feed me coffee

The last of my last cup of coffee for the day sits mostly finished in the kitchen. I'm on to beer now, though drinking slowly as I still have to get out and pick Momma up, hopefully soon.

This week that began so . . . less than spectacular, has ended with me feeling better than I have in ages, yet I'm physically worn down to a state we in the south refer to as plumb wore out. I tried to post earlier, while I was drinking number one of my evening cups of coffee, yet for all my effort, I was unable to stay awake while sitting at the computer, my attempt to blog completely in vain.

My two week notice at the bar was cut short by management. I secretly wonder if my tales of cooking glory at the gastropub had them concerned that their other cooks would revolt and leave the ship. Perhaps they really didn't need me anymore with their acquisition of two new cooks who would be quite able to fill out the schedule. Perhaps it's a bit grandiose of me to even imagine the former when the latter is quite likely the truth.

As it happened, one of the managers, on what became my second to last shift, informed me that, if I wanted, I could cut the two week notice in half, but she also admitted that if I needed the shifts I'd be welcome to them. The fact is, the g-pub coworkers had earlier suggested that I need not work out the full two weeks as they could very easily find shifts for me to pick up. My decision originally to work the two weeks was driven as much by my desire to act in an honorable manner as well as my complete lack of desire to anger the people that feed me my beer when I get that rare night out.

In an absolute orgy of work-Tuesday night, closed the bar, leaving at nearly four a.m. Arrived home for a couple of last winding down beers and two hours of sleep. Wednesday morning, popped out of bed manically, quite ready for my first g-pub shift, which I must admit I loved. Left the g-pub shortly before three, walked around the corner to the pizza place in which I used to be kitchen manager, ate a hamburger while downing two beers and walked back down the street to the bar where I was scheduled to work at four. That shift lasted till eight and was the shift during which I was informed that I could be quit of the place as an employee a week early. As the shift ended I drank my two shift beers and a third beer I happily paid for before walking back to the g-pub, both to enjoy yet another beer as well as to inform my new overlords of the change in my fate which allows them to work me to death beginning a week sooner than we'd previously thought. With that I was on my way home to Momma and a couple more beers and stupidly keeping myself up later than makes sense. Thursday was full of yard work, mowing the grass twice as it had already grown too tall to reasonably manage followed by soccer practice where I, contrary to what I'd promised myself, did run around, work up a sweat, tire myself, get my ankle stomped harder than a nine year old should be able to land. Practice ended at seven thrity giving me just enough time to make it back to my final shift at the bar ten minutes late, yet another closing shift, and yet another moment of finishing at nearly four in the morning. This morning was back to the g-pub at nine, a slightly late start, and non stop slicing and dicing and toting and mixing and done in time to run home in time to bring Momma back for her shift. That in turn was followed by a trip to the bank, the food co-op, the free air at the gas station and then the grocery store.

At some point in all this I have to tell you about the feeling, the thought that didn't occur to me till some random time between that first g-pub shift and earlier tonight. It's a moment that I tried to include in the ill fated posting from earlier, the post during which my chin couldn't seem to stop attempting to kiss my chest, my heavy eyelids dragging themselves and my head down into the sandman's own domain.

This isn't a feeling I had once in my three days at the sushi bar, if you remember that ill fated experiment. It never once came to me at the bar. It came to me at the g-pub but was unrecognized. I think it may have happened to have been in the air or was some sort of pheromone like thing I exuded but only to heighten my own senses as opposed to those around me. Perhaps it began as I tied the apron around myself, getting it just so in its old place below my belt while I tried to pinch my boxers through my jeans to ease them back down, getting that just right alignment of pants, apron and underwear that only lasts as long as I can avoid reaching the least bit upward. Perhaps it was the also familiar tucking of the towel into my back pocket. I'm not sure exactly when or where or even how, but I realized later what it was. It was a feeling I haven't had in all the years of attempting to be a stay at home dad. It was a feeling I didn't realize I missed till I realized it was back. It was a recognition of my place in a kitchen. It was a recognition in that kitchen that I was finally back home.

Home! I'm a lifer. The back aches for the feel of standing perched between keg and shelf as I finagle that box of bread off the top shelf just close enough to realize it's the wrong bread. It's the tap tap tap of my knife turning an onion into slivers. It's the feeling of the dressed salad not cooperating with my attempt to get just a little more height. The only feeling even close to this lately was my coming out not so long ago.

I think I'm finally unslumping myself, and it feels good. It also feels good to once more know that I've earned being this tired. I won't see the kitchen again till next week, and I think I might be getting a wee bit impatient.

proves how little i really understand taxes

Relative to the services that you receive from the government, do you feel you pay too much in taxes? Explain.

So begins the project known as Thinking Homeschoolers in which participants blog concerning the current question. You can read other entries HERE.

The following is my rambling, probably often disjointed, view of the question. I will admit openly and up front that I'm almost the last person to ask for an intelligent discourse on taxes, how they are collected and how they are spent. Where I lack in knowledge I overflow in opinion.

In a sense I don't feel that we are getting certain services that we should be getting that would be paid for by our taxes. In many areas I feel that we do get adequate services for the taxes we pay. At the same time, I feel that many of the services for which we pay through our tax dollars should be completely changed.

Many of the other posts that have already been added to the Thinking Homeschoolers project mention schools, a service for which most of us pay without getting any of the benefits. Some of the homeschoolers use online charter school options, so it's arguable that they are getting those benefits. The utopian ideal of school that festers in my brain would first of all not be mandatory. It would exist to provide education for those that choose to use the service, and it would be available for anyone at any age to use the service when they were ready for it. That's a system I would happily pay for.

Medical care in our country is a very unfunny joke, and I don't only mean for the people like my family who have no medical insurance. My ideas would certainly cause many people to scream socialism, but I don't understand why anyone could think we don't have a right to basic medical care. Just being born, to me, should provide the right to be able to have regular medical, dental and vision screenings giving us the ability to spot potential problems and fix them early enough to avoid the high prices we face when something is allowed to grow worse.

The continuously failing war on drugs is a sponge that can never be full of our money no matter how much we throw at it. The very idea that we are ever going to fully prohibit people from finding ways to self medicate and/or tilt their brain a little is laughable. Since the very first human first drank the intoxicating grain brew and liked the effect we have tried to duplicate it, and along the way we've found increasingly interesting ways to achieve a broad array of highs and drunks.

It would be stupid of me to not recognize that many of the drugs people choose to use are extremely dangerous and addictive, but I don't believe our government should be using our money to address this particular moral issue. By decriminalizing most drugs and legalizing others we would free up a huge cash resource that is currently being spent on more cops, more weapons used by the cops, more jails and would allow that money to flow into programs designed to study, understand and treat addiction and the people who become addicted. We make criminals of people who need help, and we incarcerate them, insuring that they will not only not get help but will exit the system in worse condition than when they entered, more likely than not to reoffend and reenter the system.

Legalizing certain drugs would also allow for their sale, much the same as with alcohol and tobacco. Taxing these would create new tax revenues that could help to fund medical care for all as well as our new school system.

Corporate subsidies just don't make sense to me and never have. If you have a solid business plan and run your business intelligently and provide a product or service that people want or need then you don't need the government holding your hand and slipping you money to stay afloat. Having said that I do feel that it is often a good idea for government to look at taxes and business and help when it's appropriate.

My town is in long range discussion of TIF's or Tax Increment Financing which basically allows certain businesses, usually developers, to temporarily hold onto some of what they would be paying in property taxes in order to feed that money back into the business. Because of well used TIF's our downtown has, in recent years, seen a number of new businesses open. We have several buildings that were once sitting empty and abandoned and are now newly remodeled as condos and stores and restaurants. We have a growing population downtown that is breathing new life into what was once a dead area, pretty to drive through with nothing to do. There is now excitement and reason to go downtown more than once a year. The TIF's were part of what helped all this to happen, but now other developers want a piece of the pie, and they want to do an end run around how business should operate in order to line their pockets and increase their own profit. I'm happy that my tax money can help revitalize our downtown, but I certainly have no interest in helping someone pave over a wetland or flatten yet another ridge in order to build yet another mall. I certainly am not interested in allowing yet another big box to abandon their big box in order to build a bigger big box down the street. We already have enough empty big boxes.

In the interest of keeping this from growing too much larger and keeping me from talking even more nonsense out my ass I'll try to bring all this into a tight little bundle. Do I think we are getting our money's worth? Sort of, but I also think that all too often the taxes flow into the wrong hands. It's not that we pay too much in taxes for too little service, it's that we are paying too much for all the wrong services and too little for what would really benefit your basic, average tax payer.

derby hits downtown k-town

This should have made it to the blog when I first learned about it, but negligent blogger that I've become, I'm just now finding my way to posting.

Hard Knox Roller Girls have had a couple of homes, each with their pros and cons. We're now looking forward to a bout this Saturday, April 19, and the ladies are hitting downtown, literally.

HKRG will be playing Memphis, I believe the B teams from both leagues, and it's happening in the old convention center under the Days Inn on Henley Street. You heard right, down-frickin-town.

Visit Brown Paper Tickets to preorder tickets for ten dollars or show up at the door for fifteen dollar tickets. Better yet, show up with five cans of food for Second Harvest Food Bank and get five bucks knocked off your ticket price and help feed some families that could use a little help. Kids under three are free, while kids three to five are only five dollars. Afterward, join the ladies at Sassy Anns to, hopefully, celebrate yet another win.

As usual, yours truly will be doing the announcing with a little help from Memphis' announcer. I haven't worked with another announcer before, so I look forward to meeting her, and I hope working with her can help me be a better announcer.

So, friends and neighbors, and anyone within the sound of this broadcast, put on your girdle, glue in your weave, pull out your big foam fingers and come on down.

keep on moving?

Momma has been raving about her new job almost non stop since her first shift. I've let it get to me a bit, not wanting to hear how happy she is when I've been feeling like such shit lately. I want to support her, but her joy ends up making my own lack seem more glaring.

It hasn't helped that, since day one, I've been pretty sure I wasn't going to like my new job. There's a distinct lack of morale among the cooks. Each shift has only one cook on the line, and the place opens at five pm. The opening/prep shift is four to eight while the closing shift is eight till whenever you finish cleaning, around two in the morning if you've been there long enough to have your tricks and techniques and assuming you don't bust your ass and do six hundred dollars in sales on your first solo shift.

A little brag here. Last night was my first solo shift and I did do around six hundred dollars in sales. After three years of being out of kitchens, I walked into that place and owned it. The worst crime I committed was burning bacon, but in my defense they use shitty precooked bacon that you basically warm and crisp on the flat top grill, and if you aren't hovering it burns very quickly.

Momma has mentioned the likelihood that I could get a job where she works, but I haven't really felt that I could do it. I should have known that I could, but the ol' self esteem has been lower than a caterpillar's balls lately, and I felt as if reaching too far or trying too much is going to see me getting knocked down yet again. It's an issue I'm trying to work on, and taking the job is just an early step.

So yeah, I'm already going to put in notice at my new job, after a week, and take another new job. I'll be working with Momma, though not quite with her as we will work opposing shifts as we always have. I'll be taking several steps up in terms of food quality, and I'll have a much better chance to learn and hone my technique. I'll also step a couple dollars up in hourly pay, which is definitely going to help.

And though I'm not sure exactly how it came about, Momma was nice enough to inform some amount of the staff that I'm gay. It seems kind of nice going in without having to wonder how to go about treating that bit of info, but again, it's not something you're ever sure people will take well. In the end I can only care/worry about that so much, and I don't intend to bother.

So we turn another page, this one a short one. I hope not to burn the bridge as the job I'm leaving remains my favorite bar to drink at and the bar at which I'm most likely to meet friends without planning to meet. I'll be working both places for a couple of weeks, and I'm certain that's bound to add to the thrills.

Finally, I'll link HERE to the website of a certain restaurant, but in the interest of blogging and working and not sure about how much info needs to be shared and not wanting to fuck up before I start, I won't share any more just now than that. I've been a stay at home dad the entire time that I've also been a blogger, so I've never blogged, before now, about a place I was employed at while writing. Again, in the interest of not fucking things up, I'll be sure to keep a sensible separation between the two. Any advice from fellow bloggers about this sort of thing is more than welcome.

it's true

I don't pay a lot of attention to my statcounter, but I do look at it every couple of days. It's nice to see the number of visitors, and sometimes it's fun to see the different ways people get to me.

I am more than a little gratified to find that I come up first in a particular search, and a good number of visits I get are because of this search.

I am the number one hit when people google Robin Williams sucks, and it feels good.

aarrrrrgggggghh

The IRS is a bunch of idiots. This is at least the ninth year that Momma and I have filed our tax returns together, each year filing as married filing jointly.

This is the ninth year they have fucked up Momma's name and in doing so delayed our refund.

When we got married, we did the normal thing, Momma changing her last name to mine. She did the normal thing of keeping her middle name and adding her maiden name as a second middle name. We went to the local office of the Social Security Administration and did it all correctly and legally.

Every year at tax time (nine if you remember correctly) we have had delays in getting our income tax return because the IRS doesn't have her name right. Every year we end up calling them and explaining the issue and telling them how to fix it.

Every single fucking year this happens.

And it's happened again. Possibly it happens because some dumb fuck in a cubicle doesn't update the information. I don't know why it happens.

I'm absolutely sick of this shit. We planned things rather poorly I'll admit, but we've been counting on the refund being in our checking account by a certain time, and we are so close to the edge financially based on this that we may end up completely broke.

And it's all the fault of the idiots at the IRS who can't manage in nine years to stop fucking us over. So thank you IRS. Don't bother fixing it this year, because by next year I can only imagine where our lives will be, and besides, I'm sure it's not your problem. You don't care if my kids are hungry. You don't care that some people don't have the money falling out their ass to deal with this kind of setback.

Fuck you, IRS!

credit

I posted yesterday about words without giving some credit to a blogger Mike who posted a blog along similar lines which was part what put the subject on my mind. I meant to thank him then for the blog fodder and to tip the ol' hat in thanks.

He posed a question concerning whether calling people certain things was okay in the office environment. I personally assume offices are generally quiet, passive aggressive places, but most of what I assume I know about them comes from tv or movies, most notably the movie Office Space.

I've never in my life worked in an office. My very first job was busing table in a restaurant, and since then, probably 90% of the jobs I've held have been in restaurants. There have been brief forays in light construction and the several months I worked as a DJ in a titty bar, but really, I'm a restaurant lifer.

Restaurant culture is totally different from any other job. I'm not going to point out how different or why different, just accept that I'm right. We are a different sort of folk, and I feel that the very nature of the work demands something so different from other work that it really does require a different sort of folk.

And part of that is the ability to at least accept the foulness and vulgarity if not the ability to deal it out as best you can. It's generally good natured and often has extreme homoerotic overtones if not a little bit of homophobia. Again, I'm not really going too deeply into that either.

Really, the whole point of this post is to give Mike credit for planting the seed of the thought that became yesterday's post and to send him some link love.

things we say

Language warning. The following screeching contains a very few words of questionable offensiveness. Read it anyway. Be a damn grown up.

My poor little blog seems to be slowly dying from neglect. I'm not intentionally neglecting the thing, but trying to write has not gotten any easier lately. If anything, my willingness to write has stayed the same, sort of, while my desire to post what I come up with continues to decline.

What you haven't gotten nearly enough of from me lately is a nice healthy rant. I've kept my ire entirely to myself for far too long. While I was off being unhappy, I was still finding targets for anger, but they don't nearly affect me lately as much as other issues I can't stop over-pondering. So what has been bothering me?

I've thought lately about words. Certainly I've considered words before, but lately I've noticed more of an ability for words to have impact, often an impact that the speaker has never considered, and there is often no way to explain, no way to make someone understand that how you hear their words is far removed from how those words sound to them.

One word, cocksucker, and a phrase, that's so gay, have stuck out in my mind lately. There are plenty of variations on these two, but these two are enough to start my little conversation. The suggestion is that enjoying fellatio as a giver or being gay are inherently demeaning to one's manhood, so it follows that they are great words to use to insult people. Cocksucker/gay=undesirable trait

What really bothers me with these words are the inability to explain to people in a way they understand why it might bother me or others to hear them used in this manner. I've only been able to explain to one person, and though she isn't black, when I compared her use of the word gay as a negative adjective to someone using the word nigger, she seemed to at least get for a moment why it might not be okay. She's a good friend and not someone who would intentionally be hurtful, but she also couldn't accept that in might bother me that she would use gay in such a way.

So how do you make the average person understand? What compares, in each individual world, to gay or to a racial epithet? What word has enough power to offend? I can't really think of any. While many women abhor the words cunt or bitch, they don't quite seem to have the same power for as many people. The bother is more a personal issue on an individual level.

The only tool I really have when confronting this is to turn it around, to make the situation lighter through disagreement, yet people often don't get it unless they also know that I'm gay. And while I might have made a show of announcing it in certain locales, not everyone reads the blog, and I don't wear my "Hello, my name is Gay" convention sticker everyday.

So I disagree. I hear the tired phrase and tell the speaker why they are wrong, why the situation or the thing is in fact not gay. "Andre champagne is the gayest? No sir. In fact it isn't gay at all. It's of low quality and has a poor taste and is in fact not even champagne. Andre may well be quite heterosexual," to use a conversation that took place recently. But all that gets is a laugh at the perceived joke or a blank stare of not understanding.

I do have friends, including the young lady mentioned above, who are quite able to use the word gay as a description and in a non negative fashion. These are people who are quite accepting of me and quite unconcerned with the homosexuality of their friends. They're the best kind of people, and I'm slowly building a network of friends for whom gayness is no more or less important than any other aspect of who you are. When you know that someone doesn't look down on the sucking of a cock you don't mind hearing it so much, and when those same people can just as easily describe the same situation as comparable to licking cunts it seems more easy to hear it.

So where have I arrived with all this? What great lesson have I learned? Not a fucking thing. All I know is that it used make me pause when I almost caught myself suggesting something was gay, and now it bothers me on some level to hear it, and I'm quite willing to point it out and to deny someone the chance to use it with impunity. I will in fact call you on it and at least try to make you see. Does it always work, or more accurately, will it ever work?

Feel free to comment about this with your own thoughts. I'd really like to hear what others think. Feel free to remind me of words I've used that make me a hypocrite.

my life . . .

. . . is like asking for Cherry Coke and getting flat cola with not enough grenadine in it.

I had an IM conversation with a friend today. He was talking about the girl he likes, explaining that he likes her more than she likes him. He explained that this is a problem that he's figured out about himself, that he too often sees more in a relationship than do the girls with whom he has the relationship.

I didn't tell him that that's the way I feel about him. It wouldn't have helped. He's made a point of explaining that he's not gay when I've messed with him about it. He doesn't know how I really feel, that I've actually had some amount of trouble getting myself over him. He doesn't need to know.

But I know, and our conversation, while helpful to him in figuring out the direction he plans to take, didn't help me at all. It merely served to slam me back into a place I thought I'd gotten passed. He's a great friend and someone I'm glad to have in my life, but it's hard to accept that I can't have him in my life in the way I want.

It makes me want to smash my head into the wall, but I learned years ago how little benefit there is in that. It's really too bad that, on some level, I'm still doing it, knowing all the time that it only hurts me. The wall doesn't give a shit.

edited to add: if you see yourself in the above, please understand that it really is okay and I promise I didn't tell anyone else. Also, I forgot that I told you about my blog, but I'm leaving this up anyway. I deal in melodrama like Republicans deal in lies and being assholes. It's just how I am.

mmmmmmmmm vital fluids

Regardless of how much I eat lately, it seems I'm never quite satisfied. I think I may finally have come across the solution to this problem. Thanks go to Joel Derfner whose blog I recently staggered across. He's perfect for me to have a crush on as he's hot and completely unavailable, but it does help that it's not another straight guy.

Anyway, to learn more about my new diet click HERE.

job news

Momma and I now officially both have jobs. Money has not yet quite gotten tight, and according to IRS dot gov our income tax refund will arrive in time to keep us afloat long enough to start getting paid. We did at one time have other plans for the money, but that's how we roll I suppose.

Both our jobs see our return to the Old City, our absolute favorite place to be. I'll be working at the place with the awesome patio. I start training in the kitchen Saturday night and will soon be following a server around learning how to remember which drink goes where and how to tell the computer to tell the bartender to make four purple hooter shooters.

To be honest, it isn't especially my first choice of a job, but it also sort of is. The vast majority of my work experience is in similar sorts of places, so bar food won't be stretching my limits too much. After three-ish years of not working, easing back into it seems like a good idea. Plus with the cross training in front and back of house I'm only making myself a more rounded employee. Also I will obviously have to retake the ABC class for which my permit just recently expired.

Momma put in a couple of applications. What had been her top choice made room for her other top choice as I pointed out that, while either job would get her what she wanted, one was closer. She wanted to stay in a more high end sort of kitchen, and she was really leaning toward the French place that is only slightly out west. Perusing the menu at the closer place helped her realize that it's equally as high end and would give her the same opportunity to learn technique and that it's closer. She allowed the closer place to move into the number one spot, and she got the job.

So Momma arrived at the gastropub at ten this morning. She took one of our chef's knives as well as her sushi knives which may very well not come in handy. She has been excited and perhaps a bit nervous. I'm really happy for her and look forward to the two of us finally earning money and getting to eat there. The menu looks amazing.

And with that we are both employed again. Soon after we spend the last of our refund we will start bringing home checks. Hers will most assuredly be larger than mine, though it will likely not be as large as she was bringing home. Soon I should be serving and bringing home a pocket full of cash to supplement the meager amount the cooking side of my job will bring in. And though the sun isn't out today where I am, life is slightly brighter.

bigger than

I feel as if I've posted this before. It almost quite seems as though I have. Whether or not I did or not, you really need to click on the triangle and turn this song waaaaaaaaay up. Way up! If you are reading this, this song is quite likely outside your normal sort of thing you would usually listen to. I suggest you play and listen to this song anyway. Even if it makes you a little uncomfortable go ahead and click the triangle.

best fucking bass line evar!

first game

Yesterday should have been the third game for my U10 team. It was our first. East Tennessee spring season soccer has never, in my limited experience, been quite the chore this year has become. Our first game was snowed out, and our second game was rained out.

As I approached our field, I met up with a couple of my team members who immediately noticed that we were going to be playing a girl heavy coed team. Of course, my team being all boys, and fairly typical eight to nine year old boys, one of them made a comment suggesting our team should easily win. I was quick to point out that he had no basis for this as he had not seen them play and that the fact that they are girls suggests nothing when it comes to their abilities on the field.

My point was proved soon after as the game began and they scored on us fairly quickly. The one real difference between boys and girls of this age would be physical in that the boy is more likely to come out of fight for the ball still on his feet. This is not meant to disparage the girls only to suggest that the boys are in general going to be a bit bigger and stronger. It's also an argument to not have coed teams after the U6 level whenever possible. But that's another post that I may have covered some time in the past.

This game certainly proved that no matter what any of us may think, girls can play with the boys sometimes, and they can play well. The first half saw our opponents take a fair lead against us. Big Brother was our keeper for the first half, and as I've seen before, he took those first goals very personally before figuring out to move and pounce. He soon stopped allowing goals and even took down a couple of their players diving onto the ball.

The second half saw us close the gap. We actually should have won the game on an offside call, though not necessarily due to the call. I saw the goal, but I didn't see offside nor did I not see offside. What I did see was the line judge make an offside call, the referee take back the goal and the opposing coach argue the call and convince the ref to give them the goal.

And this is my problem here. I could argue neither the goal or the offside call as I didn't see it. The team may have been offside or not. My problem is with the opposing coach arguing and winning. Our ref was a young man of twelve or thirteen years. At that age I don't expect him to have the same skills as an adult when it comes to standing up to an adult. My problem is with the other coach arguing with a child and setting a bad example for all the players on the field.

I teach my teams to accept without argument the calls of the ref. That's how the game goes. You will never agree one hundred percent with the referee, and a good player knows how to suck it up and keep doing his or her best. I expect my players to play that way, and I expect other teams and their coaches to play the same way. I believe this so much that, during our scrimmages, I will make at least one bad call, sometimes more. I want them to know never to argue with the ref. Sometimes bad calls happen. Sometimes the ref misses something. You can not let it interfere with how you approach the game. You suck it up, you let it go and you keep giving your hundred percent. It's seldom personal, and you can't take it as such.

We ended the game tied, and I couldn't be prouder of my guys in their first game. We need to work on getting corner kicks into the air. We need to stop bunching up and stealing the ball from each other. We need to pass more. We need for my one insanely powerful striker to accept that he can't reasonably expect to run around the entire field for thirty to forty minutes, so he should stay in his position.

One moment that gave me a giggle was due to my sweeper. This kid, in our very first practice, when I asked them all their favorite positions immediately piped up with sweeper. He does a great job on the back line. At one point in the game he kicked the ball from the half line into the arms of their goalie and actually hurt the kid's chest. I could see it in the keeper's eyes and here it in the smack as the ball hit him.

Oh, and our team name? Yo Momma. Seriously. Not my decision.

the more you ask

I'm posting this unamusing anecdote for one simple reason.

A friend of ours has a daughter between the ages of our own kids. She's a sweet kid, and when the friend asked us to watch her for the night, Momma was happy to oblige.

So how does that work out to a blog post? Nothing exciting happened last night or today, and she hasn't really provided any blog fodder, not really.

I'm pretty much done on the computer for the moment. I've checked Google reader, Myspace and my email. I've done almost everything I could want to do and certainly everything I want to do at this point in the day.

Next to the computer chair is a small child size rocking chair. The entire time I've been online today this lovely young lady has sat next to me in that same chair asking every couple of minutes if she could get online or if I'm done yet.

I tried to warn her that each time she asks only makes me stay on longer. It's not that I don't want her on the computer, but I really want to be able to finish in peace. I actually tried to find a way to compare her repeated questioning with the idea that expressing disbelief in faeries kills one, but that seemed a little too cold even for me, so I didn't say the thinky part aloud for once.

Instead of dashing any hopes of faeries she may have I've chosen to find a way to insist on taking longer. I could easily be done now. I could happily have found something else to do and given her a turn. But she wouldn't stop asking.

I'm not sure what finally did it, but she's wandered away to join the boys in some cartoons. It's been at least five minutes since I was hit with the question, but I'm still not willing to give up the computer. Like everything else I do, I'm sure it makes me a bad person, like I care.

don't know where I'm going, but I sure know where I've been

We are turning yet another page, to use Momma's explanation of our lives right now.

After three years of doing a fairly poor job of being an active stay at home dad I took a job at the same place Momma worked till recently. I began my training as she began a week long suspension, punishment for being fairly late on two consecutive days.

I worked last Friday morning and Saturday night. This week I worked my third training shift the day that Momma returned to discuss her future employment with her direct superior, the head chef.

He fired her, and I worked the rest of my shift with the thought that I would return the next day. If I was the only one of us with a job, the responsible thing to do would be to keep the job as long as I needed to.

I awoke Thursday morning in time to get to work on time. I awoke Thursday morning to a mix of rage and depression at the thought that I'd have to go back. I got dressed as far as pants and socks, pulling them on in the most angry way I could muster. I slipped a pair of shoes and my jacket on and stepped outside with Momma to smoke, an early cigarette for clarity in the coolness of the beginning of the day.

In truth I was trying like hell to talk myself into going to work. I was upset with both Momma's firing after being held in limbo for a week as well as the knowledge I have of this restaurant based both on Momma's descriptions as well as disappointing things I'd seen in the three days I put in. This wasn't anywhere I wanted to be, and though Momma will certainly miss the place she attained at this restaurant, she is overjoyed at the page being forced to turn when she'd had so much trouble doing so with so many reasons not to.

I applied for a different job Thursday, after hanging out at the park with some great people and their great kids. I have a second interview today for not quite the job I thought I was applying for. One could consider the location a step down in certain terms, but it's more my kind of place, and the possible job would be both cooking and serving. I have years of cooking experience, but I have random and not really serving experience serving.

I don't see why I couldn't get this job, and I find myself actually wanting it. The weird part is that it's at my default bar. A number of the regulars were friends before this place opened and/or are friends outside of this place. I've known some of the staff for some amount of time.

Another page, Momma has an offer to cater a small dinner party. It's on a Saturday that I have both soccer games and a roller derby bout to announce. Did I mention that Momma hasn't been skating for a couple months? The dinner is a great opportunity for her, and catering is an idea she and I have tossed around noncommittally for a couple of years. I won't get to help too much with this one, at least not in the final process, but I plan to do my part to make it a success.

So pages turn. We find ourselves unemployed, both of us expecting a check that will sever our ties with her place of employment for nearly four years. This is on top of all the things we've been through over the past year plus. We find before us doors opening, pages turning.

There are other burners going, ideas beginning to simmer between us. We are in a place of hesitant excitement as we begin to imagine ourselves doing for ourselves, less at the whim of others. We've begun thinking in terms of what is best for us rather than what we have to do. We are aware through IRS dot gov of the date by which our income tax refund will arrive, fully expecting that to keep us afloat for just long enough once again. There are light bulbs over our heads, and more and more, we are looking to turn those pages ourselves. We're getting tired of having to read to the end of pages we don't care to read and are looking for the good stories, the ones that speak to us.

title from Bon Jovi with a capital duh

the thing I said

I almost feel as if I owe any readers I still have an apology for last night's late, drunken post. Momma had gone out with some friends, and I managed to invite a friend over. He's straight, and continues to remain so despite my urging him to change his mind, so it wasn't that sort of thing.

Sometime between him leaving and Momma arriving home I made the turn from completely fine mood to somewhere else as evidenced by the drunken rambling.

I'm tired of not writing more, and I'm tired of the writing I do manage to squeeze out being ridiculous nonsense. It may seem that it's not all crap, but that's only because you only get the ones I post. You never see the shit that sits around as drafts, lonely and unwanted, soon to be deleted.

So, I hereby resolve to stop the melodrama and the melancholy or at least place some other posts between the weepy ones. And with that, I'm off to complain about something that will likely earn me trouble.

don't stop believing

This twist off of the beer cap comes too easy.

The sad feelings come too easy.

The melodrama flows out of me like blood from a head wound.

I try like hell to beat it down. I try like hell to master myself. I want so much to be in control, yet those damn feelings and thoughts have a mind of their own. I can try all I want, but I don't end up making sense of anything.

I want, yet I can't even figure out for myself what I want.

I don't know if I'm even trying anymore or if I'm just right back where I've alway been, rolling with the punches, trying for nothing more than to get drunk enough to get to sleep quick enough to avoid crying into my pillow.

Beer doesn't really seem to be working, but it's the constant, the thing I can rely on. It's the thing I think I know my way about when so much else seems to bring nothing but a curious mix of heartache and curiosity and regret. It's my friend, the friend that's there when no one else is.

I'd like to think there's something more, but . . .

holidays are bull shit

This started out as a Myspace bulletin. I cross posted it here because I loved it and want everyone to read. This note is for the couple of people that may read my crap both here and there. So . . .

To whom it may concern:

I'm tired of all these "christian" celebrations masquerading as holidays.

I do not give a shit about St. Valentine, and I doubt his life's work involved funneling even more money into the butchers in charge of the majority of diamond procurement/production that exists in the world. Look into blood diamonds and see if they're still as pretty.

St. Patrick may have been a drunk, but I sort of doubt it. I'm a drunk and have neither doubts nor qualms about it. I also don't think that he was really the guy who got rid of all the snakes in Ireland, as I don't really think they ever had a huge snake problem. Green beer sucks, and if you're beer is so nasty that adding green doesn't bother you, then maybe you suck too.

Easter, I don't even know where to start with this one. This was once a non christian celebration of spring. As is its want, the Catholic church co-opted the day and painted some religious overtones on it so that they could count the heathens among the saved and steal their gold when they were too busy collecting eggs to notice. If I celebrate spring it will be by enjoying the warm days and long nights, and it will hopefully involve drinking a beer on the patio at the Urban Bar.

Christmas was also co-opted by the church to celebrate the birth of baby Jebus. This time the heathens were too busy outspending each other at Wal Mart to notice the gold theft, but the end result is the same.

I could go on. All our holidays are shams, and if they ever did mean anything, they now only serve to increase the income of our corporate overlords. You aren't really celebrating anything recognizable as worthy of celebration, but you are helping the rich get richer. If you're okay with that, then fine, but just understand if you try to pinch me for not wearing green that I might smash your lips against your teeth. I'm not Catholic or Irish (I might be a tiny bit Irish in a DNA sort of way) and I don't celebrate religious holidays.

I have no religion, therefore religious celebrations would make me a lying hypocrite. Please respect that, and look at your own beliefs, and ask yourself what you're really celebrating. If it's just an excuse to get drunk, then perhaps you should recognize and celebrate that you're a drunk. I'll be right there with you, not lying about the fact that I drink, not needing an excuse to tilt the pint.

partay

In order, somewhat, the pork loin is cooked, chicken stock is cooling on the counter, the flourless chocolate cake is also cooling on the counter and the beans are soaking. It's too late now to worry whether I should have chosen pork butt instead of loin or to worry about whether it will overcook with the beans.

Between games tomorrow I need to drain the beans, rinse the salad greens, chop the mire poix, cut the sausage and decide whether I want more of the hog jowl bacon chopped. I'll cut the apples and soak them in some lemon juice and water in the refrigerator. I might even cut the bacon, but it might be nicer to have it hot.

Dinner will start with a salad, packaged greens that are supposed to be a fifty/fifty mix of baby spinach and spring mix, granny smith and ambrosia apples, bacon and toasted pecans. The dressing is a sort of buttermilk vinaigrette that I'm stealing from Ms. Joy which is recommended in her book with a similar salad to mine. After the salad we'll be moving on to a cassoulet followed by the previously mentioned flourless chocolate cake.

This is only the second attempt I've made at a cassoulet. I'm cobbling a variation together using Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Joy of Cooking and a little bean cookery advice from Alton Brown. I don't have goose or duck confit. I don't have any mutton. I do have pork loin, smoked sausage and hog jowl bacon.

While I'm sure I can produce an end product that is tasty, I have no fear that I'll actually approach a real cassoulet, a classic of French peasant cooking, a large casserole that not only uses available ingredients but is argued about seriously should you choose to vary your recipe from that of basically anyone within earshot.

I haven't even cooked beans that often (almost never) and have that whole concern to be concerned about. I'm a little worried about the cake as well. I couldn't mix the chocolate mixture with the egg whites any more without flat beating the shit out of them, and now I'm a little afraid that I can kind of see some unmixed beaten whites spotting the surface of the cake. We can't know till tomorrow when we dig into it, but I can't help but worry. A rich slice of chocolate cake can almost hope to fix a nearly mediocre meal. I'm confident with my salad, and I mostly expect good things out of my cassoulet, but the cake has me nervous.

I'm sure I'll remember to post about the great fun we had, drinking wine with friends and enjoying a nice meal. It'll be awesome, the food will be better than I expected, and all sorts of niceness. And because I've been posting so regularly, you can rest assured that you'll have the info soon after the affair.

And if you're lucky, I'll take pictures and tease you with glimpses of my culinary achievements. Just you wait.

food porn meme

I wasn't directly tagged for this meme, so I won't directly tag more than one person. I almost did it when Rosie left an open ended tag, but I totally did it when Sue left a more openly ended tag.

1. What food do you consider the best “date” food? In other words, what meal or food item do you think is sexiest to eat in the company of someone you would like to look sexy around?

I never dated. That's what this question makes me think of. And then it leads into too much thought going into my whole upbringing (far past and far right) and the places I've been between then and now.

I'm starting to think that the best date would be finding some dark haired boy that wants to both eat my cassoulet and watch a Miyazaki movie with me and my wife and kids.

2. What well-known person would you like to share a meal with—with or without clothing. (saying whether or not clothes are involved is optional).

I'd like Eric Ripert to cook me dinner. I believe in cooking clothed, so anything else would have to find its own way in at some point later in the evening.

3. What does your perfect breakfast-in-bed look like? (Food AND the details, please. Candles? Music? Flowers? Hot tub? Dancing girls?

My perfect breakfast in bed would happen at the bar over some steaks and eggs and bloody marys.

4. What do you consider the best application of whipped cream to be?

Pie, the only real destination for whipped cream. Anywhere else it just gets in the way.

Which is not to say that I couldn't think of any number of other uses for whipped cream. So I guess we're back to the original question. If nothing I've said so far gives you an indication . . .

5. Oh-God-No, Biff, the yacht is sinking! You are sent to the galley to retrieve the food. What luxury food items do you snatch first? The champagne? The caviar? Smoked Salmon? Truffles? Chocolate? Or something else?

Seriously sinking yacht? I'm going after the least perishable items I can find, and if Biff can't get his dumb ass in gear enough to recognize this fact then fuck him. His ass can drown. My kids and as much food as I can dig up is my sole priority in this situation.

Okay, two things are a sole priority? Yes, though kids slightly edge out food, slightly.

And there you have my food porn meme. I tag Momma first and foremost, because she needs to write more. After that?

singing fool

Last night, without even being nearly as drunk as I assured everyone I would have to be, I was coaxed to sing karaoke. And it wasn't quite so bad as I thought.

Coaxed really isn't quite what happened so much as the sound of the words "Sometimes Roommate and Sam sing Chug-a-lug," yes that one, the Roger Miller classic. That was followed quickly by the words "son of a bitch" steaming out of my own mouth. She'd already done Dolly's Mule Skinner Blues, the one with the yodeling, and after that I couldn't not have the balls to sing.

I will admit to enjoying myself. I also feel that some explanation of the particular place is also in order. It's a distinctly local place, a honky tonk that proudly advertises their hillbilly jukebox. The menu, is beer, pizza, hot cheese plate and more and is posted randomly behind the bar on sheets in paper and Sharpie. Pictures of customers and staff adorn a good bit of the wall space, and with the new addition of a slightly regular hipper, younger element seems to be growing. It's a really cool place, introduced to us by none other than Sometimes Roommate.

We're back to my enjoying singing karaoke, but I will admit more here. We got a couple of late starts on a couple of lines, which anyone could do. I also caught myself improvising some of the lyrics which is a habit of mine.

Very often, when I'm singing alone, I will make up new words to songs. Quite often the new lyrics are fairly obscene, though more often they're just stupid, humorous only to me. It certainly happens a hell of a lot less when there are children present, so don't too alarmed, but it does happen. I didn't consider this habit when I was walking through the bar toward the stage, and really, why would I? The right lyrics are on the little tv, so any I forget, I'll be able to figure quickly, not that I've memorized that many Roger Miller songs.

And it happened. I suppose the social lubricant, PBR in a can, may have helped, or not helped, depending on how you see it. Being up there at all courtesy of Sometimes Roommate and a desire to enact some mild revenge like thing may have subconciously come into play. I don't now remember what lyrics I changed or even what I sang, but I'm pretty sure I sufficiently gayed it up, which is the part that I do remember.

Momma definitely wants to go back and sing karaoke again and soon. I'm holding out as ambivalent just yet. I did enjoy it, but I'm just not sure.

And fresh from the ovens of YouTube, the video is crap, but the audio is fine if you choose to listen to the song. There's a second song that you don't have to bother with, but you are also more than welcome to listen to it as well.

finally

I almost titled this post "fucking finally," but decided not to the moment I even considere it. I just wanted you to know.

We had a couple warm days this past week, weekend days that saw our Sometimes Roommate and her two year old son over so that another friend could paint Dolly Parton on the hood of her car. Sometimes Roommate brought over a friend, the object of my newest lusty thoughts.

I can see by the looks on all your faces that you've just stumbled upon a new thing. Yes, we have a Sometimes Roommate, a female friend who sometimes finds herself staying with us. She has a two year old who also often joins us, and Big Brother and The Boy have found no end of fun playing with him. I'm not sure how involved she'll be with the blog, but she now arrives with a name even. I haven't thought up a name for her kid, but he's a sweetheart, and if he shows up again he'll have a name.

The weather was the real star of the show. I scooped as much poop as I could find out of the yard along with a fair number of leaves too committed to the poop to let go. We unstacked the white, plastic outdoor chairs and pumped up bike tires. The dirt patch under the maple is still too sodden to really want to play in, but it'll dry enough soon enough.

It was an awesome couple of days which have given us our first daffodils, quite possibly my favorite flower currently. Where I live they are always the first blooms, the first color, that shiny gleam of hope that spring is not so far away. It brings thoughts of finally fixing the clocks by a whole hour and accepting Easter as a way to get at some ham.

Momma and I have discussed Easter recently. I realized that the only meaning I've ever known for Easter has been directly related to crosses, nails, blood, torture, and having to get up extra early to go shiver in a park to hear preaching right before you went to church and ate breakfast in time for more preaching. And if you were my family, you weren't out enjoying breakfast but in the back preparing and serving it. Moments like this indicate that I was in food service earlier than I thought, but that's a topic for another day.

Soccer has begun again, our first games coming Saturday. I feel completely disjointed about the whole thing right now. I feel like I got a late start with my U10's, but we're fine where we are. I have good players for the most part, if I can't get them to see the game as I do. I think during our next scrimmage I'll take two players out at a time and get them to watch with me as their teammates bunch up like granny's underwear and steal the ball from each other.

Apparently our team name will quite possibly be Yo Momma. I don't care personally, but I explained to the vociferous suggester of the name that he had to get the written and signed agreement from each mother represented by a player on the team. I don't know who he asked, but he seemed to think that he had gotten that sort of thing with something an awful lot not written and/or signed. Somehow that led to everyone swarming to their cars and suddenly practice was over.

I've completely forgotten to give them my "all I want is your very best" speech. I'll have to remember that before the game Saturday.

Soccer practice is the only exercise I've gotten since last soccer season. I can't last for shit with those kids, which I really hate because I really love working directly with them. We're still at a point in life when I can generally beat them, but they are also getting to where they can beat me. I actually love when they do that, because I feels it helps build their confidence. I do also admit that, were I in better shape, it wouldn't happen very often and doesn't now, but the twelve pack of beer a night and however many packs of cigarettes added to the sad, depressed and fairly sedentary existence I've stuck myself in . . .

Sorry, had to sneak a little melancholy in.

Other than all that, there isn't much else to say at the moment. I get to go out Friday night(tonight by the time this gets read.) We have an all night babysitter Saturday, so Momma and I both get to go do something. Christian pulled it off in the end to take Project Runway, and a new season of Top Chef starts next week.

Daffodils and Top Chef and soccer season. Maybe I'll blog Top Chef, but if I do, Momma has to accept that we won't always watch each episode together. We'll see.

And, yeah, we're done here for now.

good deed

This was spotted while pumping gas. You can see that the notice has been corrected, which I thought was just really nice of someone, to take time out of their likely busy day. It really is the little things in life.

music and understanding

Finding this video didn't start out looking for some random moment of realization, but that's how it happened. It's a great video, The Monkees doing You Just May Be The One.

I'm certainly not quite old enough to remember The Monkees, but I do remember them thanks to the power of syndication. It's one of the few shows we were allowed to watch, and it was always a favorite of mine. This was of course Atlanta network tv a few years ago in my innocent childhood.

Mike was always my favorite followed by Peter, and it never really occurred to me why that might be. Stumbling on this particular video, in which Mike sings the lead vocals, forced a sudden and random moment of realization, and I knew why I'd always liked Mike, even all those couple of decades back.

And he's still the hottest one, followed by Peter of course because I'm a sucker when I recognize shy and awkward.

qotd

I don't know thing one about James Russell Lowell, but this quote vaulted itself right into need to be shared.

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

I'm honestly going to look for a way to say this to someone in the near future.

an ode to shoes

These are my most recent shoes. I really liked them, and would still be wearing them now but for the fact that, hidden in this picture, there is a wide tear across the bottom of the the shoe with its sole turned up.

I discovered this hole in my shoe as I was putting groceries into the trunk of the car. I'm sure, as I was turning from shopping cart to trunk there was some final last straw of friction as I felt my sock quite rapidly become completely drenched, the cold setting in immediately. It was a rainy night here in K-patch, much like tonight.

These shoes are almost exactly the sort of thing I tend to wear most waking moments of my day. I'm weird in that way, that I much prefer to have shoes on than not. Momma and both boys are not like this at all, especially The Boy who sees walking inside as an invitation to remove shoes and socks at the first possibly moment.

The major difference in these shoes and recent shoes is the near obscene amount of white, though technically this color, when the shoes were new, was actually called "milk."

The shoes that came before these are still wearable, another pair of black suede Converse, though the only thing on them not black is the logo. They became the grass cutting shoes when I finally settled on these as their replacement. So the space between the tongue and the laces on them is stuffed with little bits of dead, dry grass. They were also always a bit too big, and with their years of service they've become just too floppy for regular duty.

And now, until we get a couple of bucks to invest in footwear, I'm stuck wearing my old work boots. It's sad how weird I am about having to wear shoes, because these Sears brand sons of bitches stink and are not the most comfortable housewear on the planet. They're great for standing in the kitchen, but they suck of kicking back with a beer. I either need to get over this shoe thing or get some new shoes.

this blog still active

Was it the cold moonlight soccer practice that ended up with me getting more exercise in one hour than I've had since the last soccer practice of the fall season? Is it the combination of beer and cigarettes and perhaps some other smoked substance drug addling me good? Is it the complete sitting here alone with no noise but the dog rolling and huffing in the floor?

Something is working to make me slightly less maudlin and depressed than I've been lately. It would be nice if this were more than a one night thing, but recently, that premise is highly doubtful.

We spent this past weekend in Nashville, or more honestly, we spent most of it in Clarksville, about forty five minutes northish of Nashville. We were in middle TN for roller derby.

I'm sure everyone has missed the roller derby talk. This bout was the season opener for HKRG, so expect me to at least have that to post about eventually. Our team won, tearing each point from their scrabbling hands. It was one of the most amazing bouts I've seen, though had Momma been skating it would likely have been a slightly easier win. Though she wasn't not skating for a bad reason, that's it's own story for some other time.

In that purest if cheesiest of sports moments, the bout was won in the final jam. Nashville was up thirty points as the first period ended. By the end of the second period, our side had whittled that lead down to nothing. Knoxville took the win in the final jam with a final score of seventy eight to seventy seven. It was freakin' sweet.

The annoying twist from the weekend involves me realizing that I have an extremely stupid crush on someone I've seen three times in the last year and a half, someone I've seen across a rink more times than I've spoken to him. I may have said "hi" and/or introduced myself once. It has been roller derby related each time. I can't say I actually know him, and I live at least three hours away.

It's stupid. It makes no sense.

The first meeting was in my town and was most certainly in my bury/ignore being gay days. I noticed him and liked what I saw, but I wasn't in a place where I was going to do anything about it. You could say I got a little stuck on him, though I didn't really realize it at the time. The next time I saw him was in his town. I'm pretty sure I didn't actually talk to him, but I did see him, and I remembered the first time and was still stuck. This would have been between learning of Momma's infidelity but before my own acceptance of me, a really weird time. I saw him again recently, somewhat after having come out and accepted that I do like the fellows, and for some reason I got really stuck, completely based on seeing him in the crowd a few times. It was a classic moment filled with instances of "did he look at me or catch me looking at him?"

It's stupid. There's no sense in it. It's irritating the living shit out of me, like I've once more found a helluva way to go right back to sixteen years old. Damn! and sigh . . .

that one guy

I have a friend, not really someone I'm close to, but he's a guy I've known most of the time I've lived in this town. One thing that is really noticeable, sort of a feature that stands out, is his voice, a deep and gravelly sort of thing that you almost imagine singing some low down blues. And then he talks and dispels that myth.

I hadn't seen him in a couple of years the last time I saw him. I was out having a couple of drinks, mostly fucking off. I mentioned his voice earlier because that's how I discovered he was also out that night.

I went into the bathroom to take a much needed piss, the beers having begun to back up in the bottleneck of my increasingly less patient bladder. As I stood at the urinal I heard someone enter the bathroom behind me but thought nothing of it.

I was quite enjoying my pee, having put it off quite long enough. Along with the pee I felt a build up of gaseous material, the sort one often rightly chooses to expel in the bathroom when out in public, and this I did.

Upon the release of my fart I heard a laugh from the next stall, and I knew at that very moment that I was in the presence of only one possible person. There are no voices like that but his.

little better

What started Wednesday with a severely runny nose worsened Thursday, coupling intense sneezing fits with the clear, watery snot deluge.

By Friday it had turned into me being the whiniest I've been in ages, combining the aforementioned symptoms with random body aches, early stages of a cough, lack of appetite and what may have been the worst, a thick headed and dim witted sort of duh.

The whole of that stretched between Friday and Saturday with Saturday seeing a lot more coughing, enough in fact so that my left eye had a nice redness this morning.

My back has hurt most of this time, and various aches have shuttled around my head, sometimes including the entire head. The head was never one ache though, as even when the whole thing hurt, I could still feel the different pains separately.

One of the symptoms of the past few days that was by far the weirdest is likely the one you least want to read. I usually get a nice couple of days of watery bowel movements with whatever sort of sickness I get. This time however I spent a good portion of my past few days having no bowel movements. I will say that I farted a lot, like I just ate Senor Taco lot but without the stink. Yes, weird.

Oh, my skin also hurt. Did I mention that? That's a symptom I've recognized since childhood, and it's usually a personal early warning sign. Whenever my skin starts to hurt I know I'm in for something bad.

Today I woke up with a dry nose and a clear head. I won't discuss pooping other than to admit to some satisfaction in general in regards to that area. I've been ravenous most of the day and have eaten more in sevenish hours than I have in the previous seventy two. I even washed a couple of dishes and didn't mind fixing the boys lunch (heating up cans of soup.) My back still hurts, almost as bad as it has at any point during the sickness, but that's to be expected at this point, as it's become a muscle thing from the hacking cough.

The best thing, apart from getting to eat, about feeling so much better? I finally get to take a shower. I finally get to wash my greasy, ick hair. It'll still look like fluffy hell atop my head, but it will soon be clean fluffy hell.

wbc sucks

Good As You has a video up that is worth watching, so I've borrowed it. Warning: Westboro Baptist Church related nastiness though not too much as the good guys win in the end



I'd say the video seems fairly obviously a product of Westboro, though they do attempt to make it seem like a news story. I'll let you pick out the subtle hints that point this out.

One thing that stood out to me is how big a failure their attempts are at the evilest place in Kansas. If I believed in a god these asshats would be pushing me even farther away from wanting to know him/her.

Finally, what stood out even more was the patriotic feeling I got watching the men and women counter protesting by hiding the asshats and their hateful signs with rows of the US flag. I actually got a little emotional watching the stars and stripes used for good.

you mean that HSLDA?

Yeah, there is only one HSLDA, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, and yes I see homeschool as one word, so that's just one more strike against them. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I posted some other asinine rant about these bozos, but an easy target is an easy target, so . . .

Anyone reading here that is not a homeschooler may well be unaware of the HSLDA, and if they have heard of them then they may know that they are a bunch of uber religious nutters that have as much to do with the legal side of homeschool issues as a basket of dirty underwear has to do with getting supper on the table.

HSLDA likely fancies themselves the ACLU of the homeschooling world, and many of our more zealously christian homeschooling friends would agree to the spirit of that comparison while quickly pointing out the evil nature of the ACLU and homaseckshuls and libruls and women in pants. Yeah, those people.

I won't be entering this contest, though I do thank Lynn at Bore Me To Tears for noticing and showing us all. The contest is an essay contest in which entrants are asked to explain what the HSLDA means to them. As Momma pointed out when I showed her, "Twenty five words? That's not an essay. That's a couple of sentences."

Should you choose to enter, the prize is a gift certifacte to the HSLDA bookstore, which brings up another question. What kind of crap do they sell in the HSLDA bookstore? I can well imagine, but I'd rather make uneducated guesses, as it's so much funnier that way. So before I complete my essay I'll give some examples of things that aren't quite likely to really be there, such as the
-ladies tea cup (because coffee is probably too strong for them) reading, I got married and all I got was these bare feet and a growing stack of babies
-t shirts that read I homeschool my child for all the wrong reasons and we don't need your filthy and unBiblical logic
-the classic full armor of god play set
-book titled "Conservatives Today: Working Our Asses Off To Take America Back To The Dark Ages"

But I digress when I really should be working on my essay.

So, what does the HSLDA mean to me?

HSLDA doesn't mean a square inch of turd. They haven't done shit for the vast majority of homeschoolers, so they can go and suck it.

And it's exactly twenty five words, but I really don't think it's a prize winner according to their standards. Regardless, I think it's honest and heartfelt.

And added from Lynn's comment due to sheer awesomeness, check out this fine offering as an additional option from the HSLDA shop.

bad derby blogger

Haven't you missed hearing about roller derby? Aren't you just dying to know what the fabulous ladies of Hard Knox are up to?

There are a couple of stories in this post, one of which involves Momma leaving Hard Knox for another local league, a very small and just getting started league. She left for a couple of personal reasons that didn't make it easier, and she worries often that she might should regret the decision. I think in the end it really will be for the best, but change is often hard no matter how much we might need it.

She left with the best intentions to maintain a good relationship with the league, and we remain close friends with so many people we met. In addition we plan to work to maintain good relations between the two leagues.

As long as they'll have me, I plan to continue to announce for Hard Knox. And I get that chance in just a few (too short) hours. Tonight's bout is a scrimmage as the team prepares for the season opener in one week in Nashville. Momma has been planning on our driving out with the team to provide support and hollering as well as to see a couple of friends we've missed greatly. I'm not sure if we'll have the money to make the trip, and I don't know if we'll have the money for tickets either.

And that's a quick run down of our derby life as it stands. Look for more in the future and hope that I'm not a bad blogger and can get a message up earlier than the day of.

And finally, if you live in or around Knoxville and need something to do tonight, come out and see us at Skatetown on Broadway. Doors open at seven with the bout starting at seven thirty. Tickets are only five dollars, and it's a great time for the youngest kids to the oldest kids.

qotd

What does it say that Oscar Wilde is once again the quote that shows up and is worthy of me squeezing out a QOTD post? It must mean something. As usual, have a link to The Quotations Page from whom I freely borrow this, and feel free to enjoy the new quote.

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde

no we can't

We start the day with a bit of pessimism. Though I really do think we can, if all we've got is a pretty song and some heart warming speeches then no we can't.

You've seen the video, Obama speechifying while attractive people agree and tell us, "Yes we can." Si se puede? Perhaps, but not until we stop letting the media control who we have real access to, not until the likes of Richardson, Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich are treated as equally viable candidates from the very beginning.

Why are we reduced to two options, Clinton and Obama? Are they really the top two in what was, until recently, a fairly crowded field? They aren't and weren't my top choice. I'd love to see the old white men step aside in favor of fresher faces, but more than that I want a president who means what he says, and I want for her to tell me what she will do that will make our country better. I might smack the next person that even utters the word change without telling me what they will change and how they will change it.

I am dreading going to vote. I'll turn the little knob and press the little button, but we have so many options in our local election. We have a huge bunch of rascals in our county and city, and we have that many more people offering us vague change and bringing the power back to the people. We have options that might as well be mirror images of each other. We have people meeting oustide of the sun light to make deals with each other, to give each other the job they were just term limited out of, to make sure their little corner of the kingdom stays in family hands.

And the worst of it all is that politics are fucking boring, booooooooring. Maybe they shouldn't be or don't have to be. Maybe it's just that, locally, there are too many names and faces, and I want to make an informed decision, for my vote to represent what I believe our system of governance should be, but on some level it's like deciding whether your pie should have a full top crust or a lattice and pretending that it makes any damn difference.

So, I will vote. I will do my civic duty. I will vote based on party in some instances. Perhaps I'll vote for the sole woman in some instances. This is Knoxville, so if any of the candidates are gay they ain't tellin', and shallow as that might be, that would get my vote in the same way some Baptists will pull the lever for Huckabee, "'cuz he's one of us."

And then I'll come back home, relieved that it's over for a few more months, chagrined that little will likely change. What I really want to do, at least locally, is sew the bunch of them up in a huge sack and smack them back and forth between the TVA towers for a couple of minutes. It would either knock some sense in or knock some of the stupid out.

shovel the silliness like it was cool

Once again I find myself doing my part to keep Yuengling in business, dumping gallons of their fine beer product down my throat. Tonight we're listening to Stevie Wonder who is on my mind because I saw his happy face in attendance at the sparring match between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Of all the big name folks the camera caught, he was the one I cared to see.

I had a nice grocery store incident today. I got home in time to smoke a cigarette with Momma before she took off for work only to realize I'd left a bag behind. It was an important bag as it contained my onion, red pepper and garlic, all of which were essential to my cooking supper, arroz con pollo, mostly from the Joy of Cooking.

She called in late as I sped back down the road to fetch my goods. It wasn't until the meal was ready for the cup of frozen green peas that I realized that they had also been in that bag. And here I was at home with no working car in which to return yet again to the store. DAMN and damn again!

Other than the missing peas and having allowed the rice to overcook as I wrestled the chicken off the bones, the dish was as delightful as ever. As is my want I don't exactly follow Ms. Joy's instructions. I like to add a can of diced tomatoes, and the red pepper was substituted for green because every single one of the green peppers available to me was absolute shit. I can't imagine paying money for the nasty things they had out in the produce section today, and I much prefer the good taste of a red pepper to that green-ness inherent in a green pepper, so it wasn't a total loss.

It's not that I don't like green peppers, though I don't, because I realize that, as an ingredient, they do add a little something in the proper proportion. And sometimes the green is what is called for. A good spaghetti sauce is no less good subbing a red pepper for a green, but it changes the whole dynamic. If that's what you want then fine. I was thinking the green and . . . seriously, blah-blah-blah, but that's as good a story as I have tonight.

Either way, the rice is still overcooked, and no amount of rooster sauce can fix mushy rice. The flavor is fine, and the dish is all sorts of tasty. But I still want to have to chew my rice. It's a perfect texture for a senior citizen, and thanks to Doc's comment in my most recent and especially queer ass post, I no longer feel quite as long in the tooth as I could. But the rice . . . again, blah-blah-blah.

And that's where I find myself. I've run out of things to say in this particular post. I'm still debating whether to make a post out of the new site I joined where ninety five percent of the members are willing to identify themselves with pictures of their wieners. There's a good post in there I'm quite sure, but a two weeks in, I'm almost certain it isn't where I find myself heading, and besides, it's a whole other post if it's a post at all. And if that description doesn't tip you off to the kind of thing I'm talking about then you're likely better off not knowing, which isn't to say I won't share sometime soon.

speak for yourself, mary

I've noticed something about myself lately, and I'm not claiming that it's either good or bad. It just is. Though if it's about me you can bet your sweet ass it's more good than not. It's at least better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Before we really get into the story I should point out that I've never been the butchest bitch on the block. Again, it's neither good nor bad, just is, but it's somehow appropriate to the situation to have this information as we proceed.

Also, I've never pretended that I'm not a bit of a lush. I like my beer, and maybe on occasion a Sunday afternoon just deserves a bloody Mary while the sun is still riding high in the sky; lord knows I deserve it a bit more often than I get it, and a shot of tequila wouldn't hurt, but I'm pretty sure we're fresh out of that.

And none of that's really the point. We're here to discuss something else, and that something else is that it seems that I somehow grow a little gayer as the drinks pile up in my system.

It's nothing major, no flames licking the ceiling, not quite Japanese girl hiding her giggles behind her hand. But I hold my cigarette a little more just so. The "oh my goooood" grows a tiny bit more shrill. The eyes roll slightly more sarcastically in that certain way.

The south in me probably comes out a bit more at those times too, and what could be better than a southern queen approaching middle age?

Again, I'll point out that this is neither good nor bad, but I'd lean toward more good than not if pressed. It certainly beats the sullen prick I used to find more likely just a few short months ago.

I pointed this out to Momma last night, and she was kind enough to have noticed as well. I'm not sure kind enough is really where we're going here, but it helps that I'm not deluding myself.

What to do with this? Not a fucking thing as far as I can tell. I'm sure it's a case of just is, as I pointed out earlier. It doesn't bother me in the least, and if it bothers you then be glad you only have to deal with my drunk ass through the tubes that are the internets. And girl just be yourself.

And speak for yourself, Mary!

e for something

Doc thinks I'm an excellent blogger and has included me in some pretty good company. Considering where else I've seen this endorsement and who else has been awarded this, I'd have to say I'm in great company. I'm going to be selfish, however, and not pass it on. I really just don't feel like it, and believe me, I've thought about it. I've saved Doc's post in my Google reader, waiting for the time I felt like sitting down and figuring out who deserves it. I could come up with several, but I really just don't feel like playing. And it's nice that I don't have to play.

I have a lot on my mind lately, as anyone can well imagine.

If you are a regular reader of Doc's and if you read her comments, then you already probably know most of this story, but I'm sharing it here anyway. I sat on it for a few days, but I need a post, and it's time.

I went to the gay bar recently. Our town actually has a few, and I've been to three so far. One was shortly after Valentine's day last year, a few days after learning Momma's news, and I stood against the wall, arms crossed, angry look in my eyes, quite likely ruining the mood for ten feet around me in any direction. I'm not sure what I had in mind that night, but it didn't help anyone.

The next time I went to this particular bar I had fun, but nothing came of it but me drinking a wee bit more than I needed to have. Another gay bar I've been to has been on the night that it doesn't really function as a gay bar. A friend of ours does an alternative dance party there on Saturday nights. What this means is that a few gay people and lots of guys who look like they collect swords and/or knives with dragons on the handles, guys who like girls but can't convince them to join them for any sort of fun, hang out while a few of them dance poorly to a broad array of not necessarily dance music.

Then we come to the gay bar I most recently visited. With me was Momma, a lesbian friend and a gay male friend who called a taxi and fled when it seemed we weren't going to leave when we'd promised him we would. We would have, but since he fled we didn't have to, though we pretty much did.

I had a good time at this particular bar on this particular night, even if I did hang out with girls, much too nervous to interact with any of the lovely gay boys in attendance, the ones I should have been hanging out with. On a side note, Momma won a prize playing bingo, and I got some under the shirt action from the drag queen running bingo. She also wants to wash and cut my hair.

And that is me as a gay man, happier with the girls because the boys, hot though they are, make me nervous. I'm sure if one of them had talked to me I'd have done the giggle Japanese style, hiding my mouth with my hand, looking appropriately bashful. I need to do something about that.

All in all it was a fun night. I'm sure I'm not nearly gay enough in my flannel shirt and biker jacket with the punk rock buttons on the lapels, but it's what I know. Also I don't have any appropriately gay clothing. I'm not sure what that means, but my sense of style certainly leaves something to be desired, and when I do go out, I'm afraid the gays assume I'm not one of them because I certainly don't look it. I'm sure there's a remedy for that somewhere, and I'm sure one day I'll care enough to change my entire wardrobe in the interest of looking gayer . . . or not.

ranting again

Why do I use Restalyne? Because he thinks I'm younger than I am. So goes the line in an especially galling commercial advertising a product that one injects into their face to smooth out the lines and wrinkles one earns as part of growing older.

The commercial pisses me off every time I see it, because they are basically suggesting that it's completely okay to base a relationship on lies. I'm sure we all know how well that works, and those of us with first hand experience can second that particular emotion.

On some level I don't suppose I really care too horribly much that some people are insecure about their appearance to the point they are willing to inject toxins into their skin in order to appear younger than they really are. It is extremely galling however to have it sold to us on the basis of lying to the significant other that we probably claim to love.

How strong a relationship do you imagine you have if you are so willingly deceiving someone? And if this deception is okay to the woman in question then at what point would she draw the line beyond which lies are not okay? In my opinion, you can't accept any lie without accepting all lies.

And yes, I completely understand that this is an ad, that the people in the ad are actors and that it's par for the course in the world of advertising consumer products, but at some point we have to accept that there is some amount of mirror between how we live and how we accept that advertising of consumer products.

In the end, it's just one more commercial that pisses me off, and it's really fucking easy for advertising to piss me off. I may in fact be one of the single most irritating people with which to watch television.

I'm just saying is all.

sounds of stomach churning

I'm having to force myself not to even look anywhere near The Boy right now. For all the trouble we have getting him to eat reasonably healthy, there are a few foods that he does love.

Momma worked in the daytime yesterday, and as a nice surprise for the boys she brought home some sushi. When she brings sushi she'll often make at least one roll with soy paper and no raw fish, just in case I feel like having a little something. If it's a roll that usually gets roe she will put it in a little to go cup on the side and put it on to serve it.

The boys ate their sushi last night but didn't eat all the roe. There was some small amount left which The Boy is now eating. He has a little plate with some pickled ginger and a lime wedge and the little container of tiny orange flying fish eggs.

I tried roe once. It was salmon eggs, so they were a little bigger than what The Boy is eating. I remember it vividly because it was one of the few times I've actually had to scrape my tongue to get the nastiness off of it. I remember spitting it directly into the garbage can and probably even considered washing the taste away with a handful of that garbage. It was seriously the singly most foul taste to ever enter my world.

So as the boy sits with his little container, eating the fish eggs with a spoon, I find that I can't even look anywhere hear where he sits.

Fish eggs . . . bleurgh . . . ach . . . ick . . . shiver . . . shudder . . .

qotd

Post fodder or just a thing I keep forgetting to do? Either way, thanks again to The Quotations Page, a quote of the day. Who doesn't love Oscar Wilde?

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

and for the hell of it another:

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

video time

It's time for a new video. I forget exactly where I heard of this band, though I do know it was one of the gay bloggers that are new to my reader, not that that matters.

The singer is Sam Duckworth, and the band is Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. Yes, a bit of a mouthful for a name as far as that goes. So far I've only heard his songs that I can run across on YouTube or his Myspace page. I've really enjoyed what I've heard and need to get around to getting a cd.

It doesn't hurt that he's a cutie, though a hair cut wouldn't hurt at all.

This video is for the song Call Me Ishmael and is perfect for all the time card punchers and wage slaves out there.

link love

How late am I? Not more than a few weeks in this instance. I've been meaning to direct you to the coolest new blog around, and I'm sure I have a perfectly valid excuse for not doing so sooner, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.

The lovely and talented One L has a really cool blog that she's started, The Music Chamber. I read, though usually without commenting, because I can never think of anything good to say.

Head on over. Being Tuesday, it's open mic, so you can listen to some other equally lovely people play guitar and/or sing or maybe just slap a pair of spoons against their thigh.

Then make sure you put The Music Chamber in you blog reader of choice so that you never miss a post.

poor dumb Romney

uuuummmmmm . . . I lifted this from the local news blogging site. The person who posted it there titled his post Awkward, and I don't know of a better title. I'm just a little on the dumbfounded side here. Just watch, and feel free to tell me what you think.

please don't ask me how I ended up at my wit's end

I don't know how many posts I can start and delete. Tonight alone I'm up to four. It's like I have something I need to dump out, but every attempt just comes back around to poor-pitiful-me, and that's the last place I need to keep going.

The problem is that I keep letting myself get stuck in the evil mud of depression and self pity. I feel useless like that last square of toilet paper that you can't get off the roll without it ripping to shreds, and I know better.

Am I really just stuck in bad place, or do I just keep not doing the things to pull myself out? In the deep dark of feeling bad it's hard to ask that question, but answering it would really help.

In the deep dark it feels good to wallow in the misery, but when I force myself to try and write I realize that it's too often self imposed. Writing forces me to think and examine what I think I think. I don't have to feel this way, but it's so much easier. It really is just a matter of time and place, and I need to figure out what it takes to get out of here. The sad truth is that the self medication of the drink is the biggest help right now, and I'm already close enough to being a drunk without the added aid from the feelings.

Some amount of it is still guilt at having hidden and buried my own gayness for so long that I involved Momma in this to such an extent that I not only allowed her to believe things that just weren't true but went out of my way to make her believe. That was a shitty thing to do, and it's hard to accept that I'm as much a victim of this idiocy I nursed as she is.

The real problem in all of this is that I keep not doing the things it would take to help myself. I'm so used to inaction, I'm so used to being passive, I'm so used to just sitting back and letting life pass by. It's hard to break that habit.

I'm completely accepting of the fact that none of what I've just written makes a whole lot of sense. I'm fine for the moment with things not making sense. It's just how things have to be right now. And having said all that I know that it's really up to me. It's work, and I hate the very idea of having to do that work. But more than that I hate where I keep finding myself when I don't do that work, so it's time to shit or get off the pot.

post title taken from the Rise Against song Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.