An Empty Room and the Right Kind of People

Woolly Rock

2007-09-03T22:35:00.000-05:00

We rarely travel on the Monday Holidays because I so crave the free short week that I prefer to plop on the ol' La-Z-Boy and watch whatever marathons the genre-specific networks are offering (today it was Beach Patrol on Court TV). I specify the niche networks (ie Sci-Fi, Court TV, etc) because there is that other marathon to contend with on Labor Day. But this holiday, owing to some family rough spots, we decided to get away for a little bit. Our newly arrived art museum newsletter prompted YHWH to suggest the Price Tower in Bartlesville and so it was decided.

On the trip up to B'ville we had stopped in Owasso and had lunch with my sister and her family. Despite our tenuous estrangement, we had a great time together over Greek food and made promises to do it more often. Then on to B'ville. The girls had never been and were delightfully surprised to find hi-rise buildings in our state outside of Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Of course it has the hi-rise, the only one ever built by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Price Tower. We did pay the five-star guidebook rates to stay in the tower, but as Super Giant Killer said, "It's not every night you get to spend the night in a museum." It was pretty cool I have to admit. Of course, I do have to admit it, otherwise I'd be a damn fool to spend that much money to stay the night somewhere.

So, we went to Kiddie Park and SGK rode some vintage 1960s amusement rides and then we took Sonic up to the room for the genuine Okie experience. The trip home the next day began with a tour of the art museum on the first floor, lunch at the famous Murphy's Steak House and an excursion out to Woolaroc. Ehh... Finally we wended our way through Osage County and the Tall Grass Prairie and on home. I just adore the TGP. It's my second-favorite place in the state next to my ancestral grounds in Dewey County (although they are quite similar).

The Moon is Blue

2007-08-26T10:31:00.000-05:00

I actually picked up the needles again after a four month hiatus. I'm making Super Giant Killer a pair of legwarmers. They'll be pastel purple and blue stripes. I'd post a pic of the early-eighties-aerobics-craze pattern (oversize sweater and wide belt optional) but I'm way too lazy for that.

Speaking of Jane Fonda, she was featured on TCM's Summer of the Stars (also too lazy to look and see if that's the actual title of the series) the other night. That's where they play almost a whole day of a particualr star's films. First of all, I find that idea to be exceedingly annoying. Once in a while it's ok -- say when a star has just died or something -- but come on, 18 hours of Broderick Crawford? Ok, so ambivalence reigned the other night when it was Jane Fonda's turn. She has always annoyed me. Much like Nicole Kidman does today. And no, it has nothing to do with Vietnam. One thing is that both actresses' mouths bother me (and not in the Gable-Lombard sense). But with Jane I'm pretty sure it's the bleating. The point is, though, that I DVR'ed most of them because I love a lot of her characters in the pre-Barbarella. Haven't sorted that part out yet. Here are the possibilities: a) I've always been fascinated by what was going on in the world during the time that I was alive, but can't remember anything -- the unquenchable thirst of the historian; 2) similarly, I'm fascinated by the roles of women in that period between the late 50s and the women's and free love movements and try and figure out how my mom and aunts fit into those roles; and d) when I was a kid and I watched Jane Fonda movies, I always thought that (since she often played whores and kept women) it must have been weird doing those things with her father's friends. By the way, where are all the kept women these days? Anybody know why there are no kept-women movies anymore? Maybe there are and I don't see them (Flatulus?). Those are some of my faves from the era: Butterfield 8, The Apartment, Boeing Boeing, Any Wednesday. Maybe there aren't anymore kept women?

Still with me? C. F. Kats let me cruise around with her last night after Chinese food and thrifting. That was nice of her and I had a great time.

Today we are going to attempt to make some Cute Dolls from the new Aronzi Aranzo books. Here's a sample:

Personally, I like the Bad Book.

Do you not love the early evenings lately? I would love to have a decibel meter to determine just how loud those cicadas are. YHWH and I got out the car the other night and realized we had to yell at each other five feet apart to be heard.

Almost. Always. Again.

2007-08-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

OK, I guess it’s safe to come back. Based on recent retributive actions at the Last Public Place in America, I had a quasi-panicky reaction to posting until I could review my previous posts. But I did not give out any specifics and I only mentioned how much I simply adore the job. In fact, I think the only negative thing work-related was the cowardly anonymous hate comment I got a few months ago. So I think Gary has blown the all-clear sireen. Famous last words, huh?

I‘ve toyed with the idea of keeping this thing subscription-only, but where’s the risk in that? Between open access blogging and unsafe sex with dirty needle users, I guess I’ll take the blogging. Consorting with heroin addicts and trips to Africa will land you on the banned list at the blood institute and I’d hate to give up my only charitable outlet.

Still, I can’t promise it’ll be interesting anymore (if it ever was) with the Last Public Place and C. F. Kats off limits; they’re the most catalytic post-generators out there. And the most universally interesting. You’d think that since my friends make up the largest readership, there’d be plenty to talk about, but I realized the other day that I must be the weird friend or the charity friend of all my friends because I have very few common interests with pretty much everybody. Let’s run it down:

Baseball…maaaybe Purple Bunny
Knitting…Tex and Ste. Rose
Football….Guy and Tex sorta
Music… hmmm… cue Jeopardy theme …
Civilization … absolutely nobody
Politics… I always get the feeling I’m the token centrist or (relative) right-winger
History … hmmm … maybe everyone, but probably no one

That leaves out a lot of regular readers…
(And, no, I do not know why I have all these ellipses here)

Anyway with this nascent book career going – one on the shelf, one on the presses, one under consideration – and my three regular writing gigs at work, I’m running pretty low on creative energy. One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately is thinking about me and Kats. I decided to try and write a poem about us after I interviewed a couple of poets for a work project. I have never understood poetry, but some of the things they said made me want to try to write some for the 35,000th time. It’s not going very well, so don’t worry you won’t have to read it! One thing I did was try and think of who would write the novelization of our relationship and I decided it would be Thomas Hardy. YHWH quickly agreed. The movie would be directed by M. Night Shaymalan, mainly because of the many Sixth Sense correlations.

So who would write the novelizations of your big relationships? Or movie, if you're not a reader.

Hypnotized At Seventeen

2007-06-21T16:29:00.001-05:00

Yes, we are back from our trip. We extended it one more day by staying the night in Wichita at one of our favorite hotels -- the Hotel at Old Town. Highly recommended if you're ever up that way.

The highlight of the day in Wichita belonged to SGK. I hunted up a rock shop for her - or as it is known in the trade, a lapidary supply - and she nearly went into hysteria. She found real-life speicmens of all the minerals she had been reading about and they were 90% off to boot as the store was closing after 25 years. Overwhelmed, she could hardly contain herself as she browsed shelf after shelf of rocks and gems of varying sizes, shapes, and lusters. And, she would add, striations and cleavages. I'm not sure what those are, but she was rattling off the Mohs scales numbers and alternate names of everything. Oh, and toxicity. Yeah, she really wanted this glass-encased orange and yellow stone called orpiment. I've never heard of it, but it apparently emits a cyanide residue if you handle it. So, of course I bought it. What kind of father would I be if I didn't buy my ardent little petrologist (geologists study the earth, dad!) a poisonous rock? As long as she discovers a gold mine, diamond vein, or huge deposit of oil, I'll consider it money well spent.

One downer for the trip is that I learned Quik Trip is in a collusion deal as I suspected. A clerk at one of the stores told us. It's with Love's Country Store of all the g**amn places. Which would you rather have: a cheerful, friendly staff offering an exponential range of delicious refreshing beverages in a glowing red and white building beckoning you like your favorite grandmother telling you to, "come into the light..." or a rundown, dirty yellow and red hole-in-the wall with overpriced bottles of Coke sold to you by a haggard clerk who obviously resents having to work there? Quik Trip has been one of the Top 100 Places to Work in America for six years in a row; Love's has a tacky 1970's hand-drawn-by-the-founder's-three-year-old-granddaughter logo of cascading red, yellow, and orange hearts.

I'll bet I find out that Culver's is in collusion with Braum's. Why else would a quick check of their locations map reveal a crescent-shaped arc around the Oklahoma City market? Once again, we lose out. Braum's hasn't updated its stores or image in, what, 20 years? The stores all look tired and beat and they haven't had a new item on the menu since Reagan was in office. Culver's has 10 kinds of frozen custard, reubens, Philly cheesesteaks, something called a Butterburger (aka Myocardial Infarction In A Sack), turkey melts, and their kid's meals actually have a character, Scoopie, associated with them. Oh, and free wifi. Braum's has hamburgers and fries, ice cream and yogurt. I don't hate Braum's - it's just 'OK' - but it's not Culver's. This is probably unfair because I don't know for a fact that there is a deal there, but it's obvious something is up.

Why do I care about this? Why should you care about this? See, this is what the founding fathers meant when they forbade collusion -- inevitably, people in a certain market will be oppressed by a lousy c-store chain, a lack of Mr. Pibb, and grungy dairy stores and that violates their right to the pursuit of happiness.

Other random facts, observations, and reflections from the trip:

When we went into Cero's Candies in Wichita, we did meet a bubbly and friendly person who seemed to rise in defiance of my opinion of personality-deprived Kansans. You get someone like that in a room with YHWH and you will get 'the story'. We did. She's from Tulsa. The streak continues. The candy is really good by the way and you get to see the production line.

The drive through that northwest corner of Missouri on I-35 is one of my most-despised routes. You see it on the map and you think it'll be easy; you zip right in, you zip right out. Like a Love's Country Store, only cleaner. But no, it's not like that. Like it's big ugly step sister, I-44 between Tulsa and St. Louis, that drive is a trip-killer.

I can't drive after lunch anymore. It has nothing to do with eating lunch because I rarely eat lunch on the road, it's just that the warm afternoon sun conks me out now that I'm old. Thank God for rumble strips. Of course since our travel day does not begin until 11:30am and everything closes at 5:00pm, I'm left with little choice but to exceed the speed limit with one eye, while the other eye gets a little, well, shuteye.

Next time I travel north of the 40th Parallel, I have to remember to bring a black eye mask. The sun comes up at like 4:30am up there and once I wake up, I can't get back to sleep. Since we don't start activities until 11:30, that's seven freakin' hours - practically a whole work day - I have to find something to do in a motel room.

I've always heard Wal-mart had for some reason singled us (ie Oklahoma) out for Anschluss decades ago when they began their aim of world domination. And while it's still debated whether they destroyed small-town America, my observations upon rolling through the upper midwest like we just did reveals that they have not been successful at destroying everything. There are still small downtowns wholly intact all across that region that have not been relegated to antique shops and crafters' malls. Not so our little state.

Despite my distrust of corporations, I really enjoyed the Spam Museum in Austin, MN and was reminded of how much I love Kellogg's Cereal City in Battle Crick, MI. Now, if the Oklahoma City revered its past as much as these corps do their products...

That's enough. Thanks for reading this far...

That's the Fare From Gothenburg to Barcelona

2007-06-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

Today was low-key reentry day as we got back on the interstate and ate a big chunk out of the return trip. Our only sidetrack was a stop at the Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education National Memorial in, well, Topeka. We could have made it home tonight, but the car was already late and we're having so much fun we decided to stretch it out one more day and stay in Wichita. So we'll be home tomorrow.

The Brown v. Board site was well done and I'd recommend it to anyone going through Topeka or looking for a day trip. It's in the actual school where it all happened and has a great mix of video, interactive, and documentary displays and a very friendly staff. Rather than being just devoted to the Brown v Board case, it works as a museum to the education aspect of the Civil Rights movement.

While I'm on the subject of National Parks, I would like to mention what a great place they must be to work. Obviously, I would love to work in a park; but I can't tell you what an oasis of friendliness the rangers are when you're traveling. I'll go ahead and indict whole states by saying that all the states we have visited with the exception of Iowa are not quite friendly and most of the hospitality and travel personnel we have encountered have been metaphorical bandits -- in effect they sit behind the counter with grim faces and say, "Hand it over." That didn't happen once in Iowa. I'm not whining, it's just that when you travel to places unfamiliar you are by nature in an unsettling position and feel somewhat out of sorts or blind in a way. A little hand-holding or a smile goes a long way for weary travelers. I try to remember that when I'm behind the desk. Kansas we noticed was not really unfriendly, but they just have a flat affect, like no personality at all. Of course, I realize I come from a perfect state... But, seriously, you can't say we don''t have personality. Even if you call us all hicks, that's something.

But the park rangers always seem to be courteous and friendly and chatty no matter which park you go to. That's why the guy at Effigy Mounds the other day was remarkable. It has to be the first time I've ever had a less than favorable response from a ranger. And even at that he wasn't rude, just brusque. And of course I'll be the first to tell you everyone can have a bad day, so I just blew it off. But how is it the Parks can maintain such high standards? Is it the training? Are they highly motivated? I'd love to know why. I always love going to the parks because you know you will be consistently treated well.

Papa Zulu

2007-06-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

Today was spent all in Iowa. We got off to our usual half-day start and left Decorah for the Effigy Mounds National Monument where we encountered a brusque and cranky ranger -- a very rare thing indeed. We went on a nice one hour nature walk to the top of the bluffs along the Mississippi. So far all the girls love Iowa and want to move here. The young'ns think everyone is nice and the big'n loves how neat and tidy everything is.

Next stop was Dyersville, Iowa home of The Original Field of Dreams Movie Site, Inc. I say that to differentiate The Left and Center Fields of Dreams. Sad to say, there are two competing tourist attractions at the site of the filming of the great Kevin Costner opus. One owned by the family who owns the house and the infield, the other by an investment banking firm which bought left and center fields and has a fancy souvenir stand. At first I was upset about the inestment souvenir stand, but then I thought, it's actually pretty cool because if you really love the movie, getting to make a choice between the field cleared of corn or a corporate enterprise allows you to become part of the ethos of the movie.

Every great road trip has to have discovery of a great restaurant. On this trip we have discovered a chain called Culver's. We think they are in collusion with Braum's because they have locations all around Oklahoma, but none within. It's mainly a frozen custard stand with great sandwiches and burgers.

Every great road trip also has a new catch phrase that cracks everyone up. On this trip ours is: She's got agates in her bra.

We wrapped up the day with visits to Amana Colonies and C.F. Kats' college potentials: Cornell College and Grinnell College (or as we call them, The 'Nells) and finally landed in Newton, home of Maytag.

Sayonara

Quality Chicks

2007-06-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

We've been incommunicado with no internet and spotty cell phone service for the last few days. It's been pretty nice, actually.

Wednesday we went up to Duluth and the North Shore of Lake Superior and then we swung east over to the Apostle Islands of Wisconsin where we stayed in the fishing cum tourist village of Bayfield. Our last morning there we ferried over to Madeline Island (the only remaining inhabited Apostle) and rented some bicycles to cruise around the island. It was actually pretty fun, but it was the one crisis point on the trip thus far. SGK wanted to try riding her own bike even though she hasn't ever quite mastered it and when we tried her out the poor thing was gripped with fear and couldn't get going. That was fine as they have the little tagalong bikes you can attach to the back and have the little ones pedal along with you. But she was crushed and had to pout which started me on a slow boil. Then she didn't want to get on the tagalong bike. Then we had to go through the whole, "I can't..." and "I'm scared" routine. You know how it is when you have someone going into hysterics. The only guide we really have for that is the classic TV/Movie scenario where someone goes into hysterics and their loved one gives them a hard slap across the face. No, I didn't do that but I did loose a few mild expletives in a low tone. It's where I fail with girls. As a boy all I know that work are the bullying things we grow up with like accusations of cowardice, girliness, and sissiness. Those don't work here obviously. But refusing to give in and coddle, I just ignored her, put her on the bike and took off. She was fine after that and we cruised around the wooded island for an hour and a half. She really loved it and I paid for my persistence with an hour of running commentary on a range of arcane topics.

YHWH absolutely fell in love with the whole of the Lake, though and SGK has rekindled her geologic passion, having discovered the Lake Superior Agate and rock shops. Our swanky auto now cruises a bit more sluggishly and the tires have a little less bounce owing to her rock haul. Thanks to Tex's gift of a mineral handbook, she now regales us with the Mohs scale hardness, luster, and classification of each rock.

We have all enjoyed our time on the trip so far, but the one shared opinion we have is that the people in the North Woods are not very friendly. We've discussed it a lot and we can't decided whether they are "unfriendly" or "not friendly" or whether we have too-high standards because of our own state's legendary friendliness. So far we have shrugged it off and figured it must be a Scandinavian thing owing to the stereotype of the taciturn Northern European.

So, signing out from somewhere on the Mississippi River...

It's Not A Problem

2007-06-12T23:59:00.000-05:00

Day Four

We got off to another slow start to day. I can't seem to get through to everyone that when you start the day at 11:00 am you only get to do half as much stuff, but I refuse to be a vacation Nazi, so I just bide my time.

Our first stop was downtown Minneapolis with the stated goal of visting the Mary Tyler Moore statue. We found it easily enough and it was very tastefully done, including go-go boots and little Jackie-O purse. She's just flinging her beret in the air.

We strolled around Downtown Minneapolis awhile and visited some of the big department stores since the girls haven't ever really been in one of those grand old style stores (when didn't shop much at all in NYC last fall). They weren't much wowed by it.

Finally, as we walked back to the parking lot, I felt like I had to turn around and go to the new Minneapolis Public Library even though I had been trying to avoid it. They spent $125 million on their new building and I wanted to see what they got for the money, but I was afraid of becoming envious. Thankfully, the building is really ugly and industrial looking so that helped soften blow. And from the outside it looks like one of the villainous craft stalking Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

Somehow, while SGK and I were in the Children's area, my amazing wife struck up a conversation with the librarian in the special collections room and we all got to get a special tour of the room and see some of the treasures including one of Audubon's gorgeous elephant folios. I also talked shop with a couple of the librarians and swapped a couple of war stories.

The rest of the day, we spent looking at college campuses for C. F. Kats, including Macalester and Hamline.

Finally, we went with Drew's family to a Minnesota Twins interleague game vs. the Braves. We had nice seats and it was half off. It was great fun even though the venue is horrible for baseball. I still refuse to side with owners, but not having ever been to a game in the Metrodome, I have always taken the side of the taxpayer in the notorious stadium squabble in MSP, but I have to say they really do need a new place to play. Actually, that doesn't mean I agree with the corporate thieves who want the city to build it. If they want it bad enough, they should build it.

A Mighty Wind

2007-06-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

Day Three

We met my old pal Drew mid-morning and began our hajj to the commercial mecca of the USA -- the Mall of America. You know, I absolutely loved it. It wasn't that hard to get to; it wasn't hard to park.

Most importantly, SGK got her first initiation into the world of amusement parks. You will recall they have an amusement park in side along with the four floors of shops. There's nothing like nudging them through the line, sometimes scaring them, sometimes soothing them and coaxing them into the little car on the rollercoaster and then after it's all over you ask them what they thought and they have a huge smile all over their face and they can only make breathless interjections like, "Wow!" And then the ultimate payoff...."Can we go again?!"

YHWH got 'the most comfortable shoes she's ever worn' and I found a nice retro Swatch like I had back in the 80s.

Laptop battery's about to go...

Think Over What You Just Said

2007-06-10T21:55:00.000-05:00

Despite YHWH leaving the key in door all night we had a purty good night's sleep. The only coffee place on campus was packed, so YHWH jumped out of the car to get us some joe, while the rest of us made the block several times. Finally, Killer was worried YHWH had been killed or kidnapped, so I had to go looking for her. Apparently, the Stomping Grounds uses a cup-at-a-time drip method to make their coffee and with the place being packed out, I guess it can take a while. Extremely delicious coffee though -- if you have time.

Next stop, Mamie Doud Eisenhower's birthplace in Boone. Mamie is much-loved by Killer who was so taken with her during our trip to D.C. last year. Unfortunately, although two of our guidebooks say her birthplace is open DAILY 10-5, we arrived to find it closed and a piece of white tape over the word DAILY and MON-SAT written over it. Killer took it pretty well, though and she and YHWH and Mr. Tom roamed the grounds for awhile and even sweet-talked the groundskeeper, but, she not being a keyholder, no help was forthcoming.

The rest of the morning was a leisurely drive through Iowa to a city which shares its name with C.F. Kats' boyfriend. Photo ops were taken advantage of. Eventually, we pulled into Clear Lake, Iowa for petrol and a visit to the Buddy Holly crash site. It was pretty fun to get to trek out into the middle of a soybean field to see the tastefully small shrine standing against the fence where the ill-fated Cessna bearing Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper came to a rest. C. F. Kats is a huge fan and this completes her visits to homage sites. Clear Lake was very nice and worth an extended stay.

Wrapping up the afternoon was the Spam Museum in Austin, MN. We got there with only 15 minutes to spare, but it was really fun and quite tastefully done. Killer and I picked up T-shirts for souvenirs, and we had our first fisticuffs of the trip. YHWH and I got into a fight after I told her it wasn't nice for her to say in front of the Spam ladies that we should get her brother a Spam shirt because it would be a hilarious joke. We were civil, and though we rarely fight in front of the kids, I do think it's good to fight in front of them sometimes.

Final stop was St. Paul where we met up with my oldest pal, Drew and her family and had dinner and ice cream at two local hotspots.

Everything's Up To Date In Ames

2007-06-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

Day One

As usually happens we got off to a less than ideal start. After we picked up our swanky blue Chrysler 300 from Overcoat we began the extensive loading process. It's a pretty roomy old-guy car with plenty of room, but we still didn't have enough room for everything. And just as we were pulling out we heard the rumble of thunder and sure enough, we were hit by a blinding rainstorm as we got to Guthrie.

Our mascot for the trip is a, well, stuffed turkey named Mr. Tom.

Our sweet ride had Sirius satellite radio in it, but we're an XM family, so we didn't know the stations. That's when I got the creative-family-fun-idea that we generate our own channel list by turning to each station listening for a few secs and then C.F. Kats or I would come up with a name. Some of the ones we came up with were Snag My Sari On A Synthesizer: A European Movie Soundtrack; Glo-ry! I'm Dizzy: A "Thank You, I Receive That!" Story; A Child's Garden Of Narcisses; The Hottest Thing I've Ever Tasted Was Silver Spring Jerked Chicken; Ponytails R Us; and finally the tragic Scotsman-sung ballad of loss and more loss rated the channel name Bobby Goldsbrrrrro's Kilt.

We did tire of that after an hour or so - they have over 200 channels by God - and somewhere east of Emporia, Kans. I slipped in my CD of number station recordings. Once they got over the eerie fear that grips you like the aural equivalent of a stroll through a deserted mental institution, the hypnotic recitations of numbers made them nod off. Although at first C.F. Kats did say, "I can't believe how easily everyone in this car accepts this!"

For lunch we decided to pull off at Emporia and get some sandwich stuff and have a picnic. We got the food alright and directions to 'the park', but upon arrival we were met by a toll-taking ogre collecting parking fees to park at the, well, park. Weird. There was a baseball toonament, but we just wanted to eat in the shade. No dice. So we drove for-ever until we found a cement-covered urban park/memorial to native son William Allen White. We all pretty well decided that we consistently find Kansas to be unfriendly even though that goes against conventional wisdom.

Our sojourn through Oz was rewarded, though, by a delicious QT raid just over the state line in Kansas City, Mo. Mmmm....cocaccino....

Skittering across the northwest tip of Missouri, we slipped into Iowa and uneventfully arrived in Ames, where we stayed in the stately Memorial Union hotel. Very cool. During the evening we strolled around Iowa State's Campustown area and ate some BBQ. The girls also got see Saturday night on the streets of a college town. And despite YHWH leaving the key in the door all night, we had a good night's sleep.

From the Land of Sky Blue Waters

2007-06-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

I've pretty much hit a creative brick wall of late. I don't knit anymore. I don't write anymore. I don't read anymore.

If it was the 1970s, I would just skateboard down to the arcade and drop a quarter into the biorhythm machine to figure out when my creative curve was going to turn the corner. But, like my short shorts and feathered hair, those days are bygone.

The Centennial projects required such an acute focused energy I've given over to blaming them, but who knows. At the Last Public Place in America I'm seeing a number of guys come in to ask for temporary cards and using their military ids for verification (read: Iraq/Afghan war veterans now living in homeless shelters). That really makes me feel hollow. And angry. Also today I saw a leg at the security area. Someone forgot their leg. How do you forget your leg? I didn't have time to find out what happened. The world is too much with me.

So, in the words of Boon Schoenstein, there's only thing to do... roadtrip! It's time for the annual family roadtrip. I'll try to report in from the road....

Of course, I have to figure out a way to watch the final Sopranos episode with the kids in the hotel room...

A Foul Ball Was A Moral Victory

2007-05-04T22:17:00.000-05:00

If you're the praying sort, I can use your help. I have pressing needs but I'm afraid the folks in this tower would hang up on me. I have two requests.
And really, it's not for me, it's for others who mean so much to me.

First, Le Choix is on Sunday and the latest polls have Sego dazed in the corner yelling, "Cut me, Mick!" Or rather, "Couper moi, Mick!" She could use your prayers.

Then there's the matter of the Dodger outfield.

Two of the three starters (Gonzalez and Pierre) are so old (in fact we only have two guys in the field who are under 30) they can't run anything down and the third, Ethier, trys to make the highlight reels every night by making acrobatic dives and ends up turning singles into triples. Their fielding percentages are .974, .975, and .959 respectively. Since many of my readers may be uninitiated, you may be thinking I'm off base by complaining that Ethier only catches 96% of the balls hit his way. Let me drag out the old airline analogy: there are about 87,000 flights per day in US airspace according to NATCA; if NATCA hired Andre Ethier to watch the skies we would have 3,567 crashes every day. That's a lot of RBIs people. I mean if they were hitting over .300 or had a dozen homeruns between them I could overlook this, but that's not the case.

Now, I learned not to pray for something specific, so I don't care if you pray for angels to speed these fielders to the ball, Matt Lawton to be miraculously healed (he's from OKC, and was hitting .429, fielding 1.000 before injury), or for us to simply win. I'm just seeking some intercession here.

I will say it has been fun this year, though. We've been winning a lot and with all the close games it's like watching the legendary teams of the 1960s -- except we don't have this guy, my hero. Go ahead, watch the video; you can spare 1:41 to watch one of the best ever.

Think Blue

A City On A Hill

2007-04-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

Super Giant Killer and I have been reading this eleven volume set of American history at bedtime for the last few weeks. We're almost finished with volume 2 which is about the establishment of the English colonies. To be honest I'm surprised she's stuck with it because she tends to be more science-oriented and will read about astronomy, geology, or geography before anything else. This is the only thing she could think of when asked what she wanted for her birthday:

Anyway, we got to the section on New England and she was really interested in that. As we read she kept making these deep sighs and saying, "Again with the religion!" Of course, you never can tell what exactly kids will make of something (Bill Cosby and Art Linkletter built careers on this, and I guess Linklater, too). So a few days ago, she gets on her mom's email account at work and fires this off to our pastor:

"Hey,Preacher! My Dad and I were reading about the Puritans and Quakers. Do you know anything about them? Well, a man had been away for 6 yearsand he kissed his wife in church- AND THEY THREW HIM OUT IN THE STOCKYARDS!!!!!!!! Whoa,they were REALLY religous! Also, a babysitter namedTituba made three girls be witches! Really true!!!!!! That's em'Puritans for 'ya!!!"

Ah, how little has changed since then... or as Ségolène would say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Pour an Parachutage, l'Atterrissage Est Réussi

2007-04-20T09:37:00.000-05:00

Well, this Sunday is the big day. No, not the 118th anniversary of the Opening of the Unasssigned Lands to Settlement. Not Earth Day. No, it's the Élection Présidentielle Française de 2007. Since you're wondering why I'm so interested in the French elections, I'll just come out and admit that I have a huge crush on Ségolène Royal.

I'm not exactly sure how or when exactly I developed this crush, and I've tried reconstructing it, but hell, it really doesn't matter. It was probably the name that first hooked me. I love several French female names that Americans don't hear alot. Around here, it seems you can add "ette" on to any male name and voila! shee ees Franch. You'll occasionally see an "enne" or two. The ones I like are Clotilde, Sandrine, Blandine, and now, of course, Ségolène. Plus, I love the irony that a Royal could be president of France.

Then, yes, OK, I will admit I think she's beautiful and graceful and charming and I shouldn't objectify and all that. But a) I'm not voting in this election, 2) let's face it, it's not everyday you see a beautiful socialist (ever seen Emma Goldman? ok, she was technically an anarchist) and d) I'm new at this; I've never had a crush on a presidential candidate before.

And then, she's got a sexy bio as well. Born in Senegal to colonial parents, she later sued her father for not adequately supporting his family, especially his daughters (it's more complicated than that, but shows how tough she is).

Today's polls say it's too close to call. I really hope she wins, though. What I'd be interested to see is if her election would have an impact on ours. It might actually help Hillary if people saw that the French, who can be even more chauvinistic than we are, would accept a woman president. Although, if that happened our countries' relations could get even worse since Ségolène recently approached Hillary and suggested they work together and she got the brush off.

I just hope Lisa Loeb takes it well when she finds out about my crush on Ségolène.

Speaking of France, they have an official national logo. I wish we had one of those. The French one looks really cool. Although, it probably wouldn't work because we don't have a good analog to Marianne (the eagle just doesn't do it for me and Lady Liberty is just a copy of her) and somehow e pluribus unum doesn't rally nearly as well as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". We're so sectarian and politically correct, we could never pull it off.

Birth of the True

2007-03-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

Baby Ella is finally here! Actually, she got here two weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to posting. According to my nephew, they ran out of caps at the hospital and my little last-minute-left-over-yarn-cap came in pretty handy. Hey, we Pisces have to stick together. Here she is with dad.

My nephew and I share the same birthday and we were hoping she would arrive on that day, but she just missed it. It'll be fun having a girl Pisces in the family. My sister loathes me and my nephew, so maybe we can recruit Baby E as an ally.

I always love how wise babies look... Or maybe like Charles Bronson.

I've been calling her Minnow Pea for months and no one has gotten it. I guess it's not that funny. But I'll probably call her that the rest of her life, poor thing. Or maybe I'll call her The Ella G Show. Here is a list of nicknames I called my nephews:

Lobs
Lobster Tail
Tail of the Lobster That Bit Me
Chief Hair-in-the-Face
Doughfus
Chief Spotted Foot
J'Ray
Dotsch
Mymy
Blotch
It's not as harrowing as it sounds. If you start calling them weird things when they're young, they just accept it as part of life and don't give it a second thought. It also gives them a rationale for understanding why their mother hates their uncle. I'm not sure what the motivation there is. I'd like to think she's jealous that she didn't come up with such great nicknames, but I'm sure it's much more deep-seated than that.

Does He Like Butter Tarts?

2007-02-16T17:21:00.000-06:00

This morning as I watched the 6:00AM rebroadcast of the local news I saw the report on The Great Peanut Butter Scare of 2007. "Naw," I thought. "Couldn't happen to me." I'm one of the great multitudes of people that nothing like that ever happens to (not that I'm complaining). I remember growing up that ever so often mom and dad would take a toy away and tell me that somebody said it was dangerous. Sure enough, some kid in East Whangdoodle, New Jersey had swallowed a piece of Blammo's Live-Fire Gatling Gun for Kids. Or some three year old in a southside tenement in Chicago was eating the paint off the walls and anything with lead paint (which was everything) got pulled. I'm not complaining about consumer safety, it's just even at age 7 I wondered, "who was that kid who ruined it for everyone?" I never swallowed bullets, I never ate lead paint, I never shot a star trek phaser in anyone's eye.

It's a little different, but I also always wondered: who was it that ate the red dye #whatever? Who ate those Jack-in-the-Box burgers in Seattle? Who ate the spinach? I'm not making light of their troubles, it's just I've never encountered many public health hazards. So, when I saw the report I blew it off.

Then YHWH comes in after watching it in the other room. "Hey, guess what Killer at for lunch yesterday?"

"Uhhh...The same thing I ate for my snack every day this week?"

"Yep, say hello to Sal Minella."

It's kind of pretty as killers go.

There's no punchline here, sorry. No one was rushed to the hospital. But I've been giddy all day because I purchased my first contaminated foodstuff (that I know of). I've now been involved in a recall. Even our Pinto's gas tank was not one of the exploding kind. But last Sunday I bought two - two - jars of Peter Pan Creamy Whipped Peanut Butter with number "2111" on the lid.

I authorize Adjective Queen to turn Empty Room a web memorial.

*ps I know how to spell salmonella

Love Is Like...Oxygen

2007-02-14T20:41:00.000-06:00

So, Valentine's Day. Never was much for those Hallmark Holidays. It was pretty much ruined for me forever back in 1980. I had two girls on the hook and life was easy. They fought with each other and I just sat back and soaked up all the attention and all the loot. But Valentine's Day 1980 I gave the girl I really loved a nice present (a shiny necklace from Service Merchandise) and the other one the standard Russell Stover red heart-shaped box. Bad mistake. I should've known the one would flaunt in front of the other. A red heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolate doesn't really look like it would hurt when it's thrown in your face, but it was cold that night and it did kind of sting.

I got each of my Vals the standard gift this year -- candy and a card -- and a small extra thing. Super Giant Killer got a Polly Pocket-Hot Wheel cross-branding toy (somehow I don't think Mattel cross-brands the Pollys with the toys on the boy side of the aisle).

And C. F. Kats got a little sumpin' I knitted up to hold her tiny mp3 player. It's the first thing I've ever made up, so I'm kind of partial to it. Here it is:

Check out these insane Valentines SGK got.

See, I've said for years this religion stuff is just a cruel joke and now the folks at Dayspring have actually come out and admitted it.

I think this is Vengeful Barbie. You may have to click on it to get the subtle loathsome look.

And how about the sentiment - 'you're such a fashionable friend'? I'll hang out with you, but I won't be there for you when you need me.

Finally, another from those zany folks at Dayspring...

What kid doesn't love 1920s slang on their valentine?

I Know the Names of 666 Stars

2007-02-04T22:17:00.000-06:00

Oh well, it was a nice first half. I had a great time at the Queen's Super Bowl Party, tho. Gouldie, Guy, DOOL, and I were all there plus assorted family members. There is nothing more adorable in the world than observing a tipsy Queen. I live for it. It was also great seeing Gouldie. I hadn't seen her since Super Bowl XXIX back in '95 when the SB was still played in January. Lots of good eats and drinks and good times.

Here's my random fact of the day. I read this morning that the reason you find that ruler sticker on the pump islands at gas stations is because robbery and theft are so prevalent at gas stations the sticker enables staff to easily tell police how tall the perps were. Never knew that.

Caught By the Flanker

2007-02-04T15:31:00.000-06:00

I got no dog in this fight called the Super Bowl, but here's why I hope the Colts lose:

1. The Colts should be eternally cursed for removing one of the most storied original franchises with a staunchly loyal fanbase - and to Indianapolis for God's sake.

2. I hexed them when they beat Dallas in the first Super Bowl I ever watched - SB V.

3. They let Joe Namath and the AFL win a championship and then promptly turned around and joined the AFC. Unforgivable.

4. It's against the spirit of the Revolution to feel sorry for a pouty quarterback with a $99.2 million salary + $34.5 million signing bonus, just because he's a nice guy.

4. It's still not OK to play football in a shiny dome on plastic grass in air conditioning.

I'm crossing my fingers for the Bears because they are the antithesis of all those (except number 2).

Just A Sip

2007-02-01T23:50:00.000-06:00

Two food-related items...

We religiously attended Moe's Southwest Grill every Friday night for over a year, but last week the unthinkable happened. After a couple months of estrangement from Moe's, we have discovered our new favorite restaurant. Viva Mexico! No, that's the name of the place, not pro-immigration sloganeering. I heartily recommend it. It's the kind of Mexican food I imagine certain Mexicans would eat. I say that because I'm not exactly sure what Mexicans consider comfort food, but if I were a Mexican, this is the kind of food I would dodge a couple Minutemen to go home for. The main thing that has endeared me to the menu is the inclusion of two or three pork dishes. You rarely see pork dishes at the big Dallas chains that prey on Northwest Highway diners, but this place has them. They have all the regular Tex-Mex stuff, too, but I love the carnitas. Oh, and tres leches, too. It's on Northwest Highway near May in the cavernous building that once housed Tony's Via Roma and a number of Chinese and Mexican enterprises. The family that runs it is great and YHWH has already chatted them up and gotten everyone's life story. The atmosphere is a little different, kind of like a community center with TVs and a pool table and there're always people walking around chatting. The place is so big, though, you can always find a quiet spot.

The second item is in response to the inquiry about Quik Trip by the Maryland Crab on my previous post. QT is the shining oasis, the pot o' gold, waiting at the eastern terminus of the Turner Turnpike in West Tulsa (actually they are all over Tulsa and nine states). It was our all-night hangout when I was a disaffected youth roaming the streets of Tulsa in my sleeveless Army surplus shirt. Back then it was cigs, Sweet-Tarts, and Koolees. But today they have an awe-inspiring beverage array. A man stumbling into a Quik Trip in Dalandzagad after crossing the Gobi could die of thirst before deciding on just the right drink combination to quench his thirst. Here is the lineup (and these are all from the fountain, not cans, etc.): 24 soft drinks, 3 hot chocolate varieties, two kinds of steamed milk, two kinds of frozen steamed milk, 6 cappuccino flavors, 8 kinds of creamer (dry or liquid), 4 kinds of coffee, 6 flavors of smoothies, 2 kinds of energy drinks, 11 flavors of sports drinks, 7 flavors of freezonis, and three flavors of shakes which you can mix yourself to any consistency. The beverage center has achieved cult status and employees and loyal customers are encouraged to provide recipes for delicious combinations of all the above. This is free market capitalism as Adam Smith envisioned it, folks. Jefferson was probably even thinking of a Blue Thunder when he wrote about the pursuit of happiness.

Here's a couple recipes:
Yellow Snow
1/2 White Cherry Freezoni
1/2 Minute Maid Lemonade
Stir well

Fruit of the Loon
1/4 Blue Raspberry Freezoni
1/4 Juicy Orange Smoothie
1/4 Burpleberry Wally Smoothie
1/4 Puckerberry Wally Freezoni

Colaccino
1/3 Cola Freezoni
1/3 Frozen Cappuccino
1/3 Frozen Steamer
Stir well

Annette Frappacello
Frozen Cappuccino
5 Shots Amaretto Creamer
from Flavor Center
3 Shots Chocolate Syrup
from Flavor Center
Stir well

Kiss the Rooster
1/3 Puckerberry Wally Freezoni
1/3 White Cherry Freezoni
1/3 Rooster Booster Fountain
Stir well.

More here.

The Colaccino is my fall back position when freedom of choice is too much.

Now, here's the problem. They are nowhere near our market. I would love to know if and who they collude with because no one around here is even remotely competitive with Quik Trip. My dad the groceryman used to tell me all the time about collusion in the grocery biz. For example there is (or at least was 20 years ago) a line somwhere around Ardmore and north of that is OKC territory and south of that is Dallas territory. So, some stores and products (seems like maybe Winn-Dixie and Mr. PiBB come to mind), could be sold in one market and not in another. It's illegal, but companies get around things, of course. I'm not accusing - no libel here - just wondering why QT won't enter our market. It can't be the demographics because we are Tulsa only bigger.

Wake up! This post is over!

It Wasn't My Baby

2007-01-28T21:43:00.000-06:00

Well, if I, the father, was not slain last week in The Great Sledding Episode, then this afternoon I was laid in the grave. I attended a baby shower. I don't do baby showers. And wedding ones are even more huh-uh. Ask Purple Bunny. She loves to recount how I didn't even attend the shower people at work hosted for Killer's birth. I may be edjumacated, but I still retain a few selected redneck qualities and an objection to men and women showering together is one them.

I was not planning on going to this thing. The shower was for my nephew and the female carrying an embryo to which he has contributed DNA. He's the second of my nephews to forego such inconveniences as wedding vows or any other public committments to care for his family, but that's irrelevant here. It was in Tulsa and the girls were going to be gone all day. Even though I desperately need some time alone to recharge, I felt guilty for not spending the day with them, so I decided I would go with them and drop them off then go kill a couple of hours. I should have applied the sage advice of SAT coaches and stuck with my first answer. C. F. Kats opted out of family life anyway because the dirge of daily life has become just too much. So we other three journeyed down the turnpike with only the promise of Quik Trip's gleaming cornucopia of mixed drinks to pull me onward.

Upon arrival, my nephew came rushing out to great us. I couldn't even begin to relate to you how much I love this nephew and what a wonderful guy he is (despite that other stuff). Suffice to say, he is as good a nephew as you could get -- he was born on my birthday. And his daughter may pull off the trifecta since she is due to arrive very near our birthday. He is as near a human clone of me as the current administration would allow, so it would be really cool to see how close a girl would end up being like us. Anyway, he and his dad were both there and gave every indication of staying. I was in a tough spot. If I called them sissies for attending a baby shower, they would have beaten me to a pulp. Finally I asked him if he was staying. "Yeah," he said. "I want to be here." Damn. What has this world come to.

So not only did I stay, I played a shower game. I won the shower game. It was a game where you try and match kinds of candy to the peculiarities surrounding the birth process. My prize was a bag full of about 20 kinds of candy. Somehow Raisinets and Milky Ways are less appetizing now. Before long I was talking about how much better Avent bottles are. I extolled the virtues of the ever-versatile receiving blanket; listing its many uses as every thing from burping rag to vomit cleanup. Cradle cap. Booger removal via squeezy rubber thing. I ruminated on how the cuter the little outfits are, the less time they will be able to wear them. Not having been to one of these before I kept a wary eye on my escape route because I was pretty certain that women tell war stories involving epidurals, blood, guts and all that rite of passage stuff. Luckily that didn't come up. And I thanked every deity I could imagine that I wasn't at one of those showers in England they have after the baby arrives and snack on the placenta.

But who knows, instead of slaying the father, maybe it's a new paradigm. Maybe Killer will reject a suitor who refuses to go to a friend's shower, thinking if it was good enough for her dad, why isn't good enough for him. Nahhh...not likely.

Think I'll go have a Skor candy bar now...

That's No Moon

2007-01-16T21:43:00.000-06:00

Sunday I officially became old. I still remember the day I witnessed my own dad's fall from immortality and I think he was the same age I am now. I'm not sure if girls share this phenomenon about their mothers, but with boys it often happens that there is a defining moment in their lives when they slay the father. I say boys, but it may not happen until midlife or ever in some cases.

For most boys, your dad is always bigger, faster, stronger, smarter than you and by the time you reach puberty it appears he always will be. It's not just physical prowess either; non-physical dads can be just as alpha through being revered, successful or powerful. In most cases you aren't even aware you're competing with him. But then one day you have a moment of crystal clarity and you realize the old gazelle has lost a step to the lions.

For me this happened when I was 14. Gym class at the cult school was frequently led by visiting parents and other virile male cult members and on this particular day my dad ran the recreational activities. Flag Football. I was in the slot and my dad was covering me on a simple out route and I picked up a step on him when I made the turn. I made the catch and ten yards before going out. That was it. A first down. But I beat him. Not two days before he had me in an unrecoverable headlock. For years I was wrestled into panic-stricken positions on the living room floor ("Get off!! I can't breathe!" "If you can't breathe, how are you shouting?"), regular footrace challenges left me gasping for air, he could make me kneel down by doing something to my pinkie. I was bested in dinner discussions, he could fix anything, he always knew when I was lying. But on this day, I beat him. I hadn't even known I'd been competing with him for ten years. But I realized it then and it was sweet.

By the way, if you're male and you haven't slain your father yet, I suggest you savor the moment when it happens. It doesn't last long. You immediately become emboldened by your new found chest-beating and begin to challenge him at every turn. Victory gets easier and easier. And before you know it you realize they are hollow victories. He's not fighting you anymore. It's like Obi-Wan turning off his lightsaber once he sees Luke safely aboard the Falcon. His job is done; he's shown you the basics, and yeah, his voice might pop into your head when you need him in a crisis, but it's you v. world now.

So Sunday, I was out in the yard showing SGK how to use a snow shovel for a sled (like the one George Bailey rides into the icy pond). It didn't work very well, so I got a cardboard box and flattened it out. We have just enough slope on the driveway to make it fun for little ones, but she still wasn't clear on the concept. So I did what we poor kids did in the winter, lay a box on the ground, get as much steam up as you can on the slippery surface, and dive head first on the box. It worked great when I was six. Sunday, I hit the ground and I was suddenly aware that I couldn't hear anything. I looked up at SGK and I saw her little cherubic visage begin to be encircled by a ring of bluish white squirmy things like flagellants under a microscope. I was really confused and then, still unable to make out any sounds around me, I heard a very small, clear voice calmly say, "Don't forget to breathe." I rolled over and sucked in as much air as I could get. The little blue things were still wiggling, but quickly fading. Whew, I thought, I'm not dying -- just got my bell wrung. Pretty sure I bruised my sternum and those little knobby things on the breastplate up where your neck starts. I know if I had a son who'd witnessed my buffoonery, that would've been his moments. For now, I assuming little girls don't want to slay their fathers.

Once I got my hearing back the first thing I heard was YHWH bleating, "I don't think that box is big enough! And that hill isn't steep enough, either!" At least she didn't laugh at me. I'll take henpecking over humiliation any day. I quickly picked myself up and carried myself into the house under false bravado. YHWH plaintively apologized as I walked through the garage begging me not to go inside and, closing the door, I heard SGK saying, "You made daddy mad, mom!" I paused to consider refuting the charge that I was going inside to pout but thought, what the hell, better to be thought of as a pouter than a mere mortal.

Ice Ice Baby

2007-01-16T14:48:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago I was going to blog about how the local weather guys did their usual local news fearmongering and stirred everyone up into a frenzy over something that turned out to be nothing. But half-way through blocking out the post in my mind, I realized that is a terribly provinicial way of thinking. It suddenly struck me that what I think of as the local news station is actually THE news station for two-thirds of the state. One of those things I knew but didn't think about.

It really struck home yesterday when I finally got through to my dad and learned that he has been without power since Friday night and facing 'a week or so' more in the cold and dark. They have closed off the kitchen and dining room by hanging blankets and have been running the fireplace nonstop. He said it's 'kind of fun' except for the harrowing KRAK! in the middle of the night as tree limbs and telephone poles snap. Then in the mornings he goes out to assess the damage. So far, a storage shed has a good-sized oak limb across it, his stockade fence has buckled over, and his driveway is blocked by a snapped power pole. Apparently, a glance down the street at the power poles looks like sappers from the French Resistance have been busy. His resolve? "I didn't have any electricity for the first 20 years of my life. A lot of that is coming back to me now." So add to that that a dozen or so people have died in the area and it's hard to criticize the newsfolks for overplaying the preps. He got extra wood, extra food and water, propane for his camping stove, and made sure his cell phone was charged. It paid off. And that is absolutely the last time I will say anything remotely nice about the local news people.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Will Rogers

2007-01-06T11:38:00.000-06:00

It's out there; everywhere I look. Every blasted magazine, newspaper, guidebook, handout, museum, billboard, and local newscast has the words plastered across some or another headline. I tried in vain to avoid it for a week, but that was like trying to avoid stepping on poop in the dog park, being runover by a mallwalker, or driving on a street named for a pop culture figure in Bricktown. The fact is I can run, but I can't hide. Because unfortunately it has become my job - my life.

Oklahoma Centennial

There, I said it. I am currently involved in no less than five regular gigs churning out state and local history. I was contributing a quarterly article to a magazine, but now it's monthly. I've been assigned to write 48 short vignettes on state history. Text for bookmarks, displays, statues soon followed. I'm also involved with two large grant projects.

It's only January 6th and already I'm sick of it. I get home from work, head straight for the toilet and puke up Sooner trivia for an hour. Family members bang on the door, "Are you alright, Dad? It smells like Conestoga wagons in there!" My doctor tells me to try and get some rest and lay off the Dust Bowl, "Take a couple of Will Rogers before bed; you'll be fine in a few days." Now my teen daughter won't be seen in public with me because my tirades about how we aren't Okies (the Okies were the weaklings who left!) embarrases her.

It's not like I didn't see the Centennial coming. Being a historically minded guy, I knew all about the semicentennial in 1957 and even lived through the depressing, obscure, trinket-generating Diamond Jubilee in 1982. But in the end, it was as though I had been standing on the curve of a railroad track - you can see and hear the 3:15 out of Ardmore coming, but it looks like it's heading in another direction until it plows you under.

I should be happy to part of all of it in the small way that I am. After all, I love my state and its unique history. We've got to be top ten all-time for state history. We might not be able to challenge New York, Texas, California and Massachusetts, and probably Virginia, but we're top ten. In fact I am happy to be part of it. I just want it to end.

To be honest, this all has to do with bad attitude. Mine. When I was one of a dozen or so people writing regularly it was fine, but now it's everywhere and I don't like sharing topics and even worse, I hate reading bad history. Myths and non sequiturs abound these days, not to mention squeaky clean (i.e. cutesy boring) politically correct revisionism. But, if I were a true Sooner patriot, I'd be excited about the attention history is getting. I would embrace it all and invoke the more-merrier directive. But the sad fact is I'm intensely competitive (internally) and I have that stubborn Gen-X trait of wanting to be a dazzling unique individual. So, there I am, engine of my own unhappiness.

Sigh...I guess I'll just write about land runs, cattle trails, removals, football glory and (ugh) oil until this all blows over like a hot wind in the Dirty Thirities.

When Doves Cry

2006-12-29T13:16:00.000-06:00

You may think you've had family game night, but you haven't had family game night unless you've squared off against wife and daughter in Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game.

I was at a decided disadvantage before we even laced 'em up. Obviously, I didn't have the right equipment to play this game. Hey, guttermind, I'm talking about cognitive equipment! The game's box subtley states the only requirement for this game is that one has reached the age of four. It doesn't say anything to warn people who have glitter allergies, people who have an aversion to pink and purple blends, people who do not have a degree in quantum mechanics, or people who have mastered logic.

So the other night YHWH, Killer and I plopped down on the living room floor to play this soon-to-be-classic from Milton Br...er..Hasbro. When you play with Killer there are certain guidelines to follow when selecting a venue for game play: the play site must have an unobstructed path to the restroom to accomodate the frequent diversionary trips when it isn't her turn; the play site must be removed from the line of site of Barbies, Polly Pockets, etc. so as not to tempt her during the times when it isn't her turn (this also prevents cross-species interaction between brands; before long Polly Pocket would be introducing herself to Snow White and they would go to lunch to get to know each other better and then I would be called on to orchestrate the remaining three princesses and provide dialogue for their resentful vitriole at having been dumped for that little blonde b**** so that Polly and Snow could return and they would all make up and be BFF); finally, the play site must also be on the floor (this is so she can drape herself off the furniture or stand up and do a couple of karate moves when it isn't her turn.

The game requires extensive assembly, including a large sheet of small stickers which have to be applied to a number of small pieces. YHWH began reading the instructions while I placed the stickers on the die, markers and wish-spinner. The directions made no sense when read aloud. I assumed this was because I was distracted by the impossibility of determining where each sticker went or maybe the translation from Chinese was outsourced to India, but when I finally hit the wall and snatched the rule book from YHWH's hands, I realized the reason is that it was all written in princess lingo. Normally, I process rules with my left brain, but once I switched over it began to sink in. I just had no precognition of the Ray of Enchanting Light. Now I do.

One of the first mistakes I made was assuming that Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game was in fact the same as Pretty Pretty Princess Game or any of the myriad other girl games I have played in which competition has been very carefully excised from the experience. Most girl games lead you on some labryinthine chase through a disorienting emotional...oh wait, that's real life. Therefore, I did not formulate a strategy to trounce my opponents. And let me just stop right here to announce I never 'let' anyone win. No quarter asked and none given. No victory is too cheap. Likewise, I also did not try and size up my opponents' strategies, although I knew YHWH would do what she could to enable Killer and I to somehow share a victory and Killer would cheat like a dog to win.

Here's how the game works. Four princes have hidden a gift for each of their princesses in one of four castle towers. Each princess leaves her Rapunzel-like encampment in a tower and parades Gideon-like around the castle wall until she accomplishes her task of getting her three wishes granted. This is done by spinning the wheel with a mesmerizing spiral lightning sticker until a wish lands within your Ray of Enchanting Light which emanates from below the wheel in the color corresponding to your princess' dress. The wishes are on little stands and they rise like pillars out cavities in the wheel. This is important because when you get down to the last wish or two, you have to understand centrifugal force (which I don't) in order to retrieve it because it always lands opposite you when the wheel stops. This fact adds about thirty minutes to the game. Once a princess has her wishes, she enters the castle and walks around inside it looking at all the presents until she finds the one intended for her by her prince.

I'm constantly criticized for thinking too much, and this was no exception. I still haven't come to grips with the unwieldy name. It seems like it should be Disney's Princesses' Spinning Wishes Game, but since the majority of the target market lisps from lack of front teeth, I guess I see why they sacrificed proper grammar for a less humiliating pronunciation. A lot of my overthinking, though, had to do with the lack of symmetry. That always bothers me. Take a gander at the game board:

You can see the Ray of Enchanting Light coming out from under the wheel, but only the blue light from Cinderella's ray bathes her castle in a glow. Also, the two gray miss-a-turn spaces are on the same half of the board and there are only three wish spaces on that side as opposed to five on the other, so Belle in her yellow castle has a statistically greater chance of going home empty-handed - probably because she was originally trailer trash unlike the high-born others. All the castle gates have spires, but only one set of towers does.

And then there are the philosophical questions. Why do your wishes have to be material objects? Why not an end to starvation, global domination, or a declining teen birthrate? Why are all four couples in one castle? Why is Snow White's gift from her prince an apple when the others get glass slippers, a gold crown and a rose? Hasn't Snow had enough of apples already? And if I'm anyone but Sleeping Beauty, I'm making off with crown. Screw the rose.

The good thing about thinking too much is that you can always find a way to rationalize. I finally just told myself it's only a game. It's not whether you win or lose, blah, blah, blah. After I relaxed, I then proceeded on two victorious marched through the magical kingdom. The first was a dramatic thriller in which Sleeping Beauty and I snatched victory on the final roll before Killer opened her prince's gift. Then Cinderella and I romped on the next game.

So here I sit undefeated in Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game. I wish I could say the same for my college bowl pool. Makes me long for a glittery die roll.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

2006-12-27T13:46:00.000-06:00

By popular demand, here is the communist incense... just follow the link - I'm too lazy to scan the box.

Disclaimer: Dear Big Brother, I am not nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party (I just like the Soviet Realist art).

So Fair To Be Seen

2006-12-25T10:43:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas every one!

I thought I'd post before my usual post-Xmas funk sets in. I just pulled the pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie out of the oven and put the ham in which gives me two hours. We're also having yam puff, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and hot rolls.

We've had a pretty good Christmas so far. Yesterday Killer was so wound up I took her out for a long walk to try and wear her down. It didn't help much, but we did get to see the Grandmother of Europe, resplendent in crimson holiday vest. Last night we all watched Holiday Inn and It's A Wonderful Life and then YHWH and I were up making preps until about 1:30am. There is some wack TV on at 1:30 Xmas Eve. There were all manner of cheesy choirs and even a really lame unmelodic Native American Christmas chant. Finally I switched over to QVC for awhile. I can't help it, I love watching QVC. I have never purchased anything, but I love the crazy personalities and the washed up celebs trying to hawk their wares to the shut-in set. Last night there was a middle aged guy and his perfect whitebread family sitting on the floor in front of a fake fireplace and Christmas tree on a set. He had a box of ornaments hidden behind his back and he pulled them out one at a time and gave the complete history of each little dowdy dangly. "And this was just after we moved to Huntsville from Montgomery," he intoned as he swung a cotton ball bedecked football player on a gold cord in front of his daughter. He trotted out First Christmases, great grandmas, ones he just liked, it went on for over an hour commercial free. It was a sentimental train-wreck and I couldn't turn away amidst the carnage.

We finally crashed about 1:30, but Super Giant Killer woke me up about 6:15 and said she just couldn't try and sleep anymore. C. F. Kats was ill, but she rallied long enough to unwrap. They cut a wide swath as depicted below. Here is the peaceful scene moments before (note it is still quite dark outside):

Click for larger to see the large coral-ish snake Killer got from Santa. Here's some of the carnage:

It's actually not as bad as it looks. Our girls are scarcely materialistic and didn't ask for anything big. So they got lots of books and art supplies and clothing staples. Killer got a Marie Antoinette doll from the fat man as well (click for larger):

I got some nice Communist incense and a box of exotic beef - er, well, jerky anyway. It's really stuff like emu and gator. I also got a nice cigar and some cognac. No sign of a smoking jacket, tho.

Off to finish lunch preps...

Merry Christmas!

Is Christmas Safe For Animals?

2006-12-20T21:45:00.000-06:00

Well here's the layout (click for larger). Those are penguins, reindeer and hallelujah snowmen in the red and green shortbread; they look pretty tasty up close, just don't photgraph well. I couldn't fit the 8 loaves of pumpkin bread and 7 loaves of chai spice bread (Killer snagged one of those before I could stop her) in the picture. When she walked in and saw all the stacks she said, "Dad! It's a holiday wonderland of cookies!" I ran some stocking stuffer errands this morning so I didn't get to the CCD cookies or the pain d'epice. There's always tomorrow. I was pretty proud I only made two mistakes - that I know of. In one I put in 2 tsp of baking powder instead of soda, but I was able to spoon it out before it was mixed in and I was baking some pumpkin bread in a coffee can like mom used to and I inadvertently used a 5# can instead of a 2# can and when the top browned I pulled it out and it was a big soup inside. No prob, just poured it into a loaf pan and it came out alright, just ugly.

Since the breads took an hour each to bake, I had time to watch Santa Claus Conquers the Maritians with Killer while I waited. It's a classic, y'know. How can you argue with Pia Zadora's debut?

Merry Xmas!

The Boys in the NYPD Choir Were Singing 'Galway Bay'

2006-12-20T00:11:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's raining today and may be tomorrow. The magic of Christmas is alive! All December I've been singing, "I'm dreaming of precipitation this Christmas..." Ok, it's not Christmas, but I'll take two days of rain. And there's s'posed to be more this weekend.

That part actually irks me. My dad annoyingly wants us to drive to Tulsa on Sat nite for our family Christmas dinner. Since I'm currently in disconnect mode with them, I'm not het up about driving out there in a wintry mix for a 7:00 dinner and driving back at 9:00 at the earliest, arriving home at 11:00ish. Not the least, it's irritating to give up an entire day of Xmas prep.

I accomplished much on day one of holiday baking:
4 doz shortbread (1 red, 1 green)
2 doz minty middles
4 doz pfefferneuse
4 doz spritz
1 tray of peppermint bark
2 doz Russian teacakes
3 doz chocolate crinkles
8 maids a-milking

Tomorrow is chai-spice bread, pain d'epice, and pumpkin bread in a coffee can. Then packaging, then delivering, then I need to bake a few dozen for our annual Christmas cookie decorating (CCD) partay. And mebbe some Chex Mix.

We watched Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol tonite. It was a pretty accurate retelling - unfortunately. I'm simply baffled at why they had Mr. Magoo playing Scrooge straight. I mean the possibilities are endless (as they always are with Mr. Magoo). I can picture a scene where one of the spirits tells him to look over there and he can't see anything or he thinks the ghost of Christmas future is a wild bear and he beats him with his umbrella. Oh, well.

All the Lights Are Coming On Now

2006-12-14T20:57:00.000-06:00

I spent the day with my mom's sister. She had a box of photos she salvaged from the house of my aunt who died a few months ago and we went through them together - I digitized them and she helped me identify who everyone was. This aunt was like Mary Poppins when my sister and I were little. She was a single mom and moved to our town because my mom and she were close. Even though she had a son my age, she kind of adopted us and took us on all kinds of adventures. Since we were all broke, she would come up with all this wild - but free - stuff for us to do.

One day we had a picnic in the grass as close as you could get to the airport runway. I was only about six so I'm not sure how close we actually were, the ear-splitting, chest-crushing sonic extravaganza was mind-blowing. The sandwiches weren't bad, either. She worked in the gorgeous NBT Building in Tulsa and one night she convinced the janitor into letting us go out onto some platform as high as you could go without safety gear. Pretty thrilling to a kid. Another time we were sitting around and she said, "I'm sick of this room. Let's redo the floor!" So we drove all over time and dumpster-dived behind carpet stores looking for sample squares and other usuable scraps of carpet. It didn't matter what color or pile it was, we tossed them in the backseat of her VW bug with us and away we went. When we got back to her house we put them all together into a crazy quilt carpet for the new look. We went storm-chasing, all kinds of stuff.

Today was great, too. She showed up at my door with a box of photos and a picnic lunch and we laughed and cried as we talked about my mom and all the stuff we used to. The most priceless treasure I pulled from the box was the only known set of pics of my mom holding Killer. She died a couple weeks after Killer was born and she was only strong enough to hold her that one time. I didn't know my grandma had snapped pics, so these were news to me.

Got new glasses, too. I look (and the girls say I act) like this guy now.

I finished the Aran winter set, but you'll have to ask the Grandmother of Europe if you want to see them. I gave them to her for Secret Santa and I forgot to take pics first. I was making them for her all along and then when she dissed me and quit carpooling with me I decided I wasn't going to give them to her after all. Then I drew her name for Secret Santa so I got to give them to her anyway. I Also finished a set of legwarmers for my yoga instructor sister-in-law. I stitched an 'om' on one and the sanskrit word 'namaste' on the other. Here they are (click for better view):

I made them from a vintage Jane Fonda-era aerobics pattern (except for the emblems - did those myself), and they are pretty bunchy. This gal I made them for is pretty toned, so I hope these don't just drop right to her ankles. I'm pretty proud of the design, though.

There's Been A Hoot-Owl Howlin' By My Window Now

2006-12-03T10:53:00.000-06:00

cab·in fe·ver ('ka-ben 'fE-v&r), n, a condition in parenting which causes an increase in the child's energy level and a proportional decrease in the parent's patience. In extreme cases, the parent is given to horrifying thoughts, though rarely acting upon. These may include, but are not limited to: euphoria brought on by hopes that one will have to go to work (this requires professional treatment); search-engine lookups on the amount of time you can lock your child out in 12-degree cold without noticeable frostbite; cursing Laura Ingalls Wilder for not indexing her books while you look for guidance on what the hell to do with little girls who have cabin fever; taunting little girls as you trample them in game after game of Life, checkers, Mille Bornes, Payday, Trouble, and Parcheesi.

I'm still about 10 years old when it comes to snow days. I love any unscheduled day off work (well, scheduled, too) and all the attendant things like hot chocolate, fires, naps, bundling up and, these days, knitting. Did I mention not being at work? But then there's Killer to contend with. She's actually above-average in categories like attention span and ease of entertainment, but even on warm spring days in May (usually very early on a Saturday morning) she wants you to do whatever it is with her. Can you fathom the audacity? When I woke up Thursday morning I just knew it was going to be a long one. I tried to mentally sketch out what to expect so I could be prepared. I thought I had a handle on it. I realized I'd have to entertain her all day. I realized she would start begging to go outside the second she got up; that she would underdress; that she had no winter gear like boots; that it would take 20 minutes to get her ready to go out; that she would actually be out about 5 minutes; that our wood floor would soon become a warped puddle of melted snow; and that no matter how many packages of Swiss Miss I opened, she would eat the marshmallows, and like Goldilocks, deem the chocolate too hot and skip off to do something else. Early that morning, I wouldn't let her go out in the sleet. She had to wait until the snow started. So, we had some pumpkin bread and looked at catalogs while I drank my coffee and she ate the marshmallows out of her Swiss Miss. Then we started a game of Mille Bornes and she was being really good and hadn't even asked to go out. Then the death knell toned. The neighbor girl, Jasmine, rang the doorbell promptly at 9:00. I now had two of them to deal with. A note about the neighbor girl. She and her sister are close in age to each of ours and they have a working single mom and a deadbeat dad. So theolder is essentially raising the younger. The thing is Jasmine and Killer fight like they were sisters. Constantly. No matter how many times we split them up, they say they like each other and they are best friends, but from the moment they look at each other they begin an unceasing tirade of snipes and territorial scrapes. Jasmine has been coming over increasingly anyway (poor thing is looking for a family, I think) and with her mom at work, I realized she was going to be here all day. Hell had frozen over and I was in it. I'll spare you the details, but it was 12 hours of misery. For one thing, Jasmine's mom 'went over to a friend's house' until 10:00pm and we couldn't send her back home because the 13-year-old caretaker had walked over to her boyfriend's house to watch a movie. Finally, it all collapsed around 9:00pm when Killer crossed the threshhold and went into one of her blind rages. She does this when she gets too tired and stressed and she makes these primal guttural howls and her face gets blood red and she wanders the halls pushing people out of her way. She literally 'isn't herself' and all we can do is put her in her room and close her door. It's over in about 10 minutes. I had to make Jasmine go in the other room and put Killer to bed. Friday I was disgustingly glad to be going to work, but we were closed again. So when the doorbell rang again that morning. I told YHWH, "Let's go to the mall." So we let Jamsine stay an hour and left Killer with C.F. Kats and we walked to the mall. We had a great time together and we actually got a majority of our shopping done. At first there was no one there, but by time we left it was positively packed. We did get one call from Killer while we were out. She could barely talk because she was sobbing deeply that the snow was melting and it made her terribly sad and Sissy was making fun of her for it. I told her to watch Frosty the Snowman and tell me the moral when I got home. I was having too much fun being FREE!!

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

2006-12-01T11:29:00.000-06:00

Apparently I clicked "save as draft" instead of "publish" last week, so here's my Thanksgiving tale.

I have dubbed this year's Thanksgiving as Thanksgiving Inchoate. I knew that if I squawked enough before my inevitable and involuntary attendance at the Rebs' Thanksgiving dinner, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as I had imagined it to be. I had imagined being set upon by Harpies, picked at for being a male knitter, or forced into a small corner with some other exile, compelled to discuss the weather and the Sooners' chances. So I was actually chipper that morning when I awoke to find that YHWH was fully ill with a cold. Surely she would be unable to endure a full afternoon of the Extended Family Plan.

That morning I took a pre-emptive three-mile walk through the neighborhood at a brisk pace so that I would be in a good mood. I hate to admit that, because a) I loathe exercise; 2) I loathe sunshine; and d) I'm really uncomfortable being in a good mood. But I thought it might help because I was resigned to go to YHWH's family gathering and I didn't want her to feel like she had to choose me or them. Even so, just before leaving the house I reached into the top cabinet and sipped a shot of relaxing cognac.

There were about thirty people there, but I was only related by blood to one of them. I just sat on a couch and watched the football game and simply nodded and waved to everyone when they came in. I didn't even have to converse about the Dolphins' defense or the Sooners' chances. No one asked how work was going or what grade Killer is in now. I just sat there with a nice relaxing grin on my face.

When dinner came, it was a free-for-all seating arrangement spanning four rooms and I was somewhat taken aback by the number of people who made no effort to sit anywhere near their nuclear families. I immediately regretted not having eaten a hearty breakfast. Here it was 1:00 and I had only consumed a cup of coffee and a shot of 'yac and there was very nearly nothing I wanted to eat on the harvest smorgasbord before me. There were steamed whole green beans, not green bean casserole with fried onions on top; the dressing was not stuffing and looked like a large, full bedpan from a hospital influenza ward; there were thick cut roasted sweet potatoes rather than candied yams with melted marshmallows on top; the mashed potatoes were garlic-saged with the peels swirled in as opposed to the stiff white potatoes which can hold a reservoir for white gravy (of which there was none); and the Pillsbury crescent rolls simply paled in comparison to my sister's butterhorns. As I'd hoped, YHWH only held out through lunch and within a half-hour we were excusing ourselves to go over to her aunt's for dessert and then home to bed.

It all had the ethos of attending one of those dinners you get at a banquet or some other workplace function held at a hotel. No one wanted to be there. There was no enmity, no strife, but no affection or love or filial piety or desire to relate beyond the agreement to meet annually on the third Thursday in November. Definitely not Thanksgiving.

Forget, Hell!

2006-11-17T21:37:00.000-06:00

I'm sure glad I have that History degree. A solid grasp of history and knowledge of the Zodiac can sure help explain a lot of everyday life's tribulations. For example, I'm reminded of the great War Between the States as our annual Thanksgiving skirmish unfolds.

Just after Halloween every year I literally feel the pall cast over the fun as we turn toward Thanksgiving. And like the portent of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, I can hear the distant rumble of cannon and the rippling of musketry along the picket lines: What are we going to do for Thanksgiving?

For starters, I have already given up on Thanksgiving. So Norman Rockwell were the feasts of my youth that to even try to recapture them invites domestic disaster. But like a dreamy abolitionist, I tried this year anyway. How about a cozy afternoon with our best friends? They would love to escape the clutches of their families as well, I'm sure of it. And so I was. I made up a menu - and even allowed cornbread stuffing to pass the threshold of my kitchen. We were going to watch the parades. Play football out on the street. Watch movies. Play board games. I and The Queen were even going to cook the whole dinner ourselves. This was all something new. If this thing went off alright, it could become the new tradition - we might even look forward to Thanksgiving next year (picture a tall, thin depressive guy with bad acne, a beard and a very tall hat).

A student of history knows that about this time the old line plantation families in the South were not going to let this happen. When the news hit Charleston about a week ago, it was made clear: if that tall sad sack gets elected there's going to be trouble. The politics began in ernest. At first shock was displayed that we would even want to do anything different. Then the smoky room stuff started. Attempts were made to use the children as leverage; a well-timed call from a sibling; a seemingly unrelated letter came with the salutation, "We will miss you at Thanksgiving."

A poll was taken. None of us wanted to have dinner with the extended family. I'm not going to run down the laundry list of reasons why, but they are sufficient to motivate anyone to look for alternatives. My declarative was, "Why would I want to go there?" But we have a Copperhead in our home and a Libra at that. For days, YHWH wrung her hands and bore the thousand-yard stare. She saw both sides of both sides, but in the end, like Robert E Lee ( "I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives"), she couldn't shake the bonds of tradition.

It's all about the stuffing. In Oklahoma, I-44 bisects the state diagonally. If you hail from south of I-44, you're likely a Reb and you eat cornbread dressing; north of I-44, you're likely a Yankee and you eat stuffing made from bread crusts. If you're from OKC or Tulsa, you're likely to find both on offer. And there you have it. YHWH, with an honest to goodness Yankee pedigree (she actually descends from an in-law of Jonathan Edwards) and wife of a good Nickajack man (my ancestor stole over the Virginia border to fight for East Tennessee loyalists), supports the cause of her Reb stepfamily and their cornbread dressing.

I know you've pensively read this far with bated breath, knowing full well this analogous account leads to secession. Nothing so dramatic as that happens. In this scenario, there is no Gettysburg Address. We skip right to act III, scene 2 of Our American Cousin.

2006-11-15T19:18:00.000-06:00

Finally finished the sweater for SGK...

And the om hat for my SIL. I made it a little too long on the top and not enough ribbing on the bottom, but I'm happy with the way the design turned out.

I Went To a Garden Party

2006-11-12T11:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the family ventured out to Downtown with the intent of seeing the OCMoA's loaner exhibit from the British Museum's Egypt collection. Arriving on the scene, we found parking spaces to be at a premium and we had to park a few blocks over. I answered curious enquiries as to why by mentioning the peace festival, held annually in the Hall of Mirrors, was the likely draw. This was met with great interest, so we went there first.

If you haven't been, this is an event which features information tables and various wares offered by the deepest indigo blue-staters in the metro area. All the heavy-hitters were there including Amnesty International, Sierra Club, Green Party, Greenpeace, etc. plus a few local flavors. As I am in so many places, I was def a fish-out-of-water. I immediately had an allergic reaction to the whole place - mainly at the practitioners. I have struggled with this affliction for years. I walk into assemblages like these and I am bombarded by emotional responses I can't understand. It makes me appreciate the difficulties faced by SID folks.

It's frustrating because I can't quite get a handle on it and that annoys me to no end. I feel contemptuous, judgmental, confused, stubborn, schadenfreude; all these and more all at once. I'm confused because I agree with the sentiment of probably 80% of the people in there (in fact I knew three of the people manning the booths), and yet I'm compelled to roll my eyes and laugh at them. My initial analysis is that it's some sort of deep conditioning I got as a child growing up in a cult, going to gunshows, hoarding weapons, ammo, precious metals and pennies. But I have overcome so many other elements of that conditioning, it seems too easy an explanation. I've even wondered if seeing Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists beaten up on the nightly news as a four and five year old somehow conditioned me to feel that way. I discount that because I don't and never have felt violent toward anyone in my whole life, but maybe there's something there.

Another thing is that it seemed like such a club. I always hate that. For one thing I don't really like any of the uniforms available (e.g. tie-dye, long scraggly hair, saffron robes). There tend to be a lot of intractable holier-than-thou positions to take, many of them hypocritical, and therefore not unlike those folks on the other side. The difference is those folks on the other side used to be my folks. I guess I've already picked and chosen from them and fought the battles so I'm either more tolerant or at the very least, not passionate in my opinions regarding them anymore.

I couldn't make it in the club because I would be paralyzed. The concession was selling Starbucks coffee and I felt like if I walked around with a cup the anti-globalization guy would get on me. I only hoped the socially-responsible investing guy and the Fair Trade guy would come to my rescue, but if the investing guy came to my aid, he would risk getting sucker-punched by the Socialist Youth guy. So I just went without coffee. And the ham sandwiches. Forget it. I mean, they put the vegan table right by the exit, how was I going to get out of there alive?

And then there was sort of a general disdain I picked up for America and American culture and a corresponding heightened interest in exotic cultures. There is def a lot of baby-bathwater tossing I think. Just because America may have been co-opted by robber barons again, doesn't mean we the people are bad people and doesn't mean we shouldn't make lionize the ideals of the white males up on Mt. Rushmore. I couldn't help thinking that if some of these causes started adorning their material with American flags and using words like heritage and freedom it might be a little more palatable to the great middle in this country. Maybe they don't want that. Maybe that would dissolve their raison d'etre.

In my defense, I want to remind you that I do not act on these impulses. I don't laugh at people I don't know. I don't treat them poorly when I interact with them. I picked up their pamphlets and read them. I engaged a couple of booth-manners on the issues. The fact that I'm there proves I'm open-minded. But why does it bother me so much? If you know me, go ahead, take a whack at me; leave a comment.

The funniest thing was when I turned the last corner and saw one of my best friends at the World Neighbors booth. She was shocked that I was at a peace festival. I was shocked that she was shocked. I said, "I'm all about peace. Fair Trade, non-violence, justice, unions, condoms, environmental protection; what's not to like?" She just smiled and said, "Just by yourself, right." She knows me all too well...

My Heart Could Use Some Glasses

2006-11-12T09:53:00.000-06:00

Well, I just wrapped up a week of single-dadhood. YHWH attended a week-long retreat at a bucolic haven in western Oklahoma. I'm not sure I ever got a handle on the stated goal of the event and even though it featured two high-profile prophets, I think not being around the rest of us was the ultimate end of the exercise. So to that end, it was highly successful.

At first I was dismayed that such an event would be held for a full week and in the off-season, but later I learned that most of the attendees were pastoral types with irregular work hours. Pastors are quite acquainted with overlooking the well-being of their families for the needs of the flock, so I could see the rationale. It was pretty disruptive to the rest of us but we got a lot of help from Mimi, who came in from out-of-town, and it was only a week and you can do anything for a week. The greatest benefit was that Mimi now understands how complicated our daily lives are.

I was also reassured in my staunch belief that the Catholics are right to have an unmarried clergy, especially monks and nuns, of course. Ya can't serve two masters and all that, ya know. I had to work hard to not be jaded about the whole thing. It seemed really ironic to me that peace and harmony are achieved by disrupting the lives of so many other people. The girls really didn't understand it and were kind of disturbed by it. They got over it, but they just didn't get it. In the end, though, YHWH felt like she needed it, so I'm glad she found what she was looking for.

I was very careful to avoid letting myself whine about it and I tried to take the opportunity to observe and reflect while I was in the middle of it. A nice luxury since most times when your patterns are disrupted you don't have time to plan or you're so busy trying to cope you can't see the forest for the trees. The most powerful insight I gained was a better understanding of the single parent. I'm pretty empathic and Pisces (if you believe) are very good, dangerously good, at being consumed by role-playing and my only respite at times was knowing it would all be over in a week. Real single parents can't say that. The other thing I learned from that was the importance of one's social network. I found myself making contingency plans for contingency plans; if she can't pick up SGK, I'll call him, if he can't, I'll call... Thanks to Mimi I didn't have to use them. I'm glad because I also learned from this that I am very loathe to ask anyone for help. I guess I would get over that quickly if it were for real.

I also feel like I can better understand my mom and therefore my own childhood after this week. For most of my early life, my dad was in route sales and he would leave on Sunday night and come back Friday night. My mom had to be good cop and bad cop, make lunches, get us ready for school, and everything else alone. Some years she worked while we were in school. My dad came home to a hero's welcome every Friday night. I already knew all this, but I took the time to think about how she must have felt during those years; she was probably pretty resentful for one thing and I'm glad she didn't let it color her relationship with us -- too much. This also made me think a lot about the spouses and children of our soldiers, especially with so many Guardsmen having to stay in rotation. One of Killer's classmates has a father on active duty in Iraq and her mother's Guard unit was sent to a base on the east coast. This happened nearly two years ago. She's been living with her grandmother.

Despite all those things, I feel pretty good about saying I could do it if I had to. I guess you figure out something that works, get in a pattern and go with the flow. Build up your social network, don't be too proud to ask for (or accept) help, make contingency plans as best you can, and hold on loosely. Famous last words, huh?

Strike A Pose, There's Nothing To It

2006-11-07T12:17:00.000-06:00

OK, OK, I won an award at work.

The thing is, I don't remember any of it. I remember dressing up and going to the banquet facility. I remember I had my lovely daughters with me. It was appropriately Oscar-night themed as I remember because we walked in on a red carpet and there were people greeting us and handing me things and then I stopped for my photo op and then my publicist swept in and ushered us over to our table.

I remember the director was reading off some introductory remarks about the winner and then everyone around me started prodding me and saying, "It's you. It's you, man." And I think I heard someone say, "Get up there, man." So, when my name was announced I zoned out and just focused on getting up to the front without tripping or anything. I picked up my oversized check and crossed the stage and while there I heard the director say, "Let me tell you a little about St. Fiacre." That's all I heard, so discomfitted was I. No chance of a big head here - I didn't even find out what I'd done to win it!

Super Giant Killer was mightily impressed with the gigantic check. On Sunday morning Molly, Nellie, and Kit reenacted the cermony and the winner made several large purchases befitting such a large check. Later that day, she observed that southern Europe and southern Asia have similar shapes and so she drew a map of Italy and neighbors and compared it to another she drew of the similarly dangling Malay Peninsula. Not exact of course, but I do see what she picked up on. These were drawn on the back of my check.

I Want To Be A Football He-ro

2006-11-05T08:13:00.000-06:00

Adjective Queen likes to joke that I am her son Sport's Football Dad. Actually what she says is he is my Football Son. This isn't usurpation of Sport's bio-dad or an attempt at compensating for my having only girls, but rather a simple meeting of minds - he and I are the only members of our circle of friends who like football and sports in general. In our respective nuclear familial units, football is a bane of the first order up there with Dubbya and evangelicals.

I have never fully understood the loathsome regard blue-staters have toward football. I can name several reasons why I believe it to be, but I always come away feeling like I've diagnosed the symptoms rather than the disease. I think they don't like it because athletes are ascendant in most American high schools and the most dominant, almost iconically so, are football players and their female counterparts, cheerleaders and by contrast blue-staters, as individualistic, geeky, brainy, and largely unathletic, tend to be quite a bit south of there hierarchically. They prefer baseball because it has a solid literary tradition. They prefer soccer because they can comfortably root for the snobby Europeans or the noble post-colonial indigenous peoples' teams.
Probably most telling is they don't like it because 'everyone else' likes it, especially unthinking red-staters. It's also violent and there are those pesky cheerleaders to remind women of their eons of subjugation.

I'm confused because I think they should like it. In both the way it is played and the way its league is structured, it embodies the very community ideals and socialist economics they often tout in their ideology. In baseball, individual contributions are toted up to arrive at the final result. In football, everyone moves down the field together or not at all. The teams are made up of players with diverse skills and abilities. The professional league is structured so that revenues are split evenly among all teams, parity is highly desired and achieved so that all the teams and their fans have fair chance at glory, and players have both a minimum wage and a salary cap to prevent any one player or team too great a share of that society's riches. These seem like a blue-state dream, but I rarely see it celebrated.

I really didn't mean to go off on that tangent. It just occured to me as a thought about this post. I mainly just wanted to report that I took Sport to several local small college football games this year and he seems to have enjoyed it, as did I. We talked about plays and strategies and had some dogs and stuff. I almost asked him about the cheerleaders, one of whom looked like a dead-ringer for Kirsten Dunst, but I stopped myself because I thought he was probably too young to have checked them out and my own particular living arrangements have drubbed out any habit I might have of making public comments about a female's appearance - unless I am telling my three how spectacular they look.

I mentioned that Queen calls me Football Dad and I have to admit it makes me feel weird because it makes wonder sometimes how I would do if I had also had a son. I always wanted to have girl children because I knew how hard it was to grow up as a boy. Of course now I have the perspective that they both have their own brand of hellishness. The main thing I figured would be hard about raising boys is that they never talk. Girls talk constantly, so I figure I will at least know what is going on most of the time.

So anyway I was reminded of this during halftime at Saturday's game. We were sitting back shootin' the breeze and I started asking him stuff:
"So have you thought about where you want to go to high school?"
"Nah."
A plane flies over.
"Hey, that could be Lego Guy someday."
"Yeah."
"Do you think he'll fly someday?"
"I dunno."
"So, does he have a girlfriend?"
"Nah."
"What about you?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, yeah. Do you talk to her and stuff?"
"Some times."
"Is she pretty?"
Shrug.
"What's her name?"
"I'm not tellin' you!"
"You're not? I thought we were friends!"

That pretty well sums up my history with my dad, too. We would drive for two hours and not say a word and he'd say, "Enjoyed being with you, son." So, I hope I did OK this season, Queen, in my limited capacity as Football Dad. Oh, and by the way, he hasn't ever heard of Jim Thorpe. What the hell kind of family are you running over there, anyway? Never heard of Jim Thorpe, sheesh.

I'm All Lost in the Supermarket

2006-11-02T23:10:00.000-06:00

There was one more episode about the New York trip that I forgot to disclose - mainly because I was hoping it was just a nightmare which would pass like bad gas in the morning. But it didn't. At LaGuardia getting ready to board the flight home, YHWH lost her organizer. Nothing big really, just her driver's license, health card, credit card, and other sparkling gems of the identity theft gold mine. She didn't realize it until the next morning, and so we weren't sure where it was lost - or stolen. I had just been to a short workshop on i.d. theft and so I was sure the prospects were pretty grim. So that first day back, YHWH cancelled all the cards and notified the credit agencies and got the defensive ball rolling. Meanwhile we turned every pocket, every bag inside out hoping it was stashed somewhere. All airport and airline lost-and-founds were called fruitlessly.

Everyone had a theory. YHWH's sister was sure that it was stolen from her purse at O'Hare. In fact, she recreated an entire narrative in which she selected a half dozen swarthy immigrants who worked in the food court and had been taking a break nearby as the perps in this crime drama of her own making. Sadly, this is a woman who doesn't get out much and her world view is largely formed by the local news. To me it just didn't add up. Mainly because they didn't have two key crime elements: motive or opportunity. And because I think profiling is really pathetic.

YHWH thought the missing piece was flung from the underseat nest of her purse when our tiny jet made a rather abrupt touchdown and overbraked to a stop on the runway at Will Rogers in OKC. As to its current whereabouts, she had no answer and by the end of the day I ruled that one out because the cleaning crew sweeping in after our departure would have picked it up and if they were going to turn it in we would've known by the end of that next day, they being local and all.

I, however, knew what happened although I could not say where exactly the organizer was. When we got to LaGuardia we had to check our bags at the curb. The airlines now charge two dollars a bag for this. It was really chaotic at the checkstand, so I gave YHWH $12 for our five bags and her sister's and then took the girls inside the terminal to try and thin out the crowd on the curb. Apparently, the baggageman took the $12 and said, "This is for the airline. Now another $12 for me." YHWH didn't have it so her sister had to crack open her wallet; this was its virginal opening on the trip I'm pretty sure. I mention this because I think this was the first of a succession of mental distractions for YHWH, who is very easily distracted. So, after the bags are gone, her sister tells her we owe her $10 for the bags. OK, she stayed at our house, our friend took us to the airport, I paid the $12 in OKC to have the bags loaded, I bought her two drinks, she doesn't spend one dime on the whole trip, I had just paid the $12 to the airline and not only will she not get the tip, she prorates it. This took YHWH aback and rattled her a little bit. Understand, it's not the money, it's the principle.

We then proceed to the TSA line to get screened and all of a sudden the line gets really chaotic and some heavily armed dude shows up and starts rerouting people through other lines. And this isn't like three parallel lines. This arrangement looks like that universal symbol for USB ports you see on computers. Anyway, in a scene out of a Holocaust movie, before I know it, right in front of my eyes, Killer gets pushed into a line by herself and YHWH and I get pushed to another and the sister and C.F. Kats to another. I can't even see Killer from where I am and this SWAT-looking guy with a machine gun is in my way. I decided to just get through the line as fast as I can and keep an eye on that line. Unfortunately, the reason for the commotion is in our line. YHWH and I turn a corner and there at the conveyor belt are two young women with a baby and two freakin' cats. These idiots were bringing cats as freakin' carry-ons! And the cats were not having any of it. Do they not know people who can feed their damn cats at home? Mind you, they have shoes all over the floor, their bags aren't zipped up, nothing is in baskets - it's a g-d TSA training video is what it is. And all I know is I can't see my child. So, one woman carries a cat through the metal detector. She has to wait for the cat's bag to go through the scanner and then fights with the cat to stuff it into a bowling-type bag. Then she tries to go back for the other cat, but the TSA lady stops her and says you can't go back through once you've passed. The baby is, of course, crying it's head off by now. The TSA lady tells the other lady to come through with the cat, but she says she can't leave the baby!! So we're at an impasse. No way, they claim, will they put the cat through the scanner thing. And the TSA lady is stumped. So finally I say, "Just carry them both, lady! The cat and the baby!" Everybody just stopped and looked at each other. YHWH was not looking too good. Very frustrated. At that point I just walked up to detector and went through without looking back, praying I wouldn't beep. I grabbed all my stuff of the conveyor belt and frantically searched for Killer. There she was, sitting on a bench putting her shoes on like nothing ever happened. Looking back at the scene I'd left behind I saw that YHWH had cleared and then I saw another SWAT guy approaching - with a big German Shepherd on a leash. Wouldn't want to be there when the dog showed up.

So, I think she lost her organizer there because she had to get it out to show her ID to the TSA people and I think she got so frazzled that she left it around there. For the last two weeks we heard nothing about it and I was pretty sure YHWH was in denial about it. And then today she got a small, thick envelope with no return address and a postage due stamp on it. It was the innards of her organizer, apparently unmolested. Where it was found, who found it, where the actual organizer is, we do not know. Might have been one of those cat women. Might have been one of those boys at O'Hare. All we know is there are still good people around this country of ours.

Brandy, You're A Fine Girl

2006-10-31T22:48:00.000-06:00

I am so queasy. I did really well at work and only had half of a Butterfinger from the Customer Appreciation stash. But when I got home the abdomenal onslaught began. I had a Frito chili pie. This is a long-standing Fiacre family tradition which goes way back as far as I can remember - FCPs on Halloween night before you go trick-or-treating. I am constantly dumbstruck by the number of people who don't know what Frito Chili Pie is, by the way, including Southwesterners like my wife and my neighbor. It is not made out of Wolf or Hormel or any other canned chili. You have to make the chili yourself. That canned stuff is gross. It is also not made in a pyrex dish in layers. It's simple. You make chili, you get a little bag of Fritos - you could use a Big Grab bag, but I wouldn't advise it - smash them up, pour a couple of scoops of chili in the bag, throw in onions and cheese, stir it up and dine exquisitely. These are especially good at high school football games when your hands are freezing and the warm chili bag keeps them warm. OK, so I had a FCP. Then a regular serving of chili in a bowl. Then a pack of Smarties from our giveaway candy.

By now Killer and I have hit the road t-o-t'ing. She's a unique version of Cleopatra. A blue dress with gold rickrack, and eyes decorated in the classic Egyptian way. But she's got much yellower hair and eyeglasses which I never saw on Cleo. But it worked for her and it didn't cost anything, so that works for me. Anyway, I had an Island Orange Mounds bar from her bag. I don't know why I ate this. I mean I like dark chocolate and orange, but why I ate this piratey looking thing with coconut, I do not know. I didn't detect any orange flavoring at all. OK, then a little pack of Skittles. After making a run around our block, we had to come back so that SGK could get a drink and we consolidated her booty. At this point YHWH handed me a tankard of hot cider spiked with a generous portion of Napoleon brandy to cut the chill of the night air. Then I took SGK and our neighbor out for another raid and upon our return we found our old neighbors had decided to drop in on us from all the way out in Edmond. They missed sharing our annual Fiacre family tradition Frito Chili Pies. So I had a Shiner Bock beer they brought along with them. Then I had an Oh Henry bar, a dark choclate KitKat, and a Twix - all tiny-size, mind you. Then I had two small bite size dark choclates to cap it all off.

I had to eat those last two things because they were the last of the good candy left and I felt like I had to horde. It was my own fault, really, because I sat each of the four kids in the living room floor and taught them how to bargain for candy they wanted from each other's stashes. That was always my favorite part of Halloween. So I got the kids started on that and then went into the kitchen with the adults (they let me hang with them) and when I peeked in on them a little while later, I saw that SGK had bargained away all of her chocolate for -- taffy. I have failed somewhere along the way. And what the hell are people doing giving out taffy at Halloween in the first place?

I'm going to pay for all this in the morning I fear.

Candy-O, I Need You

2006-10-31T14:34:00.000-06:00

Ugh, I hate Halloween at the library. Unfortunately, it coincides with Customer Appreciation Month and a tradition has evolved here which involves leaving bowls of candy at all public service points. I will avoid rumination on the use of the word customer in a library context as I do value my livelihood, but many people (both customer and employee) are often confused about what exactly we appreciate in October. A brightsider might say that we appreciate the tax revenue tossed our way, and we certainly do, but the jaded would counter that the people who use our particular agency don't appear to be contributors to our millage coffers. Then there's the realist who would say that we appreciate your coming in for free internet and candy so that we can have jobs.

But that's all beside the point. The reason I hate Halloween at the library is the agonizing drip, drip, Chinese water totrture of giving out that stupid candy. Budding anthropologists need to come out and study this annual ritual. Normally, there's a mass of about 30 people waiting to get in when we open. The first bowl does not survive this initial ravishing by the sweet-starved locusts. And once it's refilled, the fun begins. Some people come by and grab as much as they can in one dip, supermarket spree-style. Others mill around the desk making small talk or proposing fake queries and for them I kindly turn away under the pretext of getting something out a drawer or dropping a pencil so that they can snatch a nugget of nougat without having to interact with me on the subject. Then there is The Addict, of whom there are many in residence, who cannot stop themselves once they have taken that first chomp on a Butterfinger. They take one and practically inhale it as they walk away. Seconds later, they are back, hands shaking as they try and hurriedly unwrap it. This goes on for several minutes or until we say, "Take a couple - for the road," and they move on. Then there are those, usually women, who very politley ask may they have one piece. And then may they have one for their husband? Son? Daughter? Niece from out of town? Invalid neighbor? I want to scream, "Just take the whole g-d bowl and have done with it!"

I'm not without pity. I know that most of these people live on wholesome, but tasteless, shelter food and what money they panhandle goes to meth and Jack. But it's really sad to watch these base human behaviors - like children - acted out over what I consider to be a trifle. Perspectivizing, I realize that many of them probably never were children or at least had a childhood approaching anything near that of my children. More than being broke, they are what my mom used to call "poor of spirit". I wish I knew how fix that. I really do.

Goin' to the Chapel

2006-10-26T12:13:00.000-05:00

Finally, day three. Just a note, first, tho. I only have pictures of buildings and cityscapes. We are supposed to get a CD of the partypics which will have more pics of interest to those who commented their requests.

We split up on Sunday. At 10:00am, Mimi came for Super Giant Killer and they hailed a cab and whisked away to American Girl Place on 5th Avenue. Mimi had made a deal with her that if she practiced exceptional finishing school manners she would be rewarded with a spree there and she really was a sparkling little angel the whole time. She got to bring Kit with her and they got matching letter jackets and Kit got some Converse hi-tops and crazy socks. That is sacrilege to hardcore AG freaks because she is dressing 'out of time', but SGK doesn't care. Then they spent the day getting hair and nails done on Park Avenue.

Meanwhile, YHWH and I took C. F. Kats on the Uptown Loop of the sightseeing bus. We got to see all the ornate French Renaissance buildings and Harlem. It was a nice relaxing trip of about 2.5 hours. About the only thing we really did that day was visit the MoMA and we shopped in a couple of little boutiques and an international grocery. MoMa is pretty pricey at $20 each, but every work in there is by a 'namebrand' artist, and most of them are the biggies like Starry Night and the Campbell's Soup Cans and Persistence of Memory, etc.

Then came the great hour. Time to get dressed for the Main Event - Wedding Part Three. The second iterations of the fancy dresses were donned and I put on my average looking gray suit, but I did wear a red tie with eyeglasses on it. Only later did I realize that I was to have worn a dark suit to a wedding. No one made a big deal of it, though. I made the fatal mistake of so many honest men and fell for the question, "How do I look?" No, actually, I was just trying to bring levity to the rather tense three-people-dressing-in-a-small-space scenario. So, I said that C.F. Kats' blouse made her look like a pirate and that YHWH's dress looked like something Mrs. Roper would wear. They weren't amused. But they were just ravishing anyway.

The third wedding was in NYAC itself, so we got there with no hitches. This ceremony was still not something to which I am accustomed. I don't know if it was because it was Catholic or Argentine or what. Evenso, I'm very tolerant of other cultures and customs - I even went to a lesbian wedding back in the early 90s before it was cool (or legal) - so I'm not judging it negatively. One thing I noticed was that there was still more speechifying. The father of the bride got up and read off a list of names of people who came all the way from Dubai and Argentina again just like the rehearsal dinner and then we all applauded. I was kind of thinking that if I wanted to know who was there, I would just go look at the guest book. Actually, we applauded lots of things at the urging of the priest. I'd never heard of wedding applause and it did make the solemn proceedings I'm used to seem a little riotous at times. Of course, SGK did a great job strewing flower petals around in the wake of the bride's steps. There were also lay readings by family members and I'm not used to that, either. That whole thing was pretty painless, though.

The hard part came when the ceremony was over and we had yet another open bar with cheese and hors d'oeuvres (I hope I got that right, I'm too lazy to look it up). I say hard because I was starving again having only had a knish from a stand in the street for nourishment all day and I was waiting in line for my gin and tonic and cheese when I was summoned away for family photos. Endless permutations of "now just the uncles", "let's have everyone over five feet", "all people born on Wednesdays!" were assembled for photos and each lineup was taken with about six cameras and two or three lighting scenarios each. So I had to endure all of that without alcohol assist. Speaking of which, once I had a drink in hand, I let C.F.Kats have a taste hoping that it would discourage her from partaking too soon. She was suitably disgusted by the taste, so hopefully it worked. The coolest part of this phase was when YHWH's uncle (the same from the previous night's speech) sat down next to the piano player, who had just played "Ode to Joy" and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" moments before, and taught him to play "Boomer Sooner".

At this point another unusual development occured. We were all asked to sit down at our tables for dinner (again, most receptions I've been to do not have dinner). But the food was not forthcoming. And once again, it was about 7:00 and I was starving. So, we all sat down and the dj started playing some anthemic Kool and the Gang or Raydio song and he belts out these booming introductions of the parents of the couple and each of the flower girls. Kind of had the feel of one of those pro wrestling introductions. And then the dj takes over the whole reception and starts playing dance music and we're all supposed to dance. OK. We're starving. Doesn't the dancing come after the dinner? But I'm cool with that. I've had two drinks and some champagne.

Everyone knew I was shy and reserved and would mope over at my table with Big Time Book Editor, but since that was what's expected of me, I did the opposite. I grabbed C. F. Kats and we danced the odd tangoish dance of people who can't dance, then I goofed around with SGK, then I danced with YHWH's sister, then I danced with YHWH's stepmom, and finally I did a Saturday Night Fever routine with YHWH when "Stayin' Alive" came on. Killer was all over that dance floor and in fact, the whole night she wouldn't have anything to do with her family. She wouldn't talk to us or dance with us or anything. She wanted Book Editor and family to adopt her. We did get to see some tipsy dancers fall over, tho, and C. F. Kats got some sage advice from a disgruntled woman hiding in the bathroom from her husband.

We finally got to eat appetizers at 8:30 - shrimp on a bed of some really gross cold grey noodles. No thanks. Then the entrees came out at 9:30. Filet again! And still no bacon. It was ok, but nothing to write home about. Dessert was wedding cake and it was pretty standard fare, even though the couple was too prim to smash the cake in each others faces. Bad sign...

So that was it. Final thoughts - it wasn't that bad. Once I accepted the absurdity of the entire enterprise and just let go, it was fine. I got rave reviews again, this time from the top, so I felt pretty good about it. I even got a verbal invitation to the brother-of-the-bride's wedding in Minnesota in May.

Saturday In The Park

2006-10-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, we didn't have any committments until 8:00pm when we were all to meet up at Tavern on the Green for the rehearsal dinner, even though the charming couple had already been married twice already and a rehearsal seemed a moot point. But we must do the proper thing if we are to do anything at all.

So YHWH and I decided to take the girls on one of the double decker sightseeing buses which prowl around the city. We weighed several activity options at first, but we thought this would be a comfortable, safe way for them to see the whole island and pick out things they liked that we could go back to. First we had to navigate our sortie from the NYAC. It is possible for one to wear humane clothing and still enter and exit the building. I called the day before we left to be sure that a secret exit passage existed and brought my tennis shoes and jeans for our daily activities. What you do is take the special secret atheltic elevator down to the third floor and then leave the elevator lobby and amble down a hallway until you find a stairwell marked 'C'. Then take the stairs down to the first level and you can go out the back door. They make it a hassle, but I was glad to have the option.

We had some good bagels to start the day and then made the short walk down 7th Ave to Times Square in order to catch the tour bus. It was very nice and crisp - upper 40s - to start out and we made a brisk walk to several tour stops in order to get the best spot on the bus. C. F. Kats appeared overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Times Square, so we were reassured in our decision to go easy at first. It was almost like LA oddly enough. At Times Square we saw a car commercial being filmed. Then down by the Flatiron Building we saw Will Smith and crew filming (I later learned) I Am Legend. We got to see some burned out vehicles and trash and all around disasterish looking sets. We got to see a stunt as well where the crew spun a new Mustang around in the middle of the street; saw a bluescreen on the hood, tho, so I guess the zombies will be added later. And still further on we saw a 'model shoot'; some kind of ad I guess. Our only departures were a walk down to Battery Park for a view of the Statue of Liberty and a promenade around the South Street Seaport.

Finally, we got off the bus at St. Patricks Cathedral and walked up 5th Avenue. This walk was like the scenes you see in movies as it was just packed with people. C.F. Kats wasn't too happy with that either. After a quick lunch at Trump Plaza we went on up 5th to Central Park Zoo to see the penguins and polar bears. Finally, it was time to head back to NYAC to dress for Tavern on the Green. But, on the way there we passed Jennifer Anniston and a couple of friends. After their first day in NYC, SGK thought she could stay forever and C.F. Kats was certain she couldn't.

We got back to the room with about an hour to spare and began the frenzy to 'get ready' for the dinner. I wore khaki pants, a black dress shirt and a black and tan checked coat with a 15 cent skinny electric blue tie from a thrift store complete with my monogram in gold. YHWH and C. F. Kats had fancy party dresses and SGK had a pink and black velvet number. We did clean up good, I must admit. We were told to take a cab down to Tavern and not to be late. However, just before we leave the room, we get a call from YHWH's folks that 'you'll never get a cab'. We found this odd that the swankiest part of NYC would want for cabs on Saturday night, but we prepared to walk the six blocks through Central Park. So we get down to the lobby and the bellboy says there are tons of cabs (like we thought). But then we see YHWH's brothers waiting down there for their wives. YHWH mentioned we were going to grab a cab and see them there and they began scoffing at her for taking a '20 minute cab ride instead of a 10 minute walk'. It's pretty sad to watch that family operate. They must be pretty insecure if they think it makes them look macho to goad their older sister into walking through Central Park at night with her children in tow. So we walked. It was a nice walk, tho. Guess who we saw milling around the bar when we walked in? The brothers and their wives - they took a cab because the wives wouldn't deign to walk through the park. Pretty sad.

So it's 8:00pm and we have the open bar with cheese in the Rafters Room first. This was the mingle portion of the night and I was forced into small talk, which I hate. The room we inhabited was long and narrow and replete with mirors and twinkling chandeliers. It was quite tacky in an out-of-touch Victorian sort of way. Here also one of the odd phenomena of the whole weekend began to play out. For some reason, the whole weekend was focused on where everyone was from. Generally, I don't mind this and in fact, I put a lot of stake in where people are from. However, in this case, we practically wore scarlet panhandles on our shirts as all anyone could talk to us about was OU football and cows and flatness. The whole room was full of either New Yorkers or Argentinians and that's all they could come up with. And that is one of my lifelong peeves with New York and foreigners in general (frequently said of Americans abroad, no doubt) is that they purport to be so superior because of where they live (in the case of NYCers) or because they can speak 10 languages (in the case of the Argentines) and yet they are so insular and sadly ignorant of anywhere but where they live or where they vacation. It was like a quiz: "Where are you from?" "Oklahoma." "Oh. Football and oil, right?" "Ding! You got me there! Ten points for you!" I wanted to start saying, "Argentina - ass kicked in the Falklands, right?" or "200% inflation, right?" or "Gunning people down in soccer stadiums, right?" But you know, you can't win when you do that.

So, I had only eaten a dog from one of the street vendors all day and here it was 9:00. My two Tanqueray and tonics on an empty stomach were getting to me, but I stood fast. We finally were seated a little after 9:00. Blessed be, there was a roll there waiting for me. We were seated as a family plus YHWH's sister and a couple from -- Canada. Somebody up there likes me. No, really, they were about the only real people we met even though they didn't know anything about Oklahoma, except that Frank Keating was in the guy's law firm. I was sure we would get to eat then, but no, there had to be speeches made and apparently it's bad form to eat while people are speechifying. One speech was great, tho. YHWH's uncle was raised the son of a doctor in a medium-sized town in Oklahoma, went to military school, was in a fraternity, and has held high-powered jobs in Boston, Washington, and Los Angeles. He's no stranger to these things. So, after all these speeches about Argentina and French people from Dubai and on and on, he gets up and makes an unscheduled speech. It was awesome. To paraphrase, he said, "All this talk about foreign places is well and good. But the bride has chosen to become an Okie and we welcome her into our hearts and homes!" All us Okies (except YHWH's immediates) let out a, whoop and the bride's family got a big kick out of it. He really brought the house down.

So, we sat through about 10 trips down memory lane before the first course came out - at 9:50. It was a large bowl with three small raviolis in it that reminded me of our Franco-American lunches at daycare. We got to choose whether we wanted duck or filet mignon for our entree which was served at 10:30pm. I went for the filet which was definitely the right call because everyone who got the duck said it was horrible and could not even be cut much less chewed. I was kind of bummed about the filet because it came without the nice bacon wrap for added flavor. But hey, what do you want for $175? Later, our Canadian tablemate let on that Tavern isn't known for it's food. This I concurred with as I took my first bite of half-frozen strudel for dessert. But those gin and tonics were really, really good.

So at a little before midnight we got up to leave. After I paid the $8 to get our coats back, I noticed that there was a line of about 30 people to get cabs. So we decided to brave it and walk back, although we went down Central Park West (aka 8th Ave) instead of through the Park. We saw a few street people, but it was safe.

By the way I got rave reviews for my dashing look and charming personality. No, I'm not kidding. I just said I hate going to stuff like that, I didn't say I wasn't good at it!

And that was day two.

Gonna Take That Big White Bird

2006-10-23T21:21:00.000-05:00

We are back, the home come heroes. As a small glimpse of how it went, let me first explain that I was not able to update because the luxurious climes in which we were perched charged 75 cents per minute for internet access and even if we'd brought our laptop, we would've been charged 1.00 per minute. I'm sorry, I simply cannot type fast enough to keep it under a monthly paycheck.

I know this is going to be a long post and reading it will be something like watching the much cliched slideshow of someone else's vacation, so you may want to stop here...

The day before we left, we were scurrying around trying to complete our wardrobes, but we finally got it together. Just as I was going to sleep on Thursday, I remembered my last post about my sister's wedding being a true community affair and I realized that this one was, too. Tex loaned me her garment bag; Mr. Tex graciously surrendered his overcoat; Rawdog offered loafers to smooth out the comfy flying attire/easy checkpoint removal/dress code approved footwear problem; Purple Bunny offered sturdy suitcases; Overcoat prepped us on easy airport transitions and transportation and Adjective Queen even gave us a ride to the airport on her day off! And everyone wished us well. So thanks, for being such a nice community everybody!

So, first thing in the morning on Friday, we reenacted the frantic family-to-the-airport scene from Home Alone, tho on a much smaller scale. We were packed the night before, but you still always have those little things here and there; it came off pretty well, tho. I jumped up and quickly got ready and heated some water for instant coffee and oatmeal. Then I helped Super Giant Killer get dressed - brown pin-striped suit pants with gold belt, brown spandex shirt, and pearls - and we just ate breakfast and watched the frenzy reach crescendo until -knock, knock - the Queen was at the door. We got all loaded and pulled away but before we got to the main road, I had to stop. I am in no way OCD, but I am a 'checker' (it's because our house was broken into when I was little and I have never really gotten over it). In all the flurry, I couldn't remember turning off the stove when I heated the water and I had to go back and make sure. The Queen was so nice, although I know I will never live it down.

We got there in plenty of time and got through security just fine. But it soon became obvious to me that I was now old and the times have a-changed. One of the first things I noticed while watching our plane being prepared was that most of the ground crew looked like they had just returned to work from shooting a Kid Rock video and still others may have been at an X-Games event. Where once I watched guys in smart service-type uniforms waving their fluorescent signal lights, I now saw dudes in baggy pants, dreads, and Phish t-shirts whipping around in baggage trucks and refueling planes. Biased on my part to be sure, as here I was complaining about the dress code to which I had to defer, but I still say I'd rather it look like Air Force personnel were prepping my plane than wiggers.

Likewise, I would like to think some former USAF guys are flying the plane. Our 'equipment' out of OKC was one of those Embraer RJ things (aka a flying pencil) and it was full and cramped. I hate those little things. So, we're getting ready to leave and our pilot gets on and he sounds like he's 15. He tells us he's Matt and our co-pilot is Chris. I'm sorry, 'Matt and Chris' sound like two dudes cruising around in a tricked out Mustang, not flying me to Chicago. I want 'Robert and Edward' or better yet, 'Walter and Jack'.

So we start our takeoff and just as we get airborne, SGK squeals, "This is awesome! I've never been this happy in my life!" So, that was worth it. Then the flight attendant announces snacks can be purchased, including cashews for $2. SGK is deathly allergic to cashews. So I turned to YHWH, "did you bring her epipen?" Neither one of us brought it. We sort of panicked because she could die before they could land the plane if she'd gotten a small whiff of cashew dust. So YHWH asked the attendant if she could refrain from serving them, and she didn't want to do it, but she said she would (she even admitted frankly that since they are something the airline makes money on, she isn't allowed to not sell them). It's American Eagle by the way, for anyone who needs to know that they still serve things that can kill people. When we switched to American Airlines in Chicago, we told the crew and they laughed and said they quit serving allergens a long time ago and thought it was stupid for American Eagle to serve them. By the way, on the last leg of our return trip we were back on American Eagle and we told them ahead of time about the allergy and the attendant refused to refrain from selling cashews and said, "We've already told people they can have them! We can't tell them they can't have them now!" Once again, folks that's American Eagle. So, we just begged people around us to not eat their cashews if at all possible and thankfully the three people who purchased a snack pack agreed not to eat their cashews.

Once in Chicago, we had 10 minutes to change planes, which was great. But upon arrival at our gate we learned that rain in the east had cause a ripple effect in the traffic pattern and we were pushed back almost two hours. No problem. You can kill a few hours in the airport. But then we get this phone call. YHWH's folks were letting us know to come straight to their room for a champagne and cheese meet-and-greet in their suite so that the two families can get acquainted. Excuse me, aren't we already going to two weddings, a dinner and a reception? Besides, we already had plans to take the girls to a theme restaurant like Hard Rock or Jekyll and Hyde that first night. So we kicked our dread up a notch there in Chicago.

Eventually, we get to board our flight to LaGuardia, but since the traffic jam still existed on the east coast and an arrival needed our gate, we got to sit on the apron for about an hour and a half waiting to taxi! In front of us was a middle-aged couple from Milwacky who were apparently making their first trip without the kids and their first big weekend getaway to New York. What great fortune befell them as they found themselves seated next to a blowhard who, though not a New yorker himself, knew everything about the city. The Gotham Bloviate regaled them with tales of the wonderous nightlife, rundowns on each and every neighborhood and what to do there. On and on for the four hours it took to get to NYC. All the while the corduroy sport-coated male kept insturcting his secretary/wife to "write that down" whenever the Gotham Bloviate imparted tell of a particularly shiny gem. The Gotham Bloviate was not actually that onoxious by nature, thankfully, and what struck me most was the apparent unpreparedness of this seemingly uptight couple. Do they not have libraries in Milwacky? Or bookstores? Was it that hard to find a guidebook? I thought they might have just been playing nice, but they seemed really uneducated on the subject.

We finally made our approach to LaGuardia about 2.5 hours late, but the remnants of that bad weather were still lingering and our MD-80 was thrown about quite a bit. Even I, who likes rollercoasters and flying, had to lean back, close my eyes and clinch my stomach. We had a glimmer of hope tho, because we were sure the delay made us too late for the soiree. I mean, it was 5:30 and we still had to get over to Midtown in the middle of Friday rush hour. Meanwhile the elite members of my wife's family were attending the only one of the three weddings that 'counted' - the ceremony conducted by the family priest up in Westchester County.

We thought by arriving at our exclusive digs at 7:00 we would've missed the event, but no, they were just arriving themselves. I got through it OK because SGK kind of took over the event by regaling the Argentine Contingent (the bride's familia) with her knowledge of the Pampas and gauchos and also running through two of her karate workouts. As I said, we had promised the girls a trip to a theme restaurant, but YHWH's brother invited us to 'a little Italian place' for dinner and we were much encouraged to go along by the grownups. So, YHWH and I went with her sibs and the bride's to the home of the $30 bowl of spaghetti. In case you're wondering, yours truly did step up to the plate and charm the three people at the table previously unknown to him. He was quickly able to discern their passions and vocations and was able to converse across a wide breadth of topics. And dinner cost $454.

When you go to New York you learn quickly that you will be constantly fleeced of your cash. I'm really not a cheapskate, but it does get burdensome after a while. We had to pay to get our bags to the street at the airport. We had to tip the driver who took us to the New York Athletic Club, we had to tip the bellhop to take them in and the guy who took them to our room. At this 'little place' we had to tip the maitre d', then the wine guy and of course the waitress and the bathroom attendant and the coat check lady. I was constantly handing out dollar bills the whole weekend.

After dinner we collected the kids and returned to our little room. First let me say I am very grateful to the bride's family for putting us up for the weekend. The room didn't cost me a dime so I'm not complaining. But I was shocked that the rooms were so small. We had two double beds with about a foot on either side and a foot between them. There was not much decor to speak of and if I had been knocked unconscious out on the street and awakened in that room I would have guessed I was in a Clarion or Best Western. Not what I would've expected for something in the $400 a night range off Central Park. But like I said, the price was right.

So that was our first night. I'm shutting up now.

Fairy Tales Can Come True, It Can Happen To You

2006-10-17T21:32:00.000-05:00

I felt obliged to say that the main reason this wedding thing is annoying me is because it's just so overblown. It's true we all tend to place ourselves at the center of the universe and assume that our way is best, and I am no exception. But I think my sister's wedding is the standard for how it ought to be done.

When she got engaged at 18, my parents weren't really prepared for it. I'm not sure how they felt emotionally, but financially, we were pretty well broke. We always were, but this was the high inflation, no jobs malaise Jimmy Carter presided over and it was pretty tough on the lower middle class.

But they were in love, and so it was going to happen. My sister visited a dozen venues to try and get the best possible value for the event. It was looking like it would have to be a dank church basement until, on a lark, she decide to try Tulsa's swankiest hotel - The Mayo. The Mayo had entertained Tulsa's oilmen and first families for decades and my sister didn't think she could afford it but she wanted to at least dream about having it there. So, she went in to talk to the events person there and after telling her story and chatting awhile, the hotelier said, "You know, Mr. Oilman just canceled a major event in our Crystal Ballroom and I'm really angry about it. I've been thinking about not refunding his money. If you can have your wedding on the 15th, we'll let him rent the Crystal Ballroom for you." And so it was that my sister was married in a place that looked like something out of Beauty and the Beast.

But that wasn't the only thing. We still had to produce this thing. My mom got a dress at a consignment shop and refashioned it into a wedding dress. My mom made the five-tiered wedding cake. She made the sheet cakes. She made the petit-fours and canapes. The groom's mother and sister hand made hundreds of fresh mini-tamales. They made five gallons of frozen margaritas with tequila they got from a guy who owed them a favor. The groom's cousin brought his mariachi band to play. All the young adults in the cult made and hung the decorations. We borrowed all the tables and punch bowls and everything else. Our whole community contributed something to this wedding. To this day, when I run into people from the cult they ask me if my sister's still married. They're relieved to hear she is and say, 25 years later, "That's the best wedding I've ever been to."

Sadly, I don't remember much of it. I spent the first half of the thing practicing heavy underage drinking and the second half curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor of the bridal suite.

So forgive me if I am grumbling about spending hundreds of thousands on a wedding for two people old enough to have kids in high school. It's just not my way.

By the way this will be Killer's fifth gig as flower girl. As you will see below, she is carrying on the family business. For I was a veteran ringbearer, having borne rings to at least a half-dozen nuptials (click for larger):

What I Need Is Everywhere

2006-10-16T18:51:00.000-05:00

I just got a call that my aunt - my mom's sister - has died. And yeah, in case you're wondering, I would rather go to a funeral than a wedding.

I've written about my dad's family ties and the curse a couple of times, but my mom's family may really have one. There were eight siblings who survived to adulthood. The oldest has polio, the next died from multiple sclerosis, the third has spasmodic dysphonia (like Diane Rehm), the fourth has chronic back problems, the fifth (the aunt who just died) had cerebral palsy, my mom died of lymphoma, the next has Parkinson's and the last one has severe complications from the ravages of substance abuse. And let me just say they're all saints. I've never heard one of them complain. Never seen anything but smiles and hugs.

This aunt was really a piece of work, though. She was 68 and she wasn't even expected to live into her teens. She had cerebral palsy and lived her whole life in a wheelchair. What I remember from my youthful visits was her crossword mania, encyclopedic knowledge of all genres of music from 1960-1975, incessant smoking and moments when the quiet was punctured by a spastic shudder or kick. But her affliction wasn't genetic. It was man made.

My grandparents lived way out in northwest Oklahoma and medical care is scarce out there even now, but in 1938 with the Dust Bowl at gale force, there was, for all intents and purposes, none to be found. The midwives from a local church (which I will not name) made all the deliveries in their area. This is one of those off the radar type churches which hold among their tenets a refusal to seek medical care.

So when the time came to deliver, my grandpa summoned the midwife. When she arrived she got really agitated and said that God told her the baby wasn't ready yet. Some or another prophecy was at play. So she left the baby partially delivered in the birth canal - nearly a whole day by time it was all over with. I've talked to people in the medical know about this and most believe that the umbilical cord was wrapped around my aunt's neck or something rather common like that and the midwife was probably too inexperienced and panicked or something. My grandpa was so angry that he yelled at the midwife and told her to leave his house and he followed her down the road on foot screaming at her for what she'd done.

He swore he'd never enter a church again. And he damn well didn't. Every wedding picture I have of those kids shows them cutting the cake in the farmhouse kitchen. Which was all well and good because the elders of the church all got together after he'd let fly on the midwife and decided to curse him. Unfortunately, no one could or would tell me what exactly the curse was. All I know is that it really did scare him for the rest of his life.

Here's the clan, except for the yet-born last child. My mom is doing her Home Alone impression (hands on her face) and the aunt in question is the ragdoll in the foreground ( click for larger):

Also there was som discussion of wanting to see me in a suit. Here goes:

They Make No Mention of the Beauty of Decay

2006-10-15T12:19:00.000-05:00

The wedding continues to dominate our lives for better or worse. We were scheduled to have an all day shopping junket on Sairdy. YHWH, Killer and C. F. Kats are all required to have small, black, formal clutches; I needed a jacket in which I can stroll around the hotel; everyone needed all-weather formal coats; I needed two dress shirts; and it was suggested I get a sweater and some 'nice' long-sleeved shirts.

So, like I said, it was supposed to be an all day affair. But on Sairdy morning, YHWH tells me to just get Killer out of the house all day - she wanted to clean the house. That's bad. That is an ominous sign. Cleaning has psychological implications. Where I have resigned myself to my fate and am now given to mocking the whole thing, she has obviously not gotten to that point.

So, I took Killer to the Zoo. We were there 4.5 hours. I have never been to the Zoo that long in one session in my life. It was great weather and Killer brought a blank journal and declared herself a naturalist. We had to stop and draw loads of plants, flowers, and animals. We read and discussed every plaque. Here's a page from the journal including some of our team work:

After that we decided to hit the northside thrift stores. I thought it would be a nice touch to wear thirft store merch to our snooty events. We didn't have too much success, but we had a lot of fun. We did find one small velvet clutch for 98 cents, though. Finally, we went to Big Lots to get some decent Halloween dex. YHWH tends to decorate with Fall things, but frankly SGK and I never found a cornucopia to be particularly terrifying. I find the glow-in-the-dark velvet skeleton hanging on the doorways of my youth (pre-cult, of course) to be the standard. So Killer picked out some stuff and here are a couple of examples of the result:

The strung-up skeleton has been dubbed Carl by Killer. He actually is very scary out there, especially when a slight breeze makes him sway a little bit.

No word when we'll actually get around to buying all that stuff...

We've also started our Halloween season movie-watching. C. F. Kats prefers the psychological thrillers to slashers, so we have selected accoridngly. We got our film critic friend with the exhaustive DVD library to hook us up with some good ones:

Experiment in Terror
Tale of Two Sisters
Cape Fear (original)
Black Sunday
Planet of the Vampires
Peeping Tom
Carnival of Souls
M
Cat People
Lady in White
Diabolique (original French one)

Cape Fear is still so creepy, among the few that consistently get to me. Talking about the Mitchum-Peck version, of course. One of the key components of it's success of course is in what it doesn't say or depict. They use semantics to lead you to a certain point and then allow you to define (ala 1984) what your own brand of hell might be.

Me and You and a Dog Named Boo

2006-10-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

The countdown is on. Will the flower girl's ballerina shoes be back from the dying place in time for us to schlep them to NYC? This wedding deal is just getting downright farcical. When I bitched the other day about it, I didn't even spill the half of it. I'm reserved to tell all of it, because there are some out there who probably love weddings and cry and all that and others who don't balk at the arcanery of it all. But you know what - get your own blog.

The best we bumpkins can figure out the current running total of this affair is nearing the GDP of Togo. You could relocate the entire population of Tuvalu to gated communities in Sydney for what is being shelled out. I mean, I'm no Commie, they can spend their money any way they want. The frivolity of it all just galls me, though. Like Killer's dress - we had to take her to a tailor here who took her measurements and called a tailor in NYC who worked out the pattern and called the tailor here to explain how to make the dress in OKC. And then we had to buy ballerina slippers and have them dyed to match the dress. The dress is white. The shoes are white. The room is dim. And the $500 dollar dress is going to have petit fours smeared down the front of it in beautiful pastel hues before 'I do'. Then there's things like 300 people eating dinner at $175 a plate. And there will be three dinners. We're talking over a quarter-mil here, y'all.

It all reminds of the first week of World War I. You remember. France didn't want to defend Serbia, but they thought it looked bad, so they called up a few troops. Then Germany didn't really want to fight France, but they didn't want to look bad for leaving Austria hanging. Then Russia really didn't want to fight, but they needed some French loans. Unfortunately for everyone, Germany (as usual) had a plan. That's how this happened. When the engagement was announced, we automatically told ourselves we weren't going. Then we thought it would look bad, so only YHWH was going to go. But then, like Germans, they said they had to have Killer be the flower girl. This is because she is the only girl they know. I am pretty sure that in the two years we have known the bride she has never once spoken to Killer. Ever. And they want her to be in this thing. Meanwhile, the couple act like they don't even want all this. So, nobody wants this thing to happen and no one wants to go, yet no one will speak up to stop it. It's World War I, people.

We told all this to a friend who plays for the other team and she said, "Married heterosexuals with no kids are the most annoying people on Earth. Except for the ones with no kids and a dog." That's not me, I'm just telling you what she said.

O course, the really sick thing is that I don't see this thing lasting. I always say that, though. Voice of experience. I say you go to the courthouse and sign some papers, put all the wedding money in a CD and then in five years if you're still together you can have a giant party.

Of course, the good thing is that usually things aren't as bad as you fret them out to be, so I'm sure I'll be fine. I'm thinking holed up in the room with ESPN and the mini-bar will do the trick. Yes, I would go all the way to NYC to do that.

You Will Never Find a More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy.

2006-10-11T16:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, in fairness to Edna from yesterday's post, I have a confession to make. The other day at Target I lost it, too. Although, in my defense, it was only two restocking red-shirters who heard me and not a line of ravenous nine-to-fivers.

After only one viewing, SGK lost the Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi DVD from our boxed set. You remember the boxed DVD set that came out a while back? The one that was marketed with the slogan 'available for a limited time only'. And the retail rumor-mill said Lucas was going to take a page from Disney and make the old Star Wars DVDs only available off and on for short periods and you may not have another crack at them for a decade. So I bought them. I bought them with the full knowledge that the movie distributing bast*rds knew they were lying. This I know because they said the same thing when the VHS came out in the mid-1990s to the tune of $200 or so, right before they rereleased all them movies in the theater and reissued the VHS for about half the price.

So, yes, I bought the boxed set of DVDs even though I was extremely annoyed that Lucas only released the stupid doctored-up versions and acted like Episode IV: A New Hope was the same movie I sat through 43 times in the summer of '77. It clearly was not. And don't start in with "It's his movie, he can do what he wants with it." Well, around my family's vicious card table, "A card laid is a card played." DaVinci didn't go back and put sunglasses on Mona Lisa. I don't care if he makes Episode IV: A New Hope so long as I can watch Star Wars any time I want without all of the silly muppets cgi'ed into it. And you had to buy the boxed set because another maxim at the time was that they would only ever be available as a set. And only in the Digitally Remastered version.

So, of course, I was miffed when SGK lost our Jedi. And then last weekend I saw an ad which explained that Eps IV, V, and VI would be available separately for a limited time. I mean what is it with these people? And you know I was there the next morning at Target to complete my set because, gd it, it's only available for a limited time! I got there about the time they were opening and the sleepy stock clerks were overstuffing the shelves for a big Saturday. I whisked my lighter, suit-capable self over to the electronics section and quickly located the Jedis. My approach took me between two unenthused stockers and I quickly extracted my copy, looked it over to make sure I got VI, not IV and then I saw it. The Sticker. There was a prism-backed sticker which gleefully beamed back to me the words "Includes original theatrical release!" I wasn't as bad as Edna but I said very loudly, "What?! They said they weren't going to do this! Why did they do this?!" Because now I have to buy IV, too! I turned in the direction of one of the clerks. She didn't look like she was alive in '77. I turned to the other one and began to plead for...something. And she was like a cop. She actually reached near her hip for her walkie-talkie. I just stopped short and smiled and she smiled back. I tucked it under and as I walked away I threw over my shoulder, "You shouldn't mess with Star Wars."

Can't You See the Real Me?

2006-10-10T16:09:00.000-05:00

This just in from the I'm Not Long For This World File, Restaurant Division:
Today I was at Subway for lunch and this lady (looking very unJared-like) lost it in the line. Wait, I don't mean she vomited or anything. I mean she exploded at the foodworker.

Allow me to set the scene. There were oh, 30 people in line; out the door and down the sidewalk. I was wistfully watching my lunch half-hour ticking away on the clock above which looked very much like a refugee from a Service Merchandise closing-forever-sale. This lady was wearing an atrocious wig; the kind that reminds you why our forefathers began calling them rugs. Because this one looked just like the jet black carpet I always wanted in my room when I was a kid and my mom gave me the I-wish-psychotherapy-wasn't-of-the-devil look. She had on a black tent dress with a cheetah collar and some clashing Easy Spirits. Her sandwich had been breaded, cheesed, toasted, and piled on and was awaiting the dressing. She made her call and as soon as the foodworker squeezed on the Chipotle something-or-other dressing (one day you will bear the full brunt of my opinions on Chipotle (let's just say, I'll bet it originated in Canada)), the lady went ballistic.
"Nooo!!!"
"But ma'am. You said Chipotle crap dressing!"
"Why do you people always spread it on the cheeeese side??!! I don't want it on that side!"
"OK. It's just how we're trained to make them. I'll be happy to..."
"Well that's stupid!! Who would train someone to make a sandwich that way!! It's stupid!!"

I wasn't far from the scene, so I felt compelled to intervene. But on which side? As a working stiff, I was sympathetic to the foodworker and, in fact, I'm in there so much I know the whole gang and occasionally get comped drinks. But at the same time, I felt empathy for the gal. This was obviously not about some Chipotle dressing. I was nudged by an unseen hand (my mom would say The Spirit) to walk over to her and put an arm around her and say, "Is your brother-in-law getting married, too?"

And then it happened. She made a boo-boo. I was all ready to be on her side until she pulled out a checkbook. A checkbook. It's 2006. Nobody writes checks anymore. And if I feel like writing a check out of nostalgia, I don't do it when there are 500 people waiting to eat on their 30 minute lunch break.

Of course, I brightsided it. It made me fell all that much better when the foodworker saw me and smiled and started fixing my lunch without asking what I wanted, knowing I would pay in cash with exact change. But Edna, wherever you are, thanks for a lively afternoon. I hope it got better for you.

Goin' Home Where the New York City Winters Aren't Bleedin' Me

2006-10-09T20:18:00.000-05:00

So, this wedding is killing me. My brother-in-law is scheduled to wed a woman from New York in a few weeks. The blessed couple lives in Oklahoma as does all of his family and so we are all flying to New York, we're all staying in an exclusive Midtown private club, and eating at beyond expensive Midtown restaurants. It isn't going to cost us anything (at least the major stuff). So, what's my problem, right? Why wouldn't I want a most-expenses-paid trip to New York? God knows I could never afford to do it on my own.

The easiest explanation is that it just violates my principles. First of all, they're like 37 years old. When you're that age and you've already been living together and you just bought a half-million dollar house for the two of you, it's an affront to me to have to buy you a shower gift and a wedding gift. On top of that, they're are already married. Her mother would not tolerate a wedding which was not performed by her priest in New York. So my b-i-l had to convert and then the priest said that the laws in New York make it difficult to get married if your from out of state, so they have to get married here first and then he will reenact what has already been done up there. But no one can go to that but immediate family (which inexplicably we are not part of), so they are having a third ceremony at the private club. That all makes me vomit. If you're that old, you should freaking go to Las Freakin' Vegas.

This is all in addition to the incredible hassle of it all. First of all flying period is a hassle. Flying in and out of NYC is ten times the hassle. Getting to Midtown from the airport is a hassle. The exclusive place where we are staying has a sadly arcane dress code which bans denim, sneakers (sic), and t-shirts. Jacket and tie must be worn outside the rooms at all times. So I have to wear a g*dda*n suit. Twice. I do not wear suits. I have one oldish one and I have had to go on a crash diet to get into it (I have done it, though).

Then I found out that because I am a librarian I am to be seated with an editor from Doubleday, who is closely associated with a huge bestselling author. Ok, this is like seating a batboy with a lumberjack. Even worse, my wife is an English teacher. And she hates that author. I think the word she used was 'insipid'. I thought you weren't supposed to sit similar people or couples together. For one thing, librarians ought to be seating chart wildcards. We can talk about anything; we have something in common with everyone.

Now, you're probably like my other b-i-l who said, "Lighten up, man. It's just a party!" But I hate parties. I loathe parties. And I don't understand why extroverts are so intolerant. I realize the obvious answer is, duh, they're extroverted. But why do they take something from introverts or push them? We don't make any demands on them at all except to leave us alone. All they have to do is...nothing.

The final nail in the coffin was this weekend when the celebrant performed one of his occasional but regular verbal assaults on me. He has a drinking problem and when he drinks and gets with his brother, they like to pick on me. Being an introvert, I'm an easy target I guess. They're very cowardly and only do this when there are two of them and usual other people around who I would rather not see the swath of verbal destruction I can leave behind. This time it was my father-in-law and my wife. I'm just not going to retaliate in front of their family members, I could only lose. It might sound strange, but I just won't do it. They don't really say anything offensive; in fact if I were to recount it you would say it was no big deal. But it's the spirit in which it is done that makes it ridiculous. So instead of telling the guy off I'm suffering through his freakin' wedding.

So, I'm thinking about small ways I can screw things up. I think for one thing I'm going to really drag out my drawl and say 'goll-lee'and 'durn' and 'dad-blamed'. And talk about all the 'oll' we have on our spread. Failing that, I'm going to be really, really honest to everyone I meet. And if anyone says anything, all I have to say is, "Lighten up, man. It's just a party!"

I'm getting too old for this sh*t.

Wednesday, Bloody Wednesday

2006-10-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

Well, here I sit with a needle in my arm. No, I haven't finally succumbed to heroin to numb the pain of my daily life. I'm donating platelets. They have a new chair which has a computer attached to it and so I'm checking it out. Ought to be interesting -- I can only use one hand and it has a band aid on the end of the index finger; the keyboard is on an overhead springy thing and it's bouncing all over the place when I type; I'm lightheaded; and I'm supposed to be squeezing this thingy to help pump the blood, but the typing-squeezing is causing disorientation akin to rubbing your stomach and top of your head at the same time. But the new nurse is cute and one of the other donors is likewise easy on the eyes, so I'm getting by. The Dodgers are on the ropes, though, and it sucks not being able to pace the floor.

I've started mentally working on a new list. I say mentally because I can't think of anything to write down yet. This one seeks to come up with a theme song for every year of my life that I can remember. It's proving to be nearly impossible. To clarify, I'm trying to find songs for each year that best express my feelings for that year, not my favorite song from that year. I'm avoiding obvious or overt selections. For example 1981 was the best year on record for me, but I'm not selecting Sinatra's "It Was A Very Good Year". It's too literal. In fact I would like it best if it was a sort of emotional imprint, so that just hearing it one could feel how I felt then. I know that's not possible, though. If for no other reason, I might play 1981's song and because you hate that song you may react like it was 1994. I'm also thinking I might have to review the list every five years or so because I might change my feelings - not mention I'm still racking up the years. So far, I'm about to declare "Suburbiac" by Dolour as the theme song for 1996. And New Order's "Sunrise" for 1985. Try it - it ain't easy.

The front half of SGK's sweater is done. I was worried about getting it done before winter, but it doesn't seem like winter will be here any time soon.

I'm getting tired of this pecking.... ta ta from blood central!

The Blair Warner Project

2006-09-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

OK, I found out you can go to Halloween Express on Friday night and see the same people you can see at the Fair -- for free! Yeah, we went in to see about getting Super Giant Killer a costyoom (she's thinking Cleopatra). Even though the stuff in the store is sold at horrifying prices, I wanted to stick around and witness the scary people that come in there. You think I'm talking about Goth kids or something, but I'm not. I'm pretty sure they drove over after they ran out of money on the Midway.

There was one woman in there looking intently at a row of costumes in the adult section (and I don't mean size-wise) who looked to be over 50 and about 5'2" and wore spandex pants in a blue the color of the old Crayola cornflower crayon and shoes kind of like this. The shirt was unremarkable, but she had on a really, really bad black wig that increased her mass by about 68%. And people, I got the distinct impression that this was not a temporary status, that she was not just trying on a costume and had stepped out of the dressing room for another size. When she moved on I went over to see what she had been perusing and they were these slutty French maid, stewardess, and Catholic school girl costumes. Then I see this lanky guy slathered in average-looking tattoos saunter up and spank her cornflower butt and off they go. Awwwww...

Then there was this bra-busting mother-of-at-least-two squawking at her kids about some $3.00 plastic swords while she was trying to find an M&M costume in her size - to no avail. Another treat was the entrance to the dressing room - and I wouldn't ponder that image too long - the sentinel placed there looked to be passed out. I'm not sure if it was due to exhaustion or long-term exposure to latex. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and concocted a story in my mind that she was probably a single mom who was working three jobs and by Friday night it had simply caught up to her. See, I really am compassionate and empathic.

Here's what we did when we got home:

SGK decided we would make our own almanac by writing down everything we know - but it had to be 'natural'. Unfortunately, bedtime arrived before the tome was complete. The aspen trees phrase was supposed to be included on line 2. Line 3 says 'to a CR a person is 2 inches tall'; a CR is California Redwood. Line 6 is 'Nuuk, Greenland has a subpolar climate' - I have no idea where she got that one.

I want to know why none of the female bloggers I link to has submitted a report on the Lisa Whelchel Womens' Conference which took place last weekend at a First Baptist church in a nearby bedroom community. I know it wasn't because none of you went. We're talking Lisa Whelchel, y'all. You know, Blair from Facts of Life? There could be no more inspiring conferee than she. She scrapbooks; she homeschools; she does conferences for women; she smiles alot; there can be no better guidepost for you gals. In fact, I think she was on the cover of Guideposts back in the early 90s. Oh well, I guess you'll have to catch her next week at the MomTime Get-A-Way in Monroe, Michigan. Or if God has blessed you with the riches you deserve (or healthy residuals from Nick at Nite), you could hire her as a Personal Mom Coach or you could go on the Premier Christian Cruises Music Boat with her. In the meantime the aforementioned church will be hosting Team Impact (and yes, you do have to watch the video). After that, be sure you go see Jesus Camp!! See you there.

Remember Me To One Who Lives There

2006-09-20T12:23:00.000-05:00

We went to the Fair Tuesday evening, we four, and I went with the full intention of gathering fodder for this post. Not that full attention was not given to the family, but, y'know, I was keeping one eye open for blogmatter. I don't know if it was some sort of middle-aged ennui or what but it was definitely a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Let me say first, I will always go to the Fair. It doesn't matter what it costs, it is just something you have to do as a citizen. Voting and Fair attendance. Queen, you will always be a Texan because you don't go.

But you can only marvel at white trash for so long. A 250-pound woman in a miniskirt and high heels with a jumbo beer and a Marlboro in one hand and a six foot tall chartreuse coyote tucked under the other is remarkable at Penn Square Mall. At the Fair, in her natural habitat, it's not even a head-turner. When I was in college (in apparent marked contrast to Queen's and Gouldie's time there), my friends and I made sport of overtly ogling some gal, begging her beau to offer up the Holy Grail of smart-ass-response-invoking questions, "Whudderyoulookinat?!" Or the equally enticing, "Yougottaproblem?!" (That was only if it looked like he wasn't armed or had any friends in proximity) At first I thought, "I pretty well see that everyday at work, so it's no longer a treat." But then I realized, no, this is different -- they're wearing their dress-up clothes to the Fair, not their all-day-chatting-on-the-internet clothes. Even so, while I saw many slutty outfits, I'm not compelled to go on about it because it's been done. I myself wrote a piece every year on the Fair for the college newspaper. And whichever alternative-to-the-alternative newspaper is still in print on any given September is likely to have a white-trash-at-the-Fair piece. But...I...really...want...to... I noticed several gals had these potbellies and insisted on wearing bare-midriff shirts about two sizes too small. No. I'm not going to do this. But... I'm stopping now.

We had fun, though. We were there for four hours and we didn't even get to see everything. Our first stop was under the bigtop where we saw De'Anna, The Hypno-Chick. Her delivery was so loud and obnoxious I was pretty sure no one could possibly fall under hypnosis; a fact which was confirmed as the show progessed because most of her 'subjects' did not do a good enough acting job to sell this rube. But she was very attractive with her flouncy skirt and six inch heels... OK, I'm stopping. So we left. Of course, later on YHWH saw De'Anna leaning on a fence after the girls rode the Okie Zip and she had to go up and chat with her. That's why I married her, folks. She's everything I'm not. YHWH, I mean, not De'Anna. I mean De'Anna may also be everything I'm not, but I'm not married to her is what I mean. YHWH will usually extract the contact's origin story and academic credentials, so there's no end to the fascinating details she reports (because I had to stand off to the side). Of course the first thing she said was, "She doesn't look nearly as good up close. You can tell she's older than she looks on stage." Ah, women. Always looking out for each other. I'm always amazed at how even blue-state gals do this. No matter how refined, liberated or enlightened, they still put so much stock on appearance. But the Hypno-Chick was very friendly and very nice and she offered to shake the Killer's hand, but since the Killer had earlier seen her grab someone's hand and make them fall asleep, she was not wont to take it.

We also visited the various international peddlers and everyone purchased a small trinket. I'm still bummed that I didn't go back and buy some incense from the Tibetan booth. I waited because I wanted to see what the Indian booth had and then I forgot to go back. Killer was trying to be big time and did all of her own negotiations and purchases. The next morning she held up this little cloisonne box she got from one of the Andean booths and said, "Two dollahhh..." If that's not an educational payoff, what is?

Don't Do What Your Big Sister Does

2006-09-16T20:39:00.000-05:00

If it had been about 40 degrees cooler yesterday I could've used my favorite word in the English language: blustery. I don't know exactly why I love that word so much. Probably because it describes my favorite atmospheric condition. It more than describes it; you can just feel it by saying it. As it was we had a scirocco.

I'm not positive when I first fell in love with that word, but I'm sure my first encounter of it was in something related to Winnie the Pooh. I looked a few things up and the movie called The Blustery Day came out in 1968, so I'm sure I didn't see that in the theaters (pre-VHS days), so there was probably a book or some attendant marketing to the movie I was handed-down. One thing I do remember is listening to a Disney lp of Now We Are Six. It was a 33.3rpm vinyl with a booklet inside and it may have had the Blustery Day in it. It's weird -- I suddenly recall that being my earliest memory of melancholia. I remember the line goes something like "Now I am six and clever as ever; I think I shall remain six forever". I guess I figured out I was going to have to grow up someday. Maybe it was the songs. Who knows. I'm a sensitive guy, y'know.

If you felt the Earth quaking a little today it was not the bullsh*t refereeing at the OU-Oregon game. It was a visit from the Saint's sister. It was the first time I'd seen her since November and the first time she'd been in my home since 2002. She came to see her grandson, but I did wheedle a visit out of her on the grounds that the gaze of her visage had not fallen upon our domicile. We had a very nice visit and I learned my grandnephew's new home is proximate ours, so at least I will have some family nearby, even though it will likely be a net-loss in effort. And by the way, I myself am not that old. I have a grandnephew because my sister married waaaay too young and her eldest child likewise followed suit, resulting in the benefit to her of people saying in awe that she simply looks waaay too young to be a grandmother and the proportionate nuisance to me of people saying, "You have a grandnephew? How old are you?"
I loved seeing my sister. I really miss her.

Check out Purple Bunny next time you see her. She has the glow....

We ate at the freakishly named Qdoba this evening because we had heard it was good. Ehhh...can't recommend it. For one thing, when we walked in we were disoriented and owing to the design of the menu and fixtures, we weren't entirely sure if we were in Qdoba or Pei Wei or P.F. Chang's. We made a promise to each other to trace the corporate heritage in an effort to delineate the three. Anyway, Qdoba admittedly had to work hard to impress us because we adore Moe's and go there every weekend. Qdoba is essentially a soulless version of Moe's (and no, I don't know which one came first). My skepticism quickly became assured as the server (you go cafeteria style like at Subway and 'build' your burrito) and I faced a Tex-Mexican standoff. I simply refuse to initiate any retail transaction and so there was a panful silence of 30-45 seeconds while I looked her in the eye and waited to be asked if I wanted pinto or black, hard or soft, etc. They do that at Moe's, y'know. And then at the end of the line, I learn that I am expected to pay 1.79 for chips and salsa. A cash register ring for C&S may as well be a death knell for my entertainment dollar in any establishment no matter how good the food. I do not pay for C&S. The food tasted OK, though. But you pay the same price as Moe's for a burrito and don't get any chips. So I pity the fool who eats there. Are you not psyched about Mr. T's new reality show, "I Pity the Fool"? It's s'posed to be a Dr. Phil-type advice show.

The Ol' College Try

2006-09-09T12:37:00.000-05:00

Last night YHWH and I attended a work function of hers. It's one of the few large-scale gatherings of it's kind I have ever been able to suffer through. I've been going for about a decade now and even though I still don't feel a part of the group (mainly because I'm not), last night was the first time I realized it may be the closest thing I have to an extended family.

From my vantage at Table 7, I panned around and saw people I have known for 20 years now in various capacities. There was Mr. and Mrs. Tex at the power table (No. 5). At this table was a couple I'd traveled thousands of miles across the country with. At that table was a woman I'd gone to school with who is now a professor. Over there was one of my major profs who inexplicably will not speak to me (he's Canadian, tho) and next to him was the guy who taught Queen and me (maybe Gouldie, too) creative writing who also won't speak to me. My ex-wife's sister was there. A Jeopardy!-style game on stage featured Mr. Tex, Tex's friend, and a woman I had a date with once as contestants. And when I extended it out, I realized that pretty much everyone I associate with for better or worse can be traced back to someone in that room. I don't know what all that means. Maybe it'll turn in to another post sometime in future. All I can say for now is, "Choose your college wisely, kids!"

Just finished some legwarmers for SGK:

Have to get on that cable knit hat now...

A Map of the Human Heart

2006-09-02T08:18:00.000-05:00

OK, well that lasted about a week. I admit it. I overreacted to local conditions. So now I have decided to act on the best advice I got during my embarrasing hiatus which came in the form of a comment on my last post from someone I don't even know - Barbarina. And Barbarina is apparently Canadian so, great, now I have to revise my list again. At any rate, thanks, Barbarina.

So what was that all about? The thing is, if I told you then I'd be doing the same thing that got me into trouble in the first place. It's a problem as old as blogs themselves - or as Gouldie may soon realize, as old as written communication. Misunderstanding.

I wasn't aware that my blog was secret. I was pretty sure everyone in my family knew about it even though I know they never actually read it. Until last weekend. Last weekend the Child Formerly Know As The Self (C. F. Kats) decided to gorge herself on six months of the Empty Room. She didn't like her nickname. She didn't like that I implied that she needed to go see the slums or that she needed to intern with Gouldie. And I didn't realize it, but as the single official representative of the millions of teens in the United States, she is insulted when I mention teens in any context. So, after a few hours of catharsis in the wee hours of the morning, we reached an agreement wherein I would stop using the name and use a name of her choosing. I didn't even point out the irony that someone could read 63 posts containing valuable insight into family and friends and a parent's quasi-inner life (I would kill to read a blog my dad wrote in the 70s) and zero in on four or five sentences as an indictment of the whole enterprise and then complain that their nickname was Self. I won't go into anymore details there, but the end result was that by Sunday, it became apparent that no M*A*S*H unit was going to heal these wounds so I just figured it would be better to stop. So over the course of the weekend despite denial of such, the lamentations increased and I finally just pulled the plug because it wasn't worth the discord.

Because I always have to know the damnable why, I tried to explore the situation this week and figure out where the breakdown is. Starting with the obvious, no one likes to be humiliated and even though from my perspective I didn't write anything humiliating at all, it was to her and I acknowledge that and apologize for that. But as I pushed ahead and consulted Tex and Queen I realized the breakdown had to do with The Approval Syndrome. Apparently, and I was unaware of this, your children need your approval. I had no idea. The way it works is that you're supposed to say nice things to them and then it makes them feel good about themselves and then they build on that to become well-adjusted adults. But wait! There's more! Girls need lots and lots of this stuff and they need it from their dads! Constantly!

And therein lies the problem. I can't do that. If it even occurs to me to compliment someone, the words dissipate somewhere between the tip of my tongue and my lips. Like Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka trying to say "parents" or Rowan Atkinson's priest trying to say "St John" on Four Weddings and a Funeral. In my memory, I don't really remember needing a lot of approval as a kid. The way I figured it, if you behaved, you didn't get in trouble; if you did your school work, you got good grades. Not getting grounded and getting A's were sufficient approval for me. I didn't get a lot of praise. In fact when I became the first person in the recorded history of our clan to graduate from college, my folks were on the couch watching TV and I produced my diploma and said, "Well, I'm a college graduate. 3.98 GPA." Their reply was, "We knew you could do it."

So, not having learned to give approval and having a low threshold of need myself, I'm at a loss here. I see first hand how important it is because YHWH still talks about how 40 years ago she brought home a straight A report card and her dad said, "Couldn't you do any better than that?" I thought that was funny when I heard it, yet she has been scarred by this her whole life and it was a joke. So I have to figure this out obviously.

While struggling with why I can't give compliments, I was tempted to blameshift. Part of the problem, I reasoned, was that for awhile I rarely ever saw C. F. Kats and when I did it often involved her not completing a chore or just being generally difficult. I wasn't witnessing 'the good things'. So I couldn't be blamed for not approving that, right? But that situation has improved, so there goes that argument. Then, as if the omnious warning from the Ghost of YHWH's past or the Ghost of C.F. Kats' Present weren't enough, on Thursday night I got a visit from the Ghost of SGK's Future.

This kid has been approved of and praised from the beginning. In fact, she runs the risk of being a little egotistical. If that sounds contrary to what I've said above, it's only because she is much smaller and you can coo over babies without much difficulty. Well, anyway, Thursday night we were driving home from an event and she starts in insulting our new home. Never one to miss an opportunity for character development, I told her that she should be grateful for her home. She persisited in her comments and I said that I was going to make her sleep out in the backyard and that YHWH and I work really hard to provide our home and it hurts our feelings to hear her say those things. Before long she breaks into these deep sobs and says, "I'm afraid you're going to be happy when I'm dead." I know what you're thinking - it was manipulation, she was working me over - but no, this was pretty deeply felt. So years of approval can be undone with one stroke of disapproval.

So here's what I have learned: kids need approval; girls need mountains of approval; no amount of approval is enough.

So, until I can speak the words:
I'm am proud of C.F. Kats because:

She bravely strode into her new school without looking back.
She bravely wears any outfit she wants.
She bravely discloses alot to her parents.
She does the dishes without being told.
She watches her sister without being paid.
She watches her sister without complaining.
She is loyal to her friends.
She is willing to improve herself.
She is diligent about her school work.
She gets herself ready for school without being told.
She is willing to watch TV with an old fat guy in glasses.
She reads alot.
She cries alot.
She tries not to hurt other people's feelings.
She is active in her church.
She is a trooper.

I love her.

I'm Saint Fiacre and I approve of this message.

A Noble Experiment

2006-08-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

You may remember that I forecast that I wouldn't be able to keep this thing going for more than three months. Now into its sixth month I have to say it's been fun, but it's been fun, but I just don't have the will anymore. It's gotten to be a political minefield and not worth the trouble. Our cult leader once pulled me up in front of the congregation and said God told him I had been blessed with a keen ability to see and speak the truth. He may have been right and if he was, I'd have to say it's more of a curse than a blessing. So since I don't want to be less than truthful or constantly look over my shoulder, I'm puttin' her to bed.

Thanks for your support over the months, dear reader.

Good night. Good luck.

Saint Fiacre

Once Upon A Time There Were Three Beautiful Girls Who Went To The Police Academy

2006-08-21T20:21:00.000-05:00

In our house we have back-to-school season. All three of the gals start their various school activities in a stagger - first SGK last Wednesday, then Self yesterday and YHWH on Thursday.

The first step, of course, was the annual school supply odyssey. Mid-July of every year the big box retailers close out the flip-flops and inflatables and concentrate all the school supplies for one stop shopping. At least that's the theory. There's always one specific item you can never find. Sometimes they forget to put the kleenex over there, or if they did put it there, they have a bundle of three 150 count, but you're supposed to get two 225s. Or they only have the .5 oz glue stick, but you're supposed to get the 1 oz. A sane and rational person would conclude that you could get two 100s of something instead of a 200, but that person has obviously never spied the look of anxiety in their child's eyes as thoughts of being the only kid in class who brought undersized gluesticks race through their minds projecting the year-long horror of seeing their name Sharpied on the tubes lying unused at the bottom of the community supply cache to be opened only in case of an emergency.

The other part of Supply Day is the ritual selection of the backpack and lunchpail. I myself looked forward to selecting a new lunchpail (never lunchbox by the way) every August almost more than I anticipated my birthday. I lunched in the Aladdin era, just after the introduction of plastic Thermoses to replace the glass-innard ones, but before those stupid soft puffy plastic ones they have now. The ones I remember were GI Joe, Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie's Angels (rowwwrrr), Land of the Giants, and in 1977 I got one that had all the NFL helmets on it - AFC on one side, NFC on the other. It was the bane of my year, though, because the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers had switched leagues that season and my lunchpail did not reflect that. It drove me crazy. I must post about the reason I only ever took my lunch to school and avoided the cafeteria. Anyway, I was sure the Killer would take forever, but she gravitated immediately to her new backpack. There was no other backpack for her. This was it. She was sure. She was even willing to shun Hello Kitty, Bratz and Barbie lunchpail and get a generic one so that it would match her backpack. Here it is:

That is so SGK.

So, Super Giant Killer started last week on half days. Her sister had the same teacher SGK is getting this year. The Self was miserable with Ms. Legend as a teacher and said she was mean and grabbed kids by the neck or yelled at them for no reason. I'm not positive, but I think I remember Tex's eldest had the same experience. So, I didn't want to poison the well, but I tried to prepare SGK a little bit:

"Now, your new teacher is very serious, but if you behave and do your work, there won't be any problems."

She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I heard she was mean, but I can handle you, Dad, so I know I can handle her! In fact, you and Ms. Legend make a much better couple. So, if Mom can find a cute guy, you can be with Ms. Legend." She basically called me mean and ugly in the same sentence.

So on the first day, I told her if she jumped up and got dressed I would take her to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Actually, what happened was a week or so before her first day, YHWH and I worked out the transportation issues and since YHWH was not back to work yet, she was going to take SGK to school. Then at bedtime the night before, YHWH says, in front the Killer:

"Don't you wish you could take her to school on her first day?"
I felt the rush of rush of emotion flow through me like syrup and cola at a soda fountain - Bad Dad Cola and Backstabbing Wife Strangle Syrup.
"Well, maybe if I you had told me earlier I could've made arrangements at work to be late..."
"You've known when her first day is for months..."

I really wanted to blaspheme the Holy Ghost and invoke half of the seven words, but instead I was inspired (maybe by the Holy Ghost) to reply, "Well, since you probably won't be ready to leave on time, I thought I would take her to Dunkin Donuts before school to celebrate! How 'bout that Killer? Huh? A little Double-D to kick off the year?!"

She selected a Marble Frosted and we got YHWH a giant iced mocha (see, I'm forgiving). On the way back the Killer said, "I think they made a typo on the menu. It should be maple frosted."

She seems to be loving school so far but she misses her best friend from last year (Gouldie's niece) who didn't end up in her class.

Soon, I will relay the first day of High School. You won't want to miss it. I wish I had.

ILL Be Seeing You

2006-08-05T23:14:00.000-05:00

Something weird happened to my template. I'd like to think I was the target of some sophisticated hacker bent on rescuing the world from my scritto owing to the dangerous ideas but I'm sure it was only the result of my hitting the wrong button or something. I got tired of trying to keep up the other stuff anyway.

I just finished Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano which was loaned to me by DOOL who borrowed it from TCCL on ILL. By the way, any book which adheres to the long tail of readership in the state of Oklahoma is undoubtedly held at TCCL. I'm not sure where they keep all their books - probably some Cold War era bunker under the Sun refinery in West Tulsa or something. I can't tell you how many times we don't have some awesome book and I'll check WorldCat to ILL it for someone and damned if it's not at TCCL. Tex used to get mad when we'd say anything about it, but it is true. Anyway, this book - eh, wasn't so great. I usually don't judge books that have been translated too harshly because it is technically out of the author's hands once it gets translated. It mainly consisted of dozens of half- or one-page dissertations from the mind of Galeano on soccer-related topics. The outcome was that in reading it I kind of felt like I'd picked up Marcel Proust hitchhiking on a highway outside of Moscow just after he'd had his morning pot of espresso and we faced an eight hour drive to St. Petersburg on ice with no brakes, half a tank of gas, no radio, and he really, really liked soccer.
I'm starting Mirth of A Nation to-nite.

I'm Hip About Time

2006-08-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

Rummy came after me yesterday with both barrels. You'll remember I have whined not once, but twice about people asking their own questions. Well yesterday, as Senator Clinton squared off with the King of the Anti-Socratics in a hearing, he went off a on a classic one minute and thirty second question and answer session - with himself! So when the news channels needed a soundbite all they needed was that! Brilliant! Check out the video. You can skip to 8:30 into the video to hear him go off.

I had the coolest thing happen yesterday. This elderly woman - about 75ish, not the greatest health, dressed like a churchlady - asked me for travel books for South America. I took her to the 918s and asked her my customary, "Do these seem like the kind of books you're looking for?" She said yes and then I said, "Y'know there're some nice travelogues on the other side of this range I could show you. I love reading those before taking a trip." And she said, "Oooh. Right on!" - like a caricature in a parody of Easy Rider. I showed them to her and then walked away smiling - first at the thought of a septagenarian wanting to go trekking around South America and then at the thought of hippies being that old. I just never thought that would happen.

Took SGK to Cactus Jack's today. She did pretty well for her age. 190 tickets. Here is the material assessment of what I got for my $10 (I'm not going to go all VISA and say "Afternoon kicking it with daughter - priceless," cause I can do that for free):

1 Fortune telling fish
1 Alien head glow-in-the-dark ring
2 Orange glow-in-the-dark bracelets
1 Amoeba bracelet
1 2" tall dinosaur
2 Human-shaped eraser
1 Fossil-making press
1 Sticky dart
252 Dollars in fake cash

Checker Out

2006-07-29T10:57:00.000-05:00

In a beautiful moment of synchronicity, I logged in to post about my game-playing episode with Super Giant Killer when I got notification that Adjective Queen had posted on women and competition. Now I don't know what to write!

So, last night the Killer and I sat down to play the Nancy Drew Mystery Game. It was the first time either of us had played it and she picked up on it really quickly. But I had to watch her like a hawk because she is so competitive. She kept sneakily removing my game pieces and hiding them under the game board and growling at me when I got the better of her. Then she brought out checkers, which I didn't even know she could play and I myself had poor luck remembering all the moves and stuff like kinging. I took the first game and then in the second game she started in with the psychological warfare. She had me in a trap and she just couldn't wait to spring it. I was desperately scanning the board looking for a move....

SGK: It's your turn.
Me: I know, I'm thinking
SGK: Well, go.
Me: Hey, back off. I will when I'm ready.
SGK: TAKE YOUR TURN!!!
Me: Hey, shut up and let me think! (should've done "it's not whether you win..." I know)
She runs to the bathroom and comes strolling in with her head wagging with hip-hop swagger...
SGK: Did you move, bitch?!
I could not believe she said that. I'm not even sure where she heard that. Of course, I wanted to roll over laughing, but I just ignored it and went ahead and moved into her trap.

I don't know, Queen. SGK is pretty competitive. It's not just in games, either. She competes with her sister, the kids at school, and her best friends. She has little scorecards for herself and everyone else. It's not 'scorekeeping' in the sense of grudges, but rather she'll say, "I read 100 pages and Classmate X only read 75." Or, "Sis says she's taller than me, but I can run faster." So far she hasn't become a bully, but it worries me.

I haven't read the Girls of Summer book, but I'm actually surprised it had to address competitiveness since one frequently hears how the two decades since Title IX have created female athletes who 'aspire' to the worst traits in male athletes. Check out the multiple listings on Bad Jocks and listen to Frank Deford on your beloved NPR.

The Fate of the Human Carbine

2006-07-27T09:34:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago YHWH went for an annual checkup and her doctor recommended she try some natural/herbal products for general health. On the way home, she decided to stop by Akin's. She actually called me on her cell to ask me if I needed anything from there. My reaction, unseen or heard by her, was an eyeroll and a pshaw sound. I refrained from, "Yeah, right!" But I appreciated her thoughtfulness and said, "Oh, let me think. Ooooh! Something carob would be nice!" Only the least bit of sarcasm was present because at the thought of it, I sort of had a hankering for some good old carob.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but much of my youth was spent eating healthy foods. This was an extension of my mother's troubled relationship with food. Or rather, her own body. Growing up on a farm, my mom was bird-thin. She was the middle of 11 children (4 boys, 7 girls) , but she was very beautiful and delicate, so she 'got' to do the housework and cooking instead of the outside chores involving shoveling, slopping, castrating, etc.

For this I am eternally grateful because, during the brief periods when my mom wasn't a health food nut, we ate some awesome food. For our first Thanksgiving together, I invited YHWH to our clan's feast and I told her for weeks how awesome a cook my mom was. YHWH felt that I had promoted it so much that it could not possibly be as good as I made it out to be. She was also concerned that I must be a momma's boy because of my love of her cooking. So after dinner YHWH said, and still does, that it was the best meal she's ever had in her life and that I hadn't even begun to describe how good it was. Sadly, it was the last Thanksgiving meal my mom ever cooked.

Anyway, about the time I was four or five my mom got ardently and religiously into health food. This lasted about a decade. Kelp, whole grains, vitamins, live active cultures - and carob. Our bread had sawdust in it. There was no salt in the house and our sugar consited of cane sugar in granules twice the size of C & H - it crunched when you ate it. We got regular lectures on digestion and other body things you didn't want to familiarize yourself with. After school snacks were frozen grapes and soy butter n' honey balls. Tofu had not yet fully arrived, but we had all manner of soy products teeming from our cabinets and canisters. But carob; carob was the Cadillac of the health food scene. It was naturally sweet and even though your tongue (and thus brain) told you it was not chocolate, you greedily accepted it as a treat.

At the time we were pretty poor and health food then, as now, was sold at premium prices. There was a way to get the good stuff at low prices if you didn't own a farm, though - the co-op. The co-op was run by a hippie commune and priced to sell to the vain, fountain-of-youth-seeking Riverside residents who could afford it (the same people who have private Pilates instructors today). You could get the stuff for near free, though, if you agreed to work for it. So guess who spent lots of Saturdays and after schools pushing a broom and carrying bags of oats out to BMWs and Mercedes? I have often marvelled at this culture clash commerce. Here you had these hippies who had a room with a sunlamp in it I wasn't allowed into (wink) selling health food to the wealthy and a conservative Christian lower middle class family working the place. The hippie guys also ran the only health food restaurant I've ever known in the state (I'm sure there were probably others). It was called The Middle Path. Isn't that brilliant?

We found out later that my mom was actually anorexic. I'm not sure when it started; probably after having my sister, she started taking unrealistic glances in the mirror. As far as we know she didn't develop it in adolescence as so often happens. We didn't even know what anorexia was until Karen Carpenter died from complications of it. From what I can guess, she must have been anorexic or bulimic before I was born and the health food era was an attempt by her to actually eat food and not destroy her concept of her physical self. I wish she was around to help me understand this. Eventually, the health food thing stopped and the anorexia returned. Finally when I was about sixteen she had starved herself so much that she had to be hospitalized for a week while they put nutrition into her. She had the same treatment they give people who have been castaway at sea or found lost in the woods. I, of course, had no idea. It's just what my mom looked like.

Oddly enough, last year I got another clue as to when she developed it. I had gone in to a new doctor for a midlife checkup and got the usual admonition to lose weight. I explained that I eat practically nothing and don't eat a lot of junky stuff and yet the only time I have ever been close to a normal weight was when I was under severe anxiety after my first wife left. He said he had an idea and after running some benchmark tests he called me in and said before he gave me his opinion, he wanted to know if my mother had much morning sickness with me. That I did know the answer to. Yes. Legendary. She had morning sickness with me every day of her pregnancy, not just the first few weeks. She couldn't keep any food down. The doc said it's a newish theory, but there's some evidence that kids whose mothers have morning sickness like that have messed up metabolisms and hormone deficiencies because they are starving along with the mother. Essentially the theory holds that the fetus learns to hang onto every calorie it gets because it doesn't know where it's next meal is coming from - a variation of the 'thrifty gene' theory. Still no excuse for my not exercising enough! So was she anorexic before the morning sickness or because of it? We'll never know.

So what you just read (sorry so long) came rushing back to me while I was waiting for a delicious carob candy bar. Or maybe some carob kisses. Or these star-shaped carob candies we had at the co-op. When YHWH walked in and handed me a bag of trail mix, I was crestfallen. "What's this?" I nearly shouted. That's all they had she said. I peered into the bag. There were some chocolate chip things in there amongst the nuts and banana chips. "Whaddaya mean, that's all they had?" Not only were there no carob products in Akin's, the scenesters working there had never heard of carob. "What's wrong with chocolate?" they wanted to know.

I Recognize You from the Awesome Edge of Your Sword

2006-07-20T15:44:00.000-05:00

Very very infrequently I hate being a Pisces - two fish swimming in different directions with their tails tied together. It's not a problem in a determinist sense. I mean just because their tails are tied together it doesn't mean they have to swim against each other. But sometimes they do.

Right now, I really want to move out of this country. I've tried to understand why. I've eliminated politics. I've eliminated fundamentalists (not literally; you'll have to do that yourself). I've eliminated job dissatisfaction. I've eliminated family strife. I even moved within my MSA, thinking that I'd left a piece of my soul somewhere around Penn Square Mall. After six months, it appears I didn't. The only reason I can think of is genetics (or is it heredity?). I'm descended from Ulster Scots. It's in the blood. I have to move. My paternal line is so nomadic it's nearly impossible to fathom. By the time I turned 19, we had moved 21 times. I've already described the hereditary willingness to abandon homes and families in order to satisfy a biological urge to roam.

But that other fish is indicating that I stay. "You know we belong to the land" - it's written right there in our state song. My whole adult life I've resisted moving to Texas like everyone else -- the brain drain. I've tried to be a voice of reason -- purple. I even listed Okie apologetics as one of my interests. I should be on the state payroll I'm such a patriot. Several people have said that I have helped them appreciate the place, Tex included. So, it's not that I've been staying out of complacency or letting the moss grow. I've tried to make it a better place. I feel guilty for wanting to leave.

So, I've been scheming. A few months ago I was thinking Ukraine. The criteria, loosely, are that the place be reasonably stable, have a reasonable number of English speakers, have a reasonable chance of letting me work (that rules out Canada and Western EU), and I'd prefer they weren't anti-American on the street (the toughest criteria). I figured I'd have a better chance of working in an Eastern country and Ukraine looks so damn much like home. But the regular airline crashes, energy disputes with Mother Russia, and that assassination attempt on the president via a flesh-eating bacteria are a tough sell. Plus the Cyrillic.

Then, last week it hit me. That's it! Cyprus! It's an island; 62% speak English; they have a violent past which is sexy with it's green line. And - it's the birthplace of Aphrodite. C'mon, you know the story...Chronos castrates his father and throws his er, guy parts, in to the sea and Aphrodite rises up from the resulting foam. That's Cyprus! And they're in the EU. The EU doesn't let unstable countries in. Finally, they're not crazy about us, but they don't hate us.

For the record, I am not moving to Australia. My dad almost moved us to Australia in 1975, but we joined the cult instead. Everybody threatens to move to Australia. The rationale is that it's just like we used to be. Why would I want relive the last 40 years of our history? New Zealand I could do - yarn heaven. Probably no jobs, though. I'm open to suggestions. Just leave a comment.

So, now I have to convince YHWH, et al, to make the move. Won't be easy. I guess the girls could sort it all out in therapy later.

In case you were worried about the Israel-Lebanon sitch, I have some good news. One of the 24 hour newschannel heads just said that, "Tempers have definitely frayed this morning." That's a relief. You'd hate to see tempers flare.

Gouldie, I am in temporary possession of eight Godzilla movies belonging to a local legend movie critic...

Sandy, Why Can't We Look The Other Way?

2006-07-15T20:42:00.000-05:00

I'm really not on a cranky streak. The World Cup was a nice break from our new part-time job dealing with the insurance company. YHWH is reasonably well; it looks like she'll mend but it will take awhile. I had a very nice appraisal at work and a pull-aside from an upper echeloner.

So, don't think I 'm being cranky when you read this, but for some reason this week I have encountered a spate of things that may have made my all-time list of things I hate. This has caused a certain bit of consternation because I can't find my damn list and I can't remember everything on it. A brightsider would make lemonade of this development and say, "Well, those things obvioulsy don't bother you anymore. Oh, but they do.

I definitely remember #1. You can never forget your #1. Or is that your first one? Well, anyway, it's non-Quebecois Canadians. Before I continue, I should point out that my list of things I hate is deductive. I don't set out to hate Canadians. I don't hate individuals because they are Canadian. It's just that of all the people I hate the most, they all happen to be from Canada. By the same logic, all the people I like that are from Canada, when I look into their background, they're from Quebec.

So, I'm resigned to making a new list. It'll take awhile. But here are some of the things that have donned on me to add to the list this week:

White pants I was walking on my lunch break and I saw a woman wearing white pants and it just struck me, "Those pants really look stupid." And I looked at the woman to see if I was being biased in some way about her overall appearance. I wasn't. She was reasonably attractive, young, well-groomed; but her pants were stupid. I can't even say why. They're like the queen of hearts in the original Manchurian Candidate or that call from Donald Pleasance in Telefon. Whenever I see them I just get really upset like something bad is going to happen. So, I thought about it all during lunch and I couldn't think of anything positive about white pants. Your underwear shows. The slightest gastronomic mishap shows. Socks look stupid with them and then you have to wear sandals or flipflops and I hate those, too. With the exception of naval officers, I just really don't see any redemption for white pants.

"That's so random" and randomly These terms have reached a ubiquity resulting in fingernail-chalkboard status in my sphere of association. I growl under my breath everytime I hear it. And when the Queen used it in her headline earlier in the week it was all I could take - it had to go on the list. I'm into my fourth decade. I know every generation reinvents the language. But most of the time the words are either unusable in any other context (eg gnarly), an exaggeration (eg radical!) or of an already amorphous nature (eg cool). Cool and bad are perfect examples of words that can mean lots of things even among standard speakers that kids have attributed new meanings to. But random? Random only means 'haphazard' or 'without aim'. Queen used it that way, but the kids use it to describe things they don't understand - which when you think about it is so frequent it's not random but sadly predictable. Oh, man - I just checked Urban Dictionary and there are tons of entries on it by detractors! It feels so warm inside to know that I'm capable of belonging to a group! See, this is a positive thing, making this list.

Flipflops I've already opined about this a few posts back.

The Internet It would take too long.

Interviewees asking their own questions and answering them Already talked about this one, too.

The History Channel Like MTV and videos, HC rarely has history on anymore. Today was almost unbearable. While I was folding laundry, I flipped the channel to HC and they had the absolute worst show on about the Masons and Knights Templars. An obvious suck off the teat of Da Vinci Code. The really annoying thing is that HC doesn't even have original content. They buy all the shows from these production companies akin to puppy mills. They're literary equivalents of Nancy Drew at best and Harlequin romances at worst. In this one, all of the 'experts', none of which had an advanced degree in religion or history, had really bad Southern accents. At one point an expert said, the Pope changed his mind about Hitler because of the 'hurting of the Jews'. Huh? Hurting? This is the level of eloquence we get? And then they say that Pope Pius XI planned to stand up to Mussolini ... but died suddenly. He was 80-freakin-2 and in poor health. That's not suddenly. And you know what? The whole topic isn't even history! Here's the best part. When they get to the part where they say that the Masons took over the US, they flash these bad drawings of old white guys on the screen and one of them is - I kid you not - James Buchannen. Yes. James Buchannen. That is so random! OK, first of all, the guy who is largely considered to be the worst president ever should not be the poster boy for the Masonic takeover. I smirk, but I figure, you know, typos happen. But then, they show a painting of somebody identified as Johann Wolfgang. Johann Wolfgang What?! Goethe?! Did you mean Goethe?! Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a mason - but he had nothing to do with us! I spent the next hour walking around the house shouting, "AFLAC!" After that show they present their Real to Reel movie where they show a movie and then compare it to the true history of the situation. Tonight's movie? Road Warrior. Yeah, I know - Road Warrior, the post-Apocalyptic movie set in Australia, is both real and history. I actually watched Road Warrior because I like the movie and because they usually have a panel of experts who talk about the Real part. I thought they might discuss how likely such a scenario would be, which I would find interesting. No panel. And all their factoids were about production costs and marketing campaigns. That's history, folks!

I'm up to seven! That's 70% of my Top 10! If I could just find that list...

I'm knitting an earflap cap with an om embedded in it. I'll let you know.

With A Purposeful Grimace And A Terrible Sound

2006-07-12T21:39:00.000-05:00

This morning Rare OKC Native told me the Lyric Theater is doing Fiddler on the Roof. The Self loves the work of one the actors in the Lyric company so Rare felt compelled to pass on the info. "Can't do it," I told her. "Can't go there. Fathers and daughters. I can't watch the play or the movie." I saw the movie when it came out in 1973 or so with my family and the only thing I really remember about that was constantly asking my dad: When was this taking place? Where was this taking place? I was fascinated by the setting. Unfortunately, my dad was of limited assistance in answering my queries, but I will say that I soon became obsessesed with the Russian Revolution. I didn't see it again until about ten years ago, pre-kids, and I could barely watch it. It's such a perfect depiction of family life beyond it's cultural and historical settings - and that's where it got me. I'd just gone through the dissolution and eradication of my own nascent family and this wonderful movie was beautifully depicting for me what I would never have. How foolishly short-sighted of me, looking at life from the bottom of a well! Then, about two years ago I saw it again. It was too much. I couldn't make it past the first marriage. I knew that within an hour Tevye was going to take Hodel to the train station. "Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again."

When Super Giant Killer had her last birthday I told her she simply would not be allowed to have another one. She will have to stay this age forever. Having said that, though, she passed two major milestones this week. Tuesday night she saw her first Godzilla movie. King Kong vs. Godzilla. We had a great time watching it. We kept trying to replicate the sound of his roar with our own voices. Afterwards she replayed the whole movie in the bathtub with a plastic dinosaur and gorilla. I checked in on her and Godzilla appeared to have three nude Barbies and a Polly Pocket on the ropes, clinging to the soapdish. Kong appeared to be drowned face down in a soapy Tokyo Bay. I said, "Which one is Godzilla going to eat first?" She rolled her eyes, "Daaaaad! He doesn't EAT people!" She went on to explain that Godzilla was secretly nice and he was saving the girls from falling off a cliff and then he was going to save Kong. She'll make a compassionate queen. We might all want to make plans for relocating to Kashmir. I hear property is going for nothing these days if you don't mind a fissure or two.

The other big thing is that yesterday she got her new glasses. Very cute. The funny thing is that it had an almost immediate impact on her wardrobe. Unless we fight with her, she will choose a miasmic blend of garish pastels, no socks and inappropriate shoes. But her first with-glasses outfit was black pants, black shirt, and black boots with a black headband. Very Beat looking. She looks like Jean Seberg or rather Lisa Loeb. This was her first visit to the eye doc and YHWH said that the doc said she was 'very near-sighted' and the glasses would make a big difference. "She's probably never really seen the world," she said. "You'll probably find that she'll be more observant and her performance in school should pick up quite a bit." Holy S**t, Doc! Do you realize what you just said? We can already barely contain her!

My Shangri-la Beneath the Summer Moon

2006-06-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

Purple Bunny pointed out today that it's possible that YHWH's wreck on Friday was an attempt by the transportation curse to get me. Her theory is not without merit since YHWH was driving my car. Hmmm... I'm getting a donkey.

I'm having World Cup withdrawals. I've gotten used to following the games during the day and now I can't remember how I made it without them to get me through the day.

Super Giant Killer asked me yesterday if Kashmir was still contested (not exactly sure where she picked up that it was or when she mastered the use of the word 'contested'). I told her it was still contested and she said, "Good! I've decided to be the queen of Kashmir when I grow up and it will be much easier to take over if it's divided." I used to joke that she was going to take over the world someday and now I'm starting to worry.

Poor Ol' Bess Is Dead

2006-06-26T20:18:00.000-05:00

I had intended to simply comment on Gouldie's post about mixtapes, but it caused such a wellspring of memories and emotions, I had to glom on and make a whole new post. At first, when I read Gouldie's post, I was like, "Yeah. Exactly. I could've written this." I was at the desk and I didn't really digest it at at the time except to be reminded of a funny episode on This American Life that Sarah Vowell did on mixtapes (she's from near Muskogee, y'know).

But then after work I had to go to the Volvo place to clean out our newly demolished car. Friday afternoon YHWH and both girls and a friend were involved in a pretty bad crash. They were cruising along on a main street and a truck barrelled out in front of them from an apartment complex and almost cleared them - almost. Airbags deployed, windows shattered, the whole thing. The cop said it was pretty bad; if they hadn't been in a Volvo, he'd hate to think how bad. The only injury was a broken finger from the airbag. The perp fled the scene - 'twas a hit and run. So, I had to go get all the belongings out of it. Man, I loved that car. Well, anyway I'm rooting around under the seats amongst the rotting french fries and sticky lint-covered gum, Barbie shoes, pennies, and straw wrappers and I reach way under the front passenger seat and feel a tape (the car didn't have a CD player, but I had XM, so I hadn't listened to tapes in forever). I pull it out and whaddayaknow...

It's a mixtape from Adjective Queen! Oh my God that was the worst tape ever made. I couldn't stand one song on there. And this is from a woman who adored DeeeLite! (I will find my video of the Queen dancing to "Groove Is In the Heart" and post it on here.)

On the way home I thought more about mixtapes. I have made hundreds of them. I'm with you, Gouldie, there's nothing like getting out every album you own and sitting in front of the stereo for hours making mixtapes. You have to listen to every song while it records; there's no other way. You get to hear songs you haven't heard in forever. Songs you thought you hated, but now you like. You tape, erase, retape; it goes on for hours. Clicks never bothered me and I got pretty good at making it go seemlessly between songs. It was a skillful endeavor. Not like these young whippersnappers today with their pods and their shiny silver things. It's just not the same. People just throw any old song on a CD mix these days and geez with shuffle, CDs and mp3 players lose the whole mood of the thing. It's like turning the Mona Lisa at a 90 degree angle or something. I make them on CD now, too, but it's just not as fun.

My friends and I frequently tried to DJ over the songs which got pretty hilarious. I still have one called Poem Break my college pal and I made which features really sick poems between all the songs. It was so awesome to listen to the playback after you were all finished. It was as though you were in control of the radio and it only played the songs you loved to hear. Kind of like those sick people who blog so that everyone in the whole world can read their petty little ... oh ... wait. Somewhere around high school age I started naming all of my tapes after wack character actors I loved like Clu Gulagher and Charles Napier. Dirk Bogarde - now that was a hell of a tape. I name my CDs after actresses I like now.

Gouldie, I used to have mix duels with people, too. I always won the dark ones because of my extensive Joy Division collection. And I could usually hold my own on the cheery ones because I retained all of my old 45s from childhood. Huckleberry Hound's "Laugh Your Troubles Away" was the clencher. But I need a date on your duel with Jeff. I remember the first time I hung out with you, the Queen and you and I went to see the revival of Casablanca and while we were waiting for the movie to start you went on and on about the new Michelle Shocked album (Arkansas Traveler, I think) and I remember thinking, hmmm, nawww, she's married. I didn't say anything, though. Come to think of it, were our spouses there? I just remember the three of us for some reason. Mainly because Queen was in her third person mode. You know how when she has a party or something with new people she spends the whole time referring to you in third person like you're not there. It's cute, Queen; don't take offense.

You ought to share some song lists from your favorite mixtape gifts, Gouldie.

Still In Love With Hayley Mills

2006-06-19T22:56:00.000-05:00

Who am I? Many of us, if we ever ask that question, answer by listing nouns that reflect our daily occupations - mother, wife, fireman, knitter. Depending on what we think of ourselves, we might even throw in some adjectives like 'damn good' or 'awesome'. That's how we describe ourselves externally, but who do we really tell ourselves we are? I recently realized that I rarely think about who I am (why would I? I'm me, right?) and most of the time I only even ponder it when I have been accused of something or had something attributed to me that elicits the internal response, "That's not me! I'm not like that!"

I mention all this because it's seems to be at the nexus of things I've been going through lately with family dynamics. I hear myself more and more telling myself and others in my family that they don't really know me. My dad doesn't know anything about my work, let alone how good I am at it. My sister thinks I'm still five years old. And at home YHWH and Co. think I'm admirable, honorable, diligent, efficient, but also gruff and disapproving - rather like Mount Rushmore. To which I proclaim, "That's not me! You guys just don't know me!"

Last week I was reminiscing with The Cheerleader who I knew from Cult School days and I said I needed her to come over for dinner and tell the family what I was like; in other words, the real me. She said, "Are you sure? You were the guy all us girls' dads warned them about. All the guys wanted to be you and all the girls wanted to be with you." Drew and other people who knew me back when talk about how hilarious I am. And smart; always smart. But that's not the husband and father that lives in my house.

One of the more interesting things about my recent posts about my dad and his family is the fact that I even know those stories. He isn't the most talkative guy in the world after all. For some reason - likely the reason that made me a historian - I was constantly asking my parents what things were like when they were young, what were their interests, who were their friends, who did they date and what did they do, etc. I got a pretty clear picture of their lives and times after a while. Now, here's the funny thing, for me, the Paul Newmanesque, street-racing, two-fisted guy who grew up unloved in the Fifties is my dad. Everything after that - the salesman, the preacher, the hotelier - was done by that guy. It made him a far more convincing evangelist to know that he used to be a hell of a guy.

Since we hear all the time that our personalities are set at age two and by eighteen we have, most of us, come to a realization of 'who we are', then isn't that my dad? And isn't the funny, sentimental, risktaker who I am? And yes, before you say it, also arrogant, know-it-all, and opinionated. And if so, then why doesn't anyone around me know this? YHWH says that's who I used to be, that it's at best unrealistic to think that's still my identity; people change. I see her point, but I still feel like I may do different things, but it's still the old me doing it.

If you've stuck with this post, don't think I moaning, "Woe is me. Nobody knows me." I'm just intrigued by the nature of our identities, be they fluid or immutable. I'm sure I would be horrified to know what people really thought; they may have the opposite reaction I have, "That's not you! You have no idea who you are!" I was in that place a decade ago when my Old Wife left and never really gave me a reason why. Just before that our close friends started breaking dates and disinviting us and I was just clueless as to what I was doing that was so dastardly. Still don't know. By the way, thanks, Tex, for sticking with me. You, too, Queen, even though you were busy and neutral. And thanks for trying as long as you did, Gouldie.

So, like a tiger chasing it's tail, I go round and round trying to figure out who I am. It's just as well because if I ever figure this out, I'll have to move on to 'why am I here'. For now, I find solace in Popeye's mantra: "I yam what I yam."

The Queen's Gusset

2006-06-11T10:09:00.000-05:00

I should clarify one thing about my reference (no pun) to the Do-Nothing Desk in several previous posts. That's not a jaded view of my own work, but rather sarcasm based on the oft-stated opinion of people below (and some above) my pay grade. I guess manual labor and workspaces that produce lines of people waiting for service are the only work that gets 'noticed'. It's kind of like being middle class in America. I'm really not that jaded about it, and the desk is only half of my job anyway! Don't let that discourage you Gouldie or Shank.

I watched a really good movie last night. Saints and Soldiers. I was intrigued because I had never seen a Mormon war movie (that I know of) and I knew that the Mormon film industry, while still Indie and low-budget, has been making some pretty good movies that our wide age-range family can watch together without it being too much or too little for any one person. It was well-made for it's budget and I would say it's about like a post-war movie of the 40s or 50s with no cursing and action is not the centerpiece, but rather the interaction of the characters. The very interesting thing is that the Mormon character never identifies himself as such and never proselytizes, but leads by example. The great thing was that it shows some universal traits of a religious life no matter what the religion, ie things we should all live by. In fact, a couple of lines received a thumbs up by our resident arbiter of theology. "You know he's Mormon, don't you?" I had to reveal. Definitely a chick war movie as well, so give it a try.

I'm enjoying the World Cup so far. I've only gotten to see one half of one game so far, but I've been watching them statistically on the web. I predicted England would choke despite their easy group and I almost proved out - their 1-0 win came as a result of a Parguayan scoring an own-goal. As I told Overcoat, England hasn't been that lucky since Dunkirk. My pick of Poland as one of my darkhorses is looking bleak right now, though...

Gotta go knit the Queen's gusset...

They Buy Books, Don't They?

2006-06-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

I flew solo on the Do-Nothing Desk today and decided to list all of my questions just for the heck of it.

Is my Tom Sawyer reserve in?
I looked up the youngster's account and she had reserved some thing called Tom Sawyer, but it wasn't the Twain book. I could've said, "No," and left it at that. But, no, I said, "Let me see if we have a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer..."

After that I had a homeless guy that sat down in front of our big dictionary and began to read the dictionary out loud in Shakespearean dramatic tones. Captivate! Captivating! Captivation! Captive! It was pretty funny for about five minutes. Security quelled his ardor.

Reserved a study room.
Reserved another study room.
Here's how the next one went: "I wanna know. Do they buy books?" "Uhhh. Do you mean can you buy books here?" "No." "Uhhh, well, I mean we do buy books. Are you wanting to sell a book to us?" It went on for awhile before she said she had a book called The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Eureka! "And you want to know it's value?!" I said. That was it. I looked it up in Alibris. I said mostly they're worth about $2-5 unless it's original. It is. Well, I said, here's one for $40,000 signed by Douglass himself. Well, this one is, too she said - and Abraham Lincoln. Oh, I said. You'd probably better take it to a rare book dealer and gave her the info on that.

Reserved another study room.
Where are your love poem books? 800s here we come...
What is the meaning of the word herlamic? That one defeated me.
Where are your books on Jingis Khan? 950s here we come...
What is the meaning of apricentric? Do you mean afrocentric? That word fit the bill.
What is the meaning of essessist? Do you mean essayist? No. Ethicist? That was it.
Did a shelf check and placed a temp tracer
How do you spell ethos? No problem.
How do you pronounce eunuch? Asked and answered.
What is the meaning of polemical? Got it.
Can I return my books anywhere? Any of our libraries...
Where are the stairs?
Where can I do homeschooling in OKC? Is that a trick question? I found some local clubs.
Do you have an Evinrude repair manual? We did.
Can I get a card if I live in Piedmont? Only one way...pay for it.
Is there an Orbis Books? Yes and I gave them the number
Can you tell me if there is a chemistry professor at Stanford named XXXXXX? There wasn't.
He could be dead, can you tell me that? If he is, he didn't get Social Security benefits.
Do you have a book that can tell me who will buy a book I wrote? Writers Market is what you need.
Do you have a list of acrylics businesses in the region? Thomas Register
Where are your bible commentaries? Let me show you the 200s
Where are your astrology books? Let me show you the 130s
Where are the Alexandra Stoddard books? Let me show you the 746s
Can you show me a book on engraving tools?
What is the meaning of archaic?
Can you help locate Lund University? I have a citation from a Mr. Munga there. It's in Sweden...
How do you pronounce 'rhys'? Reese
Where are the firefighter books? Are you taking a test or just want to read about them? Just read them...628s
What is martyrdom?
What is the meaning of shariah?
Do you have books on immigration law in Oklahoma? No, but I found them some elsewhere
Can you define enculturation?
Do you have project management books?
Did a shelf check and placed a tracer
Is there a seminary in Ivory Coast? Yep.. in Abidjan
Do you have anime books? On first floor
Reserved a meeting room for 10.
Is the Grandmother of Europe there? On first floor
How many books can you check out? 30
Do you have any ghost stories? 398s
Do you have any Broadway show scores? 782s
Can you give me the number for XXXXX in Rogers, AR?
Looked up another for the same guy
I have heard there was an airport buried underneath Lake Hefner. Is that true? Not according to the information I have but there was one next to it...
Can you give me the number for XXXXXX in Moore? I can't find it in the book.
Do you have an OKC business directory? Not exactly, but I showed her a much better source than that
My last one for the day was a 70 something guy who asked one of the most agonizing questions in the library world, "How do I research my family tree?" It was near closing time, but I found him on the 1930 census and told him to come back next week...

Sorry so long and boring, just thought I'd give you a glimpse of a day at the Do-Nothing Desk!

You Soxy Thang

2006-06-08T22:08:00.000-05:00

The Queen's first sock is finished. She proclaims it a perfect fit. Here's hoping I can get the other to match it! It looks a little squishy in this picture, but here 'tis:

In response to the Queen's comment on my last post, I had to call and ask my dad, but he said that the baby's aunt and grandmother assured him that the child was not his step sister and that they would be happy to raise her as their own. After that, we don't know what happened to her.

We'll Have to Muddle Through Somehow

2006-06-07T20:38:00.000-05:00

Several people have asked me if my family was really in organized
crime (god forbid the 20 or so people I know who read this thing
ACTUALLY COMMENT on it). The short answer is no. I never said my
grandpa and great-uncle were in the mob. But anyone who's seen The
Sopranos knows that you rarely come out unscathed if you do business
with them. And I think dead counts as scathed.

Actually, I should tie up a couple of loose ends left hanging by several recent posts. One is this mob thing, the other is that I don't blame my dad for how things have turned out between us. I have always given him a free pass when it came to fatherhood and considered myself lucky to have a father at all, given the circumstances. My dad grew up out in western Oklahoma. He was born just before World War II and my grandpa then abandoned his family, as he was abandoned by his father, and left my grandma there to run the family farm and raise the boys. This was at the end of the Dust Bowl and it was still tough farming and she tried a couple of years, but just couldn't do it alone. So she left the boys with their father's aunt and headed to Wichita to build B-29s as a Rosie the Riveter. She got remarried there and came back for the boys after the war. Meanwhile the aunt had been telling the boys their parents hated them and weren't coming back. She had also gone to the local judge and had the boys declared abandoned so she could get legal custody of them. So when my dad's mom showed up one day in 1945 to get the boys they were scared of her. The aunt told my grandma, "You're not taking Older Boy. You can have Younger Boy, but I'm keeping this one." Not quite Sophie's Choice, but my grandma didn't want the boys to grow up not knowing each other, so she gave them up and - sound familiar - started a whole new family a couple states away.

My grandpa, of course, knew none of this and he shows up one day when my dad was in high school. He walked into the classic 50's malt shop place in town where all the teens were - and you have to know my dad was a pretty cool looking, James Dean type - and my grandpa 'called him out' in the street and embarassed him in front of all his friends. Then he disappeared again for about 25 years. My sister was getting married and somehow he heard about it and he showed up the day before the wedding. I mean you can just imagine the emotions in our house. My poor dad. Marrying off his daughter is hard enough, but to have your long lost dad show up, too. And my folks. I have to tell you, it was like the prodigal son story. The minute he came in my mom - who had spewed bile against this guy for 25 years - gets up, gives him a hug and says, "What would you like for dinner? I'll make your favorite meal!" While it's cooking she goes into their bedroom and cleans it, changes the bedding, and gives him the best room in the house. Then he pulls out this huge wad of cash and tells my sister to get in the car, "We're going shopping. I'll buy you anything you want for your wedding."

A week later, we get one of those calls at 3:00 am. It's the New Mexico Highway Patrol. My grandpa had died in a car wreck. So my dad flies down to El Paso to settle the estate. He said it was like a detective movie because he had no idea what his father's life was like. Grandpa had had at least three wives - all very much younger than he - and several kids. Some bank accounts had been emptied. The local police wouldn't talk about him. The bank where he worked as a repo man wouldn't talk about him. Finally, my dad drove out to this lonely stretch of I-10 in New Mexico and tracked down the patrolman who found the crash. He told my dad it was a strange scene. It was quite clear, he said, that the car had been expertly pushed off the road by another car. My grandpa and his female companion had been thrown from the car and killed, but an infant strapped in a car seat was sitting in the shade of the wreck with two bottles at hand. A briefcase my grandpa was known to carry was missing (and never found), but his wallet with several hundred dollars was still there and the woman's purse was untouched so there was no banditry. The police matter-of-factly told my dad it was, "probably the Mexican mob". We'll never know. I do know I inherited a private eye's license and a .25 caliber automatic pistol that would fit in a closed fist. Very cool for a 13 year-old. I know less about my dad's uncle, just rumors - a politician, in Nevada, mysterious car crash.

One day a few years ago I asked my dad if he ever thought about leaving us and he said, yeah, he had. "Why didn't you then?" I asked. He said, "I didn't want you to make excuses for me your whole life." Somehow, despite all of this, he stuck with us. He loved us. He smiled and laughed with us. He hugged us and made us feel secure. And he felt his way through the dark the whole way.

You Can't Make New Old Friends

2006-06-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

The Self and I just watched The Fog. It's a pretty good ghost story. It's got a sustainable plot and just enough jolts to keep you awake. The acting is pedestrian, but it's more of a plot movie than a character movie, so it's fine. Go ahead and give it a try. Just remember it's a ghost story, not horror.

Knitting update:
The brown outfits bag:

The bag actually looks better than the photo. The middle stripe is a little more blended with brown than the grey that comes out in the flash.

The Queen's heel turned:

Jeez, Queen, what are those, size 5's?

YHWH and the self brought me some nice new incense. Japanese Pine, Nag Champa Shantimalai Red, and Meera Lemon Grass . Smells nice around here!

She's Meanness Set to Music

2006-06-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

Just finished watching Mad Max on DVD. When I first saw this movie in 1980 or so it had been dubbed with American voice-overs because the American distributor thought people would have problems understanding the Australian accents. Being slanted to the historical and being a librarian/archivist type, I generally think you should leave things the way they were. For example, the great film hypocrite Spielberg drives me crazy with his diatribes against colorizing and then he goes and removes guns from the policemen's hands in ET. I see both as the same thing. I'm really not even that much of a purist. Let's just have them both available. Star Wars is the same thing. I'm still upset that the original movie was doctored up 20 years later and is now called A New Hope as though the first one never existed. That's fine if Lucas wants to do that, but why can't I still buy the 1977 version if I want to. It's freakin' Orwellian is what it is. I know Overcoat and some others think it's ridiculous that I think this way, but you never saw Steinbeck come out 20 years after Grapes of Wrath and say maybe I was a little hard on California and take out all the beatings the Okies got. Or he is criticised because he didn't deal with Mexican migrants, so he goes back in 1962 and adds a chapter on them in the middle of his novel. And if they do anything like that in books they call it a second edition and tell you what changes they made, but they don't remove all copies of the first edition from the planet as though they never existed. And by the way anyone who tells me that I can go on eBay and buy some VCR version someone taped off of TV in 1983 gets their ip blocked.

Well, anyway, in the case of Mad Max, the American distributor was right. The dubbed version was actually a lot cooler. Today we would call Mad Max an indie movie. And it definitely had that feel. When I saw it as a young teen it was so amazingly cool. It wasn't released in the theaters where I lived and I saw it at a friends house on HBO back when HBO was only on from like 5pm to 3am. We saw it at about 8pm and then stayed up to watch it again at 1 or 2 am. It was rated R, but I got to see it because my quasi-fundie parents didn't care what I saw as long as it didn't have sex. Violence was no problem; shoot, that was just part of life. I could see a baby mown down by a truck in the middle of a highway, but if the movie had a pair of boobs, it was definitely off limits. But the dubbing made it feel so much cooler. Mel Gibson's character had a voice like Clint Eastwood and in fact I wouldn't doubt if the distributor based his alterations on the success of the dubbing in spaghetti westerns. I mean you know it's dubbed and the mouths don't fit the sound, but those movies are still amazingly raw and cool. And that's how the American release of Mad Max was.

In the Australian version the accents are just so strong it really does lose it's feel. Australians kind of have that golly-gee exuberance that we had 50 years ago and it comes through in this movie that's supposed to be dark and apocalyptic. They also seem kind of hickish in this movie. So the result is that you feel like you're watching an episode of Andy Griffith, except Andy and Barney drive turbo fuel-injected nitro-infused V8 pursuit cars. And Otis and Ernest T. Bass have names like Nightrider and Toecutter. Mel Gibson sounds like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future and squeaks and squeals throughout the movie. I so much prefer the monosyllabic Marlboro Man Mel I saw first. Another thing they fixed were some of the minor dialog things like windscreen and windshield, and some major things like, and I don't remember the line for certain from the American versions (BECAUSE I CAN'T GO BACK AND WATCH IT), but when Max gets his new pursuit car his friend says something like, "It's a real Mother****er, Max" or something like that, but in the original they say, "You can shut the gate on this one, Max. She's the duck's guts." Somehow I don't hear Steve McQueen saying that in Bullitt. I still love this movie, though, and won't strike it from my favorites list. Maybe someday there will be a boxed set with the American release on it.

I have finished YHWH's second winter bag, this being the brown outfit version, but will wait to post until it is felted. However, since the sewing portion is completed, let the royal sockmaking begin! Here is the Queen's cuff:

It's Not the Fall That Kills You

2006-06-02T23:15:00.000-05:00

Adjective Queen's latest flight of fancy brought to mind some portion of my own youth. I wanted to fly, but I didn't necessarily want to join the Air Force. I was pretty sure I wanted to be a sniper, preferably a paratrooper/sniper, but a Marine LRRP sniper or Thirteen Cent Killer would've been fine. And then after I retired I was going to do freelance work. So, no Air Force for me. I realize that's a long way from being a librarian, but that's another post.

Our cult had two pilots in it and I naturally gravitated to them. One was an ex-Marine aviator who flew corporate lear jets. It wasn't unusual for him to be gone to the Orange Bowl or the Super Bowl or Hawaii, but mostly he was taking oilmen to meetings in Houston and back. The other guy was also a corporate pilot, but he flew turboprops and those were fun. He was also more of a pretty hang-loose guy - probably had a lot to do with with the 3 or 4 million dollar difference in the prices of their planes. When I was about Lego's age, I acted eager enough to learn that the second guy took me under his wing, so to speak. He gave me the flight manuals and the ground school coursework and told me if I could sit in the cockpit and 'fly' the plane in the hangar, he'd let me do it for real and help me get a license. So I studied them. I learned about pitch and yaw and lift and drag and at 14 I actually passed the ground school portion of the licensing process. I was so ready to fly for real.

And then the ol' family curse reared its ugly head. Actually, we have three family curses. One is that any time I was about to embark on some great endeavor, we would have to move. Another one is that any time I wanted to do something fun (i.e. dangerous), my mother's fear factor kicked in and I usually lost out. The last one, the big one, is the Male Transportation Curse. My aviation career was cut short by a perfect storm of all three of these. By way of explanation, the Male Transportation Curse involves the fact that all the men in my direct line of ancestry have died young via some form of transportation accident. My dad is the death cheater, the Ronald Reagan of the Transportation Curse. I hope he broke it anyway.

Here's how the curse plays out in reverse order: one of my dad's stepbrothers died in a car wreck in Montana, the other died in a plane crash in Kansas. My dad's brother died when the parachute of his dragster failed to deploy during a race.

My dad's father was killed in New Mexico when his car was run off the road in the desert in a hit by the Mexican version of the mafia. His brother, my dad's uncle was killed near Reno, in a hit by some sort of organized crime outfit in Nevada. And various male ancestors died in the pre-car age after being hit by wagons in the street and one even died when he was kicked in the head while shoeing a horse. None of them lived past their fifties. My dad is in his sixties. So that, plus my mom's fear of me being dangerous (to be fair, I had already walked away from a motorcycle wreck), lead to the demise of my nascent piloting experience. The final phase was that a couple months after that we moved anyway. Not that you can't be a pilot anywhere else, but I didn't have access to the pilot who had taken an interest in me. I did finally jump out of a perfectly good airplane a few years ago, though. That was sweet. I've never felt that wonderful before or since.

So, Queen, get the boy a flight manual and let him see how he likes the science part of it first. If he doesn't, he'll be buying a lot of passenger tickets. There's something about the air here that makes people achieve great things in the air.

Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.

2006-05-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

Just got a call from YHWH, et al, and the Family Truckster came up lame a few miles from the YHWH Family Compound. Her brother will be along shortly to make repairs so all is well. Flying Leathernecks and Flying Tigers for me tonight. I haven't checked tomorrow's lineup, but I'm thinking of ditching America's heroes for America's Family, the Corleones. I'm going to visit mom's grave and when I get back, I think I'll watch Godfather I and II. And if I have time I think I'll watch Return of the Pink Panther.

It's funny, I was raised on those movies (made by a Tulsa boy) and I can't get one person in my family to watch any Peter Sellers with me. It's pretty much the story of my life, though. Like probably every other kid in the world, I was pretty sure I was adopted growing up. I had nothing in common with anyone in my family and to top it off I didn't look remotely like any of them either. My sister is a dead ringer for my dad's mother and sometimes him as well. Her kids' pictures routine stand up side-by-side with pictures of my dad at those ages. But me, I look nothing like anyone on either side. Someday I may do an Adjective Queen-style post on that topic.

I've been debating about three days on whether to call my dad and see if he wants to go with me to visit mom's grave. It's the kind of emotional tennis I play frequently because I annoyingly care so much about other people's feelings. Ever since my mom died my dad has gotten more and more remote. Almost everyone has told me it's normal because men don't communicate anyway, which I understand, but since I have no other parent, I just naturally assumed he would step up and try to hold the family together. When mom died he lived a couple of hours northwest of here and he stayed up there alone for about a year before selling his business. I called him a couple times a week and went up there to see him every other week or so. I even started following NASCAR and watched races just to have something to talk about. I'd scan TV Guide and make a note when movies he liked would come on so I could call and say, "Hey, did you see Bullitt was on TNT?" SGK was only a couple of weeks old when mom died so I thought maybe that would keep him going since he and mom were hyperinvolved in my sister's four kids. But no, he rarely called and visited even less. I decided that since SGK is an absolute carbon-based copy of my mom that maybe it pained him just to look at her so hard did he take mom's early death. That may be. I never asked - didn't want to make him feel guilty for ignoring his granddaughter. I just take SGK to visit eldies at a retirement home so she can be around grandparent types.

He got remarried about three years ago and moved all the way across the state. Still two hours away, but in another direction. His wife is very kind, but very different, in many ways opposite from my mom. She has two twenty-something children and he has clicked with them very well. He does lots of fatherly things with the son and son-in-law and he's an excellent grandfather for the girl's two children, so it's apparent he's capable of doing those things we're missing around here. YHWH tries to console me by saying she thinks that he needs to be needed and he must perceive that I don't need him. I kind of get that. And, you know, he's very nice and excited to hear from us - when we call him. The totality of it is that he has pretty much cut himself off from his old family and started over completely. And that's what brings me to the difficulty I'm having making this call. I'm pretty sure that he doesn't go to the cemetery anymore and so if I call him and ask him if he's going and he isn't, he'll feel guilty or uncomfortable admitting it to me. And I just hate to make anyone feel bad. Isn't that sick? In my own defense, it's not cowardice or wimp factor 9, I can be very strong when I need to. I'm just far too empathic for my own good. Maybe someday I won't care so much and confront him wielding Don Corleone's verbal blade, "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." Of course since I have a blog, Michael would rub me out like Fredo because you, "never tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking."

We're Surrounded - That Simplifies Our Problem

2006-05-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

Of the three big summer holidays, I definitely like Memorial Day the most, grave visitation aside. I've never been one of those who likes going to the lake and spending three days of fun in the sun. I've always figured Richard Linklater included my favorite scene in Slacker just for me. A couple wake up one weekend and she announces, "It's a nice day. We should go to the lake." The guy says, "I hate going to the lake! You don't just go to the lake. You have to prepare for it!" Then he goes on this diatribe about how much stuff you have to take - ice chest, ice, beer, food, towels, suntan lotion, insect spray, etc. "Let's just stay here and read the paper," he finally says. Well, that's me. And on Memorial Day, I like to settle in and watch the war movie marathons running on a half dozen channels, salted with a baseball triple header and the Indy 500. And this year is going to be sweet because the rest of the house is going to the YHWH Family Compound. For. A. Week.

But the movies started to-nite and the Super Giant Killer begged to get to stay up to watch Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker. It was really fun. She kept asking what all the equipment was and why they did this and that. She asked why the Marines didn't strap their helmets on, but I thought it might be too gruesome to tell her that if the concussions from artillery shells blew their helmets off they would take their heads off with them. About half way through she asks me if it's ok to like war. I asked her how does she mean "like war" and she said, "well, it's just so fascinating. I don't mean I like that people get killed, but I just love learning about it." I wasn't really sure what to say since I basically feel the same way. So I just said, "Let me tell you about a great movie called A History of Violence. It has this revolutionary new theory..." It amazes me how she 'gets it' though. The other day she was reading her D-Day book and she said I guess war is mostly about land and who gets to live on it. She said something similar tonight when the general was doing the obligatory large-map-and-pointer scene. And not seconds later, one of the characters says, "That's war - trading real estate for men." She got really keyed up when they raised the flag over Mount Suribachi just like the memorial she saw in Washington this Spring. Finally, she said, "Dad, I really love black-and-white movies. They are so way better than color!" I was kind of bummed she couldn't stay up to watch Sergeant York with me. She's going to be so cranky tomorrow I'll wish I was at the Russian Front.

It's kind of funny how my last post and this one converge because while I was watching Sands with her, I recalled how many war movies I watched with my dad. My dad always worked no fewer than two and sometimes four jobs at a time and when he was home, he was crashed in front of the TV watching football or buddy movies. So that's where I hung out to be with my dad. It was kind of a silent bond, but it provided a sense of continuity. My social and cultural education basically consisted of watching every war movie ever televised, every Clint Eastwood movie ever made (I can recite the entire list of charges read before Eli Wallach was hung in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly), and pretty much any movie made between 1955 and 1980 that include a gun from the props department. I saw more pimps with afros and thugs with acetone shirts and leisure suits than was probably good for a kid. And I loved every minute of it. I'm probably not going to watch all that with the Killer, but a few war movies won't hurt.

I have to post SGK's report card. I was so proud of her teacher's comments. She said the two things I most want to hear said about my child.

Review of A History of Violence

2006-05-25T23:27:00.000-05:00

A few people have asked me why I gave A History of Violence such a low grade, so here is my attempt to explain that and I guess write a review. Luckily, it has been a few weeks since I've seen it, so I'll be a little more tempered, especially since the Grandmother of Europe liked it and I hate to offend her since we are doing our part to save OKC's air quality.

First of all, I got the movie on Netflix because YHWH wanted to see it as she had heard, "it's s'posed to be pretty good." I guess I had heard the same, from people like Ebert and also Cannes. YHWH didn't get around to watching it, but I went ahead just so I wouldn't waste the rental. I ended up watching it by myself with an usual quietude in the house. Which was good, because many times I laughed heartily outloud at the amateurish dialog and cloying plot devices.

The movie begins with two ice cool killers who swiftly and silently kill a family of motel proprietors, including a toddler, rather than pay their bill. Later, we see them in Everytown, USA where they encounter two high school hooligans who curse at them and threaten them. The killers simply stare coldy back at them in silence and the hoods flee with their tails dragging. Next they enter a cafe at closing time with at least four people in it and order coffee. When they are refused, the elder of the two screams, "I SAID COFFEE!!" That was my first laugh. That was so out of character. I wasn't old enough to remember the Stafford spree here, but I'm betting it didn't go down like this. Anyway, they grab a waitress and it ends in a shoot out with both of them dead at the hand of the owner.

From then on, director Cronenberg trots out cardboard standups from old westerns, film noir, and every high school movie ever made. Yes, the lead character's son is in HS. He has a girlfriend who is the ex of the town bully and they tease him mercilessly. The boy shows great maturity and restraint in dealing with the bully, but after his father becomes Charles Bronson, it subconsciously occurs to him that it's OK if he beats the boy to verge of death. And of course the boys are wearing letter jackets. Letter jackets? Do they even make those anymore?

It turns out the father was not the family man he had been for 17 or so years, but a former mob enforcer who got religion. People from his past show up to reel him back in, but he kills them, too. The wife is angry, boohoo, because he lied to her about his past while he pouts and tried to remain good. That happens in every chick flick ever made - the guy lies to impress her and she's mad when she finds out, but sees the real him after all. That happens here, too, only to convince her, he has to brutally rough her up while they have makeup sex. Huh? I mean what was he supposed to do? Admit to several murders? He reinvented himself, and that is the man she knew. How hard is that to understand? From then on Cronenberg has spliced in parts of all the Dirty Harry movies and all the Death Wish movies. The main character drives to the east coast to kill everyone he knew, but now he has the wife's blessing. I'm really not sure why he felt the need to do that and I don't get where she's coming from. There's a lot of that in this movie.

It's possible I judge this movie more harshly because of the press it got, but I doubt it. The script really is that bad. I'm afraid they got lazy and lifted the storyboard right off the pages of the graphic novel and left the dialog in it. I read lots of GNs and I can tell you they aren't script quality. After I saw this I checked the reviews and it's so sad. It was so vacuous that I'm guessing the reviewers figured since it was Cronenberg he knows what he's doing and since they didn't get it, it must be art. There's all this talk about how American society has all these undercurrents of violence and this film shows the layers of violence we all live with and so on. Really? America is violent? I missed that somewhere. It must have been while I was watching football. Or I was busy writing a theme on cartoons and chilren's television like every kid in America has done at least once. Or I didn't notice that CSI and Law and Order are the biggest shows on TV. And I had somehow not noticed we have troops in Iraq. Oh, I know, I had rap music going on in my iPod and didn't hear the news that America is violent. If you really want to understand the concept of a violent America watch Rocky. That's one of the most artful looks at violence ever filmed.

My final feeling about it is that it's really sad that the director of Scanners and Videodrome and eXistenZ ends up doing a movie like this. Especially after Spider, which was a fantastic movie.

I apologize for the quality of this post. I haven't really ever written reviews, so it will have to take practice.

No Sense Makes Sense

2006-05-23T21:35:00.000-05:00

It's weird how some days at the Do-Nothing Desk the questions run in streaks. As reported, I'd kind of been on a really helpful roll there for a couple weeks, and last week was pretty fun as I got a long run of good old fashioned reference questions like the longest river, the population of Dallas and Cincinnati, the date of the land run, and when was Price Tower built. I hope today is not the trendsetter as we had at least three of what I call AFLACs. You know the AFLAC commercials where people are trying to think of the name and the duck keeps squawking out, "AFLAC!" These are ones where you're trying to give them the answer and they just don't get it no matter how you explain it to them. My first question of the day was a guy who came to the desk and his opening salvo is, "Where can I find out how many books were published?" I sputter, "Uh, uh, do you mean, ever? Like since the printing press?" "No," he says, "just for a year." Inside I say whew, Bowker Annual can handle that. But I press on and he says, no, he wants to know how many of one title were published. Ok, I think, CBI can handle that.We don't have it, but it can be located if the year is right. So I press on, what year? What book? 1987 he says and The Hobbit. 50th annviersary edition. Ok, I say, that may be hard to find out, thinking a book like that will have had a billion printings. Why do you need it, maybe there's another way of going about it. Eureka! He wanted to know what it was worth. So I gave him a book collectors' price guide, but told him that old axiom, "It's only worth what someone will pay for it." If you want to know the market price, let me look it up in Alibris or ABE and get a retail price. "Oh! Onliiiine," he says. "They don't know anything." Well, I said, the collectors stores are disappearing, everyone's online now. He wouldn't have it. I didn't know what I was talking about. So he takes his collectors' guide and saunters off with it, hoping it had the answer. It didn't.

Then the Grandmother of Europe had this really funny one where every step of her reference interview got a broader and broader response. "Where are the novels? You know, like memoirs?" "Uh, well, do you mean nonfiction, like true stories," GOE asks. "Yeah." "OK, well whose memoirs do you want?" "Just anyone," he says. "Where's the general section?" "They're all over. By subject," GOE counters. "Is there a particular type of person you want to read about?" "An American," is the reply. "OK, an American who did what kind of work; or when did they live?" GOE is really stretched now. She gets no answer. "20th Century maybe? You know, the 1900s," she tries again. He finally nods tacit approval and the best she can do is take him to 973.9 and let him browse with a promise of more help if he needs it.

After work, the Killer wanted to show me her folder for the year. Mercifully, her teachers keep the best work throughout the year and provide a nice folder at the end so you don't have to keep every little drawing and fingerpainting and risk scarring them by having to throw it out later. The best item was from her first day of school. It was a little train which each child would put up on a bulletin board. Hers said: My name is: Super Giant Killer. My favorite color is: Blue. I like to: Be left alone. Oh, man, I died laughing.

She and I also started a new project. She wanted to create what I guess you might call a natural history of Pluto. I'm not sure what you would call it. First we had to draw a Pluto globe and then I was supposed to draw the continents and oceans and she started in on the flora and fauna. Oh, and she also did the minerals. She had a list of all the properties of each plant and rock and what continent they could be found on, etc. She had just read a book on Pluto and I guess she figured what was good for us was good for Pluto. I didn't have the heart to bring up that it's a cold and dark rock. It was fun, though. And further proof that a monkey could've written Lord of the Rings. Maybe I'll scan in some of our work sometime.

Is It Because I Lied When I Was Seventeen?

2006-05-22T22:41:00.000-05:00

I donated platelets again today, but thankfully Mr. Garden Clogs wasn't there. There was an equally annoying gal in there, though. If you've ever given blood you know the drill. You're up on this gurney thing and you can't move your arm, etc. Well, I settle in after the big needle is inserted and neatly taped snug to my arm and try and mentally prepare for the drip. If you haven't given platelets before, it's different than the kind at a blood drive. They take your blood out, remove the plasma and platelets and then put the red stuff back in. This process takes forever. You could literally drive to Tulsa and back before they get what they want out of you. And since I have the universal blood type and such a high platelet count, they want all of mine they can get. So I have to be there for two and a half hours. I have to get psyched up to do it because I just can't sit still that long. They do have TV, which helps some, but not much. Well, anyway, today there was a woman two beds down from me and out of the very corner of my peripheral vision I pick up this movement. And it doesn't stop, so I turn over to look and she's bicycling in the air - she's on her back and her feet are up in the air and she's aircycling. And she goes on for an hour like this, including pounding her feet on the padding like she's running in place. The nurses kept going by and asking if her circulation was bad, or did she need to go to the restroom; they were getting really worried she was going to knock the needle out, but she just let out a guffaw and said, "No, I'm just distracting myself." I wanted to say, "No, you're distracting everyone else!"

To compound my agony, the nurse had given me the remote to the TV. I really wanted to turn it over to ESPN, but I left it where it was because I assumed Lance Armstrong over there wouldn't want to watch Around the Horn. So I suffered through Judge Hatchett and an hour of Judge Judy. I spent most of the time mentally and spiritually kicking my own ass for being so concerned about the feelings of others. I felt like one of Asimov's androids in I, Robot, unable to do harm to humans. The only solace I could find was in what I call Koestler Moments. Ever read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler? If not, you should. It's very applicable to real life. I figured that while it was true I did not deserve this fresh hell (I did not copy you, Queen, I got it from Dot herself), I must have done something at sometime and gotten away with it and this was fitting punishment for that. At the very least, I figured doing volunteer work ought to hurt at least a little. Don't want the Lone Cricket stalking me...

One night last week, Tex brought over a birthday gift for The Killer. I have to tell you, Tex, she has gone crazy over it. She had already memorized the monthly birthstones from her almanac and she was carrying the new book around church asking everyone their birthday. And then she'd tell them, not all emeralds are green y'know...

Le Booga Bag c'est accompli.

Even When the Sun Is Shining, I Can't Avoid the Lightning

2006-05-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

Well, this weekend was a benchmark, hallmark, watermark, whatevermark one around here. No, wait, milestone is what I mean. Friday night, The Self attended her first big social/dance. A black number in the style of Stevie Nicks was the chosen attire. Those of you who know her can draw your own mental picture of what those legendary very tight curls look like hanging straight down to the middle of her back. Emphasis on straight. Marsha Brady straight. No curls. Or I'll see if I can get a picture. There are plenty of them with her in the center - they all pack digicams or cell cameras these days and are constantly holding them at arms-length snapping away at themselves with an attrition rate rivaling Grant's at Cold Harbor. Trawl through myspace for any amount of time and you'll see hundreds of pics of teens with big heads and bulging eyes with a slightly asphyxiated look on their faces. She seemed to have had a good time and actually danced with her boyfriend which she described as spasmodic. She and her friend said that the DJ only played rap and hip-hop all night much to their consternation, so they did satirical hip-hop dances in response.

The other milestone is that Super Giant Killer got her first pet - a betta. It's a lovely blue color and is named Harry S. Truman. The whole time I was gathering the fishbowl, food, net, and psychedelic gravel, I was in a complete daze. It was like I was channeling the lives of the millions of fathers preceding me. I could see it all before me and I was powerless to affect a change in the course of events. One morning very soon I will walk in to her room and there will be a floating morass formed from half a can of fish flakes. Every week I will fight with her about cleaning the bowl amid whined protestations such as ick and gross and the words, "I used to wipe your butt!" will form unheard on my lips. I could also hear YHWH's telepathic voice in crystal tones asking me what I was thinking. "I...I just...wasn't," I said aloud, causing heads to turn. And one day I will walk in and he will be floating on the surface and we will bury him in some corner of the yard in a lavishly decorated box rivaling anything the Byzantines ever thought of crafting. I saw all this happening to me, I made the 'you have to take care of it speech', I heard the superlative assurances, saw the beaming look on her face, and nodded my assent. SGK burst into the house and held Harry high in triumph and YHWH looked straight at me with an expressionless face - the face of a fishbowl cleaner - and I just held my hands up in mea culpa and said, "Everyone deserves a crack at it, hon."

Killer's second loose tooth came out today. She still doesn't want to give them to the tooth fairy. After her first one came out, she hid it so well from the tooth fairy, we couldn't find it. This one she put in a ziploc snack bag and wrote 'SGK's Tooth' all over with red and green Sharpies and put it with her homecoming blanket from the hospital.

She and I made our usual Saturday morning outing. We went to Ingrid's for bagels. Then I had a hankerin' to check out some pawn shops, so we visited two or three and I had to explain the complicated nature of short term cashflow problems to a fascinated Killer. She spent most of her time trying to differentiate between garage sales, thrift stores and pawn shops.

I leave you with the poster for the new movie about my life (thank you Grandmother of Europe for pointing it out to me and thanks to The Cinema Trade for the image - hope you don't mind my borrowing it).

Wedding Cake For No Reason

2006-05-18T08:17:00.000-05:00

After dinner, YHWH and I began what I hope will be our new walking regimen. From last June thru November I walked like a house afire, but then all the stresses and just plain hassles of moving threw me out of my riddim and I became a recidivist. So I'm trying to get back into it. Unfortunately exercise is the only way for me to control my weight. And like millions of others I hate every second of it. So anyway, The Killer went with us for a walk (she rode her bike) around the neighborhood. After a while YHWH stopped to talk to a gardner and Killer and I pressed ahead and she talked nonstop the whole time. One of the things she brought up was that she wanted to have a family fun night tonight. I told her it was already too late, but asked what kinds of things she wanted to do for next time. Play Twister (yes my life flashed before my eyes at the thought of me doing anything requiring flexibility). Dress up (since there are no tiaras and gowns for me to dress up in, being the only male, I get to just paint my nails). Play Trivial Pursuit. Get a wedding cake for no reason. We could all pretend we are geologists and look for really cool rocks. God love her, she is just the biggest nerd and I love every bit of it. And the little snot rode her bike three miles!

Today was another real doozie at the Do-Nothing Desk. I spent the first hour simultaneously trying to track down a TV/VCR for a meeting and taking calls from one of our regulars, The Sigher. This guy is the guy they used on those 16mm films they showed in high schools in the 1950s to illustrate someone who had absolutely no interpersonal skills. He may also have been the model for Goofus in Highlights Magazine. I had to keep giving him the number he wanted and he would lose it or write it down wrong or something and keep calling back. It was redeeming, though. He told me, "You know when I call 411, they don't tell you any of this stuff. And if they can't find it, they just tell you they can't find it." I kept waiting for him to say thank you or librarians are great or something, but no dice. I just accepted his realization of it as an affirmation. Later I had to help a guy who wanted to know whether they irrigate in the Australian desert. Talk about starting from zero, I had no idea. I did learn one interesting thing - that desert isn't very hot - the max temp doesn't get much over 95 or so. Shoot, that's a beautiful Spring day in Oklahoma. Anyway, it was nonstop all day long like that.

Well, I jinxed the Tribe. They are already 7.5 games back. And since the White Sox have someone to play with in Detroit, they will likely continue to chug along like the annoying locomotive they are. Dem Bums are making me proud, though. They have suffered injuries to most of their best hitters - Repko, Kent, and Mueller - and are hanging in at only 2 games back. Their problem has been the dang bullpen which has blown 8 saves so far - even if they just had four of those back, they would be two games up in the division. Once we get Gagne and the others back from injury, I believe we will roll to victory. But just the division.

Emptiness Is Nothing You Can Share

2006-05-16T11:10:00.000-05:00

BananAppeal: Let us bless them everyday

Yesterday was an odd Ides of May, I guess. An hour after reading Adjective Queen's funeral post, I get home from work, check the mailbox, and our neighbor comes walking over with the Super Giant Killer and says, "I think she needs to be home for awhile". Of course, I start thinking what did she do this time as she has a certain notoriety for intensity. The household next door consists of an elder and her two single adult daughters. Their granddaugther/niece is the Killer's age and lives down the street, so she spends a lot of time next-door and plays with the Killer a lot. So, the neighbor says she just came home from work and everyone in the house was crying. Apparently the Killer was thinking of her Gram and began to miss her very much and she started to tell stories about her. Then Annie, the little friend, started to miss her recently departed grandfather, and by this time Grandmother began to miss her dead husband and their old house and began to tell stories about him. Annie remembered the old house and started crying about having to move and then the Killer started missing her old house. So, when our neighbor walked in from work she was met with weeping and gnashing of teeth and sent both girls home to grieve in their own fashions. So, what does the Killer do? She attacks her consoling mother about our moving and wanting her old house back.

Another weird thing happened to the girls yesterday. After dinner they went to Big Northwest Side Library and as they approached the circ desk, a boy rushed in shouting , "Help! It's an emergency! I need to use the phone!" Apparently he had been running and was shirtless and presented himself quite a spectacle. He claimed a man was after him and he needed to call his mother. Apparently no one seemed to know what to do and soon an adult male in apparent possession of his shirt came in and tried to coax him back outside, but he wouldn't go. Unfortunately, The Self became so distressed that they had to leave so I don't know the final outcome of the event. I'll try and make a call and get the scoop. Self thought he was being abducted and YHWH thought he had some mental problems. I just don't think an abductor would stick around that long and let a crowd of people see his face, but then I don't deal with this everyday. For some reason, The Self was bothered by this all night.

UPDATE
I checked with personnel at Big Northwest Side Library and the report is that the librarian handled it just fine and the boy's mother came and picked him up.

There's a Billion Odd People Better Than Me, But You Don't Know Them

2006-05-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

I hate this. I am in knitting paralysis. I am in desperate need of a 10-1/2" circular needle to start YHWH's Booga Bag and I have only a 9" and 13" on hand. Michael's hasn't caught on that people knit anything other than scarves and baby blankets and thus don't carry much in the way of supplies and Hobby Lobby is in bed with Chick-Fil-A in enforcing their theocratic intentions on everyone by not opening on Sunday. Probably think Mothers' Day is a religious holiday anyway. Tex isn't home so I can't lean on her. I received AQ's foot pattern yesterday - thanks for wearing socks Queen - but the only sock yarn I have on hand is mint green and I'm not sure if she'd like that. She's not home either. By the way, Queen sent either a scan or a photocopy of her feet. How in hell did you do that, Queen? Did you climb up on a really high chair and put one foot on the copier or something? I keep getting these images of you at Kinko's hiking up your skirt and scaling the Canon while screaming at Lego Guy to hurry up and push the button. I also had a couple of visions of you shattering the glass, shredding your foot before it's electrocuted by all the wires inside. I also have this mental picture of you standing on the copier at work when your boss walks in. All this to say that since you said your socks are currently ill-fitting it really doesn't help me to have an imprint of a socked foot. I need you to stand flat-footed on a piece of paper and have one of your men trace around your bare foot. So, anyway, I really wanted to knit this morning and I have made five African baby hats this week and I don't think I can do another.

I am seriously considering becoming a right-wing jingoist. I try to subtly nudge my girls into being selfless-thinkers-of-others (without being doormats), thinking liberals, progressives, or any combination of the above. But I want them to get there on their own rather than becoming left-wing ideological automatons that sputter and spout whenever certain keywords are mentioned. I bad mouth Wal-Mart, 24-hour news channels, reality TV, and a host of other things while giving examples of better alternatives. I even admit I'm wrong sometimes. Well, anyway, last night we were eating dinner and I brought up how if I had it to do over I would seriously consider becoming a doctor so I could work with Medecins Sans Frontieres or I would give a couple of years to The Halo Trust clearing mines. YHWH and I talked about landmines and the work of MSF for awhile and the whole time The Self is staring away blankly, bobbing her head to George Harrison. The worse part is she has no riddim and the head-bobbing was way out of sync with the music. The problem is that it's not an isolated incident, she pretty well spends most of her time working on nerve-attenuation and mainlining from Rupert Murdoch. By the way, I'm not pushing them into doing something dangerous. I'm not pushing them into anything at all, just trying to raise consciousness. As Boris Pasternak said, "We weren't put on this earth to be happy. We were put here to do great things." Anyway, I've read a few editorials lately that talk about how evangelicals have a higher birthrate (why do the obsess over sex so much?) than their ideological foes and theocracy will ultimately triumph especially if you factor in that the rising Hispanic population is pretty conservative. I love this because as a self-described historian I look at the most recent radical time in our past, the 1960s, and those radical kids had famously conservative parents. And looking at it personally, I was raised in a right-wing jingoist environment and it backfired on me, so I'm considering giving it a go. I think it will be fun. I mean my opinions and actions really got on my dad's nerves, but for me it will be rewarding watching the girls react to my philosophy. Now were did I put that subscription card for The Weekly Standard?

Ahh...Tex just called...she has the needle I desire...

...The Way The Floor Fell Out Of My Car When I Put The Clutch Down

2006-05-12T23:14:00.000-05:00

Today was a pretty good one overall. To start with I didn't have to make my morning tour of the outer loop. Yes, I begin each morning by spending the first hour and a half in the car. It's doubtless some sort of a karmic sting for some past sin - I move from outer suburbia to just inches outside the inner loop to help save the environment, ease America's addiction to oil and instill a sense of community in my kids; but before I can see the fruits of such a labor, I must spend four months driving The Self back up to her school which used to be so close she walked every day. But there are only two more weeks of school left and YHWH is going to do the last two, so I'm free! Took me seven minutes to get to work today - sweet. Soon I may range into the black on the karma ledger as The Grandmother of Europe and I have undergone preliminary discussions on carpooling. I'm kind of skittish, though, because even though I adore my Wagon Queen Family Truckster, she is getting up in years and the seats squeak a little and on the warmest days the AC does need a little coaxing.

Also I just finished a big thingy I have been working on at work and it was nice to put it to bed yesterday. And today I began to think about an oral history project I'll be co-working on soon (but I'm part of the Do-Nothing Caste, so it's not much). So I was in that sort of mulling mode most of the day, thinking about oral history, when I see three books on writing and telling your family history stacked at the reference desk with a post-it note stating that they belong to one of our regulars. We commonly check books out to people who have difficulty returning things and keep them behind the desk for them to use when they make their visits. Anyway, this stack belonged to a regular visitor who has told us on more than one occasion that he is a vampire. Grizzled and unkempt, he's the friendliest guy you'd ever want to meet. He looks and sounds like a Marlboro Man put out to pasture and I get the impression he fancies himself a ladies man owing to the amount of time he spends at the circ desk and the special rapport he has with my co-worker, The Grandmother of Europe. When he comes in he will tell you he's nice now, but you wouldn't want to see him at night when he's a "vam-par". So I realize since he's reading these books on life stories, I have to get him to do an oral history. His voice has to be recorded for all time. I'll let you know how it turns out.

We went over to our friends The Shades of Gray for dinner to-nite. We had to bring SGK along because The Self was to watch her for us, but she, being The Self, made other plans. Killer was a pretty good kid, though. I guess the Shades would have to have the final word, but considering how she can be quite an attention-seeking pest in a group of adults, I think she did really well. She sat on the couch and read the Guinness Book of World Records for 30 minutes; not bad. We had a really great time and had some excellent chow. Mrs. Shades raises the bar on homecooked meals, I must say. Mr. Shades requested I review some of the items I've seen and read along the sidebar and I may just do that - at least for the ones I feel most strongly about.

YHWH has spoken. The next knitting project will be the Booga Bag. Hers will be in black and gray striations, not the colors in the link above.

Going Forward

2006-05-09T21:44:00.000-05:00

The next time you are having a conversation with someone and they ask themselves a question and then answer it, please ask them to stop. Ask them to stop being a part of the problem and become part of the solution. I'm also looking for the name and address of the savvy spin doctor who came came up with this technique; I have some words for him.

Have you noticed this trend over the last half dozen years or so? A reporter stands there with a mike and the interviewee asks and answers his own questions. Here's an example from one of the masters, Donald Rumsfeld:

Q: So you expect this will be the tipping point, then?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know. Am I hopeful? Yes. Do I think there are more positive things taking place than negative things? You bet I do.

That is brilliant. I mean he knows that there are only two and a half minutes alloted to his interview and if he can ask his own questions, he can also control his answers and how long he takes to answer them. And he therefore controls all of the soundbites. I actually don't blame the spin doctor who came up with this. I really blame what passes for journalism. Edward R. Murrow would never let some hair-brained politician ask his own questions.

I'm resigned enough to know this is normal for politics, that this how they do what they do, but I am seeing this turn up in corporate communiques and local news and god-in-heaven, even stupid athletes are now incorporating this into their daily drivel. I keep a baseball bat by the TV for the day I hear Kelly Ogle work this into 'My Two Cents'. I'm also hearing it in conversations. So please, people, stop this before it's too late.

Once this scourge has ended, I can then start on the newest strain of public vacuity - the use of 'going forward' as a replacement for 'in the future':

- Jackson says. "Going forward, we're not going to tolerate it.
- Do you think this is a real concern for developers going forward?
- It is a fact of life going forward that your husband will continue to be reassigned.
- So, going forward it is our intention to utilize our core skills of development.
- He's able to establish the right kind of relationship with the press that we need going forward," Bolten said.

Do you see how insidious this is. That's just one page of Clusty returns. Please. Just say no. Just use the word 'future' or 'ahead'. The world does not need the superfluity of gerunds being inflicted here. I still haven't made up my mind about Toyota's new slogan 'moving forward'. I mean it is referring to cars after all, but it is perilously close to 'going forward'.

While I'm waiting on the recipients of the next three projects in my knitting queue to decide what they want, I have made three more hats for African babies. I make these for a hospital in Kenya. Yes, they need stocking caps in Kenya; they have high mountains where the hospital is. The first dozen or so I sent were all pastel pinks and blues and they thanked me very kindly, but asked if I could please make them in bold colors so as not to show dirt so much. So here they are:

The Ones That Love Us Best Are The Ones We Lay To Rest

2006-05-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

I am currently in my annual May unsettlement. Starting around the last week in April every year I begin to ruminate on when I am going to make my annual pilgrimage to my mom's grave. I hate going. May is the month because I have three target dates - her death date, Mother's Day and Memorial Day. Her death date is movable, so it's rarely the day unless it falls on a weekend, but I can always count on Mother's Day and Memorial Day to stick in my craw. It's not fair to my family, I tell myself. Mother's Day should be YHWH's day and I should spend Memorial Day with friends and family. And this year gas is so expensive. And of course, what really nags at me is the knowledge that if her grave were in town, I'd probably go all the time; weekly or at least monthly. I'd bring seasonal flowers, leave some birthday cake, have a picnic once in awhile.

I realize that it sounds crass and heartless to look at it as a chore, but frankly, I have simply never seen the point in visiting someone's grave. Her grave is in a rural area and it takes two hours to drive out there and when I get there I'm like Clark Griswold taking in the Grand Canyon. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I never cry. No way am I going to carry on a conversation. I lay down some flowers, pick a couple of weeds, kick some dirt, and sit on the nice granite bench my dad made. That takes about five minutes. "Now what?" I ask myself. I'm a doer. I can't just sit. In the evenings, I may sit down to watch a baseball game, but I'm doing laundry and knitting or doing a crossword at the same time. In church or class where I have to sit still and be quiet I have to furtively make lists or draw maps or I won't make it.

This year I had my date all marked out. It was going to be last weekend. We were going to take the Super Giant Killer to the Okeene Rattlesnake Roundup (her snake fascination is a whole 'nother post) and then swing over to the cemetery a couple counties away while we were out there. Then the Thursday before that weekend YHWH announces we're going to see her family that weekend on the other side of the state. I was going to protest and even thought about whining and making a big issue out of it, but then I realized, who was I fooling? I didn't even want to go out to the cemetery.

As it happened, though, I started talking to Family Chronicler, a co-worker, about it and she didn't think I was all that bad for feeling that way. She even had some ideas of things Killer and I could do to commemorate. One thing was to have Killer write a letter to Grammy and affix to a ballon and let float up, up, and away. Another one was to find an old grave around here that doesn't seem to have anyone taking care of it and adopt it; kind of a goes-around-comes-around sort of thing. Or on her death date we can tell stories and look at photos so SGK doesn't forget what she doesn't remember (mom died a month after the Killer was born). I'm a doer, right? I can do that. I'm not sure if it will hapen, though. When I brought it up with SGK she said, "Maybe later, dad." Crap, she's already a teen.

Aardvarks to Zebras

2006-05-04T21:59:00.000-05:00

I had the day off of work, so I let The Killer play hookey and hang out with me. We started out at Panera for bagels and she of course had to have a USA Today to read. She got used to reading it during all those stays we made at Holiday Inn Express where we got it free every day. Then we went to the Zoo which is always dicey this time of year and sure enough we pulled up and there were 16,000 school buses there from all over the state. One of my great annoyances. I have never understood the mass field trip. It seems like 30 kids visiting the inner workings of the zoo would get so much more out of it than beleaguered teachers letting thousands of them loose at the zoo gate and standing at the entrance figuring if they cover the exits it will all work out. Besides, I thought the school districts were strapped for gas money. It was such a sea of humanity that even SGK was daunted, so we went over to the Omniplex instead.

It was pretty quiet in there, but the elderly volunteer there assured it wouldn't last the hour. The Omniplex is every parent's nightmare. Even if you aren't germphobe, you're always uneasy because with 10,000 hands-on exhibits and 10,000 kids, the only thing your kid learns is a lesson in public health. The Big O is a sad old institution anyway. Most of the exhibits have been in there since the late 70s and they look it. And, although it's not entirely their fault, there isn't much science going on in there. The initial wave of small-town school buses struck about a half-hour after we got there and all the boys ran through the exhibits frantically pushing buttons and turning dials while the girls huddled around in groups of three in any available corner and waited for there turn at the Best Friends Forever photobooth. None entered the air and space part or the art galleries. It just seems like such a waste. I'm not an old fogey; I know it's a field trip and firld trips are supposed to be fun. But just take them to Frontier City or Celebration Station or something.

We ended up having a nice time, though. For one thing SGK like the stuff upstairs so we were able to do that in relative museum peace. She liked the mock AWACS mission and running the trains and we spent about 45 minutes in the photography exhibits. Then we went to the gardens in the back. They have really gone downhill as well. There were hardly any plants outside and the greenhouse and mini-arboretum were empty. But when we went out there we looked over at the zoo and noticed the herds were being driven back to the buses. So we went next door and made the rounds. I asked SGK what she wanted to see first and she said she didn't care; she likes animals from aardvarks to zebras. The little snot wanted to see everything and so we we did. Spring is quite the season at the zoo - we saw flamingoes copulating and giraffes necking; they really did; they entwined their necks around each other. Between the two places we were on our feet for six hours and she never complained.

The Doctrines of an Afternoon

2006-05-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

Just sitting here waiting on the big t-storm to strike. Should be any minute now. It's probably going to be pretty loud because that line has held together perfectly straight since Pampa, Texas. Prolly no tornadoes, though.

Oh, man after Monday night's drubbing of the Indians I was ready to dust off Bart Giamatti's "Green Fields of the Mind" with it's famous line (because I know you won't read the whole thing): "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." Both of my teams have been hanging in there really well despite major injuries at key positions. I, of course, dutifully picked them each to win their respective divisions, but on Sunday the Dodgers blew a 5-0 lead in the bottom of the 9th and lost 6-5 in 10 innings while Cleveland blew a 4-0 lead in the 6th and lost 8-4 at home. I just know that's how it's going to be all season. But then today C. C. Sabathia comes back from his month-long injury and throws five innings and allows one run for the win. In the rain. Against the White Sox. Very nice. "Hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide." We're definitely winning it all, now. And since almost everyone I know who reads this thing hates sports all I can say is too bad; the Indians and Dodgers will be in the World Series and you will have to hear about it. You'll thank me later. And anyone who mentions Cleveland's mascot gets their url blocked.

Ok, it's dark green on the radar all over the top of us and I'm not hearing anything. That is so annoying when these big storms come up to our big heat dome and run off with their tails tucked between their legs.

Father of girls. I have no idea what I'm doing. I spent the evening witnessing the meltdown of a teen shopping for a birthday present for her boyfriend. Everything in Target falls into two categories: that's retarded and he'll think that's retarded. I tried to think of everything I had received at that age as a means of suggestion. When I was a pre-driving teen I would take virtually anything. Girls bought me stuff all the time - candy, shirts, little toys, sports stuff. We ended up with a t-shirt with something on it he likes, but he will hate it because it is the wrong size and wrong color for him. I promise he won't he even notice. Oh, and a mix CD. But he won't 'get it'. I am proud of her for not going way overboard.

On the other side of the planet Super Giant Killer is threatening to take over the family business. The other day she got to pick out some books with our special discount at Barney Noble's. She scoured the whole store and picked out a DK World Atlas, the Book of Firsts, and D-Day Landings. Check out the condition of her World Almanac for Kids, from which we are regaled with facts launched from the backseat of the car:

This book is three months old. I hope it last until the 2007 edition comes out.

He's A Cerebral Assassin On The Mound

2006-05-01T15:32:00.000-05:00

Finished the Kidlet Tank last night. Pictured at left. Annoyingly, it only took one skein of yarn and about 10 yards of the next. So essentially I just added a big chunk of yarn to the lagniappe stash. I'm toying with the idea of spending all summer making small things to reduce the stash. It really bothers me knowing there is a growing fuzzy monster in the closet. Next up is a black felted bag for YHWH, a brown felted bag for YHWH and then some sox for Adjective Queen.

Had a nice afternoon with the Queen yesterday. We grilled hamburgers, and played baseball. Well, she didn't play baseball. I, SGK, Lego and Sport played. Sport's confidence is pretty amusing. When he got there I asked him if he had watched the NFL Draft. I told him his favorite team took a player from Tulsa and he says he will probably get drafted to the Patriots and make about $10 million a year. Every catch is a touchdown worthy of a dance and of course it goes without saying he is definitely faster than his brother. I hope he never loses that.

Also got to talk to Lego a little about airpower. He's going to join the Air Force. You've got a couple of heroes in the making there, Queen. Make sure Lego gets to see the Hindenburg video and listen to the famous Herb Morrison radio call. It's really cool if you can sync them together. Bet Overcoat can do it. I learned something about the ol' Hindenburg. I learned that I was among millions who think that the fateful last voyage of the 'burg was it's maiden voyage. It actually had flown over one million miles. One million! Also learned that airship travel is the safest available. But since nearly everyone in the civilized world saw the fiery totality of the crash, it killed mass airship travel for good.

I'm still trying to figure out what YHWH meant by comparing me to Tony Soprano.

The Bride Wore Tennis Shoes

2006-04-28T13:17:00.000-05:00

Only half over, but today has been pretty good. Earlier this week I saw a man wandering the stacks and I offered my help. He seemed humble, looked like he worked with his hands; carpenter maybe or machinist of some sort. He wanted to know the 'poverty salary'. I assumed he meant 'where is the poverty line' and I was able to interview him and found out he was going to ask his boss for a raise and he planned on showing his boss the stats and asking him if he thought his workers should earn below the poverty line. I said, "You know, that's pretty smart. Management people like numbers. Your request will carry a lot more weight with this chart. " I showed him a chart that not only showed where the poverty line was, but showed how it was derived and also showed different lines for various circumstances (like family size, disability, etc.; Gouldie, you probabaly see this everyday). So today, I see him walk in and you can see he's beaming all the way across the room. He comes up and tells me he just got his raise; his boss was impressed. Ah, that's why I get up in the mornings.

Also saw a wedding today at lunch. Well, a pending wedding. I could see the courthouse from my perch and there was the windswept bride waiting in the foyer. She was actually wearing a bridal gown and veil and everything, but with tennis shoes. You rarely see courthouse brides with all the regalia. I'm not picking on her for the shoes, I mean at least they weren't flip-flops, for God's sake. It may be all she owns. She was awaiting the groom, I guess or maybe the family, I'm not sure. There was a young man there who looked obviously uncomfortable in his Sunday best. You've seen them on Easter Sunday, I'll bet. An ironed pair of jeans and a polo shirt and a belt and shoes borrowed from someone who wears such things to work. I silently telepathed best wishes their way.

Started on the Kidlet Tank for Super Giant Killer. I'm not making it as depicted, I'm using a solid color (Cherry Moon). I only have two skeins of the yarn and I had to search about a thousand magazines, pattern books and websites until I found something that fit all the requirements: free pattern; a top; for girls; correct size; correct yarn weight; and coming in under 430 yds. It's a surprise, but she'll figure it out. I was going to try the 10 Minute Tank, but since it took 20 minutes to read the instructions, I figured it would only lead to aggravation.

Saints Preserve Us

2006-04-26T21:21:00.000-05:00

I had to hang my head out the window on the way home from the Last Public Place In America to see if it was a full moon. We had some doozies today, God love 'em.

My first call of the day was from a dear woman who rang us up at the stroke of 9:00. She quite eagerly introduced herself with that squeak that octogenarians get when they are really excited, "Good Morning! This is Mrs. John Doe and I have a question!! I would like to know... I would like to know... Oh dear me. What did I want to ask? Oh! No... 'twasn't that." I tried my best to oil the hinges; I asked if it was something she'd read in the paper, seen on TV, a book she wanted to read, was it a phone number? Nothing rang a bell. She finally gave up, poor thing, and said she'd call back when she remembered. You've gotta love the optimism.

Later a guy called on behalf of an incarcerated young woman who had 14 books which were quite past due - to the tune of hundreds of dollars. He wasn't asking that she be forgiven the debt, he was just letting us know she wasn't going to be getting out until January 2007 and we didn't need to send any more invoices to her. I told him if he just brought the books back, we'd call it even. He then explained therein lay the problem - the books are gone. Apparently what happened was she had a creep boyfriend who was a burglar and he piled his loot up in her apartment, so she was sent up the river for 2nd degree burglary and possession of stolen property. On top of that , the apartment complex emptied her place after non-payment of rent and locked all her belongings up in storage. Then the boyfriend somehow got in and took her purse and the books. At first, I thought, "Yeah, right. you said the stuff was all locked up." But then I think, oh yeah - burglar. The gentleman I talked to informed me that he was her guardian angel. I said "Oh, is that like a program to help incarcerated people?" "No", he said. "I am an angel." "OK," I said. "Not with wings or anything," he tells me, "that's all just a myth; God uses real people." See, that's funny because I know the Pope's astronomer recently suggested that angels were actually aliens. I didn't bring that up. The thing is, though, I actually believe him. The story of what happened, I mean. I've seen so many times here what happens when people make a couple of wrong turns here and there and before you know it their lives are a train wreck. After I hung up I pulled up the record and sure enough, all 14 books were on witchcraft and the occult. I have never understood why the 130s are the most stolen books.

On the next shift I was downstairs and I kept hearing this shouting between a man and one of my co-workers upstairs. And I can't hear it perfectly, but I know I'm hearing 'murder' and 'kill her' and lots of other unpleasant things. So I move to a place I can hear better and I realize it's a guy who's nearly stone deaf trying to communicate to a Lipstick Librarian that he's looking for a newspaper article about a friend of his he heard had killed a woman. The funny thing was she kept asking him to spell the last name of the perp and he kept avoiding it. She would ask and he would answer a non-sequiter like, "Oh yeah, I've known him since 6th grade." LL has a stubborn streak and she dug her heels in; he was going to spell that name or die trying. He never did. I finally called up there and told Purple Bunny to ask LL to quit flirting with that guy and give him the damn article. Library hijinks!

Then I had this guy call who kept repeating everything I said. I was getting really annoyed with him, but he was awfully respectful and well-mannered. He finally told me he was blind and he was taping the info I gave him so he could have the Library for the Blind record the books for him. These were books about a particularly brutal sex crime. I don't envy the reader at the Library for the Blind. In addition to all that, though, the guy was apparently a little paranoid and he wanted to make sure that they didn't end up at the circ desk because the man who works there has a grudge against him and won't let him have the books. I finally determine he thinks he called our nearest sibling to the south. He is blind after all. I didn't explore the nature of his discontent, though, I'd had enough.

My last one was another sad one. The woman calling must have had that larynx surgery or had been smoking five packs a day since birth; or both. It was painful to listen to her. Her circumstance was that her book was stolen from her berth at the local rescue mission. She was desperate to get back in to use the library, but now she wouldn't be able to because she didn't have the $14 to get back in good graces. I told her there really wasn't anything I couldn't do since the managers had gone home, but tomorrow's a new day and all that. She lost it after that. She told me she didn't want to be at the mission; she had a job and a house and her husband got sick and before she knew it she was at the shelter. I pulled up her record while she was talking and the book was an inspirational paperback about getting your life back together. Shit. I mean consider the irony. She just needed an ear and, you know, that I could do. And tomorrow when she comes in, if it doesn't work out for her, I'll pay for the book myself. I mean, there but for the grace of God, right?