable wait outside the nursery before I was allowed in, caressing my angel's cheek as another boy in the next room howled through a circumcision (assuring my boy he would not have to endure that unimaginable pain). What endures from then was firmly on my mind today, tonight and I'm not sure if I was all there for My Kids as I kept thinking about my little man turning four today. Phoning it in, yes, much like this post.
My little man's milestone demanded that I write a little something to mark this day. The little red fire engine I bought for him will probably end up being sold in a garage sale some day but someday, these words will remain. This is my real gift to him, to say, "I love you, you are the world to me, you are my teacher, my Buddha."
Friday, September 08, 2006
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
Bored and bone-achingly exhausted last night, I happened to catch The Princess Bride on Bravo. No huge accomplishment that (since it’s shown on cable almost in perpetuity) but it had been at least 15 years since I’d watched it. Ample entertainment for someone in my slack-jawed semi-comatose state. Much of the comedy was still fresh (unlike Shrek with which I found myself making unavoidable comparisons), laugh-out-loud funny, and although I barely had the energy to lift a beer to my lips, I saw the movie through to the end. A shame it was on too late for the kids; I need to hit the DVD sell-or-trade stores to see if I can get a copy.
My impression of the film years ago was that it was clever and well done but other than that, I didn’t give it much thought, there was no reason to analyze it or pick it apart then.
A decade and some change later the movie still possessed its initial charm but I was oddly troubled – not it but with myself. Years ago the central theme (that True Love conquers all) was quaint, a lark, something that had no place in my chrome-studded coke spoon view of our trash bin universe. Anyone who believed in True Love was deluded, worthy of my scruffy assed scoff and as far as I was concerned, welcome to their fairy tales, God love em’. Alone, in the dim light of the television and years of experience behind me, I wondered if I had been a little too self-assured and cynical all those years ago. Couldn’t help but wonder considering I was watching the flick all by my lonesome, nothing but a half-empty, half-warm Fat Tire to hold onto.
A couple of years ago I dated a woman who lived in Denver (about 90 minutes through rush hour traffic from here, as the hellbat flies), sexy, fun, very smart. Sometimes I’d spend a few days at a time up there, drink her wine and eat flan while she was at work, hang out and talk about everything when she got home. Screw like crazed weasels. Eat, drink, see a movie, watch Jon Stewart. Drink more, talk more, screw more, if it was the weekend.
However, if she had to work we’d retire early, settle into bed and read, she with her book and me with mine, each silently back in our own worlds but still intertwined. Sometimes the inspired, “Oh you have to hear this,” or “Holy shit, she can write, listen,” but otherwise entranced elsewhere. Then turning off the light and screwing some more, Monkey friggin’ “Sorry-officer-we’re-just-having-fun” sex.
At the end of the weekend, though, all we had was that, those moments. And she’d been clear about that, that that’s all she wanted (an acre of that’s, obviously). I knew what I was signing on for and honestly, that was fine with me. I was just a little over a year having split up with X and I wasn’t ready to tumble into something else serious. The point is, the experience gave me a glimpse of something, beyond that.
That didn’t resemble anything like the True Love of The Princess Bride but it had some of the essential components: a shared sense of fun, mutual fascination, passion, passion, passion. Everything but shared goals and chemistry.
Ahhhh, chemistry. The free variable, the radical number that just keeps growing larger with each minute, the ineffable last thing that won’t let any of the other parts work if that one grain of substance is missing. Sitting there in the dark, my beer still not finished, I conceived that chemistry as one little spring on which everything else hinged, a small and seemingly insignificant part that lost, sends everything else into an inevitable tailspin.
As the movie ended and the lights dimmed then came back up to guide me out, I stood in the cold night air, smoking, thinking,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
Looking to see if that little spring was on the floor somewhere but knowing the vacuum had picked it up long ago.
------------------------------------
Special thanks to my mixmania! mixer for a sad and scary mix, many songs I don’t know but the inclusion of Robert Johnson in the midst of every incredible song inspired me in ways that you just read.
My impression of the film years ago was that it was clever and well done but other than that, I didn’t give it much thought, there was no reason to analyze it or pick it apart then.
A decade and some change later the movie still possessed its initial charm but I was oddly troubled – not it but with myself. Years ago the central theme (that True Love conquers all) was quaint, a lark, something that had no place in my chrome-studded coke spoon view of our trash bin universe. Anyone who believed in True Love was deluded, worthy of my scruffy assed scoff and as far as I was concerned, welcome to their fairy tales, God love em’. Alone, in the dim light of the television and years of experience behind me, I wondered if I had been a little too self-assured and cynical all those years ago. Couldn’t help but wonder considering I was watching the flick all by my lonesome, nothing but a half-empty, half-warm Fat Tire to hold onto.
A couple of years ago I dated a woman who lived in Denver (about 90 minutes through rush hour traffic from here, as the hellbat flies), sexy, fun, very smart. Sometimes I’d spend a few days at a time up there, drink her wine and eat flan while she was at work, hang out and talk about everything when she got home. Screw like crazed weasels. Eat, drink, see a movie, watch Jon Stewart. Drink more, talk more, screw more, if it was the weekend.
However, if she had to work we’d retire early, settle into bed and read, she with her book and me with mine, each silently back in our own worlds but still intertwined. Sometimes the inspired, “Oh you have to hear this,” or “Holy shit, she can write, listen,” but otherwise entranced elsewhere. Then turning off the light and screwing some more, Monkey friggin’ “Sorry-officer-we’re-just-having-fun” sex.
At the end of the weekend, though, all we had was that, those moments. And she’d been clear about that, that that’s all she wanted (an acre of that’s, obviously). I knew what I was signing on for and honestly, that was fine with me. I was just a little over a year having split up with X and I wasn’t ready to tumble into something else serious. The point is, the experience gave me a glimpse of something, beyond that.
That didn’t resemble anything like the True Love of The Princess Bride but it had some of the essential components: a shared sense of fun, mutual fascination, passion, passion, passion. Everything but shared goals and chemistry.
Ahhhh, chemistry. The free variable, the radical number that just keeps growing larger with each minute, the ineffable last thing that won’t let any of the other parts work if that one grain of substance is missing. Sitting there in the dark, my beer still not finished, I conceived that chemistry as one little spring on which everything else hinged, a small and seemingly insignificant part that lost, sends everything else into an inevitable tailspin.
As the movie ended and the lights dimmed then came back up to guide me out, I stood in the cold night air, smoking, thinking,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
Looking to see if that little spring was on the floor somewhere but knowing the vacuum had picked it up long ago.
------------------------------------
Special thanks to my mixmania! mixer for a sad and scary mix, many songs I don’t know but the inclusion of Robert Johnson in the midst of every incredible song inspired me in ways that you just read.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
We came back in the Misty Mountains last night, chilled to the bone as the sky sagged down on us like a drenched wash rag. The four of us huddled together in this hovel guarded against the cold, the girls boppin’ in their room to Malcom McClaren’s “Buffalo Girls” while the boy went down hard, unhappy, lacking a lollipop for refusing to touch his spaghetti. He snuggled under an electric blanket and his cries ended about ten seconds later. It was good to be home.
Without waving the white hankie of the why’s and wherefores, I took another day with my kids, called off of work. Although I had one down with a stomach bug and the other two camped out for marathon Disney, our 2nd of September socked in with a too-early autumnal gloom, we made much of our one more day, a day more than had been planned. We cuddled and made grilled cheese sandwiches, drank hot coco, picked which characters we would be from the DVD we were watching and acted out our own plot lines (most of which involved me as the villain, chasing heroes around the living room until they were caught and tickled and given merciless belly blows). The sad sick one arose to sip Seven-up and eat soda crackers a few times but most of her day was spent sleeping off her misery. She missed out on the unpopular spaghetti.
Coming back to Manitou was a function of sheer necessity; already a day late on getting the mixmania! matches mailed out, I was also without my “things”, you know, you can lounge around at the finest resort in the world but eventually, without the availability of your “things” you get fidgety and all the mimosas and massages lose their magic. I was not the only one missing the comfort of the mundane; the kids were also clamoring for what passes as normalcy in our little shack in the mountains. A night in our own beds, with out “things” close at hand, was a good segue to take us to the ritual of goodbye as I drove them to their moms and started my work week.
At least the segue was good for me. After I dropped my kids off from the mountains, I drove to see “My Kids” in the mountains. When I left My Kids Wednesday night, it occurred to me that they were becoming My Kids and as terrible as my wages are for working at the facility that employs me, it was becoming impossible for me to think of leaving My Kids. Promises are made and now I’m obligated to fulfill my oath, to prove my fealty.
One of my kids had no snacks last week and I had to refuse him the generosity of a brother cabin-mate who had snacks and wished to share. It is against the rules for My Kids to share their snacks and as unfair as that sounds, I enforce the rules – the love I give to My Kids includes providing them with a structure that they have not had in their lives. However, as consolation for following the letter of the law, I promised him that something would be in his snack box the next night.
It wasn’t much – it was my last 5 bucks. Some cookies and pudding cups and a energy bars, a few packages of ramen noodles, what I could scrounge from my surplus at home and as much as I could get for my pocket of change from the sales bin at Safeway. As I said, it wasn’t much and I was a little ashamed that it was all I could bring to him.
What I’d forgotten was the lesson my own kids have taught me, that it’s not what I give but just that I give. My Kid hugged me as he thanked me, “I’m not used to someone actually doing for me what they say they’re going to do,” he said, quietly, almost imperceptibly, “I’m not used to anyone actually caring.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied, almost silent, hugging him back and then turning quickly as he left, afraid I would collapse into a sobbing, shuddering heap of grief. Breathing deep, I collected myself, shook of the sting of the previous moment so I could turn to watch the rest of My Kids, “Watch your language. No horseplay. You need to get in the shower, now.” Enforcing the rules, paying attention, providing guidance - being a dad. The more I work with My Kids the more I realize that I am not so much a therapist or counselor but I’m actually being paid to yes, be a father. That’s what threw me. I hadn’t actually forgotten the lesson my own children taught me but I wasn’t aware until that hug and those few words that my love and concern (and my commitment to discipline) applied as much to My Kids as it does to my kids. Maybe even more, now that I think about it. Because my kids have always known that, all that I give them where tragically, My Kids are coming to know that for the first time in their lives.
It’s not what I give but just that I give. Even if it’s nothing material but only my attention, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant the achievement, it amounts to more than anything I could ever measure.
“Daddy look, I can hold myself up with one arm,” balancing on the wicker chest, a leg tucked up and under.
Turning from the computer screen, whatever it is I’m reading not a tenth as important as this little moment I tell him, “You’re the strongest 3-year old boy I know”.
“And I can pick up heavy chairs… and I can pick up this heavy book,” lifting the unabridged Complete Edgar Allan Poe from my bookshelf.
“There are some scary stories in that book,” I warn him, “Are you sure you want to lift a big heavy book full of scary stories?”
“Did you read dem?”
“Yes, I’ve read them all.”
He looks at the book, ponders what must be inside, and carefully places the book back on the shelf. “One day I’ll read them all, too. When I’m big and strong like you. And I won’t be afraid then because I’ll be brave like you.”
It’s puzzling to me how this simple equation escaped the tiny minds of the parents of My Kid: that it’s not what you give but just that you give. What you get in return is just as immeasurable and so much more immense. Because you matter, matter in a way that will remain long after all the diamonds in the world have turned to dust.
Back in Manitou amongst our “things” it became evident that it was not what we had but what we shared. If we’d returned to a burnt-out shell of a home, we would have lost all our “things” but nothing can take away the thing that matters the most. When I drove up the pass to be with My Kids again, I realized that I brought that thing with me. Not something measured in pudding cups but in the value of a promise kept, the value of recognizing the strength required to pick up a thick, scary book. That thing that keeps us warm and safe on a cold, damp night.
Without waving the white hankie of the why’s and wherefores, I took another day with my kids, called off of work. Although I had one down with a stomach bug and the other two camped out for marathon Disney, our 2nd of September socked in with a too-early autumnal gloom, we made much of our one more day, a day more than had been planned. We cuddled and made grilled cheese sandwiches, drank hot coco, picked which characters we would be from the DVD we were watching and acted out our own plot lines (most of which involved me as the villain, chasing heroes around the living room until they were caught and tickled and given merciless belly blows). The sad sick one arose to sip Seven-up and eat soda crackers a few times but most of her day was spent sleeping off her misery. She missed out on the unpopular spaghetti.
Coming back to Manitou was a function of sheer necessity; already a day late on getting the mixmania! matches mailed out, I was also without my “things”, you know, you can lounge around at the finest resort in the world but eventually, without the availability of your “things” you get fidgety and all the mimosas and massages lose their magic. I was not the only one missing the comfort of the mundane; the kids were also clamoring for what passes as normalcy in our little shack in the mountains. A night in our own beds, with out “things” close at hand, was a good segue to take us to the ritual of goodbye as I drove them to their moms and started my work week.
At least the segue was good for me. After I dropped my kids off from the mountains, I drove to see “My Kids” in the mountains. When I left My Kids Wednesday night, it occurred to me that they were becoming My Kids and as terrible as my wages are for working at the facility that employs me, it was becoming impossible for me to think of leaving My Kids. Promises are made and now I’m obligated to fulfill my oath, to prove my fealty.
One of my kids had no snacks last week and I had to refuse him the generosity of a brother cabin-mate who had snacks and wished to share. It is against the rules for My Kids to share their snacks and as unfair as that sounds, I enforce the rules – the love I give to My Kids includes providing them with a structure that they have not had in their lives. However, as consolation for following the letter of the law, I promised him that something would be in his snack box the next night.
It wasn’t much – it was my last 5 bucks. Some cookies and pudding cups and a energy bars, a few packages of ramen noodles, what I could scrounge from my surplus at home and as much as I could get for my pocket of change from the sales bin at Safeway. As I said, it wasn’t much and I was a little ashamed that it was all I could bring to him.
What I’d forgotten was the lesson my own kids have taught me, that it’s not what I give but just that I give. My Kid hugged me as he thanked me, “I’m not used to someone actually doing for me what they say they’re going to do,” he said, quietly, almost imperceptibly, “I’m not used to anyone actually caring.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied, almost silent, hugging him back and then turning quickly as he left, afraid I would collapse into a sobbing, shuddering heap of grief. Breathing deep, I collected myself, shook of the sting of the previous moment so I could turn to watch the rest of My Kids, “Watch your language. No horseplay. You need to get in the shower, now.” Enforcing the rules, paying attention, providing guidance - being a dad. The more I work with My Kids the more I realize that I am not so much a therapist or counselor but I’m actually being paid to yes, be a father. That’s what threw me. I hadn’t actually forgotten the lesson my own children taught me but I wasn’t aware until that hug and those few words that my love and concern (and my commitment to discipline) applied as much to My Kids as it does to my kids. Maybe even more, now that I think about it. Because my kids have always known that, all that I give them where tragically, My Kids are coming to know that for the first time in their lives.
It’s not what I give but just that I give. Even if it’s nothing material but only my attention, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant the achievement, it amounts to more than anything I could ever measure.
“Daddy look, I can hold myself up with one arm,” balancing on the wicker chest, a leg tucked up and under.
Turning from the computer screen, whatever it is I’m reading not a tenth as important as this little moment I tell him, “You’re the strongest 3-year old boy I know”.
“And I can pick up heavy chairs… and I can pick up this heavy book,” lifting the unabridged Complete Edgar Allan Poe from my bookshelf.
“There are some scary stories in that book,” I warn him, “Are you sure you want to lift a big heavy book full of scary stories?”
“Did you read dem?”
“Yes, I’ve read them all.”
He looks at the book, ponders what must be inside, and carefully places the book back on the shelf. “One day I’ll read them all, too. When I’m big and strong like you. And I won’t be afraid then because I’ll be brave like you.”
It’s puzzling to me how this simple equation escaped the tiny minds of the parents of My Kid: that it’s not what you give but just that you give. What you get in return is just as immeasurable and so much more immense. Because you matter, matter in a way that will remain long after all the diamonds in the world have turned to dust.
Back in Manitou amongst our “things” it became evident that it was not what we had but what we shared. If we’d returned to a burnt-out shell of a home, we would have lost all our “things” but nothing can take away the thing that matters the most. When I drove up the pass to be with My Kids again, I realized that I brought that thing with me. Not something measured in pudding cups but in the value of a promise kept, the value of recognizing the strength required to pick up a thick, scary book. That thing that keeps us warm and safe on a cold, damp night.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been oh-who-the-hell-knows since my last confession...
My Sunday night, as it were, posting from my parent's house. Mom and Dad are vacationing in Montana at the moment, leaving the kidmandoes and me a place to party, raid the pantry, splash around in the hot tub; while yours truly drinks the rent's crappy wine, kids watch their vids on a screen the size of a persian carpet. In exchange for taking advantage of the amenities, Mom and Dad rest easier knowing no one is stealing their guns or their collection of kitsch.
The downside is, well, this is not my place, this isn't my computer, my things aren't around, convenient, close. As I type this I'm creating a mental list of the things I need to do or get when head back to Chez Shithole. Also, I'm mentally composing a list of cute kid things to report here. Having been pigeonholed as a "single dad blog" I feel obligated to post daddy-is-awed-by-too-cute-kids and I know I've been remiss in those kinds of posts although I suspect the majority of you who come here on a regular basis know poopy-diaper posts only constitute about a tenth of what I write. Still, my Catholic guilt hammers relentlessly on my sense of what I should post given the daddy-blog mark.
The downside is, well, this is not my place, this isn't my computer, my things aren't around, convenient, close. As I type this I'm creating a mental list of the things I need to do or get when head back to Chez Shithole. Also, I'm mentally composing a list of cute kid things to report here. Having been pigeonholed as a "single dad blog" I feel obligated to post daddy-is-awed-by-too-cute-kids and I know I've been remiss in those kinds of posts although I suspect the majority of you who come here on a regular basis know poopy-diaper posts only constitute about a tenth of what I write. Still, my Catholic guilt hammers relentlessly on my sense of what I should post given the daddy-blog mark.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
It went "zip" when it moved and "bop" when it stopped and "whirr" when it stood still
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will...*
Today the zipping and bopping and whirring is a bit out of synch, everything I aim at ends up untouched with the hit landing well off into the left-field bleachers. The synapses seem to be firing just fine but somewhere between the command center and where the actual grunt work gets done reveals the message was garbled such that “scratch nose” results in, “OW! My EYE! My Eye! OW! OW! OW!”
I click on the Mamacita link and end up at Outside/In; what was supposed to be shaving cream ends up as air-freshener; the coffee pot ends up not back on its burner but in the feed slot of my printer; I reach for the cereal box and end up with rat poison (apologies to Gary Larson for shamelessly ripping off his cartoon). Somewhere between intention and conclusion is a bank of cold gray chaos, the means mystify the ends. If I manage to make it back here without having set fire to something, backed over something, smoked a finger, stubbed a toe or had something blowed-up (blowed-up REAL good!), Eris be praised, I’ll tip my libation to the forces that secured the world from my toxic participation.
It’s not as though I’m lacking sleep (I slept like a baby last night) but maybe it was the dreams. My usual morning arrives with me not cognizant of a single dream but I woke up today with three dreams on my mind. Well, after several cups of coffee and some eye-gouging, I only remember one of them but I recall I had three.
The dream I do remember found me in some high-stakes trivia game emceed by none other than Regis Philbin. At the start of the game I was given $100,000 to wager and I could bet any or all on the question. What the question was I don’t recall but I remember that although I did not know the answer, the answer was obvious after some deductive reasoning. See, I’m the Trivia God and after opening a can of Whupass on other trivia unfortunates I’m invariably asked, “How in the world do you know all this stuff?” Thing is, I don’t really know all that stuff but I know enough to apply deductive reasoning to discern the answer. No matter the game: NTN or Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, the clues in the question usually narrows down the possibilities to a single, correct answer. So when Regis read off the choices, deductively everything was sewn up tight. So I bet the whole enchilada and gave him the answer.
“I’m sorry but that’s not the correct an-sah,” he said, “You lost one hundred thousand doll-ahs and you’re out of the game!”
Astounded, dejected, I snatched the answer card out of his hand and walked away down a corridor, past a T.J. Maxx and an Orange Julius to the escalator that took me downstairs to Saks Fifth Avenue where I decided to spend $75 on shirts (2 for 1!) as a consolation prize. Unfortunately, all the shirts were ugly and I was having a difficult time deciding how I’d piss away my seventy-five bucks. Impatiently going through the racks for something pleasing, I took a look at the answer card I’d taken from Regis and saw – I was right! The bastard cheated! I should have been sitting on two-hundred grand and answering another question but the son of a bitch had gypped me!
Freud said that “Dreams are the royal road to the subconscious,” and maybe the dream had something to do with all the wrong buttons pushed, the forehead smacked into door jambs. It’s hard to say. What’s not hard to say is that if you travel in my sphere today, steer clear, you’re liable to end up with an injury.
You’ve been warned.
* and sincere apologies to Tom Paxton; with the spastic way my body disregards my mind, I assume I’ll offering a lot of apologies today.
Today the zipping and bopping and whirring is a bit out of synch, everything I aim at ends up untouched with the hit landing well off into the left-field bleachers. The synapses seem to be firing just fine but somewhere between the command center and where the actual grunt work gets done reveals the message was garbled such that “scratch nose” results in, “OW! My EYE! My Eye! OW! OW! OW!”
I click on the Mamacita link and end up at Outside/In; what was supposed to be shaving cream ends up as air-freshener; the coffee pot ends up not back on its burner but in the feed slot of my printer; I reach for the cereal box and end up with rat poison (apologies to Gary Larson for shamelessly ripping off his cartoon). Somewhere between intention and conclusion is a bank of cold gray chaos, the means mystify the ends. If I manage to make it back here without having set fire to something, backed over something, smoked a finger, stubbed a toe or had something blowed-up (blowed-up REAL good!), Eris be praised, I’ll tip my libation to the forces that secured the world from my toxic participation.
It’s not as though I’m lacking sleep (I slept like a baby last night) but maybe it was the dreams. My usual morning arrives with me not cognizant of a single dream but I woke up today with three dreams on my mind. Well, after several cups of coffee and some eye-gouging, I only remember one of them but I recall I had three.
The dream I do remember found me in some high-stakes trivia game emceed by none other than Regis Philbin. At the start of the game I was given $100,000 to wager and I could bet any or all on the question. What the question was I don’t recall but I remember that although I did not know the answer, the answer was obvious after some deductive reasoning. See, I’m the Trivia God and after opening a can of Whupass on other trivia unfortunates I’m invariably asked, “How in the world do you know all this stuff?” Thing is, I don’t really know all that stuff but I know enough to apply deductive reasoning to discern the answer. No matter the game: NTN or Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, the clues in the question usually narrows down the possibilities to a single, correct answer. So when Regis read off the choices, deductively everything was sewn up tight. So I bet the whole enchilada and gave him the answer.
“I’m sorry but that’s not the correct an-sah,” he said, “You lost one hundred thousand doll-ahs and you’re out of the game!”
Astounded, dejected, I snatched the answer card out of his hand and walked away down a corridor, past a T.J. Maxx and an Orange Julius to the escalator that took me downstairs to Saks Fifth Avenue where I decided to spend $75 on shirts (2 for 1!) as a consolation prize. Unfortunately, all the shirts were ugly and I was having a difficult time deciding how I’d piss away my seventy-five bucks. Impatiently going through the racks for something pleasing, I took a look at the answer card I’d taken from Regis and saw – I was right! The bastard cheated! I should have been sitting on two-hundred grand and answering another question but the son of a bitch had gypped me!
Freud said that “Dreams are the royal road to the subconscious,” and maybe the dream had something to do with all the wrong buttons pushed, the forehead smacked into door jambs. It’s hard to say. What’s not hard to say is that if you travel in my sphere today, steer clear, you’re liable to end up with an injury.
You’ve been warned.
* and sincere apologies to Tom Paxton; with the spastic way my body disregards my mind, I assume I’ll offering a lot of apologies today.
Monday, August 28, 2006
No, no, no, hold your hand a little higher on your head and say "WAH!!!"
Jaded and tainted blogger that I am, I’ve learned to sit on a post when it garners a lot of love (relative to this puissant little place) and bleed the damn thing for all its refreshing comment-y goodness. Not my hard and fast policy but it seems that when I sit on something substantial, there’s a reasonable ratio of ranting-to-chatter to satisfy my need for feedback.
Yes, I’m a vain ass and although that’s not news to any of you, saying it creates an illusion of humility for me.
My last post seemed to have run its natural course until I got home a few nights back and discovered almost a half-dozen more well-wishers. Yet, tempted as I am to milk every drop for all the potential for titty-twisting tears, I guess I should pop out of my hidey-hole and say “hello”, screw the comment count.
I keed, I keed, I’m not that mercenary. Or am I? (sound of chin rubbing and the inevitable “shit, dammit” as ashes drop on the front of a perfectly serviceable Hawaiian shirt while little lightning bolts shoot out of my head and a flanged “whoo whoo” sound floods the room).
At the risk of slapping you darlings with a huge slab of The Obvious, I confess that my silence this past week has not been my meretricious gluttony for glad tidings but phone calls, oh so many calls. Playing catch-up for sixteen years of love lost is no small feat and aside from the wee ones here who demand my unconditional focus as well as the Jay Oh Bee, I’ve hardly had time to catch up on the ironing much less post tidbits from my pathetic life.
OK, that’s bullshit; not the time constraints but the suggestion that I actually touch an iron.
It’s been an interesting week, sharing details of my life with Nicole and her mom, Julie, so much to say and impossible to plan how those details will unfold. It’s been something akin to setting out into the wilderness without any map and only a few words to explain the landscape. The excitement of discovery tempered with a fear of the unknown. Now we’re settling down, settling in, and I’m finding myself checking my inclination to be too much father too soon. Despite my joy at having been blessed by this new-found daughter, I need to remind myself that as far as she’s concerned, my role as “father” is little more than titular at this point.
There’s only one thing I’m certain of regarding the future: I’ll be blogging more. I couldn’t say there’s a value system that instills some kind of principle in my permission to shout shit to everyone with access to the internet. Chuck a chunk of meat out and see who chews on the gristle, I say.
Yes, I’m a vain ass and although that’s not news to any of you, saying it creates an illusion of humility for me.
My last post seemed to have run its natural course until I got home a few nights back and discovered almost a half-dozen more well-wishers. Yet, tempted as I am to milk every drop for all the potential for titty-twisting tears, I guess I should pop out of my hidey-hole and say “hello”, screw the comment count.
I keed, I keed, I’m not that mercenary. Or am I? (sound of chin rubbing and the inevitable “shit, dammit” as ashes drop on the front of a perfectly serviceable Hawaiian shirt while little lightning bolts shoot out of my head and a flanged “whoo whoo” sound floods the room).
At the risk of slapping you darlings with a huge slab of The Obvious, I confess that my silence this past week has not been my meretricious gluttony for glad tidings but phone calls, oh so many calls. Playing catch-up for sixteen years of love lost is no small feat and aside from the wee ones here who demand my unconditional focus as well as the Jay Oh Bee, I’ve hardly had time to catch up on the ironing much less post tidbits from my pathetic life.
OK, that’s bullshit; not the time constraints but the suggestion that I actually touch an iron.
It’s been an interesting week, sharing details of my life with Nicole and her mom, Julie, so much to say and impossible to plan how those details will unfold. It’s been something akin to setting out into the wilderness without any map and only a few words to explain the landscape. The excitement of discovery tempered with a fear of the unknown. Now we’re settling down, settling in, and I’m finding myself checking my inclination to be too much father too soon. Despite my joy at having been blessed by this new-found daughter, I need to remind myself that as far as she’s concerned, my role as “father” is little more than titular at this point.
There’s only one thing I’m certain of regarding the future: I’ll be blogging more. I couldn’t say there’s a value system that instills some kind of principle in my permission to shout shit to everyone with access to the internet. Chuck a chunk of meat out and see who chews on the gristle, I say.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Oh. My. God. Omigodomigodomigodo. My. God.
As if today couldn't get any better.
The wee ones and I had a marvelous time skipping school and making the most of our summer day, whizzing around a balmy August brew like love-mad beetles then huddling inside during our timely and tempestuous afternoon storm (skipped the movie but we didn't need it anyway). My suggestion of chili-mac vetoed by a 3-1 margin. "Order a pizza, daddy," pepperoni & black olive (munchkins loves em' some black olives) and a free box of brownie bits; my vegan earth-firster eldest daughter picked the meat off her slices. When the mountain shadows laid out our dark bedroll, the girls settled in for the twixty-dozenth viewing of The Princess Diaries while little man bashed characters on the screen with a Batman figurine.
Daddy poured himself a few drams of brandy and opened his book, kicked his feet up and waited for the inevitable wilting of the sprouts. Yes, this is my usual stream-of-consciousness nonsense (*international hand gesture signifying jerking off*) and no, it's not without direction.
This is a story I've never told, ever, not even once. Not for sense of shame or regret but because all stories need an ending and until tonight, this story was an amorphous mess. There was nothing to tell in a larger sense because it was essentially pointless.
Back in the day of my Mister Strummin' & Stompin' studman pose (jerkoff twit that I was), I went through women like guitar picks, used em' and losed em', tossing one down when it felt wrong and picking up another one as it suited me. It's not like I was dishonest about it but neither was I nice about it because hey, we all have a contract to sign and sometimes the rider is a bitch. I didn't write the rules, I sure as shit didn't enforce them (unless you owed me money, motherfucker), and I wasn't too concerned at how they were applied just as long as my dick didn't get nicked. Yes, I was a self-centered prick but I had the rationale to justify my prickiness.
In the midst of that, someone* got pregnant. Not that I cared one whit ("What do you expect ME to do about that?!?") but for basic CYA I cast aspersions, pointed fingers (not my own, of course), and indulged in my own meth-a-matics to prove it was not MY sperm that had split a zygote. When I got the call that previous conquest-n was in labor, my reaction was I wasn't there, I was insubsantial (and probably on the business end of a bong) so therefore - what was your point?
Years passed. I dropped the band gig and went back to college, cut my hair and became a Republican (juuuuuuust kidding!!!). As I was nearing the end of my second degree, I got a call from you-made-me-pregnant lady saying that "our daughter" was about to be adopted and I needed to sign over my parental rights in order to seal the deal. Considering mom was living in a meth den with toothless stooges and I was an oh-so-superior scientist with Stanford in my sites, I decided what the shit. I'll give a daddyless little girl a better life then move on with my own Platonic perfection.
There was a meeting of all involved parties in some DHS warren for everything to get stamped, notarized, and knuckled under. I met the adoptive parents and saw they were infinitely superior to me (at that point in my life); I met mom and she was as pretty as I'd remembered her; I met my dubious daughter and although she was completely apathetic to me (regarding me as if I was petrified gum under a table top), I saw myself.
As I watched Nicole dance and sing and put blocks together, I realized she was mine or at the very least, yes, I had sired her.
Later in the day, I took a trip up to see the spread the potential adoptive parents had, an estate in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. I was impressed. More than that, they struck me as good people who honestly wanted a child to love and nurture and pass on all the advantages that had blessed them. As soon as I got back, I signed. Even if she wasn't mine (as I continued to convince myself), the kid deserved that kind of life, a life that few of us can have.
In the years that followed, my certainty that what I saw in that beautiful little girl haunted me. At odd times, stoned to the gourd, I'd break out a picture of her and hand it to a friend and every time - EVERY TIME - they'd say, "Oh - is this your daughter?" I didn't even have to prompt them; they saw the resemblance right away. Whatever lies I told myself about her got shredded between the fine blades of my friend's perception and my own intuition that her mom had been telling the truth from the gitgo. The older I got, the more my heart made sense, that I indeed had a daughter out there despite what my shitpail head had been saying from ding one.
The louder my heart chattered, the more fantasies I had. A little girl walking back into my life, showing up at my door and announcing, "I'm pretty sure you're my dad." Me wondering how I'd react and what I'd say to justify my supreme ass holiness or how I'd weasel out of my intellectual fuck-you-all that had whitewashed my smarmy disregard for her and her mom.
I dreaded that moment, feared it hard. Yet, despite the fear, I continued to entertain that instance when she'd finally call me out and insist, "You are him, that man who made me."
Tonight was that moment, that moment when all I had imagined had become real. I had just turned out the lights when my mom called. "Do you remember your daughter from years ago? Well, she called me and asked me for your number. She's 16 now and a sweet girl, a level-headed girl. And she's about to call you." It felt as though the sleeping bag I had been walking around in had been suddenly unzipped. I was naked and cold.
Five minutes later, another call came. Not enough time for me to prepare my kids for "Hey! You have an older sister and this is how it works!"
No matter, my daughter got on the phone and blew me away. Told me all about the things she's into, what she's about, who she is, where she's going, what she's done, where she's come from, why she's calling now and how, all her life, she's wanted to talk to me. I wept. Talking about her, about me, about us, I held back the choking voice that comes with tears of joy. I'd played this moment over in my mind so many times and now, the dream comes true.
Here's my daughter:
I'm past words, beyond reason; there is nothing I can say. These pictures show me my folly, the girl I did not raise, the woman she is becoming, that knowing that she is incredible and special and brilliant and beautiful but also knowing that for whatever she is becoming, she only has my genes. My loving hand remains a mere footnote in the biography that is who she will be.
Nicole and I talked for a long time and then I passed the phone to her new-found brother and sister. Lilly assured her that yes, she was happy to learn she had an older, teenaged sister but the mother-hen-of-the-brood mantle was not being passed; Zeke assured her that he was glad that a new boss had walked into town.
This is a story that is just emerging. As I said earlier, I've never mentioned this because there was no story to tell. All of a sudden, the stories scream to be told. If there was ever an exciting time to be a reader on this blog, you just walked into the Citizen Kane moment. Rosebud is just a sled but there's so much more to be said.
*Julie - Nicole's mom - is an incredible woman. There's no intent to diminish her but the narrative, unfortunately, requires that I tell the story in a way that at worst minimizes her and at best, objectifies her. I could not find away around that without sacrificing the telling of this tale.
Julie has endured far worse than me and has risen far higher than me. If in the service of presenting this story I've diminished her at all, I apologize with all my heart. She is a much better person than I can ever hope to be.
The wee ones and I had a marvelous time skipping school and making the most of our summer day, whizzing around a balmy August brew like love-mad beetles then huddling inside during our timely and tempestuous afternoon storm (skipped the movie but we didn't need it anyway). My suggestion of chili-mac vetoed by a 3-1 margin. "Order a pizza, daddy," pepperoni & black olive (munchkins loves em' some black olives) and a free box of brownie bits; my vegan earth-firster eldest daughter picked the meat off her slices. When the mountain shadows laid out our dark bedroll, the girls settled in for the twixty-dozenth viewing of The Princess Diaries while little man bashed characters on the screen with a Batman figurine.
Daddy poured himself a few drams of brandy and opened his book, kicked his feet up and waited for the inevitable wilting of the sprouts. Yes, this is my usual stream-of-consciousness nonsense (*international hand gesture signifying jerking off*) and no, it's not without direction.
This is a story I've never told, ever, not even once. Not for sense of shame or regret but because all stories need an ending and until tonight, this story was an amorphous mess. There was nothing to tell in a larger sense because it was essentially pointless.
Back in the day of my Mister Strummin' & Stompin' studman pose (jerkoff twit that I was), I went through women like guitar picks, used em' and losed em', tossing one down when it felt wrong and picking up another one as it suited me. It's not like I was dishonest about it but neither was I nice about it because hey, we all have a contract to sign and sometimes the rider is a bitch. I didn't write the rules, I sure as shit didn't enforce them (unless you owed me money, motherfucker), and I wasn't too concerned at how they were applied just as long as my dick didn't get nicked. Yes, I was a self-centered prick but I had the rationale to justify my prickiness.
In the midst of that, someone* got pregnant. Not that I cared one whit ("What do you expect ME to do about that?!?") but for basic CYA I cast aspersions, pointed fingers (not my own, of course), and indulged in my own meth-a-matics to prove it was not MY sperm that had split a zygote. When I got the call that previous conquest-n was in labor, my reaction was I wasn't there, I was insubsantial (and probably on the business end of a bong) so therefore - what was your point?
Years passed. I dropped the band gig and went back to college, cut my hair and became a Republican (juuuuuuust kidding!!!). As I was nearing the end of my second degree, I got a call from you-made-me-pregnant lady saying that "our daughter" was about to be adopted and I needed to sign over my parental rights in order to seal the deal. Considering mom was living in a meth den with toothless stooges and I was an oh-so-superior scientist with Stanford in my sites, I decided what the shit. I'll give a daddyless little girl a better life then move on with my own Platonic perfection.
There was a meeting of all involved parties in some DHS warren for everything to get stamped, notarized, and knuckled under. I met the adoptive parents and saw they were infinitely superior to me (at that point in my life); I met mom and she was as pretty as I'd remembered her; I met my dubious daughter and although she was completely apathetic to me (regarding me as if I was petrified gum under a table top), I saw myself.
As I watched Nicole dance and sing and put blocks together, I realized she was mine or at the very least, yes, I had sired her.
Later in the day, I took a trip up to see the spread the potential adoptive parents had, an estate in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. I was impressed. More than that, they struck me as good people who honestly wanted a child to love and nurture and pass on all the advantages that had blessed them. As soon as I got back, I signed. Even if she wasn't mine (as I continued to convince myself), the kid deserved that kind of life, a life that few of us can have.
In the years that followed, my certainty that what I saw in that beautiful little girl haunted me. At odd times, stoned to the gourd, I'd break out a picture of her and hand it to a friend and every time - EVERY TIME - they'd say, "Oh - is this your daughter?" I didn't even have to prompt them; they saw the resemblance right away. Whatever lies I told myself about her got shredded between the fine blades of my friend's perception and my own intuition that her mom had been telling the truth from the gitgo. The older I got, the more my heart made sense, that I indeed had a daughter out there despite what my shitpail head had been saying from ding one.
The louder my heart chattered, the more fantasies I had. A little girl walking back into my life, showing up at my door and announcing, "I'm pretty sure you're my dad." Me wondering how I'd react and what I'd say to justify my supreme ass holiness or how I'd weasel out of my intellectual fuck-you-all that had whitewashed my smarmy disregard for her and her mom.
I dreaded that moment, feared it hard. Yet, despite the fear, I continued to entertain that instance when she'd finally call me out and insist, "You are him, that man who made me."
Tonight was that moment, that moment when all I had imagined had become real. I had just turned out the lights when my mom called. "Do you remember your daughter from years ago? Well, she called me and asked me for your number. She's 16 now and a sweet girl, a level-headed girl. And she's about to call you." It felt as though the sleeping bag I had been walking around in had been suddenly unzipped. I was naked and cold.
Five minutes later, another call came. Not enough time for me to prepare my kids for "Hey! You have an older sister and this is how it works!"
No matter, my daughter got on the phone and blew me away. Told me all about the things she's into, what she's about, who she is, where she's going, what she's done, where she's come from, why she's calling now and how, all her life, she's wanted to talk to me. I wept. Talking about her, about me, about us, I held back the choking voice that comes with tears of joy. I'd played this moment over in my mind so many times and now, the dream comes true.
Here's my daughter:
I'm past words, beyond reason; there is nothing I can say. These pictures show me my folly, the girl I did not raise, the woman she is becoming, that knowing that she is incredible and special and brilliant and beautiful but also knowing that for whatever she is becoming, she only has my genes. My loving hand remains a mere footnote in the biography that is who she will be.
Nicole and I talked for a long time and then I passed the phone to her new-found brother and sister. Lilly assured her that yes, she was happy to learn she had an older, teenaged sister but the mother-hen-of-the-brood mantle was not being passed; Zeke assured her that he was glad that a new boss had walked into town.
This is a story that is just emerging. As I said earlier, I've never mentioned this because there was no story to tell. All of a sudden, the stories scream to be told. If there was ever an exciting time to be a reader on this blog, you just walked into the Citizen Kane moment. Rosebud is just a sled but there's so much more to be said.
*Julie - Nicole's mom - is an incredible woman. There's no intent to diminish her but the narrative, unfortunately, requires that I tell the story in a way that at worst minimizes her and at best, objectifies her. I could not find away around that without sacrificing the telling of this tale.
Julie has endured far worse than me and has risen far higher than me. If in the service of presenting this story I've diminished her at all, I apologize with all my heart. She is a much better person than I can ever hope to be.
The funnies of my Sunday
Today was supposed to be the second day of school for the kids but I was up late and the car wouldn't start and it's such a beautiful day. The rain has made the mountains mad with wildflowers, the best thing to do was to pick & play. Summer trumped school.
X has some sweet deal for daycare but it's a different district; the kids in Manitou Springs don't start until next week. As we sat in my non-starting car this morning, me streaming my most gutter French, I saw the pained look on my kid's faces as they watched friends and neighbors riding bikes and skating and picking blades of grass into massive heaps and laying a carpet on the sidewalk. The world was passing them by. Rather than beat my dashboard silly, I unbuckled joyful cherubs from carseats and set them free. A new itinerary, tea parties beneath a weeping willow and puddles screaming for little feet, a small brown ocean as big as an imagination can hold.
When our daily thunderstorm rolls in we'll go to the dollar movies and see Over the Hedge, eat pancakes at IHOP. Then come back here and make a drawing with 40 pages of Daddy's 'to recycle' printer paper, lip-synch Sugarloaf's "Green-Eyed Lady," bake and eat brownies.
Besides, today is my Sunday. My day to be full-on what do we do next dad. There's time enough for eat your peas ("at least FIVE") and brush your teeth dad, I'll be with you in 30 seconds can't you see I'm trying to do something at the moment dad. Today we dig for worms and put them into flowerpots because pet worms deserve decent homes. And it is not a home if there is no heart.
If summer trumps school, hearts trump everything.
Speaking of hearts, my fickle one found this earlier and light up the shadowed side of my daddy heart:
-- See you in the funny papers.
X has some sweet deal for daycare but it's a different district; the kids in Manitou Springs don't start until next week. As we sat in my non-starting car this morning, me streaming my most gutter French, I saw the pained look on my kid's faces as they watched friends and neighbors riding bikes and skating and picking blades of grass into massive heaps and laying a carpet on the sidewalk. The world was passing them by. Rather than beat my dashboard silly, I unbuckled joyful cherubs from carseats and set them free. A new itinerary, tea parties beneath a weeping willow and puddles screaming for little feet, a small brown ocean as big as an imagination can hold.
When our daily thunderstorm rolls in we'll go to the dollar movies and see Over the Hedge, eat pancakes at IHOP. Then come back here and make a drawing with 40 pages of Daddy's 'to recycle' printer paper, lip-synch Sugarloaf's "Green-Eyed Lady," bake and eat brownies.
Besides, today is my Sunday. My day to be full-on what do we do next dad. There's time enough for eat your peas ("at least FIVE") and brush your teeth dad, I'll be with you in 30 seconds can't you see I'm trying to do something at the moment dad. Today we dig for worms and put them into flowerpots because pet worms deserve decent homes. And it is not a home if there is no heart.
If summer trumps school, hearts trump everything.
Speaking of hearts, my fickle one found this earlier and light up the shadowed side of my daddy heart:
What I Learn Weeding
A dandelion root can grow two feet long.
You don't forget unearthing one—shocking
as a donkey in an old French postcard.
But mostly, love, we pull their heads off
to achieve our shallow vision of a garden.
The root cleaves to the darkness,
the same dark that sets our hips to rocking,
to burrowing into the other's body
or slapping it away. Briefly a stillness,
a long waiting to rise. Respiration. Sleep.
Until, without nurturing, a green shoot,
a thumb raked lightly across a thigh
and we succumb to this buried fury, this fever
to reseed. Oh, subterranean marriage
of root and soil! Oh, saw-blade leaf
and sunburst of maddened flower!Copyright © 2006 Kathleen Flenniken All rights reserved
from Famous Bison Books
Reprinted by Patriside® without permission but with tons o' love
-- See you in the funny papers.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Another post in which I steal ideas from another blogger and slap stuff up thinking you'll find it interesting
Today I borrow shamelessly from Landismom at the wonderful Bumblebee Sweet Potato (who also has one of my favorite names for a blog) and answer the questions she answered regarding some questions raised at BlogHer:
1. Do your kids know about your blog? If they’re too young to know, do you plan to keep it open to them as they get older?
They sort of know; Lilly and Marni are more aware that I'm writing about them than Zeke is but they all notice the pics and they're all a little taken with themselves when they see their pictures posted. To them, it's like being on TV.
As far as the second part of the question is concerned, I intend to keep up with this blog as long as I'm a parent, i.e. until the moment I shuffle off this mortal coil.
2a. If so - do you worry they may get embarrassed later? What would you do if they asked you to stop writing about them? What would you do if they wanted you to take it down all together?
I'm certain that they'll be a little embarrassed when they get older (pre-teen/teen years, embarrassed by a parent being a quality of that stage) and I intend to give them editorial prerogative at that point. My parenting style involves mutual respect and I'd certainly consider the concerns of a child who feels what I write might compromise their standing amongst peers, the world, etc. However, I'm convinced my kids think dad's a bit of a weirdo anyway.
2b. If not, what are you doing to make sure they never find it? What if they do find it?
3. Do you think our kids will appreciate the archive of their childhood? Do you wish your parents had done the same?
I started journals for each of my children soon after they were delivered. Unfortunately, my idiot brother and white-trash sister-in-law destroyed journals for two of the kids (background here when Zeke was mauled by my brother's dog) and only Lilly's journals survive. This blog takes the place of those journals to some degree (I still write personal notes to them as well as file away bits of artwork and other things) but a glimpse of their foreward footsteps is generalized here. I love that they'll be able to search archives for my chronicles of moments they may have forgotten.
Yes, I wish my parents had done the same but I don't resent them for not doing it.
4. Do you go back and re-read your past parenting milestones? Do you realize you forgot a lot?
Something I learned in school was that once I wrote something down, it was usually committed to memory. Plus, I tend to work very hard at attentiveness, to watch my children and engrave moments into my gray matter, as though an intangible etching tool moves silently through my hippocampus to tangibly implant that moment into eternity.
5. What about your children’s friends/teachers/moms-of-friends? What if they found your blog? Do you tell your child not to tell anyone about it or are they free to talk about it? Do you worry their teachers or other parents will think it’s weird?
If anything survives from my punk years it's my attitude that this is what you get, take it or leave it. I'd prefer that anyone who stumbles onto this tiny corner of the blogosphere appreciates how I obviously adore my children but I pretty much don't give a fuck what anyone thinks.
Back up The Pass - it's my Thursday - and I think I'll post again tonight. Maybe even about my kids...
1. Do your kids know about your blog? If they’re too young to know, do you plan to keep it open to them as they get older?
They sort of know; Lilly and Marni are more aware that I'm writing about them than Zeke is but they all notice the pics and they're all a little taken with themselves when they see their pictures posted. To them, it's like being on TV.
As far as the second part of the question is concerned, I intend to keep up with this blog as long as I'm a parent, i.e. until the moment I shuffle off this mortal coil.
2a. If so - do you worry they may get embarrassed later? What would you do if they asked you to stop writing about them? What would you do if they wanted you to take it down all together?
I'm certain that they'll be a little embarrassed when they get older (pre-teen/teen years, embarrassed by a parent being a quality of that stage) and I intend to give them editorial prerogative at that point. My parenting style involves mutual respect and I'd certainly consider the concerns of a child who feels what I write might compromise their standing amongst peers, the world, etc. However, I'm convinced my kids think dad's a bit of a weirdo anyway.
2b. If not, what are you doing to make sure they never find it? What if they do find it?
3. Do you think our kids will appreciate the archive of their childhood? Do you wish your parents had done the same?
I started journals for each of my children soon after they were delivered. Unfortunately, my idiot brother and white-trash sister-in-law destroyed journals for two of the kids (background here when Zeke was mauled by my brother's dog) and only Lilly's journals survive. This blog takes the place of those journals to some degree (I still write personal notes to them as well as file away bits of artwork and other things) but a glimpse of their foreward footsteps is generalized here. I love that they'll be able to search archives for my chronicles of moments they may have forgotten.
Yes, I wish my parents had done the same but I don't resent them for not doing it.
4. Do you go back and re-read your past parenting milestones? Do you realize you forgot a lot?
Something I learned in school was that once I wrote something down, it was usually committed to memory. Plus, I tend to work very hard at attentiveness, to watch my children and engrave moments into my gray matter, as though an intangible etching tool moves silently through my hippocampus to tangibly implant that moment into eternity.
5. What about your children’s friends/teachers/moms-of-friends? What if they found your blog? Do you tell your child not to tell anyone about it or are they free to talk about it? Do you worry their teachers or other parents will think it’s weird?
If anything survives from my punk years it's my attitude that this is what you get, take it or leave it. I'd prefer that anyone who stumbles onto this tiny corner of the blogosphere appreciates how I obviously adore my children but I pretty much don't give a fuck what anyone thinks.
Back up The Pass - it's my Thursday - and I think I'll post again tonight. Maybe even about my kids...
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Sad t'day, Sumday, never on Mumday so a meme suffices
With this new job, Saturdays are the saddest day of the week. Because of the hours (i head up The Pass at 2 to be at work by 2:30), I leave my little ones with either X or my parents - depending on the week - then don't see them again until Thursday. If anything will cause me to quit this job (aside from an offer of much better money), it will be that it has taken my time away from the kids. Since my shift ends at 10:30 at night, picking the kids up from my parent's is out of the question and so the kidlets end up spending the night on Wednesday and every other Saturday, my 3 or 4 days reduced to 2 days.
I had all three in the tub yesterday morning as we prepared to get them to their mom. There's no fight to get them into the bath, it's like dessert-time for them. The buckets of toys come out and the towel I keep under the sink goes down on the floor to soak up each splash of exuberance, just as I sit in the next room looking in at them, soaking in every second of them before I again have to let them go.
Maybe more later but not now. I need to get ready for work. Read the rest if you want, a meme I picked up from the mysterious and uber-sweet Sarah of Got Cow? (who has linked me from here to the last Sunday in time) and has unintentionally given me something quick to post before I head back up The Pass.
Off to work, dammit.
I had all three in the tub yesterday morning as we prepared to get them to their mom. There's no fight to get them into the bath, it's like dessert-time for them. The buckets of toys come out and the towel I keep under the sink goes down on the floor to soak up each splash of exuberance, just as I sit in the next room looking in at them, soaking in every second of them before I again have to let them go.
Maybe more later but not now. I need to get ready for work. Read the rest if you want, a meme I picked up from the mysterious and uber-sweet Sarah of Got Cow? (who has linked me from here to the last Sunday in time) and has unintentionally given me something quick to post before I head back up The Pass.
- My roommate and I once: set fire to some t-shirts in a microwave as we tried to expedite a tie-dye process.
- Never in my life have I: voted Republican (have voted Green, LIbertarian, and Independent, though).
- The one person who can drive me nuts, but then can always manage to make me smile is: my mom.
- High school was: OK but I was a drama jock and mostly had older friends through the local Community Theatre scene.
- When I'm nervous: wish I had a Valium.
- The last time I cried was: a few weeks ago (look in the archives for a post in proximity to that time line to see what I'm talking about).
- If I were to get married right now, my bridesmaids/groomsmen would be: local artists and musicians.
- Would you rather run naked through a crowded place or have someone e-mail your deepest secret to all your friends? Naked. I have no problem being naked around people (I let Sarah answer this one for me, didn't change a word :-D ).
- My hair: is brown.
- When I was 5: I was really into James Bond. I wanted to be James Bond and even thought about changing my last name.
- Last Christmas: my kids got everything I wanted - which is just what I wanted.
- When I turn my head left: I see reference books for writing/blogging.
- I should be: getting ready for work.
- When I look down I see: my boxers.
- The craziest recent event was: a spontaneous "after-party" (see the Boonie blog for a bit on that).
- If I were a character on "Friends" I'd be: I have NO CLUE.
- By this time next year: I'll be wondering when I'll get around to finishing my novel.
- My favorite aunt is: Aunt Carol.
- I have a hard time understanding: why NASCAR is so huge - and I grew up going to Saturday night stock car races.
- One time at a family gathering: my left-wing politics pissed everyone off.
- You know I like you if: I don't make an excuse to gitgoin' if you suddenly call or show up at my door.
- If I won an award, the first person (people) I'd thank: my blog readers.
- Take my advice: Don't smoke pot if you're really drunk.
- My ideal breakfast is: Steak and Eggs.
- If you visit my home town: You'll think you stepped back in time to the 60s.
- Sometime soon I plan to visit: Grace said she's shang-hai'ing me for next year's BlogHer so Chicago
- If you spend the night at my house: help yourself to anything.
- I'd stop my wedding if: someone was having a heart attack.
- The world could do without: George W. Bush.
- I'd rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: work in sales.
- The most recent thing I've bought myself is: coffee.
- The most recent thing someone else bought for me is: a book (I love you Mamacita!).
- My favorite blonde is: Kirsten Dunst.
- My favorite brunette is: Catherine Zeta-Jones.
- My car must have a sign on it that reads: "Celebrate Diversity".
- The last time I was drunk: at the previously mentioned "after-party".
- The animals I would like to see flying besides birds: pigs - so much would come true then, wouldn't it?.
- I shouldn't have been: willing to bartend after I graduated college; I'd have a PhD by now.
- Have you ever shaved your pubic hair? Yes.
- Last night I: worked.
- There's this girl I know who: probably thinks I'm cool.
- I don't know: why people turn a God concept into an excuse to hate.
- A better name for me would be: Slim.
- If I ever go back to school I'll: probably pursue Clinical Psychology instead of Cognitive Science.
- How many days until my birthday?: 180 days (figured that out HERE).
- One dead celebrity I wish I'd met is: Jimi Hendrix.
- I've lived at my current address since: January 2004.
- I've been told I look like: Christopher Walken.
- If I could have any car, it would be: one of those sporty Audis.
- If I got a new cat tomorrow, I would name it: "Lucky" because it would be lucky to live here and have the wee ones jumping for joy over it.
Off to work, dammit.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The return of The Zero Boss and the excellent "Blogging For Books"
A little respite after that last post. In my experience, whenever a post goes up that's heavy on emotional content it A) wrings me out and B) it doesn't get many comments. The dearth of comments after I posted my Noble stories appalled me; I'd put so much of me into those posts and they elicited very few comments. I felt crushed. However, several readers assured me that it's usually the heavy posts that get the fewest comments because it's difficult to say anything meaningful on posts like that. Lesson learned, I no longer take it personally when no one posts on something that exhausted me on a deep emotional level.
Dusting my many issues aside and drowning them in Fat Tire, I prefer to announce glad tidings and enjoy the beer. As many of you know, Jay "The Zero Boss" Allen took an extended sabbatical from his site (too long if you ask me). Jay will always have a special place in my heart because it was his mention of this blog that drove my traffic up from 2 readers a week (literally) to 2 readers a day (I may be exaggerating that a bit) but more than that, his writing has always been topical and passionate, sometimes chock full-o'-snark and always well-done.
While The Zero Boss was off focusing on his paid-blogging gig, navel gazing, and shooting neighborhood dogs with a pellet gun, his lovechild "Blogging For Books" was taken over by various other bloggers but, y'know, it wasn't just the same. The good news is that Jay is back and ass-kicking in his inimitable way and back to running "Blogging For Books".
You think my little mixmania! poke-and-puke is a nifty notion? Believe me, "Blogging For Books" was around well before mixmania! and is the grandaddy of the "get your ass over to another blog and read them" um, whatever those things are.
Anyway, this month's B4B has a "pick one" theme,
and I encourage you to give it a shot. My own entry, kind of done as an afterthought, is my 'Goin' out west' post from a few days ago, which I think fits the first thematic choice but it was enough to just get into the fray and realize I need liposuction.
Welcome back Jay - the check's in the mail.
------------
VICTORY IS MINE!!!
Not the "Blogging For Books" thing (as an acquired taste, I've learned not to take rejection too seriously) but my ability to get my Firefox to block the damn popups it allows. Believe me, Firefox is a Lamboughini compared to Internet Explorer's Ford Fiesta but it always annoyed me that a few popups managed to get through (always from the Merriam-Webster site and lyrics sites) and some of the more pernicious popup companies could actually crash the browser because the damn popups were Flash-heavy idiocy.
No more. "Tribalfusion", "Mediaclick" and the rest of that scum have been blocked for good. Any of you Firefox users who are annoyed by the same asshattery, go get the Firefox Image Load Block List and then do this:
fuckups popups that manage to slip through as they arise.
You can thank me in the comments :-D
More substance tomorrow, I promise.
Dusting my many issues aside and drowning them in Fat Tire, I prefer to announce glad tidings and enjoy the beer. As many of you know, Jay "The Zero Boss" Allen took an extended sabbatical from his site (too long if you ask me). Jay will always have a special place in my heart because it was his mention of this blog that drove my traffic up from 2 readers a week (literally) to 2 readers a day (I may be exaggerating that a bit) but more than that, his writing has always been topical and passionate, sometimes chock full-o'-snark and always well-done.
While The Zero Boss was off focusing on his paid-blogging gig, navel gazing, and shooting neighborhood dogs with a pellet gun, his lovechild "Blogging For Books" was taken over by various other bloggers but, y'know, it wasn't just the same. The good news is that Jay is back and ass-kicking in his inimitable way and back to running "Blogging For Books".
You think my little mixmania! poke-and-puke is a nifty notion? Believe me, "Blogging For Books" was around well before mixmania! and is the grandaddy of the "get your ass over to another blog and read them" um, whatever those things are.
Anyway, this month's B4B has a "pick one" theme,
- A disastrous work or personal project you sweared, Captain Ahab-style, to see to the end;
- A relationship you wouldn’t let die, even though everybody else around you knew how bad it was;
- An idea or philosophy you held for years, as friends and family prayed that you’d eventually regain your sanity.
and I encourage you to give it a shot. My own entry, kind of done as an afterthought, is my 'Goin' out west' post from a few days ago, which I think fits the first thematic choice but it was enough to just get into the fray and realize I need liposuction.
Welcome back Jay - the check's in the mail.
------------
VICTORY IS MINE!!!
Not the "Blogging For Books" thing (as an acquired taste, I've learned not to take rejection too seriously) but my ability to get my Firefox to block the damn popups it allows. Believe me, Firefox is a Lamboughini compared to Internet Explorer's Ford Fiesta but it always annoyed me that a few popups managed to get through (always from the Merriam-Webster site and lyrics sites) and some of the more pernicious popup companies could actually crash the browser because the damn popups were Flash-heavy idiocy.
No more. "Tribalfusion", "Mediaclick" and the rest of that scum have been blocked for good. Any of you Firefox users who are annoyed by the same asshattery, go get the Firefox Image Load Block List and then do this:
- highlight/control-c the first item
- go to tools/options/web features
- make sure the 'load images' box is checked and click 'exceptions'
- control-v in the 'address of website' field, click 'block', click 'ok' and click 'ok'
- control-c the next item on the Firefox Image Load Block List and repeat until you finish the list.
You can thank me in the comments :-D
More substance tomorrow, I promise.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
It's not what you know, it's what you don't want to know
I start this with some snark and turn dark - you've been warned
One of the tired chestnuts I toss my clients is that I’m probably the only therapist they’ll meet who is a confirmed misanthropist. A terrible joke that’s more a warning, “Run! Run as fast as you can!”
Like most things, my misanthropy is a complex construct and not just a simple reduction of “I hate people,” wherein I climb up on rooftops with a rifle to blast away at pedestrians. Anyone who has read me with any regularity (or irregularity, depending on the diet) knows I’m a liberal with a heart that bleeds like Mormons breed door-knockers. Conservatives hate humanity but love money; liberals love humanity but don’t have the money to matter. I love humanity, it’s just the member of its set that nauseate me.
As I said, it’s complex. Like most things in the universe. As a Science-head for 40-some years, my experience says that complexity increases both by nature and in our understanding of how it all works. With each answer we uncover, we discover a googolplex of questions posed by that answer, a door opening on a room with a thousand more doors. Knowledge (as we accept it) is The Red Queen’s advice, “If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Simple solutions are for simple problems and unless you’re in the first grade, both of those are in short supply. Oh, there’s dominance and submission (and the tiny minded psychodrama of how that all plays out, a lot of fun if that’s the way you lean – I hear) but the belief that we can order around the pieces of the cosmos to suit this or that weltanschauung is pathological. I mean, we can build, strive, manipulate, and create but in the end there are forces – abstract and concrete – where everything gets gang aft a-gley (due to the odd batrachomyomachy, usually).
Some of you have asked what it is I do in my new job and I’ll begin my answer by saying that I’m not doing what I’m trained to do. Furthermore, I’ll admit that I’m not sure I’m doing what I’m meant to do but hey, it’s a job. Not enough to pay my bills (entirely) but it’s what has been placed on my plate at this moment and if I get really philosophical about it, it’s probably a learning experience I need right now.
I’m working with very damaged and disturbed adolescent boys, profound examples of families fucked up beyond description. Kids who, on average, have flunked out of five other programs and have been placed where I work as a last resort. Everyone else has given up on these kids (parents usually being the first) and the place I work attempts to make those kids whole again, human, show them love, give them worth, give them their first taste of being valued.
Which brings me back to the concept of ‘complexity’ and my misanthropy. I have witnessed too much pontification too many times on the net and TV and elsewhere, fucking finger-wagging and general disgust at “those people” that which just doesn’t suit someone’s sense of supercilious propriety. My misanthropy is a reaction to that simplistic (and simple-minded) tendency to think “Since I am privileged, everyone else must be that way - or else they're deficient in some way.” God Bless America and all that.
So let me tell you what I’ve seen so far and then ask you to decide for yourself.
Primarilly I work with kids who are sexual perpetrators. Really, you'd think they're regular kids, there's nothing to indicate that they are nothing but teenagers: demanding, certain that they're being persecuted and misunderstood at any given moment, surly at times but sweet for the most part. Everything on the surface says they're all-American kids. That is, until you read the case files.
There's a 13-year old who, raped from the time he was 7, he repeated what was done to him on his younger sister. He also witnessed his grandmother and four other people murdered execution-style, all because of his mother’s involvement in a gang. Unfortunately, mom's too strung out with meth and gang-banging to visit. Tell him his mother doesn't care and you'll have a fight on your hands. This is a child who first came to the facility claiming affiliation with a gang set and yet required a teddy-bear in order to go to sleep (and still does).
Then there's the 14-year old who, after being taken from his worthless (again, gang-affiliated) parents, was handed by the state to foster parents who chained him to a pipe in the basement (where he remained for 4 years) to be sexually assaulted, pimped out by the foster family to sick shits looking for sex with a young child*.
Bad kids? Out of control? Well, I think they have a goddamned reason.
The beauty of the place I work at is that they get the attention they need, the opportunity to learn a love that comes unconditionally. I suppose that should cure my misanthropy. Yet it disgusts me that certain segments of our dimwitted society says, “Oh, get over it, Tiny, and join the rest of us residing in gated communities!”
Back to complexity again. Another kid at our facility had a history of being sexually assaulted from age 3 (passed around amongst family members and friends), beaten to the point of hospitalization on many occaisions and then put out into the child-care system. As he matured, he sexually assaulted other children, violently, and so failed in over a dozen other child-care facilities. His last resort was our facility but it was clear after a few weeks that he was too out of control, too dangerous to maintain the safety of other residents. Sadly, the only recourse was the state correctional system, his world until he’s 21 which means he’ll be free to do whatever he wants once he's released
Released on all of us (as so many are every day) and all of ours and yet none of us can predict what he will do, how he'll react in a world where he has no social, economic or emotional skills. Prepare for a victim or victims. Tempting as it sounds in a (still free) society, we can't lock people up because of some professional's perception of what an offender's potential is. Chances are he’ll re-offend (19 to 1) and unfortunately he'll learn in jail that a dead witness can't testify.
Whatever happens, from my perspective he's a lost child, someone without the benefit of any chance, ever. Excuse the horrific pun but he was fucked from the start.
So what about lost children, you might ask? So he had a really bad childhood but what about the child with cancer who dies at age 7 or the child who gets run over by a car – aren’t they fucked as well (in that sad way the universe works)?
Hardly - at least not in his way. Tragic as those other circumstances are, those children weren’t subjected to trauma over and over and over again, violated and terrorized on a nightly basis. Those other children were at least loved and given some idea that the universe acts in an altruistic way. Not just told that but shown that and although they died, they died thinking the ruling principle of the world was Love. The lost child had none of that; to him, the world is nothing more where the strong exploit the weak and life has no value.
If you don’t see the difference, if you don’t see the complexity of any of this – you’re one of those persons I despise and as far as I’m concerned, no better than the scumbags who threw these kids on a course of self-destruction.
By no means am I excusing the acts of the person who, as a child or an adult, hurts another child. If it was my child who was assaulted, I’d kill em’, bare hands, if it was my neighbor’s child I’d do the same thing.
Simplistically, maybe putting em’ out of their misery is all we need to do, huh? Problem solved.
Yeah, put me out of my misery. And that’s why I’m a misanthropist. I hate myself for my own black and white thinking. If my child was raped and murdered by one of the kids I mentioned earlier, I’d be frothing at the mouth to have the vermin disposed of with a quickness (despite my opposition to capital punishment). Yet, in retrospect, I’d have to ask, who had the better life – and compare the deaths.
I hope I never have to make that comparison. It’s too complex for me.
One of the tired chestnuts I toss my clients is that I’m probably the only therapist they’ll meet who is a confirmed misanthropist. A terrible joke that’s more a warning, “Run! Run as fast as you can!”
Like most things, my misanthropy is a complex construct and not just a simple reduction of “I hate people,” wherein I climb up on rooftops with a rifle to blast away at pedestrians. Anyone who has read me with any regularity (or irregularity, depending on the diet) knows I’m a liberal with a heart that bleeds like Mormons breed door-knockers. Conservatives hate humanity but love money; liberals love humanity but don’t have the money to matter. I love humanity, it’s just the member of its set that nauseate me.
As I said, it’s complex. Like most things in the universe. As a Science-head for 40-some years, my experience says that complexity increases both by nature and in our understanding of how it all works. With each answer we uncover, we discover a googolplex of questions posed by that answer, a door opening on a room with a thousand more doors. Knowledge (as we accept it) is The Red Queen’s advice, “If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Simple solutions are for simple problems and unless you’re in the first grade, both of those are in short supply. Oh, there’s dominance and submission (and the tiny minded psychodrama of how that all plays out, a lot of fun if that’s the way you lean – I hear) but the belief that we can order around the pieces of the cosmos to suit this or that weltanschauung is pathological. I mean, we can build, strive, manipulate, and create but in the end there are forces – abstract and concrete – where everything gets gang aft a-gley (due to the odd batrachomyomachy, usually).
Some of you have asked what it is I do in my new job and I’ll begin my answer by saying that I’m not doing what I’m trained to do. Furthermore, I’ll admit that I’m not sure I’m doing what I’m meant to do but hey, it’s a job. Not enough to pay my bills (entirely) but it’s what has been placed on my plate at this moment and if I get really philosophical about it, it’s probably a learning experience I need right now.
I’m working with very damaged and disturbed adolescent boys, profound examples of families fucked up beyond description. Kids who, on average, have flunked out of five other programs and have been placed where I work as a last resort. Everyone else has given up on these kids (parents usually being the first) and the place I work attempts to make those kids whole again, human, show them love, give them worth, give them their first taste of being valued.
Which brings me back to the concept of ‘complexity’ and my misanthropy. I have witnessed too much pontification too many times on the net and TV and elsewhere, fucking finger-wagging and general disgust at “those people” that which just doesn’t suit someone’s sense of supercilious propriety. My misanthropy is a reaction to that simplistic (and simple-minded) tendency to think “Since I am privileged, everyone else must be that way - or else they're deficient in some way.” God Bless America and all that.
So let me tell you what I’ve seen so far and then ask you to decide for yourself.
Primarilly I work with kids who are sexual perpetrators. Really, you'd think they're regular kids, there's nothing to indicate that they are nothing but teenagers: demanding, certain that they're being persecuted and misunderstood at any given moment, surly at times but sweet for the most part. Everything on the surface says they're all-American kids. That is, until you read the case files.
There's a 13-year old who, raped from the time he was 7, he repeated what was done to him on his younger sister. He also witnessed his grandmother and four other people murdered execution-style, all because of his mother’s involvement in a gang. Unfortunately, mom's too strung out with meth and gang-banging to visit. Tell him his mother doesn't care and you'll have a fight on your hands. This is a child who first came to the facility claiming affiliation with a gang set and yet required a teddy-bear in order to go to sleep (and still does).
Then there's the 14-year old who, after being taken from his worthless (again, gang-affiliated) parents, was handed by the state to foster parents who chained him to a pipe in the basement (where he remained for 4 years) to be sexually assaulted, pimped out by the foster family to sick shits looking for sex with a young child*.
Bad kids? Out of control? Well, I think they have a goddamned reason.
The beauty of the place I work at is that they get the attention they need, the opportunity to learn a love that comes unconditionally. I suppose that should cure my misanthropy. Yet it disgusts me that certain segments of our dimwitted society says, “Oh, get over it, Tiny, and join the rest of us residing in gated communities!”
Back to complexity again. Another kid at our facility had a history of being sexually assaulted from age 3 (passed around amongst family members and friends), beaten to the point of hospitalization on many occaisions and then put out into the child-care system. As he matured, he sexually assaulted other children, violently, and so failed in over a dozen other child-care facilities. His last resort was our facility but it was clear after a few weeks that he was too out of control, too dangerous to maintain the safety of other residents. Sadly, the only recourse was the state correctional system, his world until he’s 21 which means he’ll be free to do whatever he wants once he's released
Released on all of us (as so many are every day) and all of ours and yet none of us can predict what he will do, how he'll react in a world where he has no social, economic or emotional skills. Prepare for a victim or victims. Tempting as it sounds in a (still free) society, we can't lock people up because of some professional's perception of what an offender's potential is. Chances are he’ll re-offend (19 to 1) and unfortunately he'll learn in jail that a dead witness can't testify.
Whatever happens, from my perspective he's a lost child, someone without the benefit of any chance, ever. Excuse the horrific pun but he was fucked from the start.
So what about lost children, you might ask? So he had a really bad childhood but what about the child with cancer who dies at age 7 or the child who gets run over by a car – aren’t they fucked as well (in that sad way the universe works)?
Hardly - at least not in his way. Tragic as those other circumstances are, those children weren’t subjected to trauma over and over and over again, violated and terrorized on a nightly basis. Those other children were at least loved and given some idea that the universe acts in an altruistic way. Not just told that but shown that and although they died, they died thinking the ruling principle of the world was Love. The lost child had none of that; to him, the world is nothing more where the strong exploit the weak and life has no value.
If you don’t see the difference, if you don’t see the complexity of any of this – you’re one of those persons I despise and as far as I’m concerned, no better than the scumbags who threw these kids on a course of self-destruction.
By no means am I excusing the acts of the person who, as a child or an adult, hurts another child. If it was my child who was assaulted, I’d kill em’, bare hands, if it was my neighbor’s child I’d do the same thing.
Simplistically, maybe putting em’ out of their misery is all we need to do, huh? Problem solved.
Yeah, put me out of my misery. And that’s why I’m a misanthropist. I hate myself for my own black and white thinking. If my child was raped and murdered by one of the kids I mentioned earlier, I’d be frothing at the mouth to have the vermin disposed of with a quickness (despite my opposition to capital punishment). Yet, in retrospect, I’d have to ask, who had the better life – and compare the deaths.
I hope I never have to make that comparison. It’s too complex for me.
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