is it secret? is it safe?

The scene, Big Brother and The Boy are playing The Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure which characters either are pretending to be, but what I do know is that there, on The Boy's finger rests the One Ring. You know, . . . one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Yeah, that ring.

I don't question, and I don't nose around any more than is healthy. You'd have to have been living under a rock not to know of this ring and the power it has, not to know the true owner is ever watching for his ring. We won't mention that other fellow searching for his precious.

No, tonight is no night for worrying with that ring. I've got a chicken in the oven and a timer set. Fifteen minutes at 450 and up to an hour more at 350. I've got vegetables to cut and toss in halfway through. I've got sitting on my ass on the sofa to do.

I have a cigarette to smoke as soon as the chicken is in the oven, and The Boy is right there, light saber . . . err, I mean battle sword in hand.

"Do you still have the ring of power?" I ask, settling back in the plastic chair.

"No, I ate it," he answers.

Whew! It really was just a pretzel.

mildly unamusing anecdote

Supper last night was polenta with a sausage and tomato sauce. To add a vegetable Momma stirred in a bag of spinach. All in all it was a very tasty meal, and both the boys ate their share. The Boy did pick his spinach out, and he did only eat a bit over half what we served him, but it was nice that he ate what he did. Big Brother, as usual, disliked nothing about the meal and got himself seconds.

Momma cooked most of the meal. While she was getting the sausage and tomato sauce working I started the polenta. Polenta is easy if a bit of work. We use a version of the Joy recipe, three cups of water on to boil, one cup of water mixed with one cup of corn meal stirred into the boiling water.

The alternative method would be to bring four cups water to a boil and slowly sprinkle in the dry corn meal stirring contstantly to prevent lumps. Lumps in polenta are not entirely impossible to get rid of, but they do became a rather large pain in the ass.

Either version works, but more important to keep in mind is to maintain the merest boil at the lowest heat reasonable. Polenta boils like nothing else I've cooked so far. Before it really has a chance to thicken it tends to boil hugely in that it bubbles big and may just shoot you in the arm with a blast of scalding corn meal. So get the heat turned down quick.

I stirred the polenta for a while then let Momma have a turn before taking it back over so that she could do other things. The polenta finished cooking enough for our taste and got a bit of salt, pepper and some parmesan cheese. A nice spoonful of the polenta topped by a lovely spoonful of sausage, tomato and spinach sauce and finished with a bit more parmesan all went into the bowl.

Momma prepared The Boy's bowl while I fixed a bowl for Big Brother at which point I did the thing. I caught myself wiping a bit of sauce drip off the side of the bowl, much as I would do at work, though not something I usually do at home. It was a mildly humorous moment, but I must admit the bowl of food was beautiful, and the kids deserve great service.

visiting the outlet

Any regular reader I have can attest to the steep decline in posts to this here blog. I think a lot of that has to do with some amount of gayness that I finally accepted. I've posted some of my thoughts recently, but somehow this never quite seemed the place to really be as open about things as I might have liked.

I easily accepted when the blog didn't become a homeschooling blog way back in the beginning, though I did orignally think that that was what I was doing. It was an amazing pile of homeshoolers who also blog that prompted me to begin blogging, and I loved it from the beginning. Time passed and things happened, but the blog mostly remained the same. I was getting into a groove that I quite liked.

Then some other things happened and the gayness, and suddenly I just didn't feel that the thing I'd built was the place to share. Only recently did I realize that I could just start a new blog. It's not that I don't want the gay to infect the desk full of clutter I never seem to clean, but I just never was comfortable sharing quite as much as I feel I need to write.

So I've begun a new blog. Because I am a gay full of clutter I've chosen that as the name for the new blog. It's all gay all the time. It's the dumping ground for the things that don't go here. It hopefully gives me the outlet I need for the gay so that the desk can once more become the bright shiny thing that captured your little eyes in the beginning.

So click over and add the feed or don't. I don't care. But if things work as planned I'll have two different outlets for the nonsense I try to pass off as thought. By giving vent to the gay I'll make room for the other stuff that I used to write about and amuse you with.

Just think, you could be moments away from me finally posting another rant about a commercial that pissed me off just now. And before you know it there will be another quote of the day. Shit, I might even find a music video that you won't watch.

mouth meet soap

Be warned now that at some point while reading this there is some fair amount of chance that you will read something that you can never unread. I'm not saying, you know, I'm just saying.

I really just want right now to share with you the the horrible thing I said today. It isn't the most horrible thing that I said today, a day filled, it seems, with me saying horrible things. The most horrible thing was an extremely horrid yet funny joke involving a minor shaking hands with a good friend for a long time. It finds less notoriety than the other horrible thing I said solely because of the volume at which each were said relative to time and place. The horrible joke was only told to a few people, and if you want to know, ask in the comments and I might share. The other horrible thing had more audience than I intended.

One of the servers who worked lunch today actually approached the window within a couple minutes of the horrible thing I said and pointed out that perhaps my voice carries farther than I realize. Sadly, my voice does in fact carry, and I've know this since getting in trouble during church youth groups type activities when I never failed to get caught saying whatever horrible thing I said.

As a bit of a side note, I decided to learn how to say, "Hago las cosas que hacen que grita el bebé Jesús," a thing that some may consider horrible, after a Mexican coworker asked me if I went to church. I'm sure the news has gotten to her, though I can't be certain, concerning my interest in the fairer(as far as I'm concerned) sex and that was my immediate response, but I only know the English, having waited till just now to go to Babel Fish and get it translated. I add this only as a blatant attempt to raise my horrible-things-said score.

As we re-approach the main story I have to introduce you to Gruff. He's typical kitchen if not a little more punk than most. Our families have a little something in common though a different parent turned out to be the gay in their situation, and their outcome was somewhat different. I love working the line with him because he's great to talk shit to. He's a regular kitchen type, perhaps a little more punk than most. We say some crazy/stupid shit to each other.

Basically I told Gruff that I was going to rip his head off and douche my ass with the blood that gushed out of his neck.

And we were both on the line directly in front of the window looking out onto the dining room.

And my voice carries farther than I sometimes remember. Or maybe I'm just not bright enough to figure it out.

wild abandon

Hat tip to Todd X at Iced Tea & Sarcasm for the following video. I'm a little jealous that he actually got to see this up close and personal as the closest I'll get will most likely involve the song Rocky Top and absolutely no dancing, or at least nothing that should be called such.

It's a must see, so without further ado, dancing with wild abandon to Bjork's It's Oh So Quiet in San Francisco's Union Square. And I really love the random people that dance past the camera.


And because I couldn't stand not to hear that song again in better quality I give you the video.

should've just shut his ass up

Of the widgets on my Google homepage, a couple are news feeds about soccer. I get the little headlines about international soccer and sometimes a tidbit about our own Major League Soccer. I rarely actually click on any of them, only skimming the headlines often enough to know when they change.

HERE is a story I did click on, and I'm curious as to what people think about it. A fan captured on video another fan yelling a racial slur at a player who had just scored. The filming fan posted the video on YouTube, and the racial slur somehow got the attention of MLS. They claim that the racist fan will be barred for life from all league games as soon as they can learn his identity.

Racism has no place in sports (or anywhere else for what it's worth) and it's especially ugly in a sport that can be argued to have brought more of the world's people together than anything else.

So, is a lifetime ban taking away the rights of the fans to express themselves, or is it completely justifiable in the attempt to stamp out the ugliness of racism?

P.S. Maybe soon we'll see more people willing to stand up against homophobia in sports as well as players finally start to come out and admit they are gay.

because you need to know

Hard Knox Roller Girls site is finally up and looks for real awesome. Go visit, check out all the cool things, buy some merchandise and most importantly, check out the schedule and start making plans to attend each and every bout. It's really the least you can do.

And because you need to know, someone is back. Momma attended practice last Wednesday and is so back that the derby world felt a bit of a tremor and still doesn't know if it was an earthquake or the return of one amazing jammer.

thirty seconds for your candidate

There's no way I can do this in thirty seconds, partly because I don't get anything said in thirty seconds, partly because I have to be contrary. It's who I am.

I'm getting to the Thinking Parents question a little early this time around, and I'm a little curious as to who actually decided that this time around we are to write a thirty second pitch for our presidential candidate of choice.

My candidate of choice, Mike Gravel, is running as an independent and will obviously not become president. However, of all the candidates, I feel that he speaks more to the larger variety of issues that concern me, and I feel that his ideas are what we need to really turn our country from the direction we are headed currently. I don't see either of the two likelier nominees as distancing themselves nearly enough from the status quo other than to lean it slightly more toward the progressive ideals that I have. Of course why ideals such as equality for all people should seem progressive as opposed to overdue is beyond me.

As for Hillary versus Barack, I still lean toward Hillary. I can't help myself. I like her stance on gay issues and on health care a fraction more than his, and I feel that she's gotten shit on by the media throughout the race. I don't dislike Obama. I just like Hillary more. I'm sure I'll end up voting for him in the end.

I really wish people would take more chances early on in the process. I wish more that the media didn't get to decide for us who our final choices are going to be. I wish Clinton's and Obama's supporters had been less shitty to each other, and I wish the candidates would both have kept the voters in mind, had given thought (rather than paid lip service) to the idea of uniting the country around the ideals that Democrats are supposed to believe in. I wish that, for once in my life, as I say every four years, I was given options that made me want to vote.

So, Gravel for president in a better world, likely Obama in the reality that I have.

my mouth on t.v.

As mentioned, Hard Knox Roller Girls played a bout this past Saturday night. Unbeknownst to me, we had some fine folks from one of our local channel's news, and they featured roller derby where it belongs, with the rest of the sports.

Follow THIS LINK to see WATE feature barely any of me, just a little mouth in the beginning. You'll also see Momma and a friend cheering on our girls, Momma in the light green shirt matching our girls' Goblynn Green theme.

Also of note in the video, Tank Her A knocking down a jammer and Drop Dead Gorgeous easing effortlessly through the pack.

Also worth mentioning, look for more derby to make a comeback in the blog as Momma plans her own comeback to derby. Hard Knox is getting the Skull back! HIP! HIP! Fuck Yeah! HIP! HIP! Fuck Yeah!

irksome ads makes a return

Easily one of the worst things I've ever seen in a commercial and a perfect example of why I so loathe commercials and advertising.

The ad is for Dixie Ultra paper plates. Sorry, but I can't bother to link. Look and see if your computer machine has Google and use that if you must know.

"I deserve a paper plate that's as strong as I am," she says in some sort of backward feminist home maker rhetoric that serves more to devalue her as a woman as opposed to something or other. I don't know exactly why it bothers me in the whole women-as-equals thing, but I'm sure it's there.

On top of that, the whole idea of being deserving of a paper plate of any caliber just doesn't seem to be anywhere close to widest narrow part of the hierarchy of needs.

Seriously? Paper plates as need? You just failed at life.

pissing people off . . . again

As seems to happen often enough, I pissed off at least three different people last night, though to their credit, two of them apologized for what was clearly their problem and not my own.

I'm not getting into too many specifics, but last night saw me behind the microphone once again announcing what was one hell of a roller derby bout. Though unable to gain the lead our much loved Hard Knox Roller Girls played amazingly.

So on to the pissing people off.

Apparently plenty of people seem to think I do a good job as announcer. I, in my typical pessimistic and cynical and self deprecating sort of way assume that they mean to say I do a good enough job or that I'm okay till they find someone at least as competent as me. It's this sort of thing I do where I have trouble having nice thoughts about myself and my abilities, but that's been covered often enough throughout the recent postings.

I've long had a problem with the reffing in roller derby bouts. I don't want to be the sour grapes guy and suggest anything other than that too many refs just don't seem to quite get the rules, and in any sport, if you give the athletes too much space, there will always be some that jump at the chance to take any advantage they can.

Many penalties were missed last night, and many attempts at rule breaking were missed. If you see someone attempt a trip but not succeed do you still punish the attempt? Is a baseball slide into someone's ankles as bad as trying but failing to baseball slide into someone's ankles?

Over the time I've been announcing for HKRG I've gotten more comfortable with what I'm doing, and sometimes I see things that the refs apparently missed, like the cheap shot into the back while the skater getting hit was already out of bounds. Yeah, the ref completely missed two fouls at once, but I didn't, and I told our fans about it.

Part of announcing for me is to inform the fans as much as possible about roller derby. It is new to so many of them, and if you are not familiar with the sport you may well see it as a huge nearly free for all of speed and skates and cute girls and hits. But it's my job to set you straight, to let you know that it is a sport, that there are rules, that regardless of what the refs do we can inform ourselves of the rules and demand better.

Two different refs and one of the opposing skaters, at different times, demanded that I stop calling penalties. I informed the refs that I was just doing my job of announcing and went so far as to tell one of the refs that if they weren't going to call the fouls then not to get mad at me when I did. I'm personally sick of seeing derby being degraded by teams/skaters flaunting the rules and making it unfair and unsafe.

The third person to demand I halt my calls was the skater from the other team. The irony of this is that she was in the penalty box when she shouted at me. My answer was quite simple. I told her that if she wanted me to stop calling fouls then maybe she should stop committing them. She was one of the three to apologize after the bout was finally over. We hugged and commiserated and had some laughs together at the after party. She's an amazing skater and one of her team's best, so it really sucks that she can't manage to stay within twenty feet of the pack.

And that's my story. I roll through life in a pissing-people-off sort of way. Or so it seems. Maybe that's part of me coming off as an asshole. Maybe I'll look into that one day.

or not

birfday greetin'

Happy birthday to one of my favorite blogs, Ugly Sheet Cake. The name pretty much says it all. If you love getting to see some truly ugly cakes and the occasional less ugly cake, then pay Collidah a visit.

without children

The newest topic for the Thinking Parents wiki asks what we would be doing if we'd not had kids. I hadn't really considered one aspect that I've only seen with Doc and Molly, and it was the latter who mentioned it, but I add myself to those that didn't necessarily intend to have kids before doing so.

Okay, admitting right now that I attempted a couple times last night to write this post and didn't quite like the direction it turned any of those times. I'm trying yet again, and we'll wait to see how this one turns out. It's partly the entrance of personal history that I didn't really consider when considering how to approach this topic..

What would I be doing if I didn't have kids? Where would I be?

I can't imagine where I'd have ended up living. Hailing from Atlanta, I moved to Charlotte in the mid '90's, happily and often loudly proclaiming myself bisexual, though I really did know better. I'm somewhat certain that, considering Big Brother's approaching arrival prompted our move to Knoxville, I'd not have moved here, though I'm equally certain I'd have moved or at least attempted to leave Charlotte.

There was a summer, my first in Charlotte, of sort of breaking away from the old person I'd been, though I can't claim I did a great job of that. We could also accurately call it the summer that I began drinking in earnest and sold enough acid to pay for the acid I ate or shared with friends. I spent days at a time tripping wherever I was. I dropped alone and even dropped alone when I had other things to do. I was high at work. I tripped so often that summer that people often didn't know whether or not I was on any given day.

I met Momma at this time. There was no interest between either of us, in fact quite the opposite. We both eventually went through a bit of trouble separately, and life pulled me in new directions and pulled us closer to each other. I had no concept of future and certainly no concern. In fact, her becoming pregnant was what really pushed me to a point where I was finally thinking about things outside of how high or drunk I was or was soon going to become.

I'd likely still be in kitchens as far as work goes. I'd be drinking a lot. I'd probably be a fairly slutty person but in a totally good way. If possible, I can see myself even more cynical than I find myself now.

I can't honestly say that any scenario is certainly what would have occured. I can imagine lots of things as well as give a best case scenario. I'd probably be a bit more of the punk I was. I'd have come out much sooner. I'd be that anomaly, the gay punk, as opposed to the married with kids gay I became instead. Perhaps I'd have controlled my drug/drink intake and have climbed a corporate ladder at any of the chain restaurants I worked around the time, though one must admit that drug/drink control will likely never be a trait featured by most of us in the business.

yesterday

Yesterday's day at work actually began the night before. I was one of the closers Tuesday night and pretty much ended my night taking out the trash.

I could hear a lovely sloshing sound at the bottom of the first can, so after I hefted the tied at the top garbage bag out I flipped the can over, upside down. I repeated this operation with the four remaining trash cans, leaving them in a row, half on the concrete slab behind the gpub and half off in the gravel next to the concrete.

I opened the next day, and after the owner, I was the first person in. My first job of course was to go and fetch those same four trash cans, line them and place them around the kitchen. The previous night ended weatherwise with a bang, showers and downpours leaving our town damp and my place of employment a muddy mess, at least in the back where I'd left my trash cans.

Each of the trash cans had picked up their share of mud and funk in the little turned edge at the top. I flipped each can upright and dragged them into the dish area. My idea was to quickly spray off the mess, but my plan wasn't quite what I ended up with.

The first couple of cans were easy enough if a bit unweildy. I think it was the third can that was the worst. Wrestling it into submission I lost control for a moment. It flipped upward to where the rack is that holds racks for dirty glasses. I knocked one off, an extra large one that is tall enough to hold our unusually tall wine glasses.

I think we lost four wine glasses, another miraculously not breaking as it landed. The glass rack itself bounced off my hand. In addition to the mud and gravel I knew I needed to clean I now had a mass of broken glass. Conscience dictates, or should, that one insure they've cleaned up all broken glass when one has an accident involving glass. I picked up the biggest pieces and squeegeed the remaining contents of the entire table into the trash can.

Adding insult to injury, my attempt to do right also resulted in a huge muddy trail running from the door to the dish area. Someone else was nice enough to clean that mess while I was busy cleaning glass and wondering how hurt my hand really was.

At some point later in the day two coworkers had a bit of a tiff over space issues. We really don't have a lot of room for prep, but when we work together (and certain of us can stop being pricks) it all works. Today, these two people just would not even bother.

At one point, the bitchiness involved one person banging dishes and foodstuffs around in anger. This brought the other to the tipping point as he began his own stomping and banging and bitching declaring that everything the other person was doing was, and I quote, "faggot ass shit."

I tried to ignore this and did for an hour or so, sort of, but the general shittiness of him saying such, with me standing right there a foot away, I was taken aback at the time. Beyond that, his anger was not worth inserting myself in the middle of. So I tried to forget it and put my head down and work. I do too much of that. Also, while he was bitching I somehow managed to accidentally bang my head on the corner of the wall.

Coworker finally realized that something was bothering me and asked. I asked him, considering the situation, what about it was exactly faggot ass shit? He didn't quite get it, so I reminded him what he'd said.

He laughed for a moment and tried to assure me that he hadn't been talking about me. I told him that I knew for a fact that he hadn't been talking about me, that I knew exactly what he was discussing at the time and asked again what it was about the situation that was faggot ass shit. He again tried to assure me that he hadn't meant me, but I had to make him understand my point.

I'll take a moment and provide the knowledge that this particular coworker is black. We have another black employee that was working at the moment, and adding to the nonwhite kitchen population we'll include the three Mexican coworkers.

"Look around the kitchen," I told him. "Do you see anyone here about whom I could think of words to use that, though I may not mean that person would still upset them?"

I'm pretty sure he understood what I meant. He ended the conversation basically laughing at himself for what he'd done.

The rest of the shift was uneventful.

I left work around three. Momma let me know when I got home what she'd done supper wise which included having almost everything ready for me to cook. I debated with myself whether to cook before or after my shower that I desparately needed. The decision, a surprise, was made for me as I washed the press pot and my cup for some coffee. The water was obviously not right, not hot enough and not staying hot.

I knew immediately it had been the previous night's rain. My basement had flooded because, most likely, the pump had gotten clogged, and the water heater's pilot had been extinguished. This was in fact the case, and while it was soon remedied as far as getting the pump working, I still had to wait, listening for the pump, making sure it kept working, staying ready to go back into the basement and tilt it or stir up the muck.

The boys got healthy enough snacks as I watched the clock. I needed to be somewhere, preferrably around sixish. I arrived at seven, insisting first on a shower once the water was hot enough.

The appointment was at the new venue for bouts for our derby bouts. We have a bout Saturday, and last night was last minute sort of dry run/practice so our girls would have as early a heads up as possible about the quality of the floor.

It turned out I didn't need to go in the end. It was good to see everyone again, as we don't see the derby girls often at all since Momma dropped it. Plenty of kids were there, even a couple that we don't know. As usual the boys immediately made friends with the kids and played well all night.

So the night didn't end as poorly as the majority of the day would have one think it must. And what seems especially sad as I consider it, this doesn't even seem like a bad day at all considering some of the asshole days I've had lately. It was full of annoyances and the smashed hand from the glass rack, but it wasn't (or was it?) as bad as it seemed at the time.

not entirely gone from blogville

In a comment to a recent post Molly of Red Molly's Picayune Democrat blog asked about my well being. I knew it had been a while since I'd posted, but I looked today to see that it's been a bit over two weeks since my last post, and it was a sort of weekend update.

I will say up front that I can't be in too bad a shape. I manage to wake up everyday, go to work, feed the kids. I do what I have to do, but I can't say that I'm in especially great shape either. Too many things just seem pointless too many days of too many weeks.

Throughout my life I've run up against any number of questions. I'm good at questions, but all too often I just can't figure out answers that seem to make any sense. Maybe one day soon I'll post a list of all the stupid questions that keep me flummoxed.

I'm just generally in a place where I feel very depressed and very discouraged, and that makes it difficult to want to post. I don't want to end up posting the same whiny drivel over and over. I don't want to keep wallowing in my bad feelings. I do want to find my way out of ending up here again.

And that's where I am. I keep wanting to post more, but life doesn't make it easy. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon as far as blogging goes, but there will sometimes be dead air when you tune in.

Yesterday was mostly fun, birthday party and no soccer. The Boy's season is over. Big Brother should have played his second to last game yesterday, but late-ish Thursday night the opposing coach called to try to postpone our game to later in the day. That was not possible because we had The Boy's birthday party. We now have that game to make up as well as the first cancelled-due-to-weather game of the season, and then we have the last scheduled game which will likely actually be the second to last game.

The Boy is quite the child. The picture of him in my mind has longer hair than he has now, because Grandma decided to cut it for him. He didn't want it cut, we didn't want it cut. The only person that wanted it cut had to offer him a ride on the lawn mower to convince him to let her cut it. I'm still pissed, and Momma and I both mentioned it to Grandma, expressing a bit passively our frustration.

He got all sorts of gifts. Great Grandmother watched him for a bit Friday night while Big Brother and I quickly shopped for him, the day after his birthday I'm afraid. He watched Cartoon Network at her house and expressed interest in the Hot Wheels Speedracer race track. One of the things Grandma found for him is a t shirt that says, "First let's do it my way, then let's do it my way." Even if the shirt itself doesn't, the sentiment fits him, and whether or not he gets the joke that the rest of us do, he's been quoting it all day and laughing. Big Brother took his own money Friday night and bought him a couple of the smaller Playmobile sets, one just a pair of soldiers with pikes, swords, plumed helmets, and he also got him a Playmobile chariot complete with horses and rider. Momma and I got him the toy he's played with the most, the one he fawned over the most upon opening, The Littlest Pet Shop clubhouse. It only had a monkey and squirrel, so I grabbed a dog too to go with it. He's loved all his toys, but The Littlest Pet Shop is where I keep finding him.

Okay, I don't know or care what that says about him. He's a great kid. His favorite color right now is blue, and he has blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. He loves sugar and crunching any candy he gets. He would eat cereal and oatmeal all day if we let him. He is teaching himself to write by copying things he sees. He asked me to spell out Momma's real name so he could write it in the Mothers Day card he made. He's been writing his own name lately. He wrote his name one day completely backwards, but the letters were also backward, so it's arguable that he was seeing it correctly. In Momma's card he wrote his name as well, and it's not backward.

He interrupts people constantly and complains the loudest when he is interrupted. He likes for Momma and I to do things for him, but he likes learning how to do things as well. He refuses to do what Big Brother tells him to do as often as he emulates Big Brother.

meme-a-lamma-ding-dang

Audrey was nice enough to tag me for a meme, and I need to stick a post out there anyway, forcing myself not to go an entire week of not posting again. I'm supposed to post the rules at the top, and I had highlighted and copied them to do just that when I decided to just not do it. I'm not going to tag anyone at the end anyway. I treat it more like a Myspace survey that all your friends get when you post it as a bulletin. They can do it or not, and so can you.

What was I doing ten years ago:
As of this date, ten years ago I'd lived in Knoxville and been married for about three weeks. I was working at a brewpub, now closed, though the original is still open in Clarksville. Momma was about four or five months pregnant with Big Brother.

Five snacks I enjoy:
In honor of the new job and the fact that it sadly makes up much of my diet these days, I will give you my five favorite things that I snack on there.
-grana padano-a hard Italian cheese similar to parmesan(sort of) though I'm not sure if ours is really Italian or the same thing produced elsewhere, though knowing the owners it'll be as close as they can get. I take the vegetable peeler and shave off a nice flat piece
-lamp chop-has to be rare. I've noticed a certain love/hate relationship I have with lamb and realized it most likely has to do with rareness. This is probably also the rarest snack as lamb is expensive, and we try not to overcook it, and when it is overcooked no one really wants it.
-haricot verts-thin French green beans. We steam them just a bit so that they're perfect for salads. I love them cold with nothing but bean, though a quick toss in a saute pan with some butter and salt would be nice too.
-bread pudding-ours has dried cranberries and is made with fairly big hunks of the baguettes we use. One day I grabbed what I thought was a bite of bread pudding and got a mouthful of chunk of sugar. It was a bit much, but I ate it anyway.
-prime rib-we cook off three or four a day, and at least one is sliced for sandwiches. We reheat them when we need to make a steak sandwich using a sautee pan and a little au jus and demi glace. Often there are little chunks of the steak still there after finishing the sandwich, or I could just admit that sometimes I save myself a bite.

In the real world I am:
way more neurotic than people realize

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
My source for the tag doesn't say Five things, but Audrey put five. If someone would be kind enough to contact the meme authority regarding whether Five should be added to this line I would appreciate it.
-travel-probably the very first thing I would do is decide with Momma where we want to go as a family and then invite some friends with kids and go there and do stuff. If I had the money I would travel my ass off.
-help out some family and friends
-I want a loft downtown and a house just north of downtown, assuming after all the traveling we haven't decided to move elsewhere
-open a restaurant
-after setting up my children to be as financially independent as they want at a certain age I'd start finding good ways to get rid of the excess. No one needs that much money.

Five jobs that I've had-
-security guard-for three years, my personal record for length of time working for a single company, matched only by the pizza place
-dishwasher-do you have a Darryll's in your town? I hated that damn job. They use more random dishes than any place I've worked. So many plate sizes and bowl sizes and glasses for desserts and boats and crocks and ramekins, and the place was huge, and it turned out the general manager and the accountant were getting busy which has nothing to do with the story
-junior counselor-at a christian youth camp in western Wyoming. It was one summer and all I earned was the experience, but it was worth it, hearing people talk about driving over Gyp Crick, archways made of antlers, learning to drive stick shift driving up and down the driveway of the ranch family I spent weekends with
-kitchen manager-I thought I'd earned this job at the aforementioned brewpub, but as the GM had pointed out at some point, I was generally a bit of an ass and spoke my mind much too often. Those weren't her exact words by a long shot, but it is an accurate enough version. I was KM at the pizza place for quite a while.
-cook-the thing I do. I'm not a chef and don't generally like the title. I don't like the idea of referring to someone as "Chef" and don't plan to. I really just think it's silly, like people correcting you if you forget to refer to them as Dr. Douchely instead of Mr. Douchely

Three of my habits:
-chew my fingernails-I actually quit once, many years ago. I had nails for some time and even had to clip them on occasion. Then I started again for some unremembered reason.
-I still yell too much, though I'm really working on it and am doing it less and less
-smoke-I still enjoy smoking. I know how bad it is and that I should quit. I'm quite aware of all of that thank you very much.
-speaking of smoking, a fourth habit-when I finish writing a post I go out and smoke before coming back in to edit and post the post.

Five places I have lived:
story time childrens. This almost seems familiar, so if you've read it before you can read ahead in your book while the other children read along, or you can read along with everyone else, or you can just lay your head on your desk until we're done.
-Atlanta, GA-technically south Dekalb but the mail said Atlanta. Born and raised until one fateful evening when I got drunk at a boy's house and let a girl talk me into leaving for . . .
-Charlotte, NC-attended the pride parade within a week of moving there, had an apartment with mostly high school kids, washed dishes at Darryl's Restaurant and Bar
-Rock Hill, SC-after my "friends" sold and/or ate my stash of acid instead of selling it to get me out of jail I made new friends, one of whom was a cook at Darryl's and needed a roommate to live in a tiny shack
-Stockbridge, GA-back to Georgia for about three month and we were so ready to move back to Charlotte when a friend called needing a roommate
-Knoxville, TN-my favorite of the bunch. Ya'll come see us some time.

What do you want others to get from your blog:
I don't know quite what to say here. In some sense I blog for myself and write what I feel like. In some other sense I do understand that I'm presenting a certain something that is me to the world, and I even edit myself to a small degree out of some respect for the variety of readers I might have. I like the idea of making friends with people from hither and yon through the blog. Also, Robin Williams sucks.

And I changed my mind. I'll tag Franklin who in less than a week has gotten linked from me twice.

an art discussion

My slightly more clean than a week ago garage was home to an argument recently between me and a friend, Franklin. He decided to bring the argument onto the internet tubes which requires I answer in kind. Feel free to click over and pay Franklin a visit and read his misguided opinion as my post mostly answers his arguments with my own as opposed to a more normal presentation and discussion of ideas that I might go into were this one of my normal rants.

The argument is whether or not food is art. I will allow that foods can be used to create art, and I will even add that I feel food can be presented artistically, but I do not believe that food is art.

A main argument is that art can be created out of disparate elements, things that would not generally go together, and they can be put together in a way that tells the story the artist intends or to elicit some feeling or emotion. Food however, if one intends to create good and edible food, needs to be created with elements that go together.

The suggestion that anything edible appeals to someone is invalid in my opinion. Certainly we have to accept that certain cultures enjoy foods that other cultures wouldn't recognize as food, but that suggests that culture has less to do with it than familiarity.

The majority of foods people eat are rather old combinations. Over time, as people have experimented with food combinations, things that don't work were allowed to fall by the side. They don't work because the vast majority of people have agreed that they are not good combinations, that they don't produce good food.

Art encompasses a variety of mediums, and it is possible to create work that some will call art while others see as not art. Food is created from a variety of elements and can be produced using a variety of tools, but in the end the food must taste good and be edible. Art can be either ugly or beautiful and need not even make sense. Food, along with being edible and good flavored needs also to be presented well. A diner presented the very finest dish of perfectly seared scallops atop a perfect portion of garlicky grits will indeed be happy, though if you place it under a dome covered in shit and vomit, even though the shit and vomit never touch or befoul the food, the same diner will likely move along to the next option.

It's really more about certain inherent rules. Art need not be pretty or attractive to be appreciated. Food must maintain a certain dynamic of attractive and flavorful in order to be acceptable as food.

p.s. a little edit to add that the great and mighty Wordpress apparently is neither as great nor as mighty as some would have us believe, otherwise they would let me sign in. I am registered there at least twice, one of my own and one via Franklin, and neither of them work.

I'd rather be

At the end of a recent post, Bigg said,

But that's the tragedy of being gay; not that we are so oppressed (because that's what makes you strong), but that there are so very few of us. Kinda makes me wish sometimes that we really could recruit the way the televangelists say we do, you know?

The first part of this quote has been stuck in my head since I read it, and it's been joined by another line that was said to me at work recently.

There's a guy there who is, while not especially fat, certainly contains a bonus share of girth. One of my first days I referred to him quite thoughtlessly as "biggun." I admit it was shitty, but to my lame credit, the moment he said something about it I stopped. I've even pointed out to another employee that it was sort of shitty to continue to refer to this person in terms of his weight issue.

This same large coworker was recently making jokes about my gayness. I truly don't want to be overly sensitive, and I don't expect the entire kitchen to restrain themselves. I understand fully that I work in a professional kitchen and that the norms of the environment require that we all be a bit thick skinned. But I also support the right of everyone to be able to feel safe and respected within that environment. I won't stand for racism or sexism at work, directed at me or at anyone else, and I also won't take homophobic comments.

I will remake the point regarding the environment. It's a kitchen. I understand and accept exactly what that means. I know the cucumber joke is going to come up, and I know I can either counter it with a snappy comeback neatly skewering the person making the joke, or I can fully agree with the comment and give them the shock that comes with that.

The large coworker, though I now don't recall what was said, was making comments that I felt were a little over the line. There was a certain intent in his voice that bothered me. I took a moment to remind him of the "biggun" day, pointing out that based on a single comment from him I had ceased making size based comments and had not made those comments since. If I thought that would help I was mistaken as his next comment proved . . .

The line that keeps running through my head much like a song that gets stuck, he said, "I'd rather be fat than gay." Of course I immediately told him I'd personally rather be gay, but how much can that really help when someone's opinion of you is automatically less based solely on such a minor detail as sexuality?

true holy days

Just learned another reason May is such a great month. I'll admit that I'd love to celebrate this with some friends, but at the moment, the only person I can guarantee would be involved is myself. I guess I'll start thinking about taking a shower soon.

However you do it, whether or not we join in personally or just through the knowledge that we are all doing it in private, perhaps at the same time, help celebrate National Masturbation Month.

It's not going to pull itself.