trains

Not too far down the street from the house I grew up in was a railroad crossing. Thoughts of trains often are set at this crossing for me, the pastures of the prison farm across and to the right, the small trucking company across and to the left. These are the background as the trains speed past.

The train is coming from one direction or going away depending on the direction you're facing or perhaps on your general point of view. Staring ahead through the windshield gives the train a whole other power as it seems to pull you along, making you almost feel that you're moving.

These days I have other crossings that I sometimes find myself at, watching the trains go by to parts unknown. Before local road construction changed our usual route downtown, we often found ourselves racing alongside a train. It was only a short stretch of road, the train curving away and around the old factories and then back, the softball field in the distance, and then the train peels away to seek its own route downtown. We'll most likely cross over it, picking our way around old streets to the viaduct where we can almost see the train below as it leaves town around a curve and is gone.

This is the real power the trains have over me, the parts unknown. The contents of the train present no mystery I'm inclined to care about. It's all about the tracks leading off around the next bend and the next bend, across an unfamiliar river to wherever is next.

I'd like to say I have few regrets in life. There's a certain amount of wonder in thinking of how I could have decided things differently, but I believe to some extent the eddies around the butterfly's wings are often as likely to effect outcomes as what we do with our options. I end up not knowing what I should regret and what I should embrace.

I've always wanted to hop a train. I never have. I've sat in cars full of brothers counting the cars, getting dizzy from staring so hard, and wanting like hell to get out of the car. I've seen myself doing it, getting that running start as I see my target car coming up behind. Try like hell, I still can't quite match the train, but I run just fast enough. A quick look back, open door and an empty boxcar.

There's no way I could ever do that now, and I fully accept that. The only way I could ever hop a train now would either involve some sort of catastrophe or some sort of hollow, new age men's retreat where we got to rock out, hop trains, box kangaroos, bang drums and lament our lost boyhood.

But I still want to. It's not fixation, not something to concern folks. I sat today watching a train, amazed at all the boxcars I saw rolling past, doors wide open, the cars appearing empty, awaiting only that wandering soul, that vagabond willing to bend to the call of the road. I wanted to be that one who stepped up, leaving the car to take a running, flying leap into the unknown.

beware

The very first thing I have to say is that if this doesn't offend someone, then it's because wiser heads clicked away. I won't be providing the link to this, so you'll have to take my word that this line does in fact exist somewhere. It's from a blog that I may have visited but would never read (beyond a little post fodder I swear) and won't likely visit ever again.

The blog writer is a christian as is evidenced by the mounds of crap tacked up to every visible inch of their page. It's a little unseemly and very much an unpleasant place for me. No it's not just because I'm an atheist, and no my eyes don't burn when I read Bible verses. It just seems a bit much, a bit of Jesus and capitalism that I don't really recall as being part of the Bible, at least not the one I read.

Now to the funny, the line that sort of leapt off the page as I was wondering how exactly this blog was beating another in a particular skewed voting thing I won't link to as well. I have a feeling I'm courting trouble here, and I kind of like it, but I don't want anyone sending me death threats either.

Anyway, the writer who wrote the lines that are the subject of all this was discussing their desires concerning their relationship with their god. They explained it as, "the desire to press in and know Him more deeply."

HaHa, they want to press in and know god more deeply.

And that, friends and neighbors, is why I won't win. So thanks, and ya'll come back now.

aaawwwww

A sweeter story you might never find. Take a minute and go visit Scott and read his story. It made my stony cold heart perhaps no less stony but, even if for a moment, a little less cold. But that's just me. It really is a great little tale, like a commercial for aromatherapy candles but in real life and with no aromatherapy candles.

tunes post number 43-A

The boys have had breakfast and a prelunch granola bar. It's Friday and our homeschool co op day as well as Momma's payday. Lunch will most likely be leftover ramen noodles, and yes I said leftover. I cooked two packages of ramen noodles with some onions, celery, carrots, mushroom, cabbage and leftover beef and gave my kids a great meal of veggies and msg.

All of that is the preface, my excuse if you will, for the newest of my recurring series, youtube as post fodder. It started with looking for whatever Hank Williams might spring up. There isn't a lot, and sadly much of it is some chump putting together a good song with some mismatched film or video footage. At least I haven't yet seen the Naruto/Hank Sr. mashup which would literally send me into a murderous rage though I'm certain it's being worked on currently. Which is not to say I dislike Naruto, though I kind of do.

There of course was also the Hank Jr. stuff, but I largely ignore his ass. He was the talentless fuck in the middle of his father and son, the true stars of the Williams family. So that inevitably leads me to Hank III. What can you say about this guy? He's equally at home with country and rock, and the beauty of it is that both his country and his rock are really great music. I don't go in much for his heavier stuff myself these day tending more toward the country, but when he goes and does something like this . . .

uhhh, really?

It's new word time. This one I expect to be the surprise hit of the season. This word, like none before of which I am aware, takes the award for both giggle and raised eyebrow.

Today's word describes a type of thrush, a songbird according to the word of the day people from whom I steal these things.

The word is turdiform. No, this is not the set of molds inside your gut in which the poo is placed to set after it's mixed, though some days a machine molded poo seems like not the worst idea I've ever heard.

I won't take this any farther than I have already. I'll accept that it's generally accepted that I have very little to do with things as silly as standards, and there is not much in this world I won't gladly rip a funny and wordy hole in. But turdiforms and poo molds may take it just a bit too far.

to complain

That's all I'm going to do right now is complain. I shouldn't really, because I know the kind of real shit that's happening around the world, but what the hell. It's what I do.

I keep seeing the sun or proof that it is indeed shining, but there just too many clouds competing for the sky that we aren't really getting a lot of sun. It's as if the clouds admit those few rays of sun every so often just to fuck with us.

This is the nicest day in what seems like two weeks. We had our little cold snap and some rain, and more rain today wouldn't surpise me. It's also pretty windy today which wouldn't matter so much, but it's just going to blow more shingles off the roof, and I really don't like the idea of climbing from the ladder to the roof. It creeps me the fuck out and is very hard for me without someone behind me rushing me and alerting me to the pussy that I am.

Even ignoring the potential for rain that the sky admits, I can't stand to let the boys out to play. I still haven't mowed the grass, and it just sucks to even look at the yard. If I were to allow that it's nice enough to play outside I couldn't very well justify not doing the yard work. There's also a part that just doesn't want the boys to have to deal with all that grass, but I really don't relish the thought of getting out there only to have it rain halfway through the job.

The worst of the yard isn't the work, it's the neighbor. One in particular that spends a lot more time on his yard than I do mine. He actually goes out of his way as if he enjoys his yard. I watch him sometimes from our kitchen window that looks past our little bit of yard and past his driveway. I see him walking down his driveway sometimes, looking at our jungle and scowling his disapproval. I almost feel bad, then I get mad at him for making me feel bad. I play out scenes in my head where every bit of redneck comes gushing out one day in a burst of "what the fuck you looking at? You don't like it you can bring your fat ass over here and mow it your god damn self!"

followed moments later with, "motherfucker" and I stand there for a brief moment to see if he's going to get buck or back off.

And really, he's a nice enough guy as far as I know, and I wouldn't ever do that sort of thing to him providing he stops looking at my yard like that.

motherfucker

more vote requests

I've asked for my own votes at the homeschool blog awards, and I've voted for some folks that deserve to win. For the most part, I'm not one to worry too much about other people. They can ask for their own votes.

Today I've decided to do things differently. You must believe it's not just the twins that are currently winning driving me to do this because I don't really even know any of these people. I know I likely shouldn't say it, but I wasn't aware that a blog and a link farm were the same thing, but I digress. Oh sure, they do have all those Bible verses, but they didn't write that shit either, and I'd wager they didn't even type it out. They probably just copied and pasted from the eBible, the little savages. Damn I can't stop digressing. Sorry, sometimes things just get to you, like a little piece of wood under a fingernail.

Cocking a Snook Too actually deserves to win the category the twins are leading in, the best teen homeschooling blog. She writes and writes well. She doesn't seem to have to reduce herself to artful cursery like I do, even if she does seem to have olive oil issues. Which, if she reads this, go with extra virgin first cold press. Those are the only words you need to know.

The boys need lunch, and I need a smoke, and I'm ending the plea with whatever you call that last little bit of push, like the NPR folks sounding a little desperate as the hour ends. Click homeschool blog award, then vote for Cocking a Snook Too. Don't take my word for it though. Visit the blog and see for yourself.

hands, ass and flashlight

Perhaps some of you out there haven't heard the phrase, "he couldn't find his asshole with both hands and a flashlight." Well, that's the award I feel I've proven I've won. Thank you Chris for having answered my question the first time. Thank you Audrey for offering your help. Thanks to me for begging for the help that I shouldn't have needed if I'd but taken the time, used both the looking parts and the thinking parts at the same time. The ol' gray matter just aint what she used to be. I need a bath and a beer.

Of course part of me, the part that sat here clicking and copying and pasting and repasting and recopying and cutting and previewing and being astounded when simple things work even when you try to make them hard, yeah, that part nearly giggle at the damn thing working as if I'd solved some real problem. And through the little bit of a feeling of accomplishment I have to admit that it's really not my own fault.

So it's done. The Evolved Homeschooler logo links to the wiki. Click it and go, but don't bother going to my page. It just links back here for something that didn't make sense the first time around or wasn't ever funny anyway. Either way, it works and I need to get the hell away form the computer.

Thanks again Chris and Audrey, and I can see you sitting there shaking your heads at me. Dude, it's all hard for me, so at least keep the "laughing at" to yourselves while I pretend it's "laughing with" that I keep hearing.

help? somebody?

Will you look at that? I seem to be an evolved homeschooler, and I'm certain I couldn't be happier. Sadly this is as close a description of my beliefs as is possible to approach with a homemade logo. There wasn't one explaining how I honor the unholy power of Yog Sothoth and how I quake in fear at the thought that one day the blood of mankind will warm the throats of the old ones. It also doesn't say anything about the stock pile of armaments I'm amassing to be ready for Armageddon, you know, sort of my own death bed confessional but with less confession and more going to get mine.

None of that really matters at this moment. I have a real life emergency here. I'm talking about my inability to fix or even understand computery type things. Sure, when Blogger makes it stupid easy for folks like me, with a couple quick strokes of the mouse, to set up such a fancy blog with all the gewgaws stuffed in and hanging out the edges a little. I imagine I did in fact need another thing, so I got it.

I actually sent Chris a private message trying to figure out what I was doing since he's the one nice enough to set up the wiki that gives us all that much more room to play. I think maybe he wasn't able to read my mind and answer the question I meant to ask, so rather than bother him with it again, I'll toss it here and reward the first person to help me.

As is plain to all, I can easily right click and save as. I can even go into the guts of my blog and add a page element that includes that lovely little logo. What I can't seem to figure now is how to make it a link to the Evolved Homeschoolers wiki. Did you know about that? It's true, an honest to fuck wiki for homeschoolers that don't give all the credit to interstellar entities but allow for sciencey learning as well. I'm not saying there are no interstellar beings, just that you can only credit one with so much having done before the rest of them start to get jealous and wanting their own piece of the pie.

how cool are we?

Backing out of the driveway, heading to the stop sign and the right turn, on our way to soccer practice and looking for something to listen to. This conversation proves that I'm doing something right with my kids.

me-hmm, I think we were listening to The Pietasters on our way to practice last week, and that's sounding good to me

Big Brother-I wouldn't really like to listen to The Pietasters.

me-okay, there's plenty of music here. What sounds good? Phyllis Dillon? Motorhead?

Big Brother-I'd like to listen to Motorhead.

The Boy-MOTORHEAD

me-I can't argue with that.

That was then however and we are back home and we are now listening to Thomas the Tank Engine music which The Boy requested. He has been in the bath for several minutes at this point, and I still haven't stopped it. I also haven't stopped singing along.

award me

It's got to at least be good for shits and giggles, though I have to admit that I could write at least a little more about homeschooling. Perhaps the whole writing about part doesn't quite matter, just that I both homeschool and blog.

Either way, some kind soul was nice enough to nominate me for a Homeschool Blog award. I certainly appreciate that, but I must at the same time admit that I realize how unlikely it is I'll win. I just know homeschoolers too well I think.

I don't agree with the stereotype of homeschooler, though I do admit that the stereotype exists because there is some truth to it. I know it exists when I compare the number of members of my local group with the other local group, the one that does care how you approach matters of personal faith.

With all my expecting not to win, even through the absolute faith I have in me not winning, I still kind of want to win. There is certainly the majority of me that doesn't care, but that little sliver of hope rests quietly, almost unseen because I've buried it so deep under my facade of indifference.

This post all comes down to a plea for votes. If I'm elected, I will not raise taxes, nor will I repeal any blue laws. I won't promise to fund the schools or straighten up congress. What I will do if I win is sort of almost nearly exactly like what I've been doing.

So vote for me. If I win I will continue to write posts with the single minded purpose of making you the reader piss a little in your pants while laughing, a little uncomfortably I hope.

For all our differences we all homeschool and put our pants on one leg at a time. Some of us wear denim jumpers which is like jeans with one big leg for both your legs, and I don't know if you just step into a denim jumper or pull it down over your head. If it's over the head then both legs enter as one, unless you only have one leg, so that defeats the purpose of the "one leg at a time" homily.

Anyway, find me under the following categories, Most Powerful Erection, Most Colorful Use of Language Unsuitable For Human Ears, and Blogger Who Most Misguidedly Thinks Highly of Him/Herself. Vote early and vote often. Roll out your Tammany Hall style machine to push me all the way to the top.

UPDATE: I hopped quickly through the list of other nominated blogs that were nominated under "humorous" and I just have to say that if I don't beat everyone there by a margin of at least 100 to one then the word humorous doesn't mean at all what I thought it did. I'm not trying to be rude (I actually am) or anything, I'm just saying.

wowzers

Because I haven't done it in a while. If you know this song, then you probably need to hear it again anyway. If you don't know this song, then you are being underserved in your musical listening. The Flaming Lips a great band. You might remember them from a random hit they might have had, but that shouldn't be the only reason you remember these guys. They are more than that one song you almost remember.

unfinished as of yet

I tend not to post about books while I'm reading them. I've considered it before as I read over a random bit of prose that just seems especially well crafted, those hidden nuggets that you can hardly find later when your wife wonders aloud about the book you're reading.

We seem to have a fair crop of authors who've graced the town I live in. There must be a certain something that seems to seep into certain people and bring out something good in them. It might just be the bit of smog that seems to get stuck here in our valley.

Suttree is so far as I can tell a story about a guy named Suttree, though some kid named Gene Harrogate keeps showing up. I'm not too deep in the story just yet, and I don't plan to comment beyond the following quote. It's one of those that made me stop reading for a second, sort of double take and reread.

Foreign stars in the night down there. A whole new astronomy. Mensa, Musca, the Chameleon. Austral constellations nigh unknown to northern folks. Wrinkling, fading, through the cold black waters. As he rocks in his rusty pannier to the sea's floor in a drifting stain of guano. What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.

from Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy

it better have

"It's stopped snowing," said Momma, peeking through the front window.

"It better have," I answer, not sure what the unspoken "or else" might have been. It was only about an hour ago that the snow started to fall and I was threatening whoever the hell thought that shit up.

Tonight gave us in my li'l town a little of the ol' wtf. I noticed it much earlier in the evening as I drove home from a little shopping jaunt. It was a late night jaunt to the food co-op for coffee, milk and half and half. I'd just passed the lutheran church. I'd laughed at them on my way to the store as they stood outside with their feelings, the spotlights making day of the trio of crosses, a black scarf across the center one as if we would forget which one had held Jesus, duh. Traveling away from the co-op minutes later, the only lutherans I saw were saddling up and heading home.

It was about this point that I swore I wasn't seeing snow. It's been a fairly windy night and ungodly cold the last few days. It had to just be some dust and dirt whipping in front of the wind across the road in front of me. But then I saw it again, not a lot, just little glimmers in the headlights. A quick look past the streetlights, still a little inconclusive, but mostly I just don't want to see snow even knowing by this point that it couldn't be anything else.

I finished my errands without spotting much else that would make me think it was snowing. I wanted so to doubt that I was seeing this infernal shit yet again this late in the year. I was snug and warm in the Carolinas when the blizzard of '93 hit this town, but having read the story and heard the story a few times, an April snow, even of the flurry variety is reason to think of grocery stores and a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. Or more importantly, the flurry makes one think of extra six packs of beer and perhaps at least one extra pack of smokes.

I finally arrive home and whisper the dark vision to Momma. There was nothing but the cold and the weird clouds above to make one even consider the possibility. She decides to find the humor in the irony of this situation that for me only furrows my brow deeper, brings closer down those dark clouds.

Fast forward to an even later night cigarette, I'm bundled up to stand outside the back door, hating the cold and reading from my current book. What do I get for my efforts but a cold wind whipping what is certainly no longer a flurry. The snow is falling indeed and heavily enough that it's begun collecting on those places that first show the snow, the table on the back porch, the cars. Momma points out the surrealism of seeing this heavy (to us) snow while the trees are all sporting their fresh coats of leaves. The dogwoods are the white beauty we look for now, not that all forgiving blanket of snow.

It was a sight, the snow swirling now, the wind blasting it hard and cold now. It was disturbing and somewhat less than pleasant. I was so happy to wear shorts lately, almost looking forward to the yard work I never get around to. So happy that the kids won't be inside and underfoot quite so all the time. This stupid snow, for all its transience, puts one in a mood. It's the snow's damn fault too. It didn't have to come sneaking up on us.

And then Momma peeked out the front window and made her discovery known, the snow had stopped falling. My own peek confirmed this but also confirmed that for the date, it's still a damn lot of snow sitting on the ground. It better melt by the time my ass gets out of bed, or whoever thought an April snow would be okay is going to get my foot stuck up their ass up to my knee. Maybe if I was in a joking mood, but I'm just not right now, not with snow dammit.

uuuggghhh . . . easter

Let it here be known that I hate Easter. I wouldn't trade a one inch square piece of a turd for Easter if you really want the truth. And it's not just the nonbeliever in me screaming and pouting about having to celebrate one more holiday that isn't really now what it originally was.

I can sort of understand some of the ancient concepts regarding spring time renewal/rebirth celebrations. In days when the animal skins we wore still looked like the animals they had once been, we were very happy to see the end of the deadly winter months. If nothing else the ground would finally thaw enough to bury all the babies that didn't survive the cold so we can quit looking at them finally. I'm imagining a time when we were past eating them but somewhere before the enlightenment.

The reason it really gets me is that so many other people don't really mind celebrating at all, and we just can't get away from it all. I could slip into the usual media rant, but they don't get nearly enough credit for all the education they do of the nation's youth, and there's the whole point of the post to consider.

It's not like we are turning down invitations to Easter celebrations. The family celebration is always worthwhile both because we just don't see family often enough and because, as Momma says, "I may not give a shit about Easter, but I do give a shit about ham."

The only other thing we do for Easter tends to involve our local homeschool friends. I may grunt and groan my misery to Momma, but I won't turn down an opportunity for the kids to see their friends, and I won't turn down a chance to hang out with other grown ups. Plus they're all great people, and they deserve my company, my mood lightening face full of sunshine and peppermint.

Through the drudgery of preparing for the homeschool party I have found myself giggling a bit. The plan is for the families to bring plastic eggs to hide. The eggs can be filled with acceptable items for the kids to enjoy. Mine include jelly beans, some stickers I dug out of a drawer and cash. I still have three eggs that I am clueless as to what to stuff in them as I've run out of crap that I can reasonably expect not to make enemies over. I'm going to have to actually buy something at the store when I stop to get snacks on my way to the group.

The giggles started last night. We needed both eggs as well as filler material. I didn't want to go any farther than the grocery store. I need beer and smokes anyway, so that was the logical store to go to, though as it turns out, they were not the best place to find egg filler material. As I wandered the store contemplating, I kept finding myself imagining sticking every conceivable and some inconceivable items into these eggs. So I end with the list of things I will NOT be placing within an egg regardless of how fucking hilarious it would be to see these lovely children find:

-cotton balls
-combo toothpick/flosser tool
-dried beans
-dollar in pennies
-Qtips
-random legos
-banana (seriously, funny as shit in theory)
-dead battery
-travel toothpaste
-play worn Hot Wheels car
-the tiny rocks I keep finding around the house (most likely from playground at UU church where we meet)
-pencil stub
-Easter candy from last year
-coupons
-beer bottle caps

As has been made plain, I've basically laughingly considered every object upon which my gaze happened to fall that would both fit in an egg and wasn't something just wrong in the situation. I even though about leaving sarcastic little notes in an egg confirming to the finding child that this particular egg did indeed have nothing worthwhile. Alas I can't seem to go out quite like that.

And I still have those last three eggs. I'm tempted at this point to find the Easter pencil erasers we wound up with last year. It seems odd the number of times they've happened to turn up in the last year only to have completely disappeared now. I know they didn't get used because we've found these new pencils that have erasers built onto them. I wonder if anyone would get them and recognize them as having come from them. That would be funny.

random kiddity

Brisingr!

If you don't know, this is the word from the ancient language that comes to Eragon as he kills his first Urgals.

The boys have been fighting bad guys most of the morning. I wasn't sure what they up to, what their play was based on till somewhere in the distant, in the middle of a sword fight, I hear the call.

Brisingr!

And I know that another Urgal is being consumed by the blue flames. With such warriors for the side of justice as Big Brother and The Boy, any household can rest easy assured of their safety.

the letter unsent

This week's Street Talk feature in our local alternative newsweekly was not only entertaining, but it also gave me a good feeling knowing that someone, somewhere is doing some good for underprivileged kids who desire to play golf. It's always gratifying for me to know that someone is taking up the slack of all the good I don't do.

Of course you don't know what I'm talking about. You don't have to click the link because I'll tell you. It's a short interview with a local woman who works at the Underprivileged Kids Who Want To Play Golf Association. It's actually called First Tee Program and sounds both cool and good, assuming that you are mistakenly assuming that golf doesn't suck.

This post has to do with the last question asked of the young lady being interviewed. She was asked if anything funny had ever happened in relation to children and golf and her job. She answered that the children were generally fun to watch and mentioned a particular story involving her own lack of familiarity with the game.

She admitted to standing too closely to a new player and taking a shot from a club swing in the neck. She then suggested that this wasn't actually funny. Here I must take offense. If someone getting knocked out from a golf club to the neck isn't funny then I propose that nothing is ever going to be funny again. Ever!

Here is where I relay my own knockedoutedness as a result of a golf club to a sensitive area now that we've taken care of the "where the fuck is this coming from" out of the way.

I forget now how old I may have been. It would have been in the early days of my family dabbling in golf. If I remember correctly it was my oldest brother originally. Regardless, there was a set of golf clubs at our house, though I was old enough that this brother should have been moved out, or so I remember.

The story involves myself of course as the knockedoutee and my next younger brother as the knockouter. He and I apparently remember this story differently. Due to the nature of the wound that resulted from whichever story is true, I can not justify any real belief in my own story. Wounds of this sort produce oddities of thought and comprehension, and I often wonder if this single day has any bearing on how me and my thinky parts turned out.

My memory involves me walking behind my next younger brother as he swung the golf club. I do in fact remember being on the tail end of the swing, as in, his swing stopped it's long graceful arch in the side of my head.

The brother remembers me trying to pick up a ball that he was about to hit. He claims that he warned me that he wasn't going to not swing just because I was trying to get the ball. According to his version I was being kind of a dick and insisting it was my turn to hit the ball.

Either story makes him look worse, and whichever is true, I still ended up at the hospital getting my very first stitches. I can't say that I actually got knocked out because, as I may have mentioned, my memory of the event is a little fuzzy. I may very well have gotten knocked out.

Whichever story is true, getting hit in the head or neck, whether or not you get knocked out, can be very funny. And that's a bankable truth.

wik-wiki-wik

This one is neat if only because of the birthday I get to list. It seems somewhat familiar but probably because I've actually looked this up. The idea is to look up your birthday, month and day only, on Wikipedia and then list some wacky something or other. See the list. Thanks, Chris, for keeping the good times rolling. I might actually wait till I get a kid in bed, but ya'll won't know if I did or didn't, so what the hell do you even care?

September 7

Three Events That Occurred That Day
1191-Third Crusade-Richard I of England defeats Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf
1776-American submersible, Turtle, launches first submarine attack attempting to attach a bomb to the English ship HMS Eagle
2005-Egypt sees its first presidential election.

Two Important Birthdays
1860-Grandma Moses, American painter
1936-Buddy Holly, rock and roll icon, dead too soon

One Death
1892-John Greenleaf Whittier

One Event Celebrated
Independence Day in Brazil

fun with the ten comandments

Recent discussions I've found myself in have caused me to consider the ten commandments, those delightful nuggets of joy that the christian Bible tells us to stamp onto everything that doesn't move for ten straight minutes. So I went to, seriously, don't laugh, tencommandments.org

I've listed the first two commandments as one because they're basically the same thing. It's almost like god had to stretch it because he'd already said ten before he realized there were only nine. Or maybe the stone tablets looked uneven with only nine written out, and he added the last one for balance.

I don't know. I grew up with these things, probably could even years ago have told you all ten from memory. Now I have to look them up online. Yes, I do have a Bible. It's on my shelf, labeled fiction. No I don't feel like getting up and finding it.

-You shall have no other gods/you shall create no idols-This is one doesn't have anything to do with law or justice. This is a straight up command not to believe in other gods/religions. As an atheist, I ignore these two completely. I'd go so far as to say the majority of people of any faith tend to allow plenty of things to come between their professed beliefs and how they live their lives.

-You shall not take the Lord's name in vain-see above, and you lovely people may not know this about me, but I practice cursing in front of a mirror to make sure I do it right. But that's just me.

-Remember the sabbath to keep it holy-There's our blue laws for you. The worst of these laws is that we too often forget to pick up our tequila before Sunday and can't get it. Oh, I can buy beer Sunday, but our liquor and beer retail is closed. Growing up in Georgia I remember the blue laws only extended to retail sales. I'm sure different counties treat the law differently, but it always seemed odd that I could get as drunk as I wanted in a bar, but I was unable from midnight to midnight Sunday to purchase beer to take home. Also see Tennessee's willingness to change Sunday purchase time for the Titans games.

-Honor your father and mother-I saw a story on the news yesterday about a very young girl whose mother had set up an appointment with a porn photographer (actually an undercover cop) and the mother even brought extra clothes as well as sexual aids. Should this child honor this mother?

-Thou shall not murder-Every society in the world has seen murder as wrong. To some ancient cultures though a human sacrifice to the gods was seen as completely natural. Joshua's army in the Bible not only destroyed the city of Jericho, but they also killed every man, woman, child and the animals. As if that weren't enough, they then burned the entire city to the ground. Our own president could be condemned of murder given what he has led our country into.

-You shall not commit adultery-This doesn't give us a lot to go on, so we tend to assume what it means based on modern expectations of marriage which often have very little to do with ancient marriage, see woman as chattel, see concubines, see King David.

-You shall not steal-another law that various cultures throughout the world have settled on with no outside help.

-You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor-Lying, perjury, again widely accepted as morally wrong with no outside christian influence.

-You shall not covet-here we have the Bible telling us how to think. It's wrong to want things you don't have. We could look at buddhist teachings and find the same sort of attitude, attempted elimination of desire for things. But we could also accept that this one is really impossible to keep for the most part.

It is my opinion that the idea that law is based on the ten commandments is a very new phenomenon. I don't see it as at all likely, but so many of us have heard this for so long we've accepted it as true. Of all the ten commandments, three of them have any bearing on what most of the world accepts as moral or ethical. The other seven could be specific to any religion but could only apply as law in a theocracy.

coke as drink

It's almost three in the afternoon here. I tend to nurse my coffee throughout the day, making a couple of big strong cups and spending an hour or two on them. I'm not the least bit afraid of my coffee not being hot. At some point between then and the later drinking hour I try to get some water into my system though I readily admit to not drinking nearly enough. There's another cuppa in my future, though I tend to take a coffee break between cups two and three, otherwise I know I'll have a cup four. I try to keep it to three.

Feeling thirsty and knowing I was between cups of coffee, I pondered water but realized I wanted a coke. Where I'm from there are two different meanings of the word coke. If you want Coke, that's the stuff in the red can, Coca-Cola. If you want coke with a small "c" then you have a much broader variety from which to choose.

I did contemplate a beer, and I have a variety currently from which to choose. I'm not against afternoon beer or even morning beer. I have a friend that works late enough that he and his coworkers have an a.m. happy hour. I'm just not feeling beerish at the moment. Plus, this isn't the point, though it is nice to know I'm still slightly in control of my raging drunkenness.

I have recently found myself using the word soda on occasion though I fear what that may be saying about me losing some of my southernness, as if that's possible growing up in Atlanta before living in both Carolinas and now Tennessee. Big fat chance of me growing too urbane, and I'm a little okay with that. Before we get into my own version of the neo southern gentleman, the kind like me that can drink moonshine straight from the jar as well as admit that Freddie Mercury was really the only truly hot man in a mustache, we'll remind ourselves that today's lame ass post fodder is semantic in nature.

Coke with a small "c" can not of course be meant to include all carbonated soft drinks. While my favorite coke may be cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, I would actually prefer, if given the option, a lime flavored Jarritos. I don't know if Jarritos falls under the coke moniker in my opinion, and I think that's mostly because Jarritos flavors are all fruit based while cokes are generally accepted to be mostly contrived of . . . limon? cola? What the fuck are those things? Neither Sprite nor 7 Up taste at all like lemon or lime or even denatured citrus additive number 1217. Okay, maybe they do taste like DCA1217, but that's still not the point. And what the hell is the glorious substance that flavors Dr. Pepper? Because even without the cherry or vanilla it's a tasty beverage.

In the end, maybe they are all coke. I might have to ask around.

And for anyone from Wisconsin and maybe even Michigan, what the hell is pop? Seriously, pop?! Pop is what you get in the mouth when you get to sassin'. Pop is the sound of a balloon bursting. Who calls their soda drinks by an onomatopoeia that has no relation to the product in question? That's just weird.

don't try

Momma and I had an interesting conversation last night. At some point, she had read my most recent post in which I discuss apathy and depression.

I think for a few years she just didn't quite understand me. That isn't an indictment of her ability but is revealing in what she was trying for far too long. What she didn't understand was my own levels of happiness and her place in my happiness and her ability to control how happy or unhappy I naturally am.

Our relationship has brought much joy and much pain as is true of all relationships in which people invest a good deal of themselves. Mostly what our relationship brings me is a happiness that Momma didn't realize. For far too long she felt somehow responsible for making me a happy person.

This is what we discussed last night. I don't want or need to be made happy, and I wish now we'd talked about this seriously before last night so I could have saved her some effort and some of her own pain.

I'm not an unhappy person, though it may quite seem like it. I'm cynical and jaded about so many things. I'm pessimistic, not in a glass half empty sort of way but in a "who drank the other half of my beer?" kind of way. It is how I am.

And I hope now that Momma has realized that I don't need her actively trying to make me happy. I certainly don't want her bringing extra stress onto herself by fighting a battle that she not only can't win but is also not hers to fight ever.

What do I want from her? Her presence makes me happy. I'm happy knowing she's there, behind me with support when I need her or leaning on me for support when she needs it. I want to know that that particular smile will always be for me, the one that makes her lip catch on the tooth she wishes she could get fixed. I'm happy knowing that no matter how bad the rest of world might seem that I can always trust her.

So ladies and gentlemen, don't try to make him/her or her/him happy because you can't. Faithfulness, trust, support, a squeeze of the hand as the tears start to flow

quiz questions

We begin with the hat tip to Red Molly for the quiz that gives me, as my main life philosophies Justice(Fairness) barely beating out Apathy. Hedonism is listed in third place and is actually tied with Apathy, but I've really never been a hedonistic person personally. Quiz results will follow the blathering. And I'm not trolling her for blog post ideas, but I do grab them where I can.

Am I an apathetic person? There are certainly things I have concern for, people I love and care about, things I enjoy doing, but there is a certain level of apathy that I can't deny. There's still music that can move me, and there are still books that make my eyes a little leaky. But there's also that black area that often seems to be spreading like oil on the ocean.

My plan is not to plumb the depths of my depressing soul nor to discuss my fragile state of mind. It's not going to happen. I have had the quiz on my mind for a couple of days, the ideas of justice juxtaposed with feelings of apathy. I think the quiz hits me a little extra hard due to those two concepts coupled with my own current mindset. Recent situations that I've faced have caused me to think about fairness as well as my approach to life.

I have to admit to some amount of apathy over the course of the years, and I've looked at it before, somewhat dispassionately perhaps. I'm not suddenly awakening to my own apathy, but I'm faced with the same sort of thing that I butt up against and always have, that I just can't make myself care about a lot.

I'm not manic depressive, and I'm not leaning toward the bottle of pills or the blood filled bath tub. I am somewhat a depressed person, and given my current view, I'm thinking that perhaps I've always been this way but was never really forced to see it as such. Certainly there have been those really low times, those days long black moods, but I've always thought there was a reason, something causing it, lack of love or friends or perhaps just not able or wanting to see the truth.

And that's what the quiz's suggestion of apathy leads me to. I can see myself as apathetic in a sense, but I also wonder if it's not more than that. Maybe I just don't feel like caring. Maybe I just don't feel personally good enough to really give a shit about much else. I know that I have a running theme of not giving a shit about a lot of things, and I'm pretty happy with that. At some level I think unconcern is a healthy place to work from. I don't care what you look like, who you fuck or to whom you pray or even if you pray. But sometimes I also don't care if the big tree in the front yard were to blow over and crush me to death while I sat here pecking out my little screeds.

You scored as Justice (Fairness). Your life is guided by the concept of Fair Justice: Everyone, yourself included, should be rewarded and punished according to the help or harm they cause. "He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.” --Dwight D. Eisenhower More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Justice (Fairness) 70% Apathy 60% Hedonism 60% Nihilism 55% Existentialism 55% Kantianism 55% Utilitarianism 45% Strong Egoism 40% Divine Command 0% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

PSA

Dear female readers, do you own and/or wear a top that looks like this? Apparently it's called a something something tunic top or something, and it seems as though this is the top all the gals are wearing right now. This is another example of someone devious convincing women something is true when in fact it isn't.

Ladies, are you really so blind to what looks good that you're okay with this top? I'm afraid you've been deluded when you've convinced yourself that this top looks nice. This style of top is not flattering to anyone. It makes larger sized girls look even bigger while making smaller girls look pregnant.

Finally, it's just ugly. It's bad enough that it's such an unattractive fashion, and it's bad enough that girls don't realize they are making themselves look stupid, but the worst part in my opinion is that so damn many girls are wearing this shit. Couple these ugly tops with the big sunglasses and I'd almost rather move back to the '70's. At least back then they just hadn't yet invented better looks for people.

Seriously ladies, quit listening to your idiot friends. Girls convince each other of awful things in the hopes they can make the pretty friend the ugly friend, even if for just one night. That has to be the real explanation for such devastating ugliness as this top.

Thank you for your time.

UPDATE: While commenting to COD's comment, I remembered something even worse than the ugly tunic shirt, wearing pants under a dress. I'm not talking about those ugly shirts that are almost but not quite dress length. I'm talking about a real dress over pants. It looks stupid, dumb, ugly . . . did I say stupid?

long time no derby

In a melee of girls tossing each other around, crushing each other into a brick wall, rounded out with breathtaking speed and grace, the Hard Knox Rollergirls finally kicked off their 2007 season.

The league was divided into two teams, black and white, and set loose on the rink. Many of the girls are veterans of the past year, many haven't seen a real bout before tonight. Tonight's match was a great way to give the newbies a taste of the real deal as well as get the away team ready to drive north and kick some ass.

Today was a fun one from beginning to end, from Momma waking up with a horrid headache, unsure if she'd even be able to skate, to my last minute attempts to purchase distasteful prepared food products from a restaurant drive through. It's really a story in and of itself, but it isn't a good story.

I'm not sure how much I missed of the bout, as I arrived a bit late. I wandered in and found the black side was the far end of the rink. I stopped off for a refreshing beverage before finding some friends and perching on the floor, the human bumper that I'm certain has saved many a derby girl from a far worse slide had she not met the human bumper. I've somehow avoided being the in the path of a careening derby girl before now, but that's mostly because I stand in the back and scream at people.

The match was tough, well fought to say the very least. I don't know if I've ever seen that many hits in one hour. There were more pile ups than in the entire US interstate highway system. There were some bad shots, but there were so many more perfectly executed blocks. There were moments when half the people skating were on the floor, sometimes in one pile, sometimes in a series of drops.

I don't know that I can write about derby without discussing my wife. I'll not only admit up front that I'm biased, but I'll also admit that anyone that has seen her skate will openly admit to her speed. I'm actually kind of stuck trying to imagine some silly homily where I compare her speed to something else that's also fast. She comes at you faster than your kids birthday that you forgot to plan for because it came at you so fast. And it's not only that she's so fast but that she's past you sometimes before you even can think to block her. I watched so many people blocking air behind her tonight, so many people who looked bewildered "what the fuck" etched in every line of their face.

I would love to treat the entire world to a good roller derby bout. I can accept that Americans don't often get soccer, my own personal sport, but roller derby, except that they are not burning large amounts of fossil fuels, is so completely American, loud, fast, hard to understand sometimes and a little painful for all involved. Skate wheels, pads and hospital visits don't come cheap. We need more people at these matches. So get your googler out and look up your city. Go out and cheer for the home team, and before you know, there will be a caravan of cars from Tennessee rolling into your town to whip up on your local gals. And then we'll drink all your beer, sleep for just long enough to recharge our batteries before we roll on to the next town.

in which we do what it is we do

Currently listening to Afro Cuban All-Stars, not understanding at all due to my limited grasp of Spanish but understanding completely due to my unlimited grasp of damn fine music.

I actually had to look up "puede ayudarme con la basura" for a myspace survey I wrote earlier. Yes, I wrote a myspace survey. The thing is, mine don't suck. If you are lucky enough to be a myspace friend that happens to read those damn things, then you fucking know!

I should admit right here and now that I'm a bit in my cups. It's my own drunkblogging night here at happy acres, and all bets are off. Little else is off, though the kids are off to sleep and the wife is off work sometime in the next . . .uh . . .couple of whiles or so.

I've done some amount of rushing around cleaning the house today and into tonight. We've had some trouble getting a babysitter for some time now, and we have one tomorrow (tonight for most as it's already late o'clock here.) This is all no thanks to a certain grandmother who could stand to watch her grandchildren for a night here and there, though she is springing for the over nighter that allows us to drive a long, long way for a derby match, so I shouldn't complain or something, but I do. Regardless, we do in fact have a night out, some hot wings and a live band if we get lucky and fit through the door. And I can't let her walk in and see the mess that this house usually is. I'm afraid she might never come back.

Anyway, tonight (last night as you read this) we have the late ass night followed by the early ass soccer game. We'll come home for long enough for Momma to change pants, and we'll take her to work. I still have cleaning to do so that the babysitter doesn't freak out at the sight of it all, and then at some point in the evening I'm driving downtown to meet Momma and go out.

None of those plans are the least bit helpful at the moment as I still have drinking and waiting to do. It's really hard to sleep well with half the bed empty, so I end up waiting for Momma to get off work. The problem here lies in the fact that Momma is working late and in the soccer coach that wanted to get all the games out of the way first thing in the morning. He was nice enough to con someone into scheduling all our games at 9:30 in the fucking morning. And he tells the kids that Jesus loves them.

I've not bothered to approach that one. Even without Momma's current Friday night schedule, 9 fucking 30 in the AM on a Saturday is retardulous. It's fifteen different kinds of stupid and wrong. It's wrong like rubbing your pussy on a gay man to try and turn him back.

Really, there's nothing worse than trying to make a gay man straight, and the ones that want to be straight are fucking idiots. My theory is that no one gets more blow jobs than a gay man, and if you can find something better than a blow job please email me.

That's where we end for the night. If I keep writing I'll end up actively trying to offend as opposed to giving myself giggle fits. It's not really me, it's the bottles of beer lined up accusing me of drinking their essence and killing them. That's all good though as I got mine and those beer bottles are empty as my soul. So fuck 'em.

quote o' the week

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

this gem from George Jean Nathan via The Quotations Page who refer to him as a "US drama critic and editor. HERE is the wikipedia page if you are so inclined. I know nothing about him beyond that he said at least one really bright thing. Maybe I should read the thing I linked.

finding a homeschool group

Tramping through my list of blogs I read, it seems today's common theme is the local homeschool group. Momma and I went through this same kind of thing not so long ago when Big Brother was a good bit smaller. She was home most often then so was most in charge of seeing to it that things happened homeschoolishly, and she did a damn better job than I ever have.

She did the usual round of searches and found a local group on Yahoo. We could tell that it was at least somewhat religiously motivated, but it seemed workable. The group was fairly active planning park days and field trips and educational opportunities. We were sure we could avoid the religious parts and hoped that folks would be able to let us.

The group is basically an email list. You can join and email the moderator with your plans or ideas, the moderator sends the emails to the group. I never delved too much into it, but that idea is basic to our eventual problem.

The group was never very helpful to us, and our leaving was fortuitous in that we eventually found a much better group of people when we did finally give up on the more fundamentalist types.

The turning point was the anti gay marriage petition request. For a short time in our state, a small group of very vocal people were calling for discrimination of gay and lesbian people by having anti equality rhetoric written into our state constitution. A member of the homeschool group sent a petition to the group and the moderator allowed it and sent it on.

So we get this request and are of course instantly offended. Momma, possibly a little heated, quickly emailed the moderator with her complaint, partly the offensive nature of the request, partly the appropriateness of such a request in a homeschool specific group. As happens when dogma gets in the way, Momma was of course the bad guy. Their complaint had more to do with internet etiquette than anything else, though they did try to assuage us with their open and welcoming hypocrisy.

Now Momma had a mission. She started her own Yahoo group. We had no idea what would come of it, but we knew in a town the size of ours, we couldn't possibly be the one family that homeschooled and were really open and welcoming. We couldn't be the only homeschooling family that weren't zealously religious. We couldn't be the one family that homeschooled and believed in equality.

I've said it a few times around here that I'm pretty much an atheist. Some atheists might call me agnostic because I'm not a militant asshole about my beliefs and can allow for any number of things being possible, see dragons, witches, hobbits, etc. I see most religious belief as a form of superstition tied to a myth, but I also understand that people are obviously predisposed to find superstitious causality. None of that is really my point here, and be glad that I'm not going into my theory on interstellar entities and gods.

So we are not believers, and for too many believers, that's a huge and insurmountable obstacle better left alone except to pray at it. We don't really care what you believe, and don't care if you pray for us. But we will defend our lack of beliefs with what we hope are reasoned arguments, though we'd prefer not to have to. That segment of religious people for whom this is a problem are that same little bunch that cause the problem in the first place. They just can't let you be.

Years later, not really a lot of years, but some, our little Yahoo group is still little. We do have a number of wonderful families that meet weekly and sometimes slightly more often. Our kids are mostly within a few years of each other, but with homeschoolers, close in age really means that there are a few years between the baby and the ten year old, but no one gives a shit.

I think we are still the only atheists in the group, but we have some unitarians and some wiccans. I'm pretty sure we have a family that's not only christian but republican leaning. And then you have the families about which I'm not certain as to their belief, and in all honesty, I don't really know that much about the beliefs of the families I attempted to describe above. It's this little thing I practice called not giving a shit. I may have mentioned that somewhere.

The lesson that everyone should learn from all this is that secular doesn't have to mean anti christian. We aren't anti anything except being dicks to people, and that was where we found ourselves at the end. We didn't want to hang out with people that were going to be dicks because of differences in assumptions about beginnings of life or sexuality or the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. We didn't want to have to pray before we walked into the zoo. We didn't want to be ostracized because our women wear pants. And the earth is older than six thousand years.

Start your own group. Use buzzwords in the description like open, secular and inclusive. Either mention atheism, agnosticism and belief in faithy kinds of shit, or don't mention any of it at all. Put up a notice on the christian group, because there are very likely more people just like you that never thought to start their own group. And then sit back and watch the crazies roll in. And the best part, if we forget to comb the kids' hair, nobody seems to notice.

Momma just read through this and reminded me of something. Avoid the word eclectic. Seriously, it just doesn't do you any good. Some really lovely people that I know and some really lovely bloggers I read don't seem as though they would fall under the generally accepted use of the word eclectic as it appears in the homeschooling world. To add to the things about which we don't care, we also don't care how you attain with your children that precious thing, that golden apple that is homeschooling. It's part of that shit that I don't give. I don't care if you and your kids homeschool by wandering through life with a magnifying glass or if you have desks and books and, heaven forfend, a chalkboard.

more bookery type thoughts

My last post was about the first chapter book we read in its entirety to The Boy. The Boy is less than two months from being four years old, and if I remember correctly, it would have been about this age that Big Brother also became interested in chapter books.

I hate the term "chapter books" but I don't know a way to differentiate between the picture heavy books of the very young and the more text centered books that we're moving toward. So I'll hate the term and use it anyway.

This is an exciting time for me as I consider all the books we will soon be able to read. I don't want to suggest I'm tired of the picture books. We do have some clunkers that the boys have both loved and that I've had to read more than I could ever have wanted. But we also have some really awesome books with great stories and beautiful art.

All this is also not to suggest that we are making a break, that those picture books are somehow going to disappear into a void. Those books will find their way into the rotation still, but we'll get to add so many more books.

Tonight perhaps we start a new book. Part of me leans a little toward Little House as it's always a good time for a new person to fall in love with Laura and her family. Part of me is trying to remember when exactly we introduced Big Brother to a certain Bilbo Baggins of the Shire. He wasn't much older than The Boy is now, and he absolutely loved it.

I'd be curious to hear stories about this sort of thing from others. Name some books, tell us those gems you have or are looking forward to introducing to your kids. Did you read the first couple of Harry Potter books with that dear child only to have your child outgrow being read to then fight you for the new ones? Were there candy factories and big friendly giants? Did you read of kidnappings and escapes through the Scottish highlands?

oooohh, chapter book

Last night ended a sort of achievement for this bookish family. Though Momma began reading the book, I was the one to finish it. I actually read it first and recommended it to the household in general. Momma began reading it to The Boy, but after a few chapters/nights, he finally allowed me to read a bit on one of Momma's work nights. At this point Momma finished the book on her own since she was not going to keep up if she only read at night. I think she sat down to catch up on the chapters I had read and ended up finishing it. At some point in the reading Big Brother began to appear in his bed at the times we were reading to The Boy in his bed. At some point, Big Brother decided to just read the book during the daytime on his own.

I've mentioned reading A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books to The Boy, and those are basically chapter books, but I don't count them as such for our purposes. We've never read them from beginning to end. The chapters each stand alone as a story, though there is mention of different situations between different stories providing for some amount of continuity. Additionally, when we've read from these books with the boys they or we tend to pick from a few favorite stories for the most part.

The books is The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. It's the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse small even by mouse standards. Due to an accidental situation, Despereaux falls in love with the princess and is banished to the dungeon to be eaten by the rats. It's a bit convoluted, but fairy tales are quite allowed to be thank you very much.

One major issue I had with this book was the addition, much too often, of references to the reader. I found it to be really cumbersome, cluttering up a wonderful story with constant asides directed to the reader as "reader." It was kind of like watching a good movie on tv. No matter how much you try to get lost in the tale, a commercial or ten keeps popping up to mar the experience.

Aside from that, I really loved the story. Every other part of it was well written, fun, a little dark, always just a little hopeful. A particular passage referring to the nemesis, Roscuro, describes his heart being broken and mended, and it's this passage that seems to have stuck with me.

". . . these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong."

The artwork in the book is simple and spare and is perfect for this book. The chapters are all really short with lots of great chapter endings, a boon to any book that involves a quest to save a princess. It is also a great book for a kid approaching that corner between a love for Dr. Seuss and an interest in stories.

that thing they's doin'

I started writing a post about the visual DNA thingamajig that I saw at Contemplator's site, and then I didn't so much. And then the page was suddenly there again as I closed some other window, and I thought about the whole thing again.

The conclusion I came to is that I wasted a good couple of minutes or so looking at pictures and trying to decide whether this one or the other most meant love. I noticed that my favorite, ennui, was nowhere on the list. That alone is enough not to trust the testing capabilities of this thing, but in the end, I seem to like what it says. It's kind of like getting a good fortune in a fortune cookie. You kind of want to stick it in your wallet as if that will help make the fortune more likely to transpire, but then you forget about it for a few years until your cleaning you wallet and it's not even legible, plus it's so worn you don't recognize it as a fortune cookie fortune anyway, so what the fuck is the point in ever saving them again? But that's really not where we're going with this.

No, this is about pictures and emotions and feelingy kind of shit. You don't have to bother looking at it if you don't want to. The few people reading this that I might actually know may not even bother to try grokking whether it's accurate or not. Plus the fact that I'm a bit of lone wolf, an enigma wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a vest in a certain sense.

Oh, and the bedroom in the one picture is so unlike my own actual bedroom, the one in which the magic is said to happen. What actually is happening is that years later, it seems as if we are still moving into that one room. We'll get to it one of these days.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

breast health for POH

I'm a guy, and due to this, I'm nearly titless. I have tiny yet fairly pointy nipples, but this post isn't about my nonbreastedness. It's Tuesday, and Pissed Off Housewife has made a point of discussing the female human teat and its tendency in some women to develop cancer. So for her and for all the women I love, I join in the Titty Talk Tuesday.

Finding cancer early means treatment can begin earlier and increases the likelihood that one will have a successful recovery. Breast self exams and mamograms are essential tools in finding and treating breast cancer.

I like breasts as well as boobies, knockers, chestnuts and lunghammers. I like them in sweaters and in tanktops. I like a little side boob when it happens. I also like women, who I understand are actually NOT life support systems for . . . uuhhhh, that wasn't actually me there. Sorry. I've known a woman or two here and there, and I have to say, along with the nonbreasted among us, they're my favorite kind of people.

Here is a link to a breastcancer.org page discussing breast self exam. And yes I did puss out on the post title. I almost called this Tittie Talk Tuesday, but I keep pretending I have some random christian readers left, and I'm not willing for this post to lose a reader that doesn't care to read something blaring "titties" at her from the beginning.

Guys, hoping there are some left, ask your wife the next time you see her if she checks her tits on a regular basis. Checking regularly is important so that you will notice the difference. And I don't think that means you guys. You might want to help, but do you really think you can just feel for health? I can feel in preparation for some exercise, but health I'm afraid perhaps not.

I want Momma and I to die at 101 years old, within moments of each other and holding hands between the hospital beds. She's at work, but when she comes in tonight, I'm going to ask her if she's been checking.

uncertain schedule

This is our week of the uncertain schedule, mostly for Momma, but her uncertainty certainly effects the entire family. So we all have a bit of it.

A couple of weeks ago Momma got a bit of surprise mail. It came from our local court system, so the uncertainty really began as I pulled the mail from the mail box and scanned through what we got that day.

Any mail from law enforcement/court systems can cast a bit of a pall. It can be a Pandora's box of wonder and concern. Are they coming after me? Did I do something I forgot I did?

Momma's mail was a summons to jury duty. This was a new one for her, though many, many years ago, I was summoned to serve in the Dekalb County courts. I spent a day sitting around waiting, getting picked to serve and going to lunch. After lunch we waited around a bit more before learning that, during our sitting around, the two parties had settled their case, and our services were no longer needed.

We as well as Momma's coworkers have almost expected her to get out of having to serve, though her work schedule was created around her having to be available from 8:30 to 5 every day this week. Because of this, Momma is scheduled to work 6:00 to close every day but Wednesday which she has off for derby practice. This could be a rant in that, if she were to serve as a juror each day, she'd be gone all day this week from 8 in the morning when she would leave till roughly 1:00 the next morning when she finished work. She will be taking her knives and work clothes to court the days she does serve so that she can walk across downtown afterwards and go straight to work. I won't rant here about her boss who really should step up and do his job like a man, but that's not a rant for here, and I'm tired of even commiserating about it with Momma because it just gets us all worked up.

Today was the first day she was to serve, the day we found out if she would be exempted or would be required to be a juror. And though she's home and it's not quite 11:00 yet, we are still uncertain. For the remainder of the week, Momma gets to call the courthouse every day after 5:00 to find out if she needs to come in the next day. Apparently, our county doesn't actually schedule trials. How they expect to run a reasonable and fair court system this way I don't know. Chances are seemingly even that she will or will not have to serve. It sounds like a shitty way to run a court system, but what do I know?

before you go

I've been on a Buck Owens bender lately, and once more, you tube is both my friend and my enabler. Growing up, we didn't really listen to a lot of country, but it seemed to be there, somewhere in the background. There is a chance though that I'm remembering things differently from how they were. I do know that I was subjected to a metric shit ton of gospel bluegrass which somehow didn't negatively impact my ability to eventually listen to and enjoy the genre sans the message.

Today we get Buck Owens. His life is a great story, hard childhood, the depression and dust bowl. He was destined for better things, destined to wear a frightfully busy yellow suit, but that's not the point. Coupled with Don Rich on the electric guitar, Buck nearly fixed country music in the mid to late sixties.

The song is Before You Go, and I decided on one that doesn't see Buck sporting the yellow suit, though poor ol' Don and the rest of the Buckaroos are stuck in pink. I picked it because it touches on so many of the facets that made Buck and Don such a powerful force for good in what had become a very unpleasant and treacly place, country music. Don't get me started on the crap that's called country today . . . seriously.

durn cleaning

We missed a beautiful day of playing outside. I had hoped that the sun would entice the boys to do some cleaning which I was requiring for them to earn screen time. It didn't, so what should have been a day outside turned into a day of friendly reminders to pick up.

They don't seem to mind, and the news that they would also not be going to derby practice did not bring any sighs of depression. They both usually enjoy derby practice as they have a whole other set of friends there as well as skating. I generally enjoy practices as well which is sadly too often my adult conversation for the week.

The sun is still a lovely orange ball out west which means it's trying to sneak around the front drapes and into my eyes. The temperature outside is slowly dropping, though I expect a comfortably cool night followed by another beauty of a day tomorrow.

Whatever cleaning didn't get done all day will hopefully get done tonight, even if that means I do it. I'm not wasting another day like this.

book post number . . .

I'm just moments from having finished Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson. One might guess that the family picked this one up because of the recent movie, and one would be correct. We still haven't seen the movie, and I don't know that I especially want to, now that I've read the book.

The first commercials I saw for the movie looked interesting. I did know that it was a book, but I'd never been familiar with it as such. My only concept of Bridge to Terabithia came via a song of the same name, though with the name spelled Taribithia on the album jacket, from punk band extraordinaire Mr. T Experience. Should you care to find the song it is on the album Our Bodies, Our Selves, easily findable where better music is bought and sold and well worth the price of admission. One of these days I'll write about how my life is better for having found a seat on the Mr. T Experience ride. Yes that is a real album that is really playing as I write this. There you see the album cover as well. I like this picture and have titled it, Giving Myself Street Cred By Displaying My Outdated Stereo In A Picture In A Blog Post.

Big Brother read the book before I did, and I even game Momma a chance at it, but she failed to begin reading before me.

Trying to maintain a manly air, I will state first that I wasn't gasping for air, dripping tears on the pages. Perhaps aided by my own current fragile state of mind the book did see me a little damp eyed and sniffly by the end.

There aren't any battles between dragons or wizards or robots. There are no boy detectives or crimes. There are not even any truly evil intentioned villains in the book. It's just a great story, kind of sad, kind of happy. Assuming I haven't scared off any christian readers, I'd suggest a parental read through first due to a conversation that takes place after the family attends church. It was actually in the church scene of the book that I most related to the main character, though I saw bits of myself in him a few times. I didn't read it first, as I've mentioned, and I'm fine with Big Brother having read it, as if my own parental decisions effect yours, but still.

Booky McReadems

I swiped this meme from Red Molly. She has no idea who I am and didn't tag me, but I lifted it anyway, and I filled it out. So there! It's a bunch of questions about books, and it's a great way to squeeze out a blog post on a day that nothing seems to be springing into my wee little thinking part. So on we go . . .

Hardback or paperback or trade paperback?
I prefer hardbacks, mostly because they don't sustain the same damage from average reading that the softer covers seem to attract.

Amazon or brick and mortar?
I don't really care. I've made purchases from Amazon, though I tend to save them for gifts when I've had the good sense to go there first.

Barnes and Noble or Borders?
I prefer to avoid stores of this type. Large corporations tend to offer very little that you might actually look for in an enjoyable visit to a bookstore.

Bookmark or dog ear?
That this question exists here makes me wonder if it was really written by a bookish sort. The corporate bookstore question should have been a clue, but this one really begs the question. BOOKMARK!!! Dog eared pages are sad and detrimental to the overall sanctity of the book. I've even used the subscription cards out of magazines as a bookmark, and folded longways, they do a great job. My favorite bookmark is actually a bit of brown paper (like a grocery bag) that came wrapped around Momma's fancy knife. It's the perfect size and shape and has Japanese writing on it, something about Kikuichi.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
Almost totally random. Authors tend to find themselves grouped together, but the books are sorted more by child appropriateness. Like this we are able to tell Big Brother more easily what books are or are not appropriate because, for eight years old, he really reads better and more capably than he ought.

Keep, throw away or sell?
Usually keep because I'm a book geek and a pack rat. If I've bought a book it's because I want to own it, so I'm not likely to get rid of it. As far as throwing away, if I had a book I didn't want but couldn't sell, I might toss it, but even the worst book may be worth little something to someone.

Keep dust jacket or toss it?
I keep them. It's part of the book in my opinion, and in the end, I'd prefer to keep that tiny little bit of protection, though I have my doubts as to what sort of danger, beyond dust, the dust jacket might protect the book from.

Read with dust jacket or remove it?
I remove it. It's fairly common to find dust jackets lying around the house, though sometimes I just put them on top of the books on the shelf where the book I'm reading lives. Seriously, when you are actively reading a book, the dust jacket only really works as a sort of crappy book mark that's just dying to lose your place, so why bother?

Short story or novel?
Yes, please!

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (collection of stories by different authors)?
Again, how can I pick? I'll take a little of both if it's all the same to you.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
I'm going with Harry on this one. I'm not sure if I've even read a Lemony now that I think about it.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter break?
Even if I'm tired I'll go for the break. But if I get too tired, I'll place the bookmark back to a break in case I end up getting too tired to remember what I may have read.

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"?
Depends on the book really. I'd like to think that most people can come up with something better than cliches to open their books.

Buy or borrow?
Prefer to buy. I hate to borrow as I really hate to loan. The best way to lose a book is to loan it to someone. I will happily borrow from the library, though they are a great place to find books I wish I owned.

New or used?
Either way is fine with me. Used is generally a better deal price wise, and we have a great used book store in my town.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations or browse?
I find that I often enjoy reading book reviews, but they don't often effect what I end up reading. Lately I can do a little browsing, usually at the library, but I also tend very often to search out particular authors.

Tidy endings or cliff hangers?
I guess it depends on the book. I don't tell the author what to write, so I tend to get stuck with the book, and they tend to end however they do. A well written book seems often to end how it's supposed to.

Morning, noon or nighttime reading?
All of the above. Lately most of my reading tends to be either on the toilet or outside the back door coupled with a cigarette.

Stand alone or series?
Here again, I don't really have a preference. I just like good, well written books.

Favorite series?
In no particular order I'll name a few.
-His Dark Materials-Philip Pullman
-The Lord of the Rings-J.R.R. Tolkien
-The Little House books-Laura Ingalls Wilder
-Dragon of the Lost Sea-Laurence Yep
-Eragon and Eldest, books one and two of Christopher Paolini's trio are also the only of the series yet to be released to us hungry fans. I trust that book three will stand up to the first two.

Favorite children's book?
Wow, this one is hard because I've read so much J-fiction lately. Though not really a children's book, I really had fun reading Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson to Big Brother a couple of years ago.

Favorite book of which no one else has heard?
I don't know who has or hasn't heard of the books I like. I'll suggest an author though that was introduced to me not too long ago that I really love. I don't know how I'd try to explain Mark Helprin. He's a great writer, but he doesn't really fit in a particular niche. I'd suggest a novel as his short stories tend to leave me wanting to read the rest of the novel, though in almost a good way.

Favorite book read last year?
Probably Eldest, the second book in Christopher Paolini's trio of dragon books mentioned above. I also enjoyed Eragon, though last year's reading of that book was a rereading as I awaited Big Brother's finishing of the book. Eldest continued the story beautifully and left me waiting for the third conclusive book.

Favorite books of all time?
One of my all time favorite books is Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers. Just about anything Mark Twain ever wrote will find itself on that list as well. Appetite for Life, the biography of Julia Child is another top book. I'm a bit of a sucker for Julia anyway, and this book only increased my love for her.

Least favorite book finished last year?
If a book is that bad, I'm more than happy to put it down and walk away. The worst book I finished would likely have been some random child's book that was written more for a payday than to present literature to a child. But we don't always decide what the children ask us to read.

What are you reading right now?
magazines, Reason and Seed and Popular Science. I'm not currently reading a book, though we have Bridge to Terabithia from the library, and that's the book I'm most likely about to read next.

What are you reading next?
See previous question/answer.

And that's it for me. I don't like tagging people, but I'm happy for all of you (both my readers) to assume you've been tagged. Fill it out monkey!

search wha?

Anyone familiar with blogs and blog stats and searches might also be familiar with the odd search terms that bring people to your or my blog. Many people can create an entire post out of these searches, and I'm certainly neither the first nor the last to do so.

Sometimes when I find an odd search I will open up that page to see what else the visitor found when he searched his odd phrase or where in that list my own blog lands. Sometimes I don't see myself on the page of hits, and sometimes I can go through several pages and not find myself. Sometimes, and it's a little gratifying, I find that my blog shows up early in the hits or, better yet, first. I doubt it means much, but to see something I did at the top of anything gives me a little boost.

I'm also often astounded by the locations around the world from which I receive visits. In the past week my blog has hosted visitors from Russian Federation, Portugal, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Qatar, as well as the farthest reaches of our own USA.

We'll end the self aggrandizing with the search that inspired this post. If you search the words "soccer she slowly bra perky" without the quotation marks, you'll find me reigning at the top of the pack. And regardless of the rights this may or may not give me to be a little proud, I can't help but feel a wee little something, though if it keeps gurgling, I'll have to admit that it may something else entirely.

gad!

Since I've apparently run out of things to say, and because YouTube is always right there with a post topic, and because I've still got Queen on my brain . . .

This video is just adorable. The song has a bit of the cheesy, but it IS a good message and it does end up getting to me a little bit. And I don't know of a better word than adorable to describe it, though I would tend to use the word sarcastically more often than not.

moi?

Because I'll write about anything as long as it's something I can make fun of, and coming as no surprise to anyone that's read more than two posts here, I am a snarky blogger, or so says this little survey thingamajig.

You Are a Snarky Blogger!

You've got a razor sharp wit that bloggers are secretly scared of. And that's why they read your posts as often as they can!

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

thanks to Housewife for this one because apparently she is my knew post fodder.

yellow is the new red

Here in my lovely town, we're learning an often harsh message in regards to our traffic lights. Due to the installation of traffic enforcement cameras at certain intersections, once a warning, the yellow light is fast becoming akin to the red light. The red of course still means what it always has, but if you still feel like coasting through the yellow, be aware that the flash you almost see behind you is a fresh new ticket in your mailbox.

Now I've come across what I fear may be a new phenomenon at these camera cop intersections. Having retrieved Momma from work recently, we made our usual slip up and over the hill back to Broadway, passing through the original cameras that have slowly spawned all over town.

Before us was a mini van as we approached Broadway, our own street taking a sharp right turn around the end of a small ridge and the traffic light somewhat hidden by the geography. It's a light that one does well to remember, but the light is quickly in view and with plenty of time to stop safely if one is already driving safely. The light was in fact green, but the minivan driver, probably wary of the cameras, continued to slow down slightly as he approached.

"Go motherfucker!" I promptly shouted.

And immediately it hit me. Thanks to my town and those asshats that speed through intersections at the last minute, not only is yellow the new red, but green is the new yellow.

more info

Because I was vague about the ass whipping in an earlier post, Housewife asked for clarification. This is that.

There are people in this world who, for whatever reasons, are absolutely toxic in whatever relationship they develop. I know someone like this, and while I could give you his name, I'll just use his initials, POS.

POS doesn't get anywhere with girls in a healthy state of mind. He waits till girls are in a more fragile state and swoops in only to leave everyone he touches sad, hurt and disgusted.

One of his tricks is his sensitivity, the fact that he's always been such a good friend, someone who would listen to you and understand. And when he sees you vulnerable, he moves in closer. He understands how you feel, and he thinks he's falling in love with you.

I've known POS for a few years, and I've known some of the girls he's hurt. I'm quite certain that no one he's ever slept with has come away from him anything but full of pain. He has no regard for anything or anyone.

I really don't know that I can say enough about him. I could go on for days expressing how much I hate this person, how he is nothing but hell and hurt. The people he would consider friends don't think very highly of him.

I could easily hint more about my issues, not only with this person but with my own personal hatred of him, but I have my own issues apart from him that are more worthy of my attention. Rather than actively hate this person, I'll soon just get to where I can forget his existence for the most part. We have some friends in common, though any of them would have my back before his, and that's a little gratifying.

And finally, the humorous thought that keeps occurring to me has to do with POS and the book I'm currently reading, Texas, by James A. Michener. Had POS and I lived in Texas even as recently as one hundred years ago, I could have shot him by now, and it would have been okay. POS is proof that "he needed killin'" should be an accepted argument in certain trials.