I'm going to be obnoxious for Halloween

I'm pretty busy at work today but I didn't want to lose my momentum (heh) on the blog, so I decided to talk about my Halloween Costume specifically, and my big Halloween weekend in general. First the general stuff. I've got three, count 'em, three Halloween events planned for this weekend.

First, on Friday, tonight, there is a Halloween parade scheduled in the mildly boho district of Norfolk --Ghent if you care. We'll be attending, but not participating in that. There are a few lame bands (acoustic folk and 'beach music' Ach!!!) playing and I'll hang out and listen to them until the need to burn cars or kick something over becomes too acute. Then we'll hit a few bars probably.

Second there is a theme park near here (Busch Gardens Williamsburg) that puts on some sort of Halloween themed thing. We'll attend that on Saturday evening I think. It depends on my mood I suppose. I like roller coasters and stuff, but Lori doesn't. But I do like wondering around and looking at the gardens and what not. I wish I lived in a carefully manicured world with French fry stands every hundred feet.

Finally, on Sunday one of my nieces is DJing at a sort of gay bar; it is not totally gay, only two nights a week, but still gay enough to be called a gay bar. This is the costume event. My brother and his wife ( papa and momma smurf I think) will attend as will Lori and I. I'm dressing in some tight whitish pants, a shiny black shirt open at the chest to expose my rug ( all natural baby . . and gross of course) , an obnoxious plaid blazer. White shoes, a white belt, tinted sun glasses and slicked back ( or spiked up) hair (depending on what I can make it do) will complete my ensemble. Oh, I may go to K Mart and get some cheap but fragrant cologne to douse myself with. In short, I'll look pretty much as I do everyday.

When people ask me what or who I am I plan to say things like:

I'm 'it,' baby!
I'm a roller coaster of love, sweet heart!
I'm your daddy's nightmare and your momma's wet dream , toots!
I'm what you've been searching for, hot 'n tot!
I'm 90 seconds in paradise, cupcake!

. . . and other similar witticisms. Experience tells me that as I drink more I'll be able to come up with even funnier (to me) and more obnoxious ( to them) little quips. I'll accompany these remarks with snapping fingers, the pistol gesture and perhaps a little jig as the alcohol takes hold. I might even grab my insubstantial crotch if I'm so inspired.

Lori is going to wear something extremely slutty and she promises to tease her hair up really high. I'm sure she'll look fabulous.

How humiliating will it be for me to get beat up at a gay bar?

Frodo Lived!

Scientists uncover possible new species of human


Ok, not really. But this story from CNN and a like spot on my local public radio station certainly is fodder for all those geeky middle earth fans in the world ( fights urge to raise hand). Fascinating stuff for all of that too.

Basically the story deals with a race of proto humans or near humans who got stranded on a small tropical island and, because of environmental pressures, evolved in a race of very wee folk. It sort of reminds me of stories I've heard about fish and fish bowls -- that fish will only grow as large as there surroundings allow. Apparently this phenom is common to mammals, they eventually evolve to be smaller and smaller due to limited food supplies and living space

It is possible that they made there way to the island by means of a wooden shoe . . .Scratch that. That's silly. Bamboo rafts is the genuinely theorized conveyance. Wooden shoes are just nonsense.

Anyway, supposedly this gang of adorable proto hobbits hunted equally diminutive proto elephants which the radio spot described as being about the size of a 'large bottle of water' How cute is that?

They made tools and cooking fires, and hunted the leetle tiny elephants in leetle tiny organized groups. Given that and the relatively late date of their demise ( the remains have been dated to 18, oo0 years ago, a volcano laid waste to the island 12,000 years ago) it is possible that they used language too (human language as we know it is theorized to be something like 50,000 years old). I bet their voices would be squeaky and child like - a whole tribe of Shirley Temples maybe.

I have a very similar problem. I've got a race of tiny people living in my ear. They tell me stuff all of the time. Kill this person, kill that person, gorge yourself on chocolate, sour patch kids and beer and the like. They tend to give extraordinarily bad, though none the less persuasive, advice. I wonder if the scientists working on the little hobbit folk would like to know about them too? I wonder if they'd let me hang out with them and talk shop? I'm thinking not.

On a related note the great, mighty and wise Kurt Vonnegut wrote about the Chinese evolving into tiny match-stick sized people in his novel 'Slapstick' According to the novel the Chinese set about to shrink themselves because of pressure caused by over population. Eventually they got too small to interact meaningfully with the rest of the world and sort of separated themselves from it. Meanwhile the rest of the Earth went to hell in a handbasket, but the little Chinese, buoyed by superior technology and infinitesimal food requirements, flourished. The novel's main focus isn't incredible shrinking Chinamen ( and women) though, so if you decide to read it based solely on that premise, you will be disappointed.

Yesterday

Yesterday was a full moon. I wonder if that was why I was feeling so strange.

An Unstable Universe, Attempted Raccoon Murder, Lack of Gun Control, Cave Man Clubs and the joy of Warm Pliant Pussy


I'm antsy today. I want to jump out of my skin. I feel like my fight or flight reflex has a hair trigger today. I've felt like this before. I know that I'll have a number of uncomfortable ( for me) encounters with people where I'm sure that my reactions will be inappropriate or odd. I'll try to adjust for my desire to punch someone, almost anyone really, right in the nose or conversely my desire to flee any casual conversations that might occur. This will make me overcompensate so as not to say anything odd. It is all for naught though. After talking to me people will likely say "now, that was odd."

I've gotten into real arguments that sort of spiral out of control on days like this. Usually with my girlfriend. I feel bad for her, but I pretty much can't contain myself. I don't really know how to think and feel today. I'm not trying to be an ass, but my judgment as far as interpersonal matters goes is all out of whack. She better not ask me to pass the butter at dinner or else all hell will break loose. We all know what she really means when she says stuff like that.

My mood today is an excellent argument for gun control. If I owned a handgun I'd probably be carrying it. It would be comfortably nestled in my lap as I type this in case I have any difficulties with my computer -- in case I have to reboot it. I'd probably carry the gun in my hand all day, cocked and loaded, just to make me feel better. Not that I really want to hurt anyone, just in case you know. Shit happens . . . and, worse yet, shit happens to me, even when I'm just trying to get through the day . . in hull down position. It pays to be prepared, that's what I always say (OK, I never say that). Some people, like the prof. who expects me to edit his 20 page proposal in an hour for instance, might be better off filled with smoking lead. Yee hah . . I'm off to the sporting goods store!

Ok. Not really. People like me should not have butter knives or nail clippers ( hedge clippers even) let alone guns. I'm not to be trusted. Girl scouts could knock on my door wanting to monger their cookies. Mistakes could be made. There are no do-overs in multiple homicides. Drat my luck anyway.

Cats help when I feel like this. (I'm not cat gay or anything I just recognize the therapeutic power of fifteen pounds of warm purring fur . . nothing wrong with that). Cats are the only creatures that I can relate with in a semi-normal manner when I'm all out of sorts. Cats want food, they want to come in or go out. They want to sit on your lap or for you to stay the hell away from them. That is pretty much the extent of it. Even in my jangly state I can read my cats moods and react appropriately. I wish people would stick to scripts like that today, for the good of the group.

Raccoons, however, are not so good for me on days like this. I felt like this three weeks ago. I was sick on top of it. Stomache problems. I'm pretty sure my digestive system is ready to quit. I'm never hungry. I'm often queasy. Whatever.

Anyway so I was sick and out of sorts and I heard a raccoon facing off against one of my cats on my deck. Out I go, to rescue my cat (Noodles if you are keeping track). Noodles, of course, promptly runs away. The raccoon stands there looking at me. I keep this piece of driftwood by my door. Part as decoration and part as a means of fending off the wild life that not infrequently decide my deck is a good place to be (Note to friendly woodland critters: my deck is not a good place for you to be). Anyway so I grab this piece of drift wood -- OK, OK, I admit it. The driftwood is slightly bigger than your average baseball bat, it it really more of a cave man club -- so I grab my club and I brandish at the raccoon hoping to scare the bejesus out if it. It doesn't scare it at all. In fact, the raccoon sort of rears up at me, obviously in preparation for leaping at my face and ripping it off with its all too human looking paws. When it does this I ever so gently whack it with my club, err. . my piece of driftwood. I whacked on it's temple approximately.

I expected it to run. I expected to scare it away. I swear, I didn't hit it all that hard -- I remember it as a flick of the wrist rather than a full armed swing. But my reactions, as you will know if you've been keeping track, were all out of whack. So instead of skittering away in indignation the stupid raccoon sprawls out on the deck, twitching around in a sort of a seizure. I actually see raccoon drool foaming out of it's little disgusting rodent mouth. I'm horrified of course. Eventually after a few seconds the raccoon gains control of its rear legs (It's front legs are still twitching spasmodically ) and sort of scoots off of the edge of the deck like some kind of epileptic motor boat. I hear it tumbling down the lattice that screens the porch below my deck and scramble off towards the wild part of my back yard. And I'm thinking A) why the hell did I do that? and B) this club seems to work pretty good.

I would have never actually hit the raccoon had I had my wits about me -- poke, prod and harass certainly, but never, ever whack. Raccoon whacking is whack as all the hep cats say. All of this took about 45 seconds by the way. Not nearly enough time for me to master my emotions at all. No raccoon jury in the land would convict me. I had temporary insanity and a cave man club --A recipe for disaster if there ever was one.

I had a conversation with a work buddy a few minutes ago about the situation in our office ( it's sick! sick I tell you). I found myself getting all wound up. then I found myself getting all depressed. Usually we just talk through these things for my entertainment or to give her some perspective. Today I failed at both of those goals. It just riled me up.

So I'm out of sorts, antsy nervous, uncertain of my reactions, and considering buying a hand gun. At the very least I should have brought my club to work today.

But maybe it's not me. Maybe I'm the normal one and the universe is out of whack. Maybe it is you people. I've read science fiction ( or maybe pop science) or inspirational literature ( all the same really) that describes the really important part of the universe as just wave forms. you and I, the unfortunate raccoon, and the doomed girl scout cookie mongers are all just standing waves, masses of vibrations, a variation in the density and frequency of the universe. Sort of like tuning forks without the fork part. Tuning forks that don't need to be whacked against anything to vibrate. So if that is true, and I fervently hope it is today, maybe I'm just a sort of tuning fork whose frequency is sweet and true and the rest of the universe, including you, Gentle reader, are out of tune. Maybe that's all dreck and I just need a valium. Whatever gets me through the day.

I have poison ivy. I get it roughly three times a year. I even have a little joke about it. When someone asks me if I know what poison ivy looks like I say, 'sure' and point to my rash . . .

I really have very little idea what the plant looks like, though it has been pointed out to me a lot. To my mind the plant has absolutely no distinguishing characteristics. It looks exactly like any other weed. Exactly.

I've had poison ivy more or less everywhere: hands and feet ( last year I got it on the sole of my left foot) arms and leg, crotch area. I even had a few blisters on my butt one time. I'm not entrirely sure how I got poison ivy on my nether regions, as I normally have at least a pair of shorts on when I'm outside, and I've never had it and an'outdoor experience' in close proximity to each other. Rudely scratching myself must be the answer.

This time I have a bit of it on my arms and some on my left ear. I've never had it on my ear before, so this is truly a new miserable experience for me. I got it this time helping my brother Al build a fence in his backyard this past weekend. I think the fateful moment came when I changed out of my long sleeve shirt and into one of his t shirts and then helped him clear a bit of bush in preparation to put put some pickets. Anyway, I blame him entirely. Thanks a lot Al. I hope you and Polly ( his dog, for whom the fence is dedicated) enjoy that fence.

The itching isn't the worse thing; it is the weeping rash. Last spring I had it pretty bad on my mouse hand ( the hand I use to manipulate the mouse not an actual mouse hand) I spent a week or so with my affected fingers wrapped up in a paper towel. I had to keep washing off the mouse none the less. It was truly foul.

Now I have it on my ear and it sucks. That is all.

My Heart Attack

22. I like to camp and I am good at it.
23. I can start a fire with one match and a small quantity of bacon grease.

I only got to go camping once this summer. It was in early June. My girlfriend and I have been going to the same spot off and on for about five years. The place is lake Moomaw which is in the Warm Springs area of Virginia, in the western part of the state. We go there because my GF insists on going someplace with bathrooms and I too, in my fat spoiled lifestyle, have come to appreciate the luxury of a toilet and hot water after a long day of fun and sun. The disadvantages of this style of camping is, of course, that there are other people around and your restricted to setting up camp on gravel tent pads.

I used to camp in the bowels of George Washington National Forest, a hundred or so miles north-east of Moomaw. That is where I learned how. That is where, like a baby duck, I was imprinted with the idea of what 'real camping' is. In GW, primitive camping is what I'd do. These camp sites are little more than a pull off along side the 'road.' The bathrooms consist of designated trees or hollows sufficiently far away from camp that you can't hear the shouts and hoots of friends and family as you try to do your business. The bathing facilites are the ice cold stream. I'd still bathe every day there , but generally at high noon, when it was hot enough that you could lay out on the rocks and recover from the shock of the cold, cold water.

Moomaw, however, has the additonal advantage of the lake. It is man made, created in the sixties, when the James river (I think) was dammed up, creating the lake behind it. It is still nice. There are beaver and you can see the remains of roads leading right down into the lake in some places which make good fodder for scarey stories, that I've been forbidden to tell anymore as they tend to scare everyone and then we have to tramp en masse to the bath rooms in the middle of the night whenever it is required.

Our trips to Moomaw have frequently been marked by really bad weather. The first time we went there, just as we pulled in, the mother of all hail storms swept through the area pummeling the area and my poor truck with golf ball ( no shit) sized iced cubes for fifteen or twenty minutes. We huddled in the truck listening to the drums of doom beat down on it's roof and talking about turning around and going home. I'm all for camping, but not so much for roughing it. The storm, coming when it did before we had time to set up, may have been a lucky thing for us though as the camp site we picked was under ankle deep water after the storm passed, so we picked another. We had a great time that trip, after a trip to the laundry mat to dry all of Lori's clothes and her and I's bedding , the only thing that got wet as a result of the trip

This summer when we went up we were again threatened by poor weather. This time it was just Lori and I. I drove the whole way up, about 6 hours the way we travel, stopping at every rest stop and gas station, loading up on candy and chips and generally goofing around a lot. On the way up my right shoulder began to hurt. This I beleive is a result of an old injury I sustained while working for years doing menial lalbor in a grocery chain and aggravated by spending considerable time working in the freezer of said establishment. It crops up every once in a while when I turn or twist a certain secret ( to me) way. Anyway, it started hurting on the way up . It usually feels like someone has pounded a rail road spike through my shoulder blade and peirced my chest. Every time I move my arm I can feel the imaginary spike grating against the bones and muscle in my shoulder. Driving made me move my arm a lot so naturally it began to hurt a lot.

We get up to Moomaw and there is a light rain falling. It isn't too bad, perhaps a bit chilly, so we set up camp, without much issue. The tent goes up, in goes our bedding, nice and dry, and I even manage to get a fire going ( though since we were'nt there for breakfast and thus didn't have bacon grease and the wood was a bit damp it took more than one match, much to my personal and private shame).

By this time, it was late afternoon and the rain seemed to be getting a bit worse so we decided to cook dinner and spend the rest of the evening reading in the tent -- no big deal. Then, of course, it started raining much harder. I had to hold this parasol thing over the coleman stove while Lori, cooked our deluxe tacos (much to complicated for rainy Half assed cooking it turns out). The tent was getting pummeled and we didn't want to eat in there so we opted to eat in the truck. This required me to go back and forth in the rain gathering up utensils and beer and such.

Soon enough I got really cold and I started to experience chest pains. I had trouble breathing. I was doing some sort of half coughing thing, as I couldn't breath right. This coughing was sort of synchronized with my shivering from the cold. So I turned the heater in the truck on and it subsided, though my shoulder now hurt much worse. Soon enough I needed another beer and wanted to get the trash from dinner out of the truck so out I went into the rain again. Again, I got cold and again with the chest pains, the wierd coughing thing and the shivering. This time however the warmth of the truck didn't help. I started to hyperventilate or something. I couldn't situp straight I was sort of hunched over and coughing ( sounded kind of like huffing or barking). and I begin to get a little scared as I had never hurt like that or had trouble breathing or been completely unable to control my shivering. Lori , started to get worried too, but of course being the man , I continued to tell her that I was OK, that my shoulderr just twinged a bit and that I was just cold. But I wasn't feeling any better and after a while all my symptoms started to wear on me.

I began to think I was maybe really having a heart attack. So I naturally suggested we not sleep in the tent but go find some hotel, because hotels cure heart attacks as anyone who hates doctors and hospitals and sickness knows. Now we began the 2o mile drive out of the park, Lori was driving as I was sort of curling into the closest approximation of a fetal position I could manage in the passenger seat of the truck. Every bump and turn treated me to an increase in the intensity of my half coughing and the pain associated with it. I 'knew' in the back of my mind that it was just my shoulder, and not a heart attack as my pulse was fine and it was my right shoulder that hurt. But I could'nt control my breathing and now I was really hurting and doing that half-assed coughing thing. So I began to think maybe a hospital was a better idea. I went back and forth with Lori, which must have been a real treat for her. 'Lets find a hospital,' I 'd say, ' just in case I'm having a heart attack'. 'No, lets find a hotel,' I'd say, ' I'm obviously just a little tired and cold.' We (I) opted for the hotel. I treated myself with some of tylenol and a few shots of vodka, which along with hotels cure heart attacks, and slept curled up in the fetal positon.

I woke up in the morning more or less completely cured. My shoulder was stiff but not especially panful, but Lori drove everywhere we went for the rest of the trip and even learned to row our little boat, with me lounging in the back soaking in the sun that prevailed for the rest of the trip.

Special Deliveries


42. I still miss my cat Knuckles who died two or three years ago. If I think about it too much I could cry, so I won't. Knuckles was a great cat -- I pulled him from the womb (almost literally).

Several years before Knuckles died, a very strange thing starting happening. At the time I co-owned six cats: four of them (including Knuckles) were indoor/outdoor, one (Mickie)was too old to go outside, and the remaining cat, Noodles, had forgotten all she ever known about house training and was ( and is ) restricted to the out-of-doors.

I live in a two story Cape Code style house that I bought from my parents in a relatively normal suburb. There is a deck on the back of my house that my father (mostly) and brothers (more them then I) and I built. The deck is on the second story. It extends the entire length of the house and is accessible from either of the two upstairs bedroom ( one of which I'm converting into a library, office, bat cave) or from a set of stairs that leads up from the porch directly beneath it. The deck is a great pleasure in my life, as it is 90% covered by a roof, it faces towards the little lake in the suburbs upon which my house sits, and, perhaps best of all, it is graced with a porch swing ( or should it be a deck swing?) that hangs beneath a ceiling fan. This make the deck usable in rain or shine ( I foolishly sat out there and observed hurricane Isabel last year, the wind was blowing from the front of the house so I was sheltered and dry. several times, however, the wind gusts were sufficently violent to make me run inside. You could literally feel the air being sucked out of the protected area of the deck when that happened) about nine months out of the year . .. August is generally too hot and January and February too cold. Each of these details is unimportant to the story at hand, but I thought I'd pad this post out with a description of it. I spend an awful lot of time out on the deck, pacing back and forth ( the hobby I am most dedicated too and have spent the most time doing), watering plants, drinking beer and occasionally smoking.

One year around November, flowers began appearing on my deck. I didn't notice at first, or at least didn't think it was unusual as things blow up on the deck quite a bit. But soon I noticed that two or three of these flowers would appear every morning, inexplicably. They were all the same kind, a type of camellia I think. They were all stemless and generally in pretty poor shape. I didn't do anything about it. Soon enough there were literally hundreds of these flowers on the deck in various stages of decomposition.

I had really had no idea where they were coming from. After all it was November. In this part of the country there isn't much in bloom at that time other than camellias ( or whatever those things were, I'm pretty sure they were camellias, so lets just assume they were). Once I began to notice them and worry about it a little bit (it was freaky), I noticed that some neighbors 4 houses down had a camellia bush of the kind that matched the flowers on my porch and that it was in bloom.

Camellias are relatively messy trees/bushes/whatever. They put out a lot of flowers for a relatively long amount of time (twice a year in these parts) and they drop an extraordinary quantity of these flowers as they go. If you want to ensure that these bushes don't get a nasty disease that causes the blooms to rust you're supposed to clean up the dropped blooms regularly.

The question of course was how where these flowers getting from point A ( my neighbors yard) to point B ( my deck). The answer, of course, was Knuckles, my cat.

For some reason Knuckles had subverted his instinct for bringing dead mice and birds to my door step to the practice, perhaps even an obsession, with bringing dead flowers, but only from that particular bush. I had another type of camellia bush in my back yard, but none of those flowers ever made it onto the deck. He did it pretty sneakily too. I suppose he had observed how displeased I was when he brought dead critters to me ( despite the obvious charm and utility of a half eaten mouse) and had decided he would best provide for me by bringing me this example of the earth's bounty under the cover of night. I finally caught him at it early one morning as he trotted back from the neighbors with a one of the camellias practically covering his face. I was amazed that he could see where he was going let alone get it up to the deck. Later I noticed that his face was pretty much constantly covered in pollen(see picture below). Why he did this and why that particular bush I guess I'll never know.

I had sex with the Prom Queen

Since nothing ever happens to me anymore I've decided to talk about things that used to happen to me as a way of having blog fodder. My goal (don't take it too seriously folks) is to post one entry per day, excluding weekends. I'd also like to edit my posts a bit more carefully than I did with my last blog, so I don't seem so idiotic and careless. I suppose there is some weirdness associated with the fact that part of my job is to edit other folks writing but my own writing is rife with errors , unless and until, I sit down specifically to correct and proof it. All I can say is I have some cognitive problems that contribute to this, so forgive me. I'm not as stupid as I come off.

My uncle Chris passed away several years ago. He lived in Providence, Rhode Island. He was of Portuguese descent( pronounce 'porch-a-gee', by him), He was not my uncle by blood. My parents apparently met him whilst my father was working in providence for Philco-Ford as an electronics engineer. My parents and several of my brothers and perhaps my sister (I'm not really sure of the time line here) lived next door to he and his wife, Unky Doris ( the 'Unky' is another story involving cute little kids who couldn't get the aunt/uncle thing straight). They became close friends. We kids began calling them Uncle and Unky as a result. I have three such sets of unrelated aunts and uncles. Not to slight the others, but Uncle Chris was by far my favorite. He was a warm, funny and gruff man. He was dark skinned and bald. He worked as a heavy equipment operator most of his life. He and his wife started up a ceramics shop after he retired. They ran that for many years. I made a 'hummel monk' for my niece, who is now a 24 year old accountant, when she was a baby in their shop. I think of him often and fondly.

When I was going out with my first real girlfriend, a funny thing happened to me and it involved Chris. Here it is:

My girlfriend was a former prom queen and captain of the cheer leading squad at the small Christian high school she had attended. She was bleach blonde, tan, and beautiful. We went to the beach a lot. I still have wrinkles and a fear of skin cancer to prove it. She, too, was funny as hell. Our first date was at a 'gourmet' hamburger place called 'Fuddruckers.' I noted in my list how shy I am and how quiet I usually am around strangers. On our first date we sat in Fuddruckers for three hours talking and laughing our asses off. I laughed so much my face hurt and my eyes were sort of chapped from the tears rolling down at various times. She was around 18 and I was about 23. A big gap, I know, and some of you, no doubt, think I was robbing the cradle, but we were good for each other. We went out for two and a half years. We saw each other every day for the first 250 days of our relationship. We had sex every day for the first 100 or so days of our intimate relationship which began a week or so after we started dating. When we didn't see each other after the 250 day mark, we 'd talk on the phone at length, several times. In short, we were joined at the hip.

One day we were in my bedroom preparing to have sex. It wasn't going to be ordinary sex either. It was going to be extra passionate. Sometimes sex is like that for no apparent reason, extra passionate and intense. So there we were kissing naked when we hear a loud knock at the door downstairs. We sort of panic, of course. My girlfriend's parents were very active in their church, a fundamental evangelical big box church set up my a charismatic couple who built in from a small shacky like thing to a pretty big stadium type thing. Anyway my girlfriend and I, let's call her 'Jen', because that was her real name, lived in mortal fear that her parents would find out we were doing the nasty and ship her off to a convent ( or its equivalent) and rebuke me to Satan. So when we heard the loud knock at the door we could only assume it was her father come to kill me. So we started scrambling for clothes, but then we heard the door open and someone come stomping up the stairs. We were scared shitless. So we jumped into the bed as the quickest way to cover our nakedness. Jen has hiding under the covers. The door to my bedroom opens and who should it be that scared the crap out of me? Jen's parent? Her preacher? My parents? The thought police?. . . If you've been paying attention thus far you will have guessed it was my uncle Chris, come down to Virginia from Rhode Island for a surprise visit.

He was looking for my parents who were away for the day. So what did he do, seeing me under the covers, with a frightened and embarrassed look on my face and a very obvious Jen shaped bulge under the blankets? Did he bow out quickly and wait downstairs for me to get dressed? Did he say who is that underneath the covers? No. He stood in my door way and talked to me for ten minutes while Jen hid under the covers. He pretended nothing was amiss. After we'd made plans for dinner that evening and ascertained the whereabout of the rest of the family and he was preparing to leave, he reached down and pinched Jen under the covers.

Later, at the family dinner, Jen met Uncle Chris and Unky Doris formally for the first time. They liked her and she them, despite her initial embarrassment. Chris never mentioned the incident at all much to my surprise and relief, but he did pinch her in the arm when they were introduced.

My Uncle Chris was funny and cool. I miss him a lot, but I tell that story and a few other good ones about him whenever I can fit them in. That makes me feel better and miss him a bit less. Jen eventually went away to Liberty University ( Jerry Falwell's Insitution, I think) in Lynchburg and broke up with me about two weeks afterwards, which broke my heart. She was engaged within a few months after that. She is married now with three kids,I think, and get this, she named one of her boys the name she and I had picked out for our son, Zachary. How screwed up is that?

100 things

1. Almost everyone who knows me thinks I'm very funny
2. I think I'm funny but I can't tell jokes.
3. I like cats better than dogs, but dogs are OK
4. I claim to be a punk rocker, but I don't dress the part
5. I used to curse a lot, then I never cursed at all, now I'm cursing a bit again
6. I read every day. I try to be always reading a novel but my interests and schedule don't allow that.
7. I'm painfully shy around strangers, but a goof ball around people I know. Even when I'm being serious I express myself in a humorous way. I can't help it.
8. Women around my own age frequently come to me for advice
9. I think I give pretty good advice
10. I like women more than men mostly
11. I'm silly and I can't help it
12. I've got some version of ADD, but am too old to do much about it now
13. I have an IQ just shy of genius level, but you'd never know it in casual conversation or by considering what I've done with my life.
14. I like to garden, but I'm no good at it.
15. I'd like nothing more than to fit in, but I don't. People who want to be different don't understand how much it hurts
16. I can charm the pants off most people if I'm in the mood and I'm comfortable with them. Because I can see all the way down into them through their eyes.
17. I like to cook experimentally and I am good at it because I have a basic understanding of how it all works
18. I'm a geek who used to play Dungeons and Dragons but now plays computer games but it embarrasses me so I don't talk about it much.
19. I've been writing things in fits and starts for most of my life. I still dream about being a novelist and a rock star
20. I am youngest of five. One of my brothers hates me, the other two don't think of me much. My sister and I are very close
21. I am comfortable with silence.
22. I like to camp and I am good at it
23. I can start a fire with one match and a small quantity of bacon grease.
24. I love to swim and am good at it despite my nearly completely sedentary job and life style
25. I could not leave my abode for weeks on end, but eventually that would depress me
26. I am depressed most of the time and have been all my adult life and I'm not sure why
27. I have lived with my current girlfriend for 7 years or more. She wants to get married and that scares me
28. I didn't lose my virginity till I was 18 and didn't have a pleasant sexual experience till I was 21.
29. I'm lousy at math, but I don't think I should be.
30. I remember most of what I read and can quote what interests me verbatim without effort.
31. I can sing a thousand songs, though not very well
32. I can quote dozens of poems, which seems to impress some people
33. My father is a collector of useless knowledge and so am I.
34. I hate to finish a really good novel . . . Especially the first time I've read it. It depresses me and makes me feel abandoned.
35. I always want to talk about good books I've just read so I make my GF read them too
36. I have taken to arguing about political since the most recent Iraq war. I'll be very happy when I can be politically apathetic again.
37. I have written poems and some of them are pretty good, but it is a useless unmarketable practice so now I concentrate on prose.
38. Russell Edson is one of the greatest living poets
39. Paul Westerberg, former front man for the Replacements, is the greatest living song writer. It astounds and saddens me that more people don't know that. His most recent album, Folker, rocks.
40. Everyone has always assumed my girl friends dominate me ( wear the pants in the family) because they all have had strong personalities. My girlfriends and I have always realized the opposite was true as I have a stronger, but perhaps infinitely subtle, personality.
41. Stupid shallow bigots assume I'm gay as do stupid shallow gay people. I'm not, but the assumption doesn't bother me too much as I consider the source. And if there is any sorting to be done I want to be with the cool kids.
42. I still miss my cat Knuckles who died two or three years ago. If I think about it too much I could cry, so I won't. Knuckles was a great cat -- I pulled him from the womb (almost literally).
43. I have a finely honed philosophy that begins with the assumption that human beings do the best they can, but sometimes (perhaps mostly) that isn't very good.
44. Most people aren't introspective enough if at all.
45. I am an excellent teacher when I'm in the zone. I excite students, entertain them, and even make them love me a little.
46. I am a lousy teacher when I'm not in the zone.
47. I am strangely not shy in front of a class of any size.
48. In recent years I've been able to extend this not shyness to public speaking
49. I love a handful of my (former) professors to a unhealthy extent. I stalk them via google.
50. I'm writing this list in an effort to keep up this blog . . . My third attempt at blogging.
51. My first blog turned out too private. I have a penchant for writing personal and embarrassing things
52. My second blog, meant be a work of fiction has petered out so far.
53. I can't really touch type. I think it is connected with my dsylexia, ADD or general perceptual cognitive disorders
54. I like to take pictures and do digital art projects, but am lazy about it.
55. My office art is 90% done by me. I'm especially fond of a trio of Warholesque Space monkeys that I made by scanning a photo of Ham from national geographics and photoshopping the crap out of it. I made the engineers who are leaning over him subtely demonic in deference to my fish out of water position as a 'art-fag' at an engineering college. Nobody has truly 'got them' yet though they are admired
56. I am currently reading V.S Naipaul's, "a bend in the river' and enjoying it. I will be sad when I finish it.
57. I have edited 300 page dissertations about computer engineering and, particularly, computer modeling and never understood a word of them. I was nevertheless able to correct a writer on a technical point solely from the context. That student assumed I was a computer engineer.
58. I do a lot of negative self talk and can't seem to break the habit. I advise myself to commit suicide every day, several times a day -- especially at night. Because of this, I don't listen to the voices in my head anymore.
59. I can't sleep at least one week day night per week worrying about work
60. I am quiet , the person in the office next to me is loud.
61. I sometimes maintain a candy dish on my desk solely to lure people into my office. I frequently want them to leave when this silly ploy works.
62. I'm an ass man and simply an ass sometimes.
63. I want to believe in God but I don't think I do. I none the less believe the order in the universe is not random (maybe)
64. I think people who are sure of things and their place in the universe are either dishonest or unsubtle.
65. People talk to me too much for my own good.
66. I break everything. I'm a very poor steward.
67. As I grow older my body is increasingly odd looking, but I was a beautiful young man.
68. My favorite movie is probably Magnolia. The best one I've seen recently is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind.
69. I failed first grade, forth grade and ninth grade, but my parents talked the school into passing me in forth grade. I dropped out of school after ninth grade.
70. I passed my oral comprehensive exams for my M.A. with distinction. My panel consisted of a rhetorician, a linguist, and a writing teacher. I think I made them all love me a little. Walking into the exam I assumed I'd fail and was prepared to schedule my retake
71. I taught myself HTML when it was still a tough thing to do.
72. I read all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels before I was 16. I reread them again at 25 and they were completely different. I reread them again in the past two years . .They were different again. I think 'Bluebeard' is his best work and will argue with you about it.
73. I often quote Vonnegut to good effect.
74. I have had 8 (possibly 9) women fall in love with me. Two said when we were breaking up that 'they couldn't breath' without me. I find the coincidence disturbing.
75. I myself have been in love 1o times
76. I don't remember my dreams very often. When I have dreams of people chasing me I am never alone and I ALWAYS feel responsible for and capable of saving those people who are with me.
77. As I grow older I sometimes can not remember whether I dreamt something or it really happened. I used to think people who made such claims were weird.
78. I'm pretty sure that I only dreamt of killing a girlfriend that I can't remember and burying her in my back yard. In any case, I got away with it.
79. I haven't maintained any friendships from my pre adult years even though I live in my parents old house.
80. More people know me from school and work than I actually remember, but I always remember whether I liked them or not.
81. My cat, Mister Grinch, comes when I call him, sometimes even like a puppy.
82. I am in a transitional hair cut phase. I style it a little differently everyday because I just can't decide. This bothers me.
83. I have an old ratty gray cardigan that belonged to Mr. Archer who lived across the street from me before he passed away. I wear that sweater at home any day it is cold enough. I think I look cool in it. I have had a similar sweater for 15 years. I currently have a nice Eddie Bauer Wool Cardigan that I wear every day at work when it is cold. I think I look cool in that one too.
84. I stole my father's blue-gray sweater vest when he retired. He stole it back but then gave it to me a few years ago . . It was too stretched out by that time to my everlasting disappointment.
85. I have briefly been in therapy three times in my life. I have been on anti depressants twice. I no longer trust or believe in them as the doctors who are proscribing are just guessing.
86. I was in therapy last year. My first session lasted four hours. I thought it was only an hour. I talked non stop and felt much better afterward. The subsequent sessions were unrewarding. The a last time I went I just BSed my way through it talking about 'the meaning of happiness' or something equally silly. I don't think the therapist knew I was being insincere. So I stopped going.
87. I sometimes get angry when participating in heated discussions on Web forums even though I know I shouldn't.
88. I usually only eat one meal per day, dinner, and drink one big cup of triple strength coffee. Most days this process makes me feel queasy but I don't do anything about it.
89. I drink 3 or 4 beers most nights. Sometimes if I'm angry or frustrated I drink a lot more.
90. I'm incapable of regulating myself when I drink liquor so I don't do it very much. When I do I drink Stoli's vodka on the rocks with beer as a chaser.
91. I fooled my primary school teachers into thinking I could read when I really couldn't. That caught up with me.
92. I got eyedrops in my eyes a few years ago that made it impossible to read for a few hours. I found that profoundly disturbing. I am frightened of losing my sight
93. My eyes get worse every time I go the the eye doctor. the last time I went the doctor cautioned against leaving the house without my contacts AND my glasses -- just in case.
94. I am frightened of insanity. Movies about maniacs scare me but movies about the supernatural normally don't. I secretly wish I were insane so I could give up.
95. A crazy old women who I prevented from stealing plug tobacco back when I worked as an all night stock clerk said the following to me: "you know what you are? You know what you are? You're just spirit. you come and you goes away." And I believed her.
97. Another crazy women while I was working evenings in the grocery store told me I'd make a 'good FBI agent' (she claimed to be in the FBI herself) When I got angry with her, and told her she was being stupid, she got angry right back and told me that "you could be in the FBI and not even know it!" I believed her and it still frightens me.
98. The same crazy women threatened to make me a pair of spiderman underoos out of a pair of her boyfriend's used underwear. That grossed me out.
99. I am melting and growing saggy man breasts.
100. All three of my brothers are bald and were bald before they got out of their 20's. Despite the I am 40 and still have all my hair they still occasionally claim that I'm going to go bald. My father has all of his hair.

I am a Racist

That's right. I'm a racist. I do, have, and will have sometimes violent and often dismissive impulses about random strangers that are different from me. These impulses are borne of fear of others, fear of that which I don't understand, and hatred for those that don't honor me ( or whom I feel don't honor me) and mine. I have used the word 'nigger' in anger and meant it (OK, not as an adult) I have looked askance at the way people dress and talk. I often imitate and parody foreign accents for the amusement of those around me. I suspect ( if I don't think about it too much) that my particular culture is superior, by which I mean better, more noble, more advanced, and more grounded in goodness then your culture, oh gentle reader. I'm pretty sure (again, if I don't think about it too much) that people who don't speak English well are not as smart as me. I have knowingly and unknowingly helped people who resemble me (or whom I can relate to better) to the detriment of those who look different from me. I'm a racist and a classist and a sexist and an age-ist.

But before you sneer at me, before you discount me and my views as purient and vile. Before you warn your children to stay away from me, advise your dog to bite me, and your cat to pee in my shoes, there is something I'd like to tell you: I bet you're a racist too. And a classist and an age-ist and a host of other kinds of 'ists' that I'm not prepared to rattle off this afternoon.

Now, the clever introspective ones among you are nodding, likely mumbling half in shame and half in dogged acceptance of the human condition, "yes, yes, Capo, I'm a racist too' while the less introspective among you are saying, shouting maybe even, "No, No capo, I'm not a racist. I love red and yellow black and white people equally. " But before you tell me some of your best friends are the other and discuss you fondness for 'ethnic food' and 'African art' or 'Norse mythology' or whatever element of the other you have chosen to embrace I should tell you that your pleas will fall on largely deaf ears. It is not that I won't trust your sincerity or that I won't believe you like/love these things that are different from you and yours. It is that I think you are incapable of rising up against your prejudice in any fundamentally meaningful way. I want you to consider something.

Fear of those things that you do not understand is a integral part of the human condition. And that cold fact has a brother: We can't truly understand anyone, not even ourselves. Each of us is different in principal than the person who sits beside you in class, occupies the house next door, or the cubicle right next to you. And each and every one of those fine people have prejudice in their hearts, if not spewing out of their mouths or displayed on their fucking t-shirts.

Its the way our brains work. Not in some airy-fairy psycho-babble sort of way either, but at a mechanical level, down at the level of the neurons and the neuroglia that encases them. Our brain cells our racists too, each and every one of the ten billion or so of them. We are sorting, categorizing, stereotyping animals. It is what we do, the way we are wired. Anybody who claims different is a liar or a fool or simply doesn't know any better.

Computer scientists have begun to use models of neural networks to develop parallel processing computer thingies. The advantage is that, through some alchemy that involves a kind of higher math that I've repeatedly proven myself incapable of, these computer modeled neural networks can learn. You run the network through what task you wish it to accomplish and when the results suck you correct the errors and run the task again and correct the errors again. Eventually these networks learn to do the thing you fervently wish it would.

They did this with a program whose purpose in the universe was to identify and recognize pictures of faces. This is what how it worked: They got a set of a thousand or so pictures most were faces but some were not. they came up with a scheme of dividing this pictures into Cartesian zones and then they 'trained' a neural network to sort faces from non faces and then to identify/match like faces in a particular set. In short the machine could recognize people. Now get this: they did this with several sets of faces (a black set, a white set and an Asian set I believe). They trained the system separately on each of the sets of faces and when it got really good at recognizing faces in a particular set they tried it out on one of the other sets. The program having been really good at say recognizing white faces in various poses and expressions and knowing that this face was a girl's face and that these tow pictures were both jane or jill or whatever, really sucked when it tried the same feat with black or Asian faces . . those faces of ethnic backgrounds other then the one it was trained on pretty much all looked alike to the computer. They all looked alike. Sound familiar?

This of course proves exactly nothing. It was a extremely simple test with an extremely simple neural network by comparison with the feats that a real brain and a real neural network can do. But it does seem instructive or at least evocative to me.


So I think we're all a bunch of racists, but I'm not resgined to the fact, no not at all. Just like every other human failing I think it is our task in the universe to fight against these animalistic tendencies to rise above the pettiness that we are born with. to become more like God, more like rock stars to become closer to some universal concept of human. Or sometihng like that