about a mile or so

Sometimes I use something and realize a new to me feature that was probably there all along. I've used Google maps plenty of times, and lately, while looking for a house, Momma has used it many more times.

The Google mapping I did was to search the route between where I work and where I'll soon be living. I actually knew exactly what my search would tell me in regard to the route, but I was curious about the distance. It's definitely walkable which was part of my curiosity.

The feature I mentioned above is in a small drop down menu. When you search a route you can choose how you plan to traverse that route, whether you are driving, walking, using public transit or riding a bike.

It only makes sense, and I wasn't amazingly surprised that it existed, but I was a wee bit pleasantly surprised. Now let's work on pleasantly surprising myself with an affordable bike in the near future.

so many words say so little

Given my fairly strong agnostic tendencies one might be surprised to know that I live in some amount of fear of jinxing myself. Mine is probably not that peculiar. And perhaps it's somewhat a self esteem issue. I feel that argument could be made.

The thing is that I often feel like I ruin things by enjoying them. That's really not exactly how it goes. Let's try this. If I get too excited about a prospect, no matter what I put into making it work, it will fail. And even that doesn't fully describe it.

And when this sort of thing happens, as it so often seems to, it's easy to pretend that it's not of my own making, that my own prejudices and habits don't guide me all too often. No, perish the very thought.

But then I find myself working my magic and pulling my strings, and things start coming together. I get excited because my minimal effort is paying off. And if I give no more than a minimal effort I should probably expect minimal reward. At the same time, I'm still letting myself be a defeated hump, so any progress should naturally be seen as a huge step, regardless of the minuscule nature of what I seem to come up with.

All of this must be sooooo cryptic, mostly because I planned for it to be. I feel like I'm finally making my move. And it feels freeing and like the start of something new. I've finally made an effort, and I wonder if it wasn't all meant to be, like I was coiling my springs, waiting cat like for that moment when I finally knew it was time to pounce.

And then I remember that I should have jumped some time ago, and I've succeeded in grabbing the lowest fruit.

But dammit! right now is my time. I'm sure I said that one at least once before, but it was followed by another turn at the wheel, wearing my rut ever deeper. This time it's for reals. I've lined shit up in rows, and though it may really only be one row, I'm quite prepared to knock down the pins.

And with that I take my bag of cliches and wander away from all of this. Actually, I'm not really wandering away. I'm really just gonna slap some tags and a title on it and post. But first I'll proof read it, and I'll miss something.

it could be worser

My place of employment is a fairly attractive place in what I find to be an attractive part of town. We are staffed with a fair amount of attractive people, though the girls are much moreso than the boys if we were to make a chart.

The last round of hiring in the front of house was almost all girls. There was this one guy who is pretty cool especially since he started getting my jokes, and all the girls get so moist when he's working. I could see it if it weren't all too much, and I just realized my issue. He's too manly, and I'm just not into the whole bear thing as such. I'm not saying no automatically however, but that's really not the point. Or maybe it's just his hair, or perhaps it's the all black outfit with brown shoes.

His brother is actually in the round of new hires and one of two very cute and of course straight guys. And it's the other guy that is at issue.

I get along great with most girls. I probably always have more than I realized, but I always assumed (lied to myself) that it was because I was such a great and open minded guy. I realize now how very gay and probably normal it is for me to get along better with girls. None of them are options in the buffet of people I'm going to want to either get dirty or act all grown up with, in both the dirtiest and maturest states those ideas can cover. Unless they're homophobic, then they're safe, and I can let down my guard a little bit.

I think sometimes I have a type, and then there's guys that don't really fit that that still sort of put my brakes on, and it's the other guy that's at issue in this latest round of hiring. He seems sort of like a tool, maybe a bit of a frat boy wannabe. I can't really say as I've not really spoken to him. I did sort of talk to him one night about the hat he'd chosen to wear when he clocked out and changed out of his work clothes. And honestly, that's sort of a sign there that he isn't a team player, and the other foh people will likely start to get that, but that isn't really the point.

The hat came down over his eyes, and his beautiful blue eyes are a huge part of his appeal. And I, without really thinking about it, said something negative about the hat. I was accidentally flirting.

And I don't do that. Really.

And what if he does figure out that I have a purely carnal crush on him? Just from the few shifts I've worked with him I can pretty much guarantee he isn't the coolest cucumber in the walk in. But then we squeeze past each other in the tight confines of the dish room in the middle of a busy shift where you might bump hips in passing but a clear "coming through" or a firm "hot pans" are all the courtesy anyone gets or expects, and you smell his cologne in the brief moment as you reach around the ill placed I beam to slip those pans into the sink full of water and grease and noodles.

I mentioned the other new server, the brother of the more veteran that the girls think about with their hand held shower heads. The girls all like the big, tall brother, and I like the less tall one. I don't think any of them would toss him out of bed on a cold winter night, but they'd wish for the other. I likely wouldn't toss either of them out, but I would get freaked out if they approached me together.

Because I don't really dig on the taller brother I can talk to him. Because none of the guys in the kitchen other than me are what I'd consider even drunkenly doable I can very easily talk to them. Most of them are actually much farther down the food chain than me, and I hope it burns them up to know that the girls wish they were all gay and me not so much.

And when we finally get two hot guys at once I remember my problem, that I can't act normal around them. I could be fifteen in the '80's, straight and trying to hit on Molly Ringwald for all the sane I'm able to muster.

it's that time in where I live

Tomorrow is my turn to get up early for the testing. Big Brother has reached that point of homeschool life when we take him to be tested.

We printed up a copy of the test, though I must admit we could have paid more attention to what we were looking at. We did want the test on paper to better simulate the testing environment, though I can't say we sanitized the place and put in buzzing lights to truly get the feel.

As mentioned we copied the test, and we could have thought more about, maybe looked at the totality of options available when printing a multi page document. One might ask themselves if they really need those several mostly gray pages with only the words, "DO NOT MARK ON THIS PAGE." We certainly didn't, but apparently The Boy needed drawing paper, so he got some, and he certainly marked on those pages. Hope the law don't get after us.

We didn't print the answer pages, so that was paper saved . . . oh, wait. We got lucky and ran out of paper just as the last actual test page was printed. I actually had to find a random still blank sheet to feed into the printer at the last moment.

After this week we'll certainly have plenty of scrap paper. I imagine it will be perfect for drawing on the back of, and Momma has used some amount of paper in her ongoing home search, so she can now print the information about her possible soon to be dream home on the backs of the testing pages, though that may at times not leave her with a lot of room on the back to write any notes, though there are plenty of test pages with a single question occupying about one quarter of the paper to go along with the red stripe at the bottom holding both the page number and either the arrow or the stop sign.

They didn't offer the answer sheet that the kids get with the little bubbles to fill in, so he just circled his answers.

And that's that. Now I get to wake much too early and take the boys and go . . .

And if anyone reading this knows what local phrase I've parodied sorta to get the title of this post they will win a prize. It's a line I often tweak, but that likely won't help most anyone, so I can't say it's a clue, but it's something.

is friended a word?

Another wrinkle has worked its way into my ongoing internal discussion about the two halves of my life, the out here but not there thing. A mother of one of The Boy's team mates has sent me a friend request on that social networking site we all love so well.

It's that damn internet's fault, making me searchable. I'm certain she could do more searching, and I've realized much before this that I am in fact more out than I can now have any control over. This was a deciding factor in my decision to stop coaching those three-ish short years ago. Okay it was one of any number of equally important factors at the time. Sadly, other coaches proved to me that, at least in my opinion, the league would be better served having me there.

I'm not sure exactly how to go about ignoring the friend request. I can't say that I have any real reason not to accept friendship from someone, but it's Facebook for fuck sake. I've gotta be able to be myself there.

Now I have to admit that I still haven't checked my privacy settings in quite a while and don't know what they're set to. I do remember the big to do that Fb was selling our children or something, and I got a message from someone on the inside explaining what they did and that I could go to this page and set it myself if I damn well wanted to. It was actually a nice message, or nice enough at least. And I did go and at least review my settings, but I don't know as of this moment which package I chose to go with.

I do know about my pictures. I may not be able to tell you without looking what all is there, but I've seen them all, and I know. There are a couple that other people might choose not to include. And it certainly makes me seem as though I drink more than I want most people to think. And there's that one from the birthday party and more than a couple in which I might look kinda gay.

And that's the thing, the information that gets out. I can only control it so much, and I only want so much to control it. I don't want to live a lie ever again. I don't want to have to be in the closet, and I don't want to have to have a sign over my head flashing HOMO whenever people see me. It's an essential element, and I can't know for certain how it informs and influences my choices and my approach to people and situations, but that's not really the question. I want to just be me with the homo part just that, a part of the whole.

And I'm left with not really knowing what to do. I'm going to tend toward my original plan of ignoring this person's likely well intended request. I mean, how do you tell someone, "I'm sorry, but I can't be your friend. You've stumbled on a part of my life where I'm able to be out and open, and since I don't really know you, even though I'm your child's very first ever soccer coach, I must respectfully ignore your request because of things I'd rather not discuss with you that, depending on your sociopolitical leanings and/or religious beliefs, may cause you to abruptly and distinctly change your opinion of me. I hope you understand."

two don'ts

Soccer practice today was an easy one. Practice tends to start with the kids passing the ball. We don't all arrive at the exact same time, and of course I usually try to be there early. I need to set the field up both with whatever cones I'll need as well as doing the pencil check.

The field we are currently using is just a big, mostly crappy rectangle of mostly grass and pencils and is part of a local middle school. As kids walk across the grass to and from school they lose a variety of items. I do sometimes find a pen, but for the most part I can count on finding five to ten pencils, most of them broken.

As my team slowly arrives around and about the start time they've learned to just go ahead and start passing the ball as we wait for me to actually start practice. Often they will tend to pair up, and often I'll put them in pairs or groups.

Big Brother and I were running late which means we arrived at five instead of ten till. There was one of my team on the field with his dad and younger brother, and between the three of them they were passing both a soccer ball and a football. Another player was in his car and came to the field as I arrived while a fourth player also soon arrived.

I knew this would be a lightly attended practice. The local kids are out of school on spring break, and it's the week before Easter. We don't even have a game this weekend. As I've done in the past I told the families that I'd be willing to have practice but knew not to expect them all. One kid's mom already told me he'd be at the beach.

So four kids out of twelve and one coach. We spent half of practice just passing the ball between each other in a big circle. I did my best to NOT coach as part of an idea I had for practice. It's arugable that more kids finding the joy in simply passing the soccer ball would increase soccer enjoyment in the US and would then lead to better plays in the US, and no I don't think it's a bit of a stretch, but it's also not why we're here right now. We were all finally thirsty, and when the water break turned into sitting around for an extra five minutes I let it. I picked one of the four team to play with me, and the rest of the practice was just playing soccer, me and the kid versus the other three kids. I told them specifically that it wasn't a scrimmage in fact, and I continued to do my best not to coach. My goal for today was to have fun playing soccer, and none of the kids really wanted to go when I told them we were don't, but I knew their parents were ready.

And now we get to the title of this post, two don'ts. When you are thirty seven, you really need to adjust how you play any sport with kids. If you are in good physical shape then you shouldn't really play your hardest. You need to dial it back a bit. When you are in less than good physical shape you might still want to ease up. In one instance it's not fair to the kids, and in the other you wind up nearly killing yourself.

I imagine we all know about kicking a soccer ball, but for those that don't there's one basic fact you should know. You do not kick with your toe. I would wager that most sports with any amount of kicking involved don't actually involve the toe in direct contact and for a variety of reasons. One reason is that it hurts your toe, and my toe hurts.

I do know how to kick a ball, but in my defense I was doing the other don't, and so I probably deserved the bit of toe pain.

A slide tackle is a desperation move, and in one of today's rare coaching moments I used my own bit of breaking a rule to explain to them the idea of a slide tackle as desperate and a last resort. What I didn't discuss with them is the idea of not slide tackling when you're the coach and supposed to be coaching and not slide tackling.

I let myself get a little too involved. It was all fun of course, and I didn't actually slide tackle a player. I and the ball were well ahead of him, and my team mate was open. What should have been a quick and neat move turned out really poorly. I hit the ground and didn't slide, landing on my calf and knee. The foot that was supposed to gracefully come around and contact the ball with the top ended up going straight on, toe first. The ball was moving pretty quickly as my momentum brought me into contact.

The wound is slight and won't effect anything, and I accept that it's entirely a product of poor decision making. The take away message, above and beyond the two don'ts, might be knowing when to dial it back. There's never a reason to not do your best, but there are valid reasons sometimes to not play your hardest.

in the closet? or just inside the shadow?

My Google reader has over two hundred unread items in it again. That isn't that many, but it does represent a couple of days of lessened computer time. Between Friday evening and Saturday late night lately I'm fairly busy.

Friday evening is soccer practice with the boys followed by attempts at feeding them healthy food, getting them into bed then obsessing over what I might have missed at their practices, what I can do to make the games go well and hoping none of that keeps me from getting to sleep.

And when I start cutting back computer time or just having less time for it, often my email is the first thing to get overlooked unless I'm expecting something. And I missed a comment recently to my most recent post as it came in just before the weekend mania.

The comment is from a blogger I enjoy who also happens to author one of two blogs hailing from Canada that I enjoy reading, Tossing Pebbles in the Stream and A Small Corner of Nowhere.

The comment was to my most recent post about the idea of deliberately outing closeted politicians who work against the interest of gay people. Sadly, when I saw that I had a comment, I had to go to the blog post to remember what I'd posted. I suppose it's been a while.

It's always interesting to have comparisons from people used to life in Canada but who are also well aware, through experience, of life in the US. I have to assume it's the subtle differences. And that's sorta what the comment made me think.

But then the idea of the closet crept back up.

There's some idea of levels of outness that I've considered before, quite possibly even thought about on occasion. There are so many variables that work into this equation when I really stop to think about it. One basic question to ask is Who Knows? The followup question is Are They Cool? Two distinct examples come to mind, work and soccer.

I'm pretty much completely out at work. There are a few new employees that I haven't told directly, but I can only imagine they'll figure it out soon enough. I work in a part of town that has a lot of cool places and hosts a lot of my friends, people I've met over the years of working and hanging out in the vacinity, some living in the area and some scattered throughout the city. Of the people living closest the demographic is young, hip, probably with more than a little money while the visitors are pretty much everybody in town for various events over the course of a year.

It's a safe place to be out, and it wouldn't matter anyway since enough people know that I have to assume that everyone knows. It's freeing to not give a shit. It's not nearly as gay as I'd like to see it, but even before I was out it was where I loved to be, where my two most regular bars are still. I'm accepted now just as I was before.

In this place, these several city blocks of this town, I feel like I'm just me. I can dream that I could meet someone and poetic nonsense will happen, and then a happy ending that involves growing old together with no wind chimes indoors.

And then there's soccer. Obviously, this is the place where it matters least. This is also one place I'd currently sorta most like it to not come up.

From the direction of our downtown you can follow the four directions to find somewhat different perspectives and opinions on life and politics. While downtown is a more liberal sort of place, driving north takes you into more conservative territory. We're currently in an in between but less lib sort of direction, and our soccer region is mostly the points farther out than us.

I don't want to judge the people who let me coach their children, and I can't know what they think because it doesn't come up. I do my thing, they cheer, maybe we'll win next week, and then the season is over.

I have a whole other complaint here that I feel needs to be somewhat addressed and actually will be in the fall. I'm not sure what happened, but someone noticed something I noticed. One of the ideals I learned from my earliest coaching days with this organization is the idea that complete and total fairness was the ideal. There would be now stacked teams, no all stars beating up the "others."

I've coached some great kids, though not all of them should have been playing soccer. I've seen so many that just didn't really want to be there, but they made the effort, and sometimes I got some really good playing out of them. Some kids just DID NOT need to be there. They hated it, they didn't like or appreciate being pushed to do things they had no interest in, and you never know what to do.

Is there a good way to tell someone to ask their child if they really want to play soccer? This is the first season that Big Brother's team has been full of kids who all seemed interested to be here. Okay, now that I think, I can name a couple that would rather do other, but I also see these kids as being willing to pull together and do something great if I can just . . . They do actually enjoy playing soccer, and I'm refusing now to get sidetracked into the discussion about how kids are different and there are the kids who like playing soccer as well as the kids who hate losing anything. That's a great idea for a blog post, but it's not where we are right now.

I never mean to, but thinking about soccer gets me into a certain groove, and this is a great year for that. I stopped coaching for a short time, part of the whole coming out thing. Soccer just seemed too much at the time. Coming back to it is weird because so many of the faces in the organization haven't changed. And it should be mentioned that our preseason coach's meeting is held in a Methodist church. And that's a crap segue to get us back to my point.

I'm making assumptions like Hank Aaron hitting home runs when it comes to the idea that these people might learn their kid's soccer coach is gay, but I don't think that I'm entirely off base when I assume that it could be, at best, uncomfortable to have to deal with it. And there's the point that it kind of doesn't matter at all in this lone place and time. And while I don't see it ever coming up, I can imagine it ending poorly for all interested parties.

I would prefer people know. If they are accepting then it makes my life easier, and it shouldn't change or effect anything for them, but that's the main variable here. You just can't know who's cool and who's not.

When I'm downtown, if someone learns that I'm gay and has an issue, I have back up. I have places I can go if I need to, and I have friends that will stand up with me. Among the soccer crowd I have a huge unknown. They don't realize it, but there's a gay amongst them. And he's doing his best to coach your kids, to make them better soccer players and better teammates.

And if we get back to some of those stereotypes of gay people, I have worn my sunglasses in front of them, and on me they're kinda gay, which I'm generally okay with, but I'm sure my "secret" was telegraphed somehow to someone. Also, I love those sunglasses. I saw them on someone else and actually went to WalMart to buy them because I loved them so much. That also might be kinda gay.

drat

where ever

The idea of being forcibly outed isn't new. I imagine that any group of people who find themselves with a general disdain for gay people has probably run across the concept at some point.

Without getting too complicated, considering I barely skimmed the news source, I give you a couple of links.

Roy Ashburn, a Senator from California apparently has a voting record that tends to deny gay people equality. I honestly didn't read that much about the guy, so I'm taking The Advocate's word for it. That isn't really the point. The thing is, the guy's gay. He got himself a nice DUI while taking an anonymous male home from a gay bar. Days later he admitted that he's gay.

According to another article in The Advocate a blogger plans to out any number of politicians if they vote against something or other that also isn't the point. It's the idea of forced outing that is the whole point but sort of juxtaposed against the idea of anti gay politics coming from closeted gay people, which has happened before. Larry Craig would of course be a prime example.

With first hand experience I can tell you that the closet is a horrible place, but I can't for the life of me imagine a way that I could justify animosity toward gay people who were out.

That's a lie. On some level I can see a place where, from in the closet, my own jealousy might cause problems. Really it would depend on the reasons we find ourselves in the closet. We're all in for very personal reasons.

I also have to wonder how a closeted politician gets to a point where they are basically known, on some level in whatever town they spend most of their time, as gay, but they are able to remain closeted to the people who rely on them for political representation.

So, is it right or okay to out someone? That's really the basic question. Is it ever? Is it never? Are their circumstances that effect the decision?

Can we weight the question with factors such as the person's place in a political machine that often works to undermine efforts seen by many people as an attempt to achieve equality for a group of people that the person is also secretly a member of?

How do you weight for the what it does to a person and their family?

I want to argue that it's always for the best when a gay person comes out of the closet. It doesn't fix things really. It doesn't make your life immediately all it could have been. There's still miles uphill to slog, and we all have our own hill anyway. Throw in being secretly gay while casting votes in the senate to deprive gay people of the simple fact of being treated as equal, and you've created a whole new bunch of circumstances for yourself.

In the end, if you go out of your way to tell people not to do what you do in fact do then perhaps it's best that we all get to know that you do in fact do what you strike so forcefully against.

worst excuse in the world

Wanna hear what might me my tip top all time fave song by The Specials? You should wanna. It's not happy and full of blooming flowers, but it's HERE, and it's awesome. Just go listen. You've got fuck all else to do.

on standing

Of the people I consider friends is one young lady we'll call BK for short. We were at the same place recently, the old watering hole, and happened to exit the bathrooms at the same time. She being a woman and I being a man, we actually met in the hallway outside the loos and threw our arms around each other and made our way to where the bulk of our friends were congregated.

Our path took as past some of the pool tables and through the dart playing area. I don't know why the dartboards are where they are here, but then I've never known that. As we wended our way past the dartboards I overheard someone comment that he was having some difficulty, upon seeing BK and I, with ascertaining which of us was the boy and which the girl.

I should think it would have been obvious, but what if the two of us are so gay that one can't easily tell gender difference? I think that I look like a boy and that BK looks like a girl, but rather than bother with the like, I raised my hand behind BK, who didn't seem to have heard the exchange, and raised that time proven middle finger. I hoped this was the end of the situation and assumed so as no alarm was raised upon being shot the bird by the homosexual.

This fellow had a friend who witnessed the situation and approached BK a few moments later with an apology for his friend's behavior. I was willing to accept this gent's apology, but BK, upon hearing finally of the exchange, had other ideas.

She was suddenly tracing her steps back toward the dart players and wondering exactly who had, moments ago, expressed an opinion rooted in ignorance. I began to intercede, to attempt to bring BK back into the circle of our friends, but as I watched her ire grow, I began to enjoy what I was seeing. The obvious offender was suddenly unwilling to express his doubt when faced with an actual person he'd so easily demeaned moments ago. He ducked and pleaded ignorance, the guilt full in his face.

And I think that's the lesson to be learned. It's BK's lesson, and it's all about being willing to go back, to get in someone's face, and to ask that immortal question, "What did you say?"

grass roots healthcare

I wasn't as busy helping out as some people last week as we built up what may become our own grass roots health care, but in the end I like to think I did my part.

A good friend was recently diagnosed with cancer. Her husband is a good guy, and they have two young and lovely daughters. She does have health insurance, but the family doesn't make much money, and she won't be able to work during her chemo.

My contribution to helping has included watching her youngest daughter on chemo day or day after chemo day, and I've taken a couple of meals to them on chemo day or day after day. I also donated some food for the art auction that was held to raise money to help out.

There's two sides to this art auction. The one side is that it shouldn't be necessary to do this, that people who get sick should be able to get care and not worry about losing anything. They shouldn't have to worry about their kids' well being. The other side is that an amazing community has formed around this. So many people donated art to the fund raising auction. Momma and her employer donated a sushi party. A number of friends created clothing and fashion accessories. A number of services were donated such as spa treatments and a massage. People that don't even know my friend that well have given time and money to help. A number of local businesses donated gift certificates, and some lucky someone ended up paying exactly the amount of the tattoo that they won in the auction. Of course there were a number of boxes of wine and twelve packs of PBR donated because that's how we roll.

Even now, two days after the event, I can still feel everything I felt then, having ridden the emotional roller coaster, the sadness of the necessity and the joy of friends and community, really the creation of a family, all gathered around this amazing person.

But I still can't help but feel angry. I'm reasonably well as far as I know, but I haven't visited a doctor in longer than I can remember. My doctor's front door for the past decade and a half has had a red sign with the word "Emergency" over it. That's no way to live.

I really don't have any plan to put on the table. I don't have any answers as to how to make it work, but I think I know what we need. We need a medical system that includes every single person in this country, and I do mean every single. I don't care if you're brown and are here illegally. I don't care if you can afford to pay or not. I don't care. I just know that we should all be able to go to the doctor whenever we need, and we should never face the chance of losing anything because of a sudden illness or a previously undiscovered condition.

And to the right winger that inevitably tells me they won't damn well be forced to pay for someone else to get health care I say, "Fuck You!" If we really have to hold art auctions and benefit concerts to take care of a sick friend then something is wrong with our system. If your health insurance tries to tell you that you can't have the chemo that will hopefully make you well again then something is wrong.

In just over a month there's another local event designed to help raise money for someone else who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Some of the people involved with that were at the auction, and many people involved with the auction are already planning to attend the next event and are figuring out what they can do to help. I don't know how far I can run in a pair of heels, but it might be worthwhile to find out. Who knows when it will be my turn to need some help.

but am I?

As usual I'm getting drunk for the big day.

Actually, the big day is tomorrow, and I'm not getting drunk for that. I'm getting drunk because it's what I do. I'm really good at it, and it's something I feel I know how to do, so I go with it. You are more than fucking welcome to come along, but I'm not saying shit. Do what you gotta do.

I have to get up at a decent hour tomorrow and make some semblance of good food happen. I was actually drunk when I took on this role, and now I'm less drunk and thinking about how I'm going to go about this.

I have to have horse doovers for any number of people in about three and seven hundredths of an hour or more or less. I don't even know anymore.

No, seriously . . . I have all day to plan for this thing that, had I taken it on earlier, I'd have a list down my arm. I'd be all kinds of Sarah Palin on this thing. I would so be . . .

I'm sorry, but I've ruined this whole post. It was going to be about how bad ass I am, about how I can kill with enough of a hardened look, how skin crawls off a salmon filet at my command, about how chicken wings mix the butter and Texas Pete before throwing themselves in the oil because I have such dominance over foodstuffs.

But then I got political about some dumb hair brained . . .

I'm sorry, but I've done it again. I'm walking away before it gets nasty. I really do have shit to do tomorrow, and this isn't getting me closer. I'm going to go inhale the fumes of the tobacco plant and then force myself to approach sleep.

Also, I'm not nearly as drunk as I said. Really! I mean, seriously, come on, right? Could I really do this otherwise?

Shit!

homeschool reason number something thousand

Yes, once in a while you just have to post because you stumble on or remember another reason that homeschooling is a great option.

We have a friend who is spending today recovering from a chemo treatment. She has two daughters, one of whom is at school. The other is here with us.

She's absolutely adorable as only a three year old girl can be, and my eleven and six year old boys have spent their day enjoying her company. Big Brother played go fish with her and didn't mind that he spent the entire game helping her understand what was going on. When she found a book she wanted read to her I had all three kids closing in on me to enjoy a book I haven't read since The Boy was as young as our visiting friend.

So, added to the reasons one might consider or choose to homeschool is, in my opinion, one that proves that the socialization question is only relevant when asked in a way that shows the actuality of socialization as hsers. I love that my boys don't have a problem playing with a much younger girl because they never learned that it's uncool to do so.

And now it's time to get my list together. Momma is running errands, and I need to text her a grocery list so that I can make food for the young lady we're hanging out with and her family. They're vegetarian which makes the job sort of a fun challenge. There's actually no challenge today because I've known for the last couple of days what I was cooking, but the idea of creating veg food is a fun challenge as I'm happily omnivorous.

Now, to work!

taxing fun with taxation

That time is once again drawing near, that particular day halfway through April when the US, in one big group, rushes out late at night to the post office to get a bunch of paperwork and documentation in the mail. It's tax season.

Momma and I, though not together, have continued to file our taxes as married, filing jointly. We are still legally married as we haven't really felt a pressing need to actually finalize the dissolution of our marriage with divorce. We both know it's coming, but the need to truly end the thing isn't a huge concern. We haven't really even looked into, so neither of us are really sure what exactly it's going to take.

We both have our W2's, and I'm not even going to mention how sadly pathetic the number in box 1 is on my own. Momma has three, having worked at three different places over the course of oh nine, and I'm not going to mention her collection of boxes 1.

We haven't really discussed filing our taxes this year other than my suggestion that, while she's at work tonight, I'd be willing to begin the e-file process. She asked that I wait in order to actually discuss how we'll go about it this year.

We may choose to file as we have, but we've discussed that their exists the option of married, filing separately.

I don't want to mess with the IRS, nor do I want to do anything illegal. What I do want, and I'm sure what we all want, is to get the largest possible sum of money in the form of a refund. I'd love to get enough money to buy myself a bed, and I have a couple other ideas for spending money I don't even have yet. I'm sure Momma has ideas of her own.

So I won't work on the taxes just yet. I will feed the boys, and I've got a couple of errands to run, and later tonight those same boys get their shower/bath night, and I could stand to wash a couple of dishes, and there's already plenty of laundry piling up needing to be washed, and there's still clothes needing to be folded from the last time that I did laundry. I was nice enough to throw them on the sofa where the dogs were nice enough to sleep on them several times over the last week, so they might not even be clean anymore.

Errands and chores and taxes do not necessarily a fun night make, but they aint gonna do themselves.

but he's not evil

Girl group night seems to have descended on me, as happens on occasion. It started on the nefarious FAcebook, that veritable eyesore of horrid grammar. I sometimes just ramble through the Fb bramble, landing where I may.

You might find that looking at pictures sends you to photos at an aunt's profile where she's posted a video that mentions a particular group by name.

You weren't necessarily interested in this band at that moment, but it's a band you've recently discovered, though your own birth happened seven-ish years after their heyday. It seems I should have known of The Shangri-Las at least a little, but I never did till . . . hmm . . . something else to blame on coming out. Maybe I'll write a little something about all that, but this isn't that sometime.

HERE is Give Him a Great Big Kiss, and if you saw me listening to this song you'd probably think I was gay. I can't help it. Also, I'm really falling in love with this group every time I hear them. And Mary Weiss is probably still just as hot.

Oddly enough, we run across another musical reference on the Fb courtesy of someone I know from blogland. Perhaps you already know, but apparently there's a movie about The Runaways. This is another band I was barely familiar with before recently, and it's only barely thanks to the movie.

I've run across a couple of references to a movie in my Google reader thanks to some of the gay centric feeds I enjoy. Apparently there's some lesbianity on display at some point in the film and all the usual anti-gay suspects are up in arms that any one should ever dare present gayfords as a normal every day part of human life.

Which is not to say that a movie about The Runaways is ever going to really represent the normal every day of human life for the most part. I've already mentioned my mostly not familiarity with the band. I have listened to them via our friend YouTube somewhat more than usual recently, and I still can't decide.

Were they a run of the mill band that just happened to be girls? Were they an awesome band that broke stereotypes? Maybe it just takes me listening until I hear the song, that one song that makes me get it. Mama Weer All Crazee Now, apparently, is the name of the song that finally sucks me in. I really do hate it when people intentionally misspell things, but there's really nothing I can do. The song is still amazing, or maybe I just love a great sing-a-long chorus.

I haven't really got much more that stems directly from this line of reasoning. I've run into The Bangles because somebody in one band was in another and eventually whatever. I'm hearing them right this moment, but I'm not really feeling The Bangles right now. You can google them yourself if you want.

So where do I go? Well, we could end up with a video of a 78, its slow spin and an earlier musical revolution that allowed Mary Ford to sing backup for herself doing Tennessee Waltz, a song I truly love. I'm not entirely convinced it's a Tennessee thing, and I'm not entirely convinced it's not. Either way, HERE it is.

So, who are your favorite women in rock? Or better yet, who in rock and roll do you think did their part to tear down gender based nonsense that allows or even necessitates the need to point out when girls rock?

hat racks

Some combination of my alarm clock and the chainsaws next door woke me up around the time I needed to be up, while an insufferable need to urinate finally dragged me to remove myself from lying down with the blanket pulled up to my chin.

The neighbors lost a big limb on their nearly/mostly dead tree recently, and they've decided today was the day to get rid of the whole thing. We also lost a tree recently but never did lose a branch really until the whole tree and all the branches fell across the driveway.

One thing these trees shared was that they'd both been topped at some point in the past. If you aren't aware, topping a tree involves removing everything from the tree above a certain point. You can read about it HERE.

I can't say that I noticed so many trees treated in this way in other places I've lived, but it's all too common in my little town. And I'd never considered it too much, but I've grown to hate the sight of them, and I decided long ago that it can't possibly be healthy. Now, according to the views expressed in the link above I have some justification for my ire.

These two yards should have nice healthy trees still growing. One of those two trees should be in this yard, shading the big windows in the front when the summer sun sets in such a way as to shine right in, making this part of the house a greenhouse and making the ac work that much harder. I don't plan to be here by that point in the year, but it's always going to be someone's problem.

I don't know the reason either of these trees were topped. It isn't a question of power lines. It shouldn't have been a question of safety.

I just don't get it.

corn bread

The thing that started life as an idea to make a white chili (chicken and white beans) turned into a reality that was more a brown (reddish) broth soup that was good nonetheless. It did get its share of both chicken and white beans, and it tastes unmistakably not unlike chili, but it doesn't meet my own criteria, so I'll just call it soup.

I did make cornbread to go with it. I have a square skillet, so my cornbread has corners. That seems to be a positive in the "creates crustiness" category. There's also bacon fat in the refrigerator, so it was that much better.

An easy assumption would be that, by my age, my mother had cooked way more corn bread than I have currently. It never became as much a part of my repertoire as hers, but then my eating habits have changed drastically, and often for the worse, and my general familial style is also quite different that how I was raised.

My whole point here is that, while Mom very likely didn't, I needed a recipe for cornbread. The last one consumed in this house was made by Momma. She used on odd cookbook, one with a title containing any of the words ladies, church, society or settlers. I could be wrong, but I'm not.

There several recipes in this book, a book put together by having a bunch of ladies, probably members of some group or society, send in recipes they felt best represented themselves and their reasons behind putting together a cookbook. Often, several pages in a row will contain very similar recipes, such as we find for corn bread.

I glanced at the book after finding my way half way through putting together the Joy of Cooking's recipe for Southern cornbread. I'm not sure what Mrs. Joy thought she was up to, but some of what she suggests about Southern cornbread do not ring true when one reads recipes by actual southern people, people with a desire to be and remain as true as possible to some ideal of southern-ness.

None of that is actually the point. I liked it well enough as something to go in a bowl of soup that happens to be not entirely unlike a white chili, and I have enough left for something else. Maybe a little molasses and butter for breakfast in the morning is a not at all bad idea.

impatiently waiting

If I were a better blogger I'd have been posting more than bimonthly lately, but we've already discussed that, and I can't go back in time. Let's just leave that one alone.

However, there is a subject somewhat near and dear to me that I've neglected to discuss, and that is a certain trial that is happening right now in San Francisco. Saying it's happening right now isn't really as accurate as it could be.

Today is the last day that the two opposing sides will call or question witnesses at which point the judge will take a few weeks to mull it over. Apparently then there will be closing arguments and then at some point a decision by the judge.

Do you remember when California legalized same sex marriage? Yeah, I don't really like the term either. I prefer marriage equality because that's a more accurate desciption. Either way, you either remember or you don't. If you don't remember then you may also not remember that, soon after, Proposition 8 was introduced because the "will of the people" needed to be heard. Of course that meant leaving the rights of a minority to the whims of a majority.

Yes, those are scare quotes around "will of the people." There's a point at which the will of the people erodes civil rights and makes things worse. You may not remember, and I am certainly not old enough, but there was a time when a certain group of people in this country were treated like absolute shit. Because of the color of their skin they were assumed to be lesser people. They were not allowed to use the same facilities or eat in the same dining rooms as white people. The language many white people often used to describe this other group was inherently demeaning and dehumanizing.

It took a huge court case and a lot of blowback from racist whites, but eventually the laws were changed to allow all people to recognize that they were equal and deserving of the same rights, protections and responsibilities. There was a whole nother trial years later in which laws were finally changed that allowed people of different colors and racial backgrounds to get married. Of course the people opposing this also didn't think of themselves as racist or bigoted or prejudiced, but they fought it just as they had every single piece of legislation that attempted to enforce the idea of true equality.

It wasn't a huge percentage of people that got prop 8 passed, but they did, effectively taking away the right to marry for same sex couples, aka the gays.

The ongoing trial I mentioned above is actually known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger, but since the governor of California isn't soiling his hands with it, it's commonly known as the Prop 8 trial. Basically, the idea is that it wasn't cool for a bunch of religious types to decide that their ideals are allowed to trump civil rights in a nation in which we insist on a separation of church and state, that the church isn't allowed to use it's beliefs or doctrines or scriptures to set civil law.

The thing is, if it IS okay for religious organizations to decide what is or isn't civil law, then where do we stop? Do we take the Christian's word for it that the US is a nation based on the exact sect of Christianity of which he or she is a member, or do we incorporate all religious belief, giving as much credence to Hindu beliefs as we do Judeo-Christian?

Anyway, I'm sitting here, drinking my coffee, thinking about breakfast, and waiting somewhat patiently for today's updates. 10:19 here means 7:19 there, and the trial won't be starting for the day for at least another hour. It isn't televised, and you can't catch it on YouTube, but there are people liveblogging, and I've been keeping up at Courage Campaign's trial tracker.

It hasn't all been fun, but if you have a few free hours any time soon you might enjoy looking over the posts and updates that have been posted over the last couple of weeks.

ouch

Did I tell you about my head? Yeah, I hurt the shit out of it.

You are probably not familiar with my house or my basement. It's not my house or basement, but the fact is that I do still live here for the time being. And the basement is accessed through a door on the outside of the house.

The door is a plywood frame with some old corrugated sheet metal covering. Open it to reveal a rather dangerous looking set of stairs. At the bottom is a doorway into a dirt and cinder block walled hole with a concrete floor. Right near the bottom of the stairs is the water heater, and past that in the far corner is the hole into which is sunk the pump that doesn't always work properly when enough rain falls to wash a bunch of shit into the hole and clog the pump. If you don't get to it soon enough and make sure the pump is working when there's enough rain you end up with a flooded basement and an extinguished pilot light.

None of that is the point. If you are my height and stand up in the door way you are quite likely to slam your head into the top. If you do that you will meet intense pain.

I did exactly the thing I've mentioned and met the exact pain I mentioned. I have a nice lump and bruise to go with it. It hurts now because I forgot what I'd done and scratched my head not so long ago. I aggravated the hurt and hurt all over again.

It's not even a little bit fun, but the basement is drained, and the water heater pilot is on, so we have hot water. That's good considering that the kids needed bathing tonight, and they did both get as clean as they tend to get themselves. I'm not willing to confront that issue, but I trust them somewhat.

It's all tied together, but really my issue is the pain. It's the opposite of fun. But, like most things, it'll heal soon enough. For now, however, my head hurts, and I'm tired, and it's bed time.

also

It used to be a shit ton easier to hit the "Publish Post" button. Lately I edit too much, and upon rereading I get scared. I tinkle my pants a little and decide not to click. I need to not do that as much. Here's hoping this is the end of that.

haven't even

I haven't even looked at this blog in nearly two months. That's a shit record, but it's a record nonetheless.

Chances are that I showed up tonight because I finally checked my email.

I haven't looked at Yahoo in even longer. I let it go a couple of days, and then another couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, and then I just didn't want to bother. I knew there was a backlog of nonsense waiting for me, so many bits and pieces from the random places I've attempted to keep up with.

I've let so many things gather in the bottleneck, and I've just ignored them. I ignored family requests that I visit for the holidays. I missed a couple of comments to this blog. I've just been so far into my own trying to forget that lots of things got overlooked.

It's not so much trying to forget, but I'm also not really sure what else to call it. It's at least some amount of just avoiding thinking about things so that I don't get depressed, and I've done a great job of not being depressed lately, and some of that is just not recognizing, just ignoring.

Am I about to come out of it finally? about to rejoin life in all its bitter yet sweet ups and downs? I find that doubtful. I don't seem to work that way.

I really don't know what it is. I went and started a new blog, but I haven't been any better about that than I have this one, and I've sort of let it go fallow as I've done this one. I didn't meant to or want to, but it's gotten hard to post. I fear sometimes I've run out of things to say, but maybe the truth is slightly worse, that I've grown scared to post.

There was a time when I was like any other anonymous blogger. Sure, there were the blogging friends that I'd made, and I still love that I was able to create this thing that some people seemed to enjoy, but then they all started getting in, started getting too close. I think that's part of a pattern, that if anyone gets too close I start to shut down.

I know that it's part of a pattern. I do in fact shut down when people start to get in. I don't want to be that way, but it's become a bit of a habit, and it's a hard one to break. It becomes a habit because I don't know what to do when people get in, when they start to get to know me.

There was a time when I knew exactly what to do, but that exact knowing meant that I turned into an ass and drove them right back out. It wasn't a conscious effort, but from where I am now I can see that that is what I did. I can see that that is what I do. I don't like people getting in, because then they get to know me and stuff.

Recognizing this pattern is hopefully the first step in fixing it. I'm not sure what fixing it entails, but I'm quite certain I won't like it. It's going to require that I find some comfort and an ability to accept that there are more people at the party than I'm quite okay with. It's going to take me doing stuff, and me doing stuff is not my happy place.

But then that's life in general. I need to do stuff. I've been quite comfortably not doing stuff for too long, and it's really about time that I do do stuff.

p.s. yeah, haha, I said doodoo, but not like that.

the shirt

The shirt that started it all is black, has long sleeves (the left one has in a line running horizontally down the side the name of a band, NOFX) and features on the back a picture of a bratty looking boy holding a lollipop and choking a chicken. Beneath that it says Tour 94.

It's very large on me, not the size I might buy now, somewhat later than 1994. But at one time, a time I may have been more concerned with fashion than I am now, I found myself wearing clothes slightly larger than was necessary. I never wore my clothes ridiculously large, but there were a couple of years before I realized that I really just didn't like clothes that didn't fit.

The cuff on the right sleeve has almost always been about to come off. I try to be careful with it, and when it gets bad enough I can always sew it back on.

Almost as old as the shirt is my jacket. It's leather, from a store you may or may not have at your mall, a store that tries to convince you that everything is better made out of leather, but really what you want is that end of season jacket that's on sale so you can be like the other punks, or so I was thinking at the time. It was a gift from Momma, giving it that whole other something for me personally. The jacket itself is only of minor importance to this story other than that I always wear an extra layer under this jacket, one of which tends to be the NOFX shirt.

So I get to work and take the jacket off and then the layer, or maybe I was leaving work and putting the layer on and then the jacket. It really doesn't matter, but a younger coworker complimented me on it as she saw what it was.

For whatever reason this led me to ask various coworkers what they were doing in 1994, which we'll remember as being the birth year of this shirt. My answers were as varied as "in school" to "I was seven." Someone else was as old as nine in 1994. I was twenty two. I could almost have parented them, but even in the south that's asking just a bit much.

What was I doing in 1994? As far as the shirt goes it's its own little story. I was on my way from Charlotte, NC to Atlanta to see NOFX. We'd smoked some amount of something as we got started, and the something seemed to reignite some past LSD I'd consumed. I don't remember now why I drove, but the whole drive down was like a free trip. I quite enjoyed myself.

I would not recommend that anyone use drugs and drive. I was a younger person then and did things differently. I can't deny that I enjoyed the trip very much. I enjoyed seeing a great show, and to this day I enjoy when the winter months roll around and this shirt once more becomes part of my wardrobe.

I'm sure I've told lamer stories, but I honestly can't remember. It couldn't have been so long ago, but this is the lame story for tonight. I have an old shirt and behind that shirt is an amusing story of youthful ideas that one is immortal. It's enough to make a girl fish the tissue out of her sleeve.

ooh, baby, comments

I just published two comments from just over a couple of days ago. I keep forgetting to check my email, so I missed that I had comments. I should also blame it on not even visiting Blogger lately. I can't think of anything to write, and when I at least find a song worth sharing I find it so much easier to just click the Share on Facebook button.

Also, if you aren't my Fb friend you've totally been missing out on a wealth of Holiday music.

Yes, I didn't say Christmas, and I did capitalize Holiday. I think that's going to be my new thing. I will celebrate the Holidays as I see fit. I will purchase small trinkets and tokens of affection for a very few people. I will drink with you, raising our cup/bottle/flask/goblet/what-have-you in a toast to good tidings, to good cheer, to merriment, and most importantly, that ever unattainable yet always in demand, peace on earth.

I honestly don't care what or how anyone celebrates, but I was talking about comments and apologizing for having been so long in allowing them passage through the gates of my censorship. I'd have waved them through much earlier had I but noticed.

And then I mentioned the email checking I haven't been doing. At first it was just not having done it, and now it's the knowledge of all the things waiting for me, mostly Yahoo shit that I want to read and tend to enjoy, but it piles up if you don't stay on top of it. There are currently nearly a weeks worth of three homeschool groups, a local group based on a shared zip code, all Fb and Myspace nonsense . . .

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I really don't want to bother, but apparently I must. And now, since I actually visited Blogger with a completely different purpose, I bid you farewell until completion of the next post.

I hope I didn't blow my blogging wad over this post. I really did sit down to write something else entirely, but upon arrival at the Blogger page I found the comments, and now we're back to that when I'm trying to stop so I can post and then start all over.

Shit.

I mean seriously!

there he goes again

Also, another commercial I hate is not a specific commercial so much as every single one that suggests that a home microwave and a bag of something from your grocery store's freezer aisle is comparable to something cooked by professionals in a restaurant.

They usually show a series of clips of chefs, and you know they are chefs because of the coats and the toques (the stupid ass hat that sits three feet off the top of your head and gets knocked off constantly) which suggests a certain quality one must assume. I can do the same job in jeans and a tshirt and busted old boots from Sears, but that isn't the point here.

We are slowly lead through a segment of that professional kitchen till we somehow end with a mother/wife/woman removing some sort of packaged product from her microwave. On some level we tend to imagine the corporate kitchen where all these chefs work tirelessly, creating each of these packages of foodstuff individually, putting great care and precision into each one. You open the freezer door and touch a piece of their soul in the process.

Or maybe we are merely led to believe that, without any real effort on our part at all, we too can attain a level of craft that a real chef works years to perfect, an unattainable goal that drives one to insanity at times.

I can't necessarily argue with buying food for convenience if you feel you need to. I get that some days the bag of pasta dinner just-like-in-the-restaurants-but-in-seven-minutes is the best way to go.

Just don't lie to yourself. And accept that the commercials are lying to you. It may not seem like a lie, and perhaps they don't come right out and say it as such, but you know for a fact that their food is not anything like what you could make or what you could order in a decent restaurant. And if your local favorite is serving shit that tastes equal to what you can purchase and nuke then for fuck sake find a new favorite.

it would be

A woman is at the store stocking up on Tylenol when the voice over prompts her to wise up and take Aleve. See, if you take a shit ton of one kind of drug because you have such pain then maybe it's time to pare that down to a single much more powerful pill?

That's right, it's time for another commercial that I hate. I really do hate commercials for the most part. There are always a couple that I'm okay with or that make me laugh, but for the most part I just see a swamp of ridiculousness and pandering and making people think they are stupid or entitled.

I hadn't really considered the drug aspects of this commercial. No, what pissed me off is, as the woman realizes she can just purchase the one bottle of Aleve rather than the multiple bottles of Tylenol she puts down her basket in the middle of the aisle, still containing the Tylenol, and walks away.

Who does shit like that? Who leaves a basket of anything sitting on the floor and leaves it? She's created some minor hazard, but more importantly, out of sheer laziness, she's left extra work for someone else, tiny though it may be. Okay, maybe the hazard is the bigger deal than the fact that someone has to bend and reach more than he or she might have.

But then I think about the whole drugs thing and it raises questions. Well, raises questions isn't really where I'm going, because I've already posed similar questions in the past. For a country with such issues with drugs we sure seem to like them an awful lot. What if there was a plant that grows easily, was safe for human consumption, was useful for a large number of uses including some amount of easing of pain? That would be cool.

for-like-ever

Via advocate.com I learned of this article/interview at latimes.com about Ian McKellen. He's seventy years old and has been out since forever. I'm only familiar with him due to his roles as Magneto in the X-Men movies and as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies and hopefully soon as Gandalf again in The Hobbit.

I need to do something about that familiarity, because the man has been in movies since forever as well. He has of course done actual theater. I will likely never see him actually doing thus, so he's a movie actor to me.

I've had the two links from above in tabs for what seems like days, which it has been, fully intending to write something, but I haven't really known how to approach it. I think I'll just leave it here, and if anyone does read they can comment and tell me what they think.

Also, I wouldn't post it if it weren't interesting, but I'm not going to review it more than to tell you it's got great gay power of story as JJ would say, assuming I'm using the phrase properly, and he throws in a couple of stabs at religion while making some valid points.

reject letter

If you know where I live then it would likely come as no surprise that there are around these hills people who believe that gay people are all evil, predatory perverts. It's part of the agenda you sometimes hear about that apparently makes us go out and recruit people.

This intractably held position is firmly rooted in scripture, ancient texts meant to exist for all time as the code to absolute right and wrong, assuming it's KJV.

I'm just really having trouble even finding a way to approach this. What I really want to tell people and make them understand is that they can disagree. They can have an abiding faith that gay people are going to totally ruin it for everyone when the plague of a week long endless rain of flaming frogs and hurricanes that only rip up chain link fence and ruin automobile paint jobs. Believe the shit out of it, but there's a line at which you can't make me do stuff because you believe something I don't.

All of this stems from a letter to the editor I read in the local alternative newsweekly, print edition. My first response when I read the letter earlier today was to wonder why they bothered printing it. I began a post about the letter before finding the online version. It kind of sucked the day out of my day a little. I was freshly home, finally off work, had the French press working its magic on a cup of coffee, and I was smoking, standing on the back porch ready to read a brand new edition of the local alternative newsweekly.

I began, as I sometimes do, with the letters to the editor. It's right there in front. My next response was just a general dismay that I'd bothered reading this particular letter. From the first paragraph you know what you're getting.

If you don't want to bother reading the letter it starts with a fervent call to pray away the gay, a longstanding and oft tried technique that still seems to have zero-ish percent actually working to make someone not gay. We're led then into the horrors of the gay agenda and the eventual comeuppance exacted by slapped in the face once too often god of justice.

People really are free to feel however they want. You can hate me and think I'm an awful person, but religion is for churches and for personal codes of conduct, not for setting civil equality standards. If you can't give me a reason for laws that do not in anyway rely on your ancient texts then it probably doesn't have much place in a document meant to govern a free people.

For blog purposes I then went and found the online version of the letter, linked to above. Of course having found it I then had to read the online comments. One comment, as of now, is a long series of quote from people one might consider to have been founding fathers, one is to question the newsweekly's decision to publish the letter, and one is from the editor not entirely justifying the publishing with a request for a more reasoned response worth publishing and suggesting it isn't right to reject letters based on disagreements with wingnuttery contained therein.

As gay people we shouldn't need to keep explaining why we should be treated as people. It really is just that simple. We are normal and a part of the human gender/sexual orientation continuum that so many people can only see as man plus woman equals the only thing that is okay, KJV version. They trivialize everything down to sex as being the ultimate query, can you and your partner perform sexing that can result in pregnancy? And then they won't accept our claim that what we are discussing is so much more than sex but is also on so many levels an issue about sex.

So my own question comes back to why the newsweekly felt any need or obligation to run this particular letter. I get not rejecting letters because of point of view issues. Certainly it makes sense, but when the other side is using such horrid arguments to justify discrimination I can't really see any reason to present them. We all know people like that. We get that we live where we do and that this is a fairly common sentiment regarding gay equals damnation. As important is that we see it so damn often that it's inescapable. Perhaps christians will find that acceptable, that their message is so pervasive that people are really less likely to listen or to take them seriously.

V, not for vegetarian specifically

Last week saw me once again making my newly famous mushrooms and dumplings. I forgot to get peas when I hit the grocery store, so they weren't part of the deal. And I'm not entirely certain that mushrooms and peas are an equal protein exchange for chicken, which isn't the point, but it is something to think about. I trust my vegetarian friends to take care of that themselves.

The occasion was that a friend needed a home cooked meal and some friendship. She was at a place, and I knew it, so I invited her over. She invited another friend who is in a long running place, a friend who also needed some friend and a good home cooked meal.

Apparently when you're me that's all it takes to end up with lesbians and a trans man at your house. And so, just maybe, Tuesday nights with V and a vegetarian meal are the new thing at my house.

I have to say that I'm not a planner. I'm not good at making things happen, not a professional instigator. I like doing stuff, but being the pussy that I am I just don't tend to go out of my way. I suppose that's part of why I sit around at home doing nothing so often. It's a thing that could use some work, but the shy part of me, the part that's obviously afraid of something intangible, is not happy with the change that needs.

This week was going to be chili, though I'll be the first to admit that whatever I made isn't really chili. It was good, but it wasn't the chili that I set out to make. And without trying I actually made a vegan dish, but vegans can suck it, and if I'd thought to buy cheese it wouldn't have been served as vegan.

Did I mention that we watch V? Yes, that V, the remake of the early '80's scifi series involving Marc Singer and aliens with somewhat less than benevolent intentions. I remember it to some extent as a nearly eleven year old child, though it seems the majority of people I've come to know lately either didn't watch it or weren't born or just weren't old enough. I actually tried to discuss the original series with a coworker recently. When he pointed out that he was a year old in 1983 I had to turn and walk away.

All that to say that you should swing by next week. I'm not sure yet who will be here or what I'll be cooking. I do ask that you bring your own beer, and if I get enough interest it might have to become a potluck. My only other request is that you shut up during V. It's no Saddle Cub or Top Gear but I do love it so already. Also dogs and kids are welcome, but there's no fence around the yard, so your dogs best not be the running off and acting crazy in the neighborhood types.

already? seriously?

Moments ago I refreshed my Facebook homepage and was met with a head smackingly obnoxious status update of a "friend," a person I may just have to unfriend over this shit.

When I joined Facebook I intended it to be the family safe place because my brothers and then parents were all members. I thought I was happy with Myspace being the place I was going to be out and myself, but over time things changed. I grew to like Fb more and became friends there with more and more of my actual friends.

I then found myself being friends with a number of people I'd gone to church and school with as a child, though the overly conservative right wing type stuff soon caused me to remove all those people from my friends. I realized I wasn't actually friends with these people and didn't want to be.

One of my two closest friends as a child/teen is now the only of those people with whom I'm still friends, though I haven't spoken to him in nearly twenty years and likely have absolutely nothing in common beyond some shared childhood.

As of today I might just have to remove him. His status update is one of those typical Fb polls, though this one is just stupid. Apparently we are asked to vote yes or no as to whether we agree with President Obama referring to the White House's celebratory tree and whether it's okay for it to be referred to as a holiday tree or whether he must refer to it as a Christmas tree.

First, I don't give a fuck what he calls it, and I can't imagine why it matters. Of course I get why the wingnuts are going to shit themselves over it since they can't stand the fact that there does truly exist a separation of church and state or that people might ever try to be sensitive to the beliefs of others. Second, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet. Nearly seven weeks till Christmas and the douchebags are already fussing.

I'm so not looking forward to any of this shit. I care little enough for the holiday season anyway, and I don't celebrate the christian version of the holiday, nor do I celebrate the solstice aspect of the event. I'll accept an excuse to get together with what friends and family I'm able, and I always love a huge meal with those friends and family.

Just give us this one year that we don't have to deal with the wingnuttery. Though the people who most need to hear this aren't here at my blog, I'd still like to beg them to please just let it go. So many people are going to approach this holiday to celebrate their own variant of the day, and it really is okay. Christians do not own the day or the celebration, and their whole version of it is basically stolen in part or in whole from other belief systems. So please, please just let it go.

Also, I didn't forget the Jews, but I'm not going to sit here and be sensitive enough to figure out the one true spelling of whatever they hell they call it. And black people can have there one too, but again, I don't celebrate it and am not at all concerned. Shit, Jews and black people are likely those people most reasonable about the fact that we all have our own approach and are most willing, it seems, to live and let live. So for that I thank you.

p.s. maybe the sensible ones among us should use this particular year to be the assholes and get uptight and offended, clutching our pearls and being aghast when people wish us Merry Christmas.

p.p.s. I suppose that, given my choice to blog about this, I'm fueling the fire and doing the thing I'm bitching about. If you're surprised by this then you don't know me.

already? seriously?

not surprised but still

Some of tonight was spent watching the film Jesus Camp, a film many people are aware of. I remember when it came out, when it seemed to blow up the little corner of the blogosphere that I'm marginally a part of.

I'm certainly not afraid of a film, but I am somewhat worried about the mentality of the sort of people portrayed in the film. I'm not surprised that people are like that, and I come from a not too dissimilar background, so I'm well aware of the indoctrination that happens to kids born into such religiously zealous backgrounds.

I'm nearly ready to call what I saw in the film brainwashing. I'll admit to raising my own kids in a way that mirrors my beliefs, and to some extent that's what is portrayed in the movie, but then it must be admitted that these people take it to a whole other level.

Big Brother didn't watch the whole movie with me. He and The Boy were too busy playing with some new toys they bought today with their own money. But they were both in the room playing, and he did see some amount of the movie. He was aware of some of it and watched some of it with me.

I want my kids to know they can ask questions when they have questions. They don't as much as I'd like, but when they do I want to be honest. This movie and the few question Big Brother did have because of it opened up some interesting conversation, but more than that it made me think.

I was able, because of this movie, to discuss with him the dangers of taking too seriously everything you hear. I was able to discuss the need to approach things objectively, to at least try to view all sides of a discussion. I was able to discuss the fact that repitition, music, chanting, etc. can put people in a state of mind that is almost trancelike, that it opens people up to suggestion. I even got to discuss abortion and my views.

I want to think that my most important point throughout the discussion was the point of having an objective approach. I want him to understand that my views are my own, that other people are welcome and within their rights to hold differing views. Most important is getting information that will allow him to make an intelligent decision about what he believes.

More than anything what I personally took away from all this is my own need to interact more with my children. It's so easy to just let them go about their business, to give them quick answers to their questions, to allow myself to become so absorbed in my own things that we don't live together and communicate together so much as exist within the same realm.

And as for the kids in the movie, I really felt sorry for them. They are taught a certain dogma, they are taught the "right" answers. They weren't taught to look at things from any sort of distance, to judge things on merits that aren't completely tied up in their faith based world view. I worry for the ones that are fed this singular view, the ones who know better, who look into themselves and see that it isn't right or isn't right for them.

And finally I'll share one bit that stood out to me. The kids at the end passing out religious pamphlets approached the black family to ask that age old question, "If you were to die where would you spend eternity." They got the answer of heaven, but as the kids turned away one of them mentioned to the others her belief that they were probably muslims. It's much more likely that the people were christian somewhere within the typically accepted protestantism of the U.S., but I assume based on their skin color, the kids made the leap to muslim. Just wow!

post halloween party

One of my workmates is throwing his Halloween party tonight. In part this has to do with those of us who had to work not getting to party. He's cool that way I suppose, and he's really, really easy on the eyes, though that has nothing to do with any of this.

Being a Halloween party, he insists on us all wearing costumes. I have no problem with that as it's part of the fun, but I seriously have no idea what to wear as a costume.

I could run to the thrift store for female clothes that fit and go in drag. I could wear the pants and vest of a three piece suit and be zombie fundy. I can dig the boys' black cape out and be a vampire. I could . . . I could . . .

None of these really appeal to me. None of them sound especially fun or inventive. So I'm stuck here racking my brain for something I actually want to be. I really just have no idea.

busted ass

Yesterday, while completing the last task before being done with work, I did in fact bust my ass. It wasn't technically my ass as much as it was both shins, a knee, an elbow, my hands and, as it turns out, a hip.

Tuesday in many restaurants is a truck day. At some point, usually never at the best, most opportune moment, the day's deliveries begin to arrive. This means that the truck driver for your distributor of choice will show up with stacks of boxes that he will leave sitting in your walkway. You get to spend some amount of your day clearing this out.

Clearing the mess involves breaking the stacks into other stacks based on where things go. Cold and frozen items move immediately to their new, respective homes as the last thing you need is for your food to thaw or come to anywhere near room temperature. Next you'll put up your dry and canned goods followed by chemicals/cleaning products and disposables such as to go containers.

A large part of the job involves taking things out of boxes which tends to leave you with a stack or pile of empty boxes. I've gotten really good over the years at reducing a mess of boxes into a neatish stack of broken down and flattened cardboard.

Sometimes these broken down and flattened boxes will sit somewhere out of the way until someone has time to discard them. We discard ours by carrying them to the opposite side of the square, about a block a way, and a short way down an alley to a room where all the businesses close enough take their cardboard for recycling.

Throughout the square there are a number of benches and tables, the tables each surrounded by four small benches. They are great for people to sit and eat or to use their laptops or to sit and sway drunkenly while waiting for friends. Apparently they are also perfect for busting one's ass.

My last task yesterday was to take the cardboard, and we had quite a stack. I tried to position the boxes in a way that they would be somewhat easy to carry and would leave me able to see where I was going. The second part of that was not carried out as well as possible.

I exited the restaurant backward, using my back to push the door open. A customer was leaving at the same moment, and I was even able to hold the door for him with my foot after swinging the boxes out of his way. I then left our patio while attempting to manage the boxes and move them to a more reasonable hand hold. I did not succeed soon enough and was unaware of the ass busting so soon in my future.

I'm not sure which leg hit first. One of the tables with four small benches sits about ten to fifteen feet from our front door, and I tripped over one of the benches. I think what happened is that my right leg hit first as that bruise is placed at the right height for the bench. As I began to fall my left shin slammed even more abruptly into the bench causing me to fall harder. I cleared the bench rather spectacularly I assume as I seem to remember some feeling of flight as the boxes flew out of my hands. I'm pretty sure I came down on my knee and elbow at this point while slapping my hands onto the ground as I tried to catch myself.

No one saw this happen, but a couple a short distance away gave a most disapproving look to my voluble shout of FUCK! as I hit the ground.

I retrieved my boxes, and, in some amount of agony, continued on my way. The shins hurt just to walk and at the moment the next most painful thing were the heels of my hands. I finally reached the recycling room, tossed my boxes onto the pile and was finally able to visually asses the damage.

I have a nice cut/bruise combo on my elbow and a tiny blue bruise on my knee. Both shins are bruised blue and yellow with a minor abrasion to match. The hip shows no visible sign of damage but hurts nonetheless. The heels of my hands hurt a small amount but also show no visible signs of damage

Had anyone else seen my flight it would have at least had that humorous edge that doing something spectacularly stupid earns. As it is, the disapproving glance was all I got from anyone else, and the couple who provided that seemed less concerned with a hurt fellow human than with having heard a swear.

The moral of the story is to to watch where you're going. Don't start your box carrying journey till you know you can see the obstacles. And if you're going to hang out and work at Market Square for the number of years I have, for fuck sake learn where the benches and the table/bench combos are. They're bolted to the ground for fuck sake and don't change position.

I am not a hipster

To really describe the hipster is just too difficult. They are a seemingly less rare breed than I'd once assumed, but I also realize I'm not as up on what the kids are doing as I could be, though I can spot one when I see 'em. None of that is really the point, but suffice it to say I am not a hipster. The point really is a horrid, new trend I'm loathing lately.

I'm wondering how this happened, this new fashion I've seen too much of lately. It's not really new and certainly not a fashion I'd ever want to see back, but as summer winds to an end and the days become cooler and shorter, the shorts on the guys in my town have gotten noticeably shorter as well.

Honestly, it's been in the works for some time now I'm sure, and I can only assume it's some sort of nefarious plot the way I've suddenly seen this trend. I can honestly say that what wasn't really that cool in the early days of summer is upon us.

I can think of one guy in my town, not someone I'd really call a hipster as such, but in a sense he is, who was wearing the short shorts as far back as a couple years ago. I have to believe that he started it, though I must also admit that perhaps it's a universal hipster thing that he was only ahead of the curve on in our small town.

I think of these shorts as Larry Birds, because I'm always reminded of his pale self hanging every which way out of a green tank top and green short shorts. It's not a pretty sight, and it's not a pretty sight when some pale, local young twenty something with his finger on the pulse of all that's too cool for you and a scarf tied just so around his neck in ninety plus degree East Tennessee summer sports them with his beat up loafers.

I will not be wearing shorts that fall mid thigh. I really don't much wear shorts anyway, and I've always been able to prove I'm a dork in different ways. Besides, it's really too cool for me anyway.

contact

There's a closeness that I miss, a closeness that Momma and I shared even though I was so deeply in the closet throughout our relationship, a closeness that I miss, and I think sometimes that missing leads me to make decisions I wouldn't otherwise make. I think perhaps she has the same problem, but either I'm wrong or she's just unwilling to accept my view.

This is not meant to discount pure, animal horniness in any way, because that's there on some level. Like most humans I do indeed love sex. I can look at it from a distance, however, and wish for something more committed than just random hook ups. Hook ups I can get, but I've done well to avoid those situations and places that make it too easy, because it isn't really what I want.

But that idea of closeness also makes it difficult. It's so easy to confuse that closeness with sex sometimes. It's too easy to let sex stand in for the closeness I miss having.

Momma and I still have a great friendship and are closer than many people. I love her very much and am concerned for her and want great things for her. I'll hurt myself to help her. I'll fight for her. But there's a whole other level of whatever that we won't ever share again, an unexplainable thing I can only think of and describe as closeness.

I'm not sure that I really have a point in all this blathering. I sort of do, and it's between Momma and me, and you won't really get the point of this, and that's fine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes fucking isn't the same as touching, though sometimes it is.

Also, don't read anything into this, because you're most likely wrong, because none of this is actually about me and Momma. It's about me and it's about Momma, she and I as individuals and not us as an us. We have our own issues separate from each other with randomly occurring Venn overlap.

p.s. no we didn't do it

p.p.s. it's also not about anything in particular as much as about attempting to do better for myself over a period of time

in the pines

Flipping through the channels out of boredom I stopped for a moment on the Biography channel. They were discussing Kurt Cobain. I held a certain fondness of Kurt and for Nirvana back in the day. That first video I saw featuring them in the school gym and Kurt in that green striped sweater was really powerful at that moment. It was one of the first songs that really shook me a bit and caused me stop and take notice. Before that I'd just sort of listened to music.

A little something in the way of background might be useful here. Given my upbringing I never had a lot of friends who were into whatever music was popular at the time. I was raised on some amount of bluegrass and gospel and Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, among other things. So when I started choosing my own music it wasn't based much on peer pressure. There was the "classic rock" via Z93 if I remember correctly, thanks to a brother who may comment here and has, but there was also a lot of Billy Ocean and Rick Astley.

Of the tiny snippet of Kurt's bio that I caught was some discussion of Nirvana's MTV Unplugged appearance and their version of the song known by me as In The Pines. It's also known as Where Did You Sleep Last Night and even Black Girl. It's been recorded numerous times over the years and under an even greater number of titles than I've listed.

Regardless, it's a song I've loved for many years, and the reminder tonight caused me to look into it. I won't tell the whole of what I've found because someone already did a better job at Wikipedia HERE. What I will do is give a list of links to various versions of the song so that you can enjoy it too many times like I've done.

I enjoy The Stanley Brothers version a bit, traditional bluegrass style

Leadbelly did a great bluesy version of the song.

Who can argue with Dolly Parton?

And for a dose of OMG tragic with a taste of Rufus-how-could-you? also featuring some lesser people, and knowing my Rufus love . . . seriously, how?

Finally let's visit the Louvin Brothers doing a different song, the ever popular murder ballad Knoxville Girl.

alls I'm gonna say

Okay, we've all heard about the Balloon Boy kid and his parents worried sick about poor baby floating away in the UFO. I have very little in the way of opinion.

I do however have one question. Was America glued to this story out of concern, or did they just want to be watching when his little ass plummeted to earth?

takin the fam to the show-thanks Momma!

Tuesday night saw the whole family, me, Momma, Big Brother and The Boy, enjoying a night out at a local theater (or theatre as the Bijou prefers to refer to itself.)

We went to see one group but were mesmerized by the opening band. I have to admit to being proud of both kids. Big Brother makes me proud because he's open to new stuff and enjoys so much that kids aren't generally expected to like. To me it's not so much proof that my kid is special as much as it is proof that kids are cool. The Boy made me proud because he totally behaved in public even though he is what we might call in the south a bit of a fussbudget. That's a nice way of saying that he's ornery in his pickiness (bless his heart.)

We went to see Andrew Bird and were lucky to also get to see St. Vincent. I've included videos just down there a bit, and if you want you can skip ahead to the listening and not even bother reading anything else I've written. It might be your best bet actually.

First, St. Vincent, I had no idea what to expect. I'd read the blurb/interview in the local alternative newsweekly before realizing that they were opening for Andrew Bird who I'd been hoping to see for months since learning that he was going to be playing my small town. I have to admit that I went in with some air of impatience, looking forward to the band I wanted to see, assuming I'd sit patiently waiting, but St. Vincent put on a great show. Someone behind me, between songs, put it succinctly when he yelled, "We're enjoying your set!" Total Ktown moment that.

Part of my choosing the videos for the songs I'm posting is that I wanted good versions of live performances without having to use versions from talk shows (fuck Kimmel and Letterman in this instance.) I'm okay with at least decent sound and maybe a little crowd noise, but I really wanted to at least attempt to capture the feel of live, which of course isn't going to happen in YouTube videos in a blog post, but a girl wants to try.

Before we get to the music, set your television recording devices to PBS on 10/24 to catch both bands on Austin City Limits. You'll thank me.

So here is St. Vincent doing their song Now, Now.


Momma and I have been fans of Andrew Bird for a few years at this point. I was fortunate enough to see him in our small town a while back and loved the show. He's a great performer and is kinda on the hot side, which doesn't really mean shit in this instance. It's just an extra something.

Again, I wanted a video that at least nearly captured some amount of something you might get live, but having covered that as impossible already I'll just throw out the video. Actually, I'm giving you two Andrew Bird's. First is his song A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left which is one of his more popular songs. It's fine and all, but the second video is actually him sans band doing one of my favorite of his songs, Glass Figurine.