Knott Blog

The End

2004-08-31T10:00:00.000-04:00

Well, guys, it's official -- this blog is over. I can't really say why, but this might explain a little.

Captain Black Cloud

2004-07-27T07:55:00.000-04:00

There's this lady I know -- actually, I am serially related to her, but more on that later -- who used to listen to me when I got in one of these foul, bitchy moods with great sympathy and restraint. I say restraint because instead of telling me to get my head out of my ass as I'm sure she was tempted to do, she would say, "Wow, Captain Black Cloud certainly is visiting you today."
Well, she was right, he did like me pretty well back then, and days like today prove that he hasn't entirely given up on our relationship yet, either.
First off, I ended up sleeping on the couch more or less all night. My son still has his strange, symptomless cough, and the doctor didn't offer to see him as an emergency, so we're still fussing over him in hopes it will improve things. Then, when I got up, all of the power was off. My house is very, very old, and there must have been a stroke of lightning some time last night (or even just a flash of heat lightning, it's so old) which tripped all of the circuit breakers. So, I had to wade down through my basement to the circuit board and reset things before I could even properly shower. Y'see, my house used to be what they called a "spring house." Back before refrigerators, farmers would make a small building right on a stream bed, and let the running water keep things cool for them. The stream ran right in one wall, through a trench in the floor, and right out the other wall -- which it does to this day, regardless of how I try to stop it.
Then, I couldn't find anything at all when I was trying to get ready. Oh, my wife (a saint, blessed be her name) got my clean towel, underwear and socks ready for me last night, but I still couldn't find my shoes, belt, comb, cologne, wallet or ID badge. If I'd been able to turn on the light, it might have been different, but she didn't want the baby disturbed. On the way to work, my car kept making this suspicious noise, which makes me think that my tie-rod is getting ready to let go, a $200 fix. Once I got to work, the woman I share an office with was back from vacation, and neither one of us was glad to see the other. She hates me, and I would return the emotion if I had that kind of energy.
So I came straight here and read my motivational spam about how "I am the only one who can decide what kind of day I'll have today," and "nobody can make me feel bad, I can only let them make me feel bad," but before I could get to "so I'm going to have a good day today!" I realized that I was going to hurl if I read all of that happy crap.
But I AM gonna have a better day today, even if it kills me.

True confession

2004-07-26T19:26:00.000-04:00

I tried and tried to get my older son to take a picture of me that didn't make me look fat. I kept telling him, "try another angle," and "what if I stood over here?" Finally he looked over the camera at me and said, "You know, they say the camera adds ten pounds, and you've obviously been photographed sooo many times before...."
So now you know. Despite all my efforts, I am fat. Oh, not so's you'd notice in a crowd of my peers, but when I stand next to The Boy, who is two inches taller and around 60 pounds lighter? Bingo! Moby Dick.

Oooh... scarey

2004-07-26T18:51:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe it. I was sitting at my desk today, and one of my co-workers from the Financial Aid department stopped by my desk. She had this neat little magazine all about federal and state financial aid, and how much your child qualified for based on your income, and how you and your child can increase the amount of aid (both in grants and loans) that you can receive. I thought it was a pretty slick little publication, and was idly leafing through it -- yes, it gets that boring at my job when classes aren't in session -- when it suddenly hit me like a brick right between the eyes.
I am in my mid thirties, and I have a child who will be going to college in two years. No, LESS than two years. I honestly thought my chest was gonna cave in.
Y'see, she's my daughter from my first marriage. I was married very young and VERY disasterously to a lady with some major personal problems (alcohol and fidelity would top the list) for a roller-coaster ride that lasted less than two years. When we split, she went into rehab within eight months, and I got custody. (Not just of her, but also of her sister, my stepdaughter, who is in college right now and making us incredibly proud. But that's another post.) I was already dating my current wife (no wait, that doesn't sound right. My forevereternalforgiving wife, that's better), and as luck would have it, we were already seriously with child. I remember those days very clearly: lots of emotional turmoil, lots of not knowing how we'd ever make it through alive, and not a lot of clearheaded planning for the future. But then, we had The Boy, and things looked up. We got married, we moved back to my childhood home (and still live here!), I got a really great job with the phone company, and everything started gushing out some serious blue sky and roses.
Of course, time seemed to take longer back then, if that makes any sense, and after things had gone well for what seemed then like a long time (and in hindsight seems like five minutes) , we decided to have ANOTHER baby. The only one we planned, god bless us. We were starry eyed, we had big dreams for our children and for the future--
And it all came crashing down faster than you can say young and stupid. My wife had an unbelievably difficult pregnancy, culminating in a mini stroke and confinement to her bed for the final two months. The phone company traded our whole division to Bell Atlantic for some of their wireless territory, and EVERYONE got fired, right down to my boss who'd been with the company for 26 years. My car caught fire -- an engine fire -- and halfway exploded before I could properly pull over. The baby was born with complications, and she's had problems ever since. We spent five minutes consoling each other about five weeks after she was born, and four weeks after that we found out we were pregnant again. I mean, the skies practically clouded over and rained shit for a solid year straight.
We pulled out of it eventually, of course. I got another job, my wife got better, and there were years and years between our middlest daughter and the next one. (Okay, four and a half years, but it seemed longer to us.) Things got better, and worse again, and better... we lived and we learned.
But things speeded up somehow. Time got shorter. The kids grew an inch every time we turned our heads for a minute. Right now, inside my head, I'm only twenty six, maybe twenty seven tops, because there hasn't been time for the outside to soak through my thick skull to the inside. I think things are still the way they were... until I get one of those sudden flashes like I did today, which is kinda like an icepick in the kidney just when you least expect it. How can my little girl, the one I had on my own (for that ten minutes between practice wife and real wife, natch), how can my sweet little princess be a JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL, for God's sake?
I tell you, it's all just some dirty trick. I don't remember who said it (I'm famous for forgetting the little things like that), but it's still true: youth is wasted on the young.

Just too funny

2004-07-26T15:11:00.000-04:00

This is hysterical. I actually laughed out loud, especially since I appear to be the only one in our entire office who knows the difference between a dog toy and a marital aid on a consistent basis. After I thought about it, though, it actually gave me serious pause for a moment. I mean, what does it say about someone when they can't tell the difference between an implement intended for a dog's mouth and an implement intended for a person's.... wherever?

Pet Population

2004-07-25T19:05:00.000-04:00

Let's see: one dog, two cats, a tree frog, two anoles (little chameleons), a firebelly toad, an albino african clawed frog, three aquariums with twenty four fish, one goldfish pond with seventeen fish, four frogs, and an eel.
Wouldn't a chinchilla be redundant?

Pets

2004-07-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

Kids and pets go together, right? At least that's what I'm trying to tell myself. The older of my littlest girls just told me she wants a pet for her room, just like the other kids have in theirs. I'm thinking maybe dwarf hamster, hermit crab.... a ginea pig at the outside. I ask her what she's thinking; she strikes a very serious pose, finger on her chin, and mulls it over.
"I know," she finally says. "I want a chinchilla."

Today's Weather

2004-07-25T18:58:00.000-04:00

It was fairly nice for most of the day today, but I was still kinda bummed. Today is the (symbolically) the last day of the vacation. Tomorrow it's back to the salt mines with a vengeance. I am soooo ready to find another job.

Smart Mouth

2004-07-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

.....my son says (apparently oblivious to my presence):
     "I want to weigh as much as Dad..... Only I want it to be all muscle."
     "Hey!" I say. "I'm all muscle!"
     He smiles. "That's what I said."
     He's so lucky that I love him. But then, so am I.

Bitchin' in the Kitchen

2004-07-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

I'm teaching my oldest daughter to cook some of their favorites. One of them is the masterpiece we're rendering today, my own Cheapass Barbecue. This is how it goes:
You buy the small cuts of pork left over from cutting butt and loin roasts (around here they call it "city chicken" and it sells for around 1.09 a pound) and brown it in a large skillet. In a jar, you mix half a bottle of ketchup, about half a cup of honey or corn syrup, to taste chili powder, pepper, garlic powder, fresh ground onion (get all the juice!), molasses, brown sugar, white sugar, a tablespoon or so of french dressing, a tablespoon or so of soy sauce, and a cup or so of salsa. Mix it all up and viola, you got barbecue sauce faster than you can say stone broke trailer trash. (But we live in a real house!!! just so we're clear)
My daughters will inevitably break something. I don't know what. This morning it was a beautiful hand-blown glass thermometer, the kind with the little glass balls full of colored water inside? I think I have a picture -- anyway, she was wiping off the shelf and oops! there it goes. Naturally, we're too poor to have bought something like that on our own -- it was a gift -- so we won't have anything nearly as nice to replace it with. (okay, I might get lucky at a yard sale, around here you never know what you'll find.) Okay, enough with the boo-hoo for me parade.
The girls are in the kitchen banging pots around, which is my signal. I better go before they bust that really nice Braun mixer our Aunt gave us.

Sunday

2004-07-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Allegedly a day of rest, at least for those who have no children.
Actually, it isn't too bad most Sunday mornings, as there's nothing that really interests the children on TV. They tend to stay in bed, or to congregate upstairs and engage in weird little fights conducted entirely in whispers.
Last night, though, the little guy was sick, so my wife and I were up a lot. He's got a bad cough, but no fever or sore throat; I think he's working his way up to full-fledged asthma or something. My oldest brother had it, but he outgrew it. Or, if you prefer my mother's version, she bought him a chihuahua and "that dog just sucked the asthma out of him." She absolutely swore by this theory, because she'd read it in Dear Abby. I have already assured my wife, dear readers, that we WILL NOT be getting a chihauhua, or however the hell you spell it. We have one furry eating machine already, and I absolutely loathe the way those overbred little yap-yap dogs tremble constantly. It's like living with a meth-addicted soprano midget who occasionally pees on the carpet, just for comic relief.
Anyway, we were up a lot, so this morning started very early. Pancakes and fried eggs on todays menu, with lots of syrup and butter. I figure at the rate we hand out carbs, red meat and cholesterol, they should all be super-vegans by the age of twenty one out of sheer rebelliousness. I have to work a little today, but only a little; if the weather holds up, look for pictures. The kids have a full agenda planned: tormenting us, fighting with each other, and the ongoing demolition of our home.
I just saw the dog trot by with a fried egg in her mouth. Gotta go.

Breakfast at our house

2004-07-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

2 boxes of cheap knockoff cereal:       $4.50
1 gallon of milk:                                       $3.38
1 loaf of bread:                                         $.79
1 stick butter:                                          $.69
about ten bananas:                                 $2.29
1 pot of coffee:                                         $1.00
                                                                -----------
Total:                                                        $12.65

Mind you, I'm not griping, or at least not very loudly. That's getting off pretty cheap compared to what it costs for one person to eat breakfast in a reasonably priced restaurant in the city. I'm pretty much already running my own little restaurant -- not only for my own, but also for their little friends who always want to hang around because our house is "so cool."
There's a ringing endorsement for you.
In fact, there is a small restaurant in our fair town for sale, and if my credit weren't so terrible, I might go for it. I'm a pretty good cook, I have lots of experience at preparing several different meals simultaneously (no matter what you fix, there's always someone who won't eat it), and I spend my life rushing around cleaning up after other people. Plus, my wife's primary work experience is as a waitress, which certainly comes in handy around here.
Anybody wanna lend me about $50 thou? I'm good for it.

Twilight Time

2004-07-23T20:19:00.001-04:00

I love this time of day. The sky is still blue and beautiful, but the shadows are long enough to hide how badly my lawn needs mowed.

More Weather

2004-07-23T20:19:00.000-04:00

It finally did get decent here this evening, and since the temperature's settled down the ground is drying out a little bit. I hope it doesn't rain again first thing in the morning.

Today's Weather Forecast of Doom:

2004-07-23T18:38:00.000-04:00

Our weather has achieved new permutations. Today it was cold (and yet humid!), then rainy (and catastrophically windy!), and finally hot, humid, but occasionally pierced with a strong, cold wind. But at least it beats the winters here!

Long Day

2004-07-23T18:15:00.000-04:00

We had to go to the city to pay our quarterly tax payment today. $780 is a big bite for our little budget, and pretty much wipes us out until next Friday. The kids were kind enough to lend us some money. (they joke around about interest, isn't that cute?) That will cover us for gas for next week, so we'll slog through somehow.
But, on top of having to visit the "county seat" and the courthouse, my son was doing a volunteer stunt for a charity, and that took a good chunk out of our day, too. I'm really proud of the way our kids have turned out; evidently we learned something from our parents, because they're a lot less screwed up than we were, at least so far. Time will tell, I guess, but like all parents I'm hoping for the best. What else can you do? Anyway, they do walk-a-thons and 5-k and 10-k runs and stunts, and they have to raise money for each one. This time my oldest son raised $100, which isn't bad considering he hits the same circle of people up for a donation about once every three weeks. I'll always be proud of him, provided he doesn't become a politician. I mean really, we must draw the line somewhere, right? (Just kidding. If he turns out to be a politician, I'll squeeze it for all it's worth, natch.) Long story short, he demonstrated once again that he's a good unselfish kid, and got his picture on TV for around 5 nanoseconds.
Then we all came home, and I grilled. My wife has to work, which sucks; I'm investigating a job in town, a non-desk-job (if that makes sense) which rocks; and to the kids, it's just one more day of endless summer.

Evening coming on

2004-07-22T18:41:00.000-04:00

Everybody says how good the old days were, when they were younger and things were better. Of course, I don't think that things necessarily were better back then, but what I do feel kinda nostalgic for is the way time seemed to pass at a reasonable pace. As I get older, it seems like time flies by faster and faster without anything good to mark it. That's really a tragedy, too, because when you're younger, you just want time to pass faster so you can get to the good stuff, and when you're older, you wish it would slow down so you could better enjoy however much you have left.
Right now, I'd give just about anything for a few of those long, meandering hours I spent in the days before college, without anything to do. Even when I have time to myself these days, I feel compelled to use it to some advantage, instead of just enjoying the moment I'm in.
So I think now I'll go hang out with the kids, and see if I can find the old moment again.

Whole Family

2004-07-22T14:24:00.000-04:00

So there you have them, my entire repertoire (did I spell that right?) of offspring. Not bad for a busy guy, huh? Of course, they inherited all of their good lucks and redeeming qualities from their mother, who has not yet consented to have her picture posted here. I'm working on her, though!
So, to those who wrote me to express disbelief over my number of progeny, I say a big 'so there.' (But not to HR Lady, I love your blog.) I'm very proud of all of them, and of my wife and I for surviving in spite of them for this long. Don't take any bets on how much longer we'll last, though. There's not a bookie in Vegas who would touch those odds.
Now I'm going out to take the little girls for a walk, and take some pictures. I'm sure I'll be posting more of them soon. Maybe I'll even take a nap. I understand they're very refreshing.

Seventh Son

2004-07-22T14:17:00.000-04:00

The boy we thought we'd never see. "What a little devil," to quote his grandfather. So far, he seems to be exactly like me at his age. Poor kid.

The Little girls

2004-07-22T14:07:00.001-04:00

They're always together, so it was easier to take their picture this way. Both very smart and talented, like their older sibs, but dedicated to true princesshood and GIRL POWER.

Our Middlest

2004-07-22T14:06:00.001-04:00

Our resident diva. She knows she's fabulous, and you'd better too. A winner of contests, pageants, and athletic events too numerous to name.

Next - To - Middlest

2004-07-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

She's our "special needs" child, although so far as I can tell those needs amount to mind-warping video games and goofy anime tv shows. We love her, and she manages to tolerate us quite nicely.

Oldest Son

2004-07-22T14:05:00.001-04:00

For a long time, he was our only boy. It's made him a bit (*cough* understatement! *cough, cough*) headstrong, but he's amazingly smart and good in school.

Oldest Daughter

2004-07-22T14:05:00.000-04:00

The oldest, and most in command. She babysits, washes dishes, and rules with an iron fist. Next conquests: cars and boys.

Day Off

2004-07-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

Wow, a very rare day off. With pay, no less.
Of course, the place I work (the med school) has such an aura of draconian repression about it that I actually spent the early morning hours (5 AM - 6: 30 AM) worrying about whether I'd get in trouble for taking the vacation days. That's when I'm usually getting ready to go to this job, provided I haven't worked the other one the night before.
Oh, I jumped through all the hoops: first I asked my boss, then I called and asked the HR Overseer Lady. I was going to take it off unpaid and just work extra time at the factory job, but HR Overseer Lady said that's bad, it counts as absentee time whether you have permission or not. Take vacation days instead. Okay, so I go back to my boss with a memo saying I would like some vacation days, please (think Oliver Twist asking for more gruel), and he says okay if HR Dragon Lady says okay and Office Manager Dominatrix says okay too. So, I copy the memo off to Dragon and Dominatrix. The nice Dominatrix lady came tottering over on her four inch spike heels (bad if you're not height/weight appropriate, kids) and gives me signed approved copy of my memo from HER boss. So, now I have a signed okayed copy from my boss, from the Dominatrix, from the boss of the Dominatrix, but nothing from HR Whipslinger Lady. So I said screw it, I know she got the memo, I'm just gonna proceed on faith. Plus I didn't tell the other woman who works in my office with me, which will probably be what gets my tender parts caught in the vise again. She hates the idea that I get vacation now (especially without having to beg her for permission, too!) and last time she screamed -- and I do mean screamed -- at me for ten minutes about how I didn't deserve a vacation, and the fact that I had a second job was keeping her from getting one, and how completely selfish, inconsiderate and pigheaded I was for breathing in the first place. So this time I just didn't tell her. Screw it.
I'm soooo very ready to quit the day job, but it really keeps the money coming in, and it has health insurance (really crappy medical insurance, mind you, but insurance just the same), and I'm just frankly scared to be without it. I'm supporting eight other people, and responsibilities like that can do strange things to your mind.
But this is the last time I'm going to even think about it between now and Monday morning. After all, if they fired me, at least I wouldn't be able to blame myself for quitting, right?

Go See Bubby!

2004-07-22T10:10:00.000-04:00

She beats the pants off Dear Abby in my book. You can read her advice to me in the July 12th post.

Won't stay down

2004-07-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

Hardly a new problem, but certainly a consistent one with all our kids: the baby won't stay in bed.
When my wife decided he was big enough to be out of the crib, we got him this car bed (above). He liked it - as a toy - but preferred to sleep in our bed. No matter how many times we put him back in his own bed, no matter how often we told him how lucky he was to have such a nice bed, he still didn't want to sleep in it. So, one of us always ended up giving him our side of the bed, and my wife or I would end up on the couch.
So, I sent the car bed back to the store. Why pay so much for something he won't use? I got bunkbeds instead for the little girls. They love them, and neither of them has fallen off the top bunk.... yet.
The baby got a new toddler bed, not nearly as nice but just as unused. It's empty right now, while he's lying in our bed. Crosswise.
Wonder how we'll both fit on the couch...?

Hump Day

2004-07-21T08:03:00.000-04:00

Am I ever tired. I know I'm supposed to be happy to be able to do my part as a good little capitalist/consumer, but this two jobs thing is really starting to grind me down.
Now, I want to qualify the whining, puling, moaning, and general candy-*ss bellyaching that is to follow by saying that I'm glad I have work. Lots of people in my hometown don't, and would kill (or at least do serious bodily injury) for even one job that pays more than minimum wage. To them, I say: forgive me. It's no fun to be out of a job, any more than it's fun to work a job that is solid frustration and grief with no hope of betterment. (is that a real word?)
And that's kinda where I see myself, too. My "day" job is at a medical school, and it's just one more variation on your standard desk job with one hour commute. It makes me kinda miserable, but I guess I'll stick with it until something better comes along. Then there's my "night" job, which is at a plastics factory in my hometown. I work there at least three 12-hour shifts a week, more when I can get it. Believe it or not, I really like that job. I would say love, but it is a job, and work that you do for someone else is just never as good as work you do to accomplish something for yourself. Most of my graduating class works there, and it's so completely different from my other job that I think half of my enjoyment comes from the sheer novelty factor.
Of course, what I'd really like to do is just stay home with the kids. If I could magically make about 40K a year just appear out of thin air, I don't think I'd ever have another serious gripe in my life. And to those who know me well, yes, I only say that because I know the 40 grand will never materialize, so I don't have to worry about going completely against my sour, carping nature any time soon, understand?
The real gripe I have with things now is that I am never home, and I'm always exhausted. When they say that they use sleep deprivation as a means of coercion on Iraqi prisoners, I know for a fact that they're using a guaranteed method. After you've gone just so long without sleep (around 50 hours in my case) every possible action - including thinking - just plain hurts. If somebody came to my desk today and told me that I could stop working all those hours if I would just tell them where Osama Bin Laden was hiding (and I knew, of course) then he'd be toast faster than you can say "forty winks."
But, since nobody is likely to come to my desk and do that (although pretty soon somebody IS gonna come around and ask when I'm actually gonna do some work), I guess I better get back to it. Rock on, people.

My Head

2004-07-20T20:07:00.000-04:00

Some people -- people I would never have guessed would read MY blog -- emailed me to say that they didn't believe the number of kids I claimed in a previous post. So, naturally, I wanted to prove them wrong. After all, I'm not just proud of how much they cost; kids are just about the only investment you can count on to surprise you by paying off in ways you never expected.
But, my wife and children were against having their pictures on the Internet. Part of it is our small town mindset, I think; we have a tendency to see the Internet as a vast seething pit of sex perverts, requiring only one false step to send us plunging down into our worst nightmare.
So, I got most of them to agree to the entirely reasonable compromise of not posting anyone's face on the 'net, just back-of-the-head shots a la brian. Of course, my wife's still against it, but she'll come around in time.
Until then, I think I'm gonna hafta find out where brian gets his hair done -- it's always so shiny and nice in his pictures! I don't think the shot above measures up... Plus, it makes me look fat.
Oh, well. Who's gonna see it, anyway?

Viruses, Trojans and Worms, Oh My

2004-07-20T08:03:00.000-04:00

You know, I remember vividly how when Windows XP came out, I didn't like it. I mean, I was gung ho at first, but when I got on a computer running it and gave it the old college try, I thought, "Man, they are going in the wrong direction with this." And so, I clutched my Win98SE to my bosom, and vowed never to let my baby go.
Then they made me upgrade at work. I got to try Windows Movie Maker, which ain't half bad. If you're a mac user, I know you're tearing your hair out right now and screaming "fool! fool! You've never tried the real thing!" Sure, I know. I do. But I'm not dropping two-three grand on a machine for my entertainment, period. If I spend that kind of money, I want to be able to drive it AND live in it if needs be, thank you very much. So where was I?
Oh yeah, I tried XP and after awhile, I kinda got to where I liked it. You know, kind of like the way you get to like cocaine if someone spikes your coffee with it every morning but never tells you. You know? I'm not a big fan of the "cosmetic improvements," but it sure does crash less, and it has some features I like.
Unfortunately, every hacker, virus and trojan writer, and spammer also like XP. In a big, big way. Most of the stuff that comes out nowadays goes sailing right over Win98 and under, but it homes right in on XP and goes to town. I found this out when I got XP at home with my broadband connection. (Oh, and right here, I'd like to take my hat off and say a tearful thank you to Verizon for making broadband not just available but cheap enough for even a lowly peasant such as myself to afford, many are the hosannas I say in their name.) First, I got a trojan, which made some of my most important desktop icons disappear -- apparently forever -- and then screwed with all of my settings. The real kicker is that I only knew that I had the trojan because my AVG software said so. It popped up a scary message that said,
"WARNING! virus backdoor/trojan blah blah found in folder blah blah blah!" It even made an extra scary sound when it gave me the message, just so I'd pay attention. "Run AVG for Windows!" the warning commanded. So, with hands trembling with fear, I did. And what did I get, kids? Why, the old thumbs up! "No viruses were detected during this scan." This, from the same program that told me I had the stupid thing in the first place. Okay, says I, and downloaded about five other programs designed to get rid of trojans. Or so they said. Now I'm starting to think that they're actually more trojan programs, scattered over the Internet for cheapass pennypinchers such as myself to find. Many, many attempts at fixes later: AVG no longer says I have the virus. So, either I got rid of it somehow, or AVG doesn't recognize it at all now. Of course, my icons still haven't come back.
So, I broke down and got better antivirus software. Well, my kids talked their grandparents into buying some, anyway. They spend more time on my computer than I do, so I didn't feel too bad. In fact, I thought this might just be the answer, at least for now. And, as people so often do when they think they have found The Answer, (flourish of trumpets, please!) I found out only too quickly just how wrong I was. My boss got a virus at work, an email one, and it mailed itself to everyone in a flash. It also snagged everyone's email address, and sent itself out again from new email addresses, INCLUDING MINE! Yep, gotta love that. Thanks, Czechoslovakia.
So, it arrived at home looking like it came from me at work, and one of my kids opened it. Bingo, whole new can of worms. AVG went nuts again (WARNING! Virus blah blah detected in yada yada!), but this time it was a bit more helpful -- it pointed to exactly where the virus was, but declined to touch the dirty thing with its delicate digital fingers. I went in, found it, deleted it -- and today, my browser doesn't work at all. I can send/receive email, all right, okay, but no web side of the Internet. Kaphooey.
So, all of my web time is gonna hafta happen at work today. Now, don't you feel bad for me?

Breakfast at Our House

2004-07-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

Breakfast this morning:

11 out of an 18 carton of eggs       ($1.49)
1 loaf of bread                                  ( $.79)
1 gallon of milk                               ($3.39)
1 6-pack pecan twirlies                   ($.99)
6 bananas                                      (~$1.25)
1 pot of coffee                                  ($1.00)
                                                        ----------
Total:                                                ($8.91)

They made french toast. I was happy with that. Then I found the dog eating a rather large plate of french toast, complete with syrup and butter (incidentals you'll notice I left off the list). I wasn't really happy with that. And they wonder why I'm grumpy in the morning.

2004-07-17T18:39:00.000-04:00

Summer is just flying by me. I feel like I've hardly seen any of the things I love about this time of year. What's that line in the Don Henley song, "I feel it in the air, the summer's out of reach..."

2004-07-16T19:34:00.000-04:00

My oldest son got me this really cool lamp. My oldest daughter is out shopping for something right now; my middlest girls both made me presents, and my littlest girls both drew me a picture. And the baby? Well, he kinda is my present.

Kids

2004-07-16T19:14:00.000-04:00

I just want to say, my kids really are pretty great. I know, I know, worrying about them all the time and working myself half to death sometimes makes me a tad crusty, but I try to write out all the really snarky things I think about it rather than say them to kids who won't understand and be hurt. Because I would never want to hurt one of them; they're the best thing that ever happened to me, hands down.
I was one of only three kids, all boys, but my mother was one of seven, and we lived next door to her widowed mother. (I vaguely remember my grandfather, but my clearest memory of him is his funeral.) In addition, almost all of my mother's brothers and sisters lived within a few blocks of us, and they all had families too. I was surrounded by a crowd of family from my very earliest years. Later, when I'd had enough of that, I struck out on my own -- only to end up recreating what I'd had before in my own family.
So now we have lots of kids, and I love them all. They made this whole damn day all better, even though it started out pretty crummy.

2004-07-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

I went for a walk on my birthday, and you could really tell that it's rained a lot in the last few days. Over seven inches in an hour and a half, at one point.

2004-07-16T19:10:00.000-04:00

I got some nice cards for my birthday. I doubt that anyone who sent them is reading (they're mostly not the computer type) but I want to send my love and thanks to them anyway.

The Big B-Day

2004-07-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

Woohoo, let the bells ring out, I'm another year older and closer to death. Today is the anniversary of my arrival from the womb, and what a corker of a day it is.
Naturally, I am at work, and nobody even knows that it's my birthday here, which is exactly how I planned it. My kids know, and they're handling it the way kids always do: bafflement that you aren't as excited as they are on their birthdays, and peevishness that you can do all of the things that they only wish they could, but you'd rather spend the day in bed with the covers pulled up over your eyes. Oh, they've come up with the requisite cheerful presents and handmade cards and earnest wishes for many happy returns of the day (as if you hadn't had enough reruns of this particular milestone by now!), but mostly they just think that I'm handling it badly.
God, they tell each other, eyes rolling until they almost fall out, he's always so unhappy and mean. What's his problem?
Well, lambkins, my problem is that I am saddled with overwhelming debt which I cannot pay or bankruptcy away, there is literally no place or way to escape my constant worries, and to add to that, I keep having these weird chest pains that I know (deep down) are just acid reflux, but when they do that travel-down-my-left-arm thing, they get me a bit anxious, too.
Oh, I know, I'm doing that depressive stick-in-the-mud thing again, too. How boring.
Anyway, not only is today the dreaded celebration of my nativity, but tomorrow is my wedding anniversary. Why it's the day after my birthday is a long, long story, but suffice it to say that it showed very poor planning with regard to the way the observation of birthday/anniversary/deathwish from a cash point of view. I am so broke from taxes, children's birthdays, bills, and trying to find a whole new car for the same price I'd normally pay for one tire. I can't afford to celebrate, and I don't want to. I just want all of this part to be over.
Do you think that's wrong?

Just Me

2004-07-14T12:14:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I think I've illustrated my position on absolute good and evil (recap: don't exist), and at least outlined how I feel about politics (there's too much of it, and almost everyone involved in it is a jerk). So, who else can I piss off?
Well, let's talk about my feelings about my home town! Yay, that will make them ALL love me!
Okay, I was born and raised here, not just in the US in general, but in a very small town very far from anywhere important. I recommend this as a pretty good way to completely miss out on the defining moments for your generation (or anyone else's, unless they were born before the advent of the internal-combustion-driven manure spreader). Now, you might think that this would make me a knee-jerk reactionary, the way it seems to have done for most of the rest of the rural population. But you would only think that because you are unfamiliar with the place where I grew up.
Where I'm from (and names don't matter, so we won't use them!), money is a much talked-about but little-experienced phenomenon. To illustrate, let me just say that the budget for our town for an entire year is probably less than most really successful people's annual salary. Let that sink in for a moment: in most parts of the country, "making it" means earning more money as one single person that all of us in my home town together can come up with in a year. You might say, "well, sure, it doesn't take that much money to run a town of... what, two, three hundred?" For your information, there are around seven thousand of us, and the average (median) income is around $22K a year. Of course, the average family size is around four children, which further deflates the value of $22K a year. I mean, if you're single, then that is definitely enough to keep you in a reasonable amount of beer and skittles for a year, but if you're married with four or five kids (and I have more than that!!!) it's a struggle just to feel like working is worth the effort. If you're really, really frugal, and have the same view of 'necessities' that your average homeless person has, then earning $22K a year is at least as noble as running in place. You don't get ahead, but you don't fall behind either. Of course, if you value cleanliness over frugality, or if your children want to be clothed in something manufactured AFTER 1975, then even economically running in place is kinda out of reach.
This has made the natives of my fair birthplace rather uniformly bitter and sullen. When we can afford a TV set, it only goes and shows us more stuff we CAN'T afford. When we can afford the very modest price of some flat, vaguely bitter on-tap beer down at the bar, we have only those in the same situation to commiserate with, and none of us have the energy to entertain anyone else's problems. Of course, if there were any more entertaining or enlightening venues in which to spend our time, I'm sure we would be as a whole uplifted, but there is no theater, all the restaurants are either bars with food tacked on or McDonalds, and the drive-in only runs for six weeks in the summer. That's probably why our major form of entertainment is fistfights.
Now, add to this unhappy situation the fact that, despite our being the poorest-per-capita in our county and tri-state region, we have the best paid police force in either of those indexes (starting salary: $40k a year), and the further fact that those cops feel that they are being paid to bust heads and in general run our town like Noriega ran Mexico. The result is that even church-going, kitten-loving old ladies spit at the cops every day, and most kids look at law enforcement the way people during the Cold War regarded Russian military leaders. In short, we hate them with a burning, squinty-eyed hate.
I know this probably sounds like the rant of every young person who grew up in a small town and wants to see something bigger and better, but let me hasten to qualify. I am no longer as young as I was (at 37, I'm more than likely already halfway through or better), I've seen both bigger and better, and rather than just gripe, I've honestly tried to improve things. I've "gotten involved," I've volunteered, I've been on committees and distributed flyers and pushed petitions, and it all just finally convinced me: the world in general is made of crap, and each unique location is just one more example of crap in a new arrangement.
Example: where I live, you can get arrested because you accidentally wore your T-shirt inside out: you get accused of public intoxication (you must be drunk, you didn't even put your shirt on right!) and resisting arrest (you insisted you weren't drunk and didn't want to get arrested just to prove that you weren't), but when it goes to the hearing they plead it down to disorderly conduct with a $150 fine WHEN ALL YOU DID WAS ACCIDENTALLY WEAR YOUR SHIRT INSIDE OUT.
But nothing can be that bad, right? I must just be pissing, moaning & groaning because that's my general nature, right? I mean, if I was really serious, I would print the name of our fair little town, so others could come visit and judge for themselves, right?
Are you kidding? I'd get sued twenty ways to Sunday by everyone who came, saw, and realized that I hadn't even scratched the surface.

2004-07-13T18:40:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe summer is half over. It seems like I'm still waiting for all the snow to melt. But the green, green woods are all there, waiting for me....

Not Really One or the Other

2004-07-13T17:44:00.000-04:00

A few posts ago, I wrote about why I would never be a conservative, or at least not a good one. I read a lot of pundit blogs, and war blogs, and just blogs period, and I find that (at least to some people) it can be important to identify yourself in those terms, if only so people don't assume that you are a like minded soul with whom they can commiserate about how the world's going to hell.
Well, today's bit is about how I don't think I'll ever be a good liberal, either.
Take the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I've read so much about this from so many conflicting viewpoints that I sometimes sit and wonder if we're all living on the same planet. It's a good lesson in how everything is subjective, I suppose, and that there are no empiricals, no absolutes of good and evil; or rather, that there is nothing that is purely good or purely evil, but only a swirling mixture of the two in varying proportions. With the conflict in Israel, I see the Israelis as basically doing what they feel they have to, and I don't condemn them for that. I think that killing people is a bad thing, and whether you're doing it for the right or the wrong reason doesn't make it any less bad. I get the sense that the Israelis understand that, and that the Palestinians somehow don't. It's one thing to be a soldier, and to choose to do what you feel is right even if you know it might get you killed. It's quite another thing to be a suicide bomber, knowing that you're going to die even if no-one else does. And it's a third, utterly repulsive and despicable thing to convince someone, by virtue of their youth, inexperience, and some sort of religious authority (I guess!), to become a suicide bomber. I think even the inestimable Mr. Lileks would commend me on making that judgment. What I don't think that he and a lot of others feel is what I feel, and that is a certain sorrow - maybe even anguish - for the Palestinian mother who loses her children, and for those who lose their homes for whatever reason. It makes me sick inside that people can look around and see that the world/nature/laws of physics makes no provisions or exceptions for us, that the planet we live in is a hard, hard place to be and that people can yet go on and make things worse by living in hatred and causing death.
Y'know, I think it's that peculiar little disability of mine that keeps me from ever really being one thing and one thing only. I always see both sides, and how both are right AND wrong to some degree. It's the way everything is, in my opinion. To quote the Bible (which I never do): 'In the midst of life, we are in death.' At the cellular level, we've started to die before we're even formally born. Every part of good on this planet has its own sort of evil; nature can be calm and beautiful and inspiring, but like the wise ones before us said, it can also be 'red in tooth and claw.' Even a tree can look like a harmless, productive organism from one perspective, and a factory of phytochemicals that poisons its predators and competitors and shades its smaller rivals to death. It's all just a struggle, and for every winner there's a loser.
A lot of people would tell me that this particular take on things is just another way to duck responsibility, I guess. You know, that not committing to anything is the coward's way out, you have to take a stand sometime, and so on. Well, I had a lot of philosophy in college, and I can tell you that once you take God out of the equation, there's no justification for anything. I myself never was really big on having God in the equation to begin with; I haven't made up my mind on whether he's there or not, but granting that he is as a premise, I still can't posit him being any more interested in us than I am in the social interaction of E. Coli. I wanted to believe for a long time in the humanist line, that things mean something because (puff out your chest) dammit, they HAVE TO mean something. If God won't give us absolutes, we'll look to nature or science or... well, most people are stuck right there flipping back and forth between those two channels. That, or they live by the code of 'My Parents Told Me So,' which pretty much guarantees that they didn't learn anything at all from their parents.
Now, I'm not exactly looking to be convinced, either. It's not like I'm just waiting for that one devastating argument that will make it all slip into place, and make everything from peace in the middle east to the ultimate question of life (why? and why now?) all slip into place. People who are just waiting for that kind of reason always find it in the worst possible places, and become skinheads or Jehovah's Witnesses or lifetime McDonald's employees.
No, I think I'm gonna stay right where I am: on the outside, looking in.

Not Doing So Hot

2004-07-09T08:53:00.000-04:00

Boy, is Captain Black Cloud ever following me around lately. I'm really trying hard to keep my head up, but it just seems to get harder every day. It's not so much the bad stuff -- I'm used to bad stuff happening to me, and on a regular basis at that -- bad stuff is just part of being poor. Not to harp on it, or anything, but when you've got no money, you've got no recourse.
Even so, I know lots of people in the same general state of desperation as myself, and they don't seem to be as miserable as I am. Oh, they get upset and unhappy when the bad stuff comes down, same as me, but then a day or so later things have somehow worked out again. It's just not that way for me. I can't seem to find anything that takes my mind off the constant worries that I have -- money, my kids, my marriage, nothing to unusual. Just constant. I can't sit through a movie or read a book when my mind keeps obsessively returning to the problem at hand, the way you find yourself scratching and picking at a scab even though you know damn well you shouldn't. It's been this way for a long time now, and for most of that time I just accepted it as normal. But now, even I can't hide from the negative impact it's having on all of my relationships, the ones with my wife and kids that really matter AND the ones with people at work that I really couldn't care less about. I don't want being around me to be bad for my wife and kids, but I know it is, and that makes it all worse somehow. I know I shouldn't take it out on them, because they're not the ones at fault, but somehow it just keeps happening and I don't see it until it's too late.
I'm not trying to be melodramatic or anything, because attention really isn't what I'm craving here (if it was, I suppose I could find a couch in an office somewhere to whine my heart out on). I just have to say it to myself, out loud AND in writing:
Life just doesn't seem worth it any more.
Oh, I'm not planning any high dives off a bridge (there aren't any that would really do the trick around here, anyway) or anything like that. It just seems like all the things that really made me want to get up and see another day are gone, or have turned into flat grey imitations of themselves, like getting a xeroxed picture of a great meal instead of the real thing.
I keep telling myself that it's my job's fault, that I'm really unhappy there and that it's just poisoning the rest of my life, but even when I'm just whispering it in the back of my head instead of writing it, it still feels like a lie. This is something that starts with me, that is welling up out of some black pit at the bottom of my mind like sewage leaking into drinking water.
Since I work in the medical education profession, I am constantly surrounded by doctors. I'm sure any one of them would be the first to say, "Oh, you're just depressed! Take one of these pills every day, and sorry about the side effects." Fact is, I don't think that's a way out for me. Number one, I've given antidepressants a try, and they're less effective than Haagen-Daz ice cream. Number two, it's a good rule of thumb to be skeptical of any drug whose pharmacology statement begins thus:
'the primary mode of action of this compound SEEMS to be...' Trust me, if they don't know exactly what it's doing to you, they can't tell you if the results will be good or not. That's why they say that they 'might have to play around with the dosage a little, or try another drug if this one doesn't work.' Personally, I think they'd be just as far ahead to give you a nice fat shot of heroin for depression. That way, when you went screaming to them that you are an addict now and need a fix, they can grin and say, "Well, yeah, but I bet you're not depressed anymore!"
Anyway, now I've exposed my shame here for any and all to read (not that anyone will, thank god). And so I now move on to the wait for the next bad thing to fall on me.
Cheers!

2004-07-08T21:33:00.000-04:00

The storm clouds are rolling in again, and I'm actually glad to see them. I think I'm becoming allergic to the sunlight from being chained in the bowels of my work place. Can an aversion to crosses and garlic be far behind?

Speaking Out

2004-07-08T21:13:00.000-04:00

The other day, I read a pretty good blog, good enough that I actually thought about it quite a bit over the next few days. And now, I'm even gonna blog about it.
The post (which I don't want to link to) was in a blog written by what I'm guessing is a fairly young lady. She didn't go into a lot of details, but she said that she felt her blog was fairly private, and that she wrote something that expressed feelings that she held very deeply about someone else in one of the posts. She was then very taken aback when she found out that someone she knew only at the casual acquaintance level had not only read her blog, but had managed to guess the identity of the person she'd blogged her heart out about. This acquaintance then went on to use this information to cause the young lady some very real grief. She didn't specify what kind, either, but she painted in enough of the details that anyone could fill in the missing spaces out of their own lives.
Now, this bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on why at first. It took a long time, and consideration, but then in the car on the way to work one morning, I heard a song that tied it all together for me. It was an oldie, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. I listened to that one way back in fifth grade, man. Eons ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and yada yada yada. Music often makes a point for me that I can't quite express (at least not as succinctly or poetically) in my own words. Isn't it that way for everyone? Anyway, the bit that got me was the line,
...sweet freedom whispered in my ear
you are a butterfly
and butterflies are free to fly
fly away, high away, bye bye
Boom, just like that, I got it. This young lady told the truth as she knew it, and it hurt her. But her blog was good, it was real. It made me realize that I want to write the truth, and just let it spill out where it may. I want to be free, and if it hurts me, at least I'm hurt and free, instead of all chained up inside my head and miserable.
Besides, nobody ever reads what I write here, right?

Yahoo!

2004-07-07T12:30:00.000-04:00

Okay, I know it's been awhile since I posted, but I've been mulling over a post on my relationship with that web juggernaut, Yahoo!, and I knew that it would take some time.
Y'see, I first found Yahoo back in college, sometime around early '97. Yahoo was still pretty new back then, and very eager to please: as with most of the 'Net in those days, everything was free. Of course, Yahoo was only a portal then, a glorified list of favorite links supplied by its inventors that was tied to a rather limited search engine. I liked Yahoo then, mostly for the free email address and quick news stories.
But then.... My real problems with the big red Y started when they bought e-groups. I was a devoted fan of e-groups, and I really liked the way they worked. I thought, 'maybe this won't be so bad, I like the way they run the portal site, maybe they'll do a good job with e-groups!' Ah, how delightfully naive I was then. But things did go along all right for awhile: the groups ran pretty much as before, and Yahoo went right on acquiring some of my other favorite sites, like Launch, and they seemed to do okay with that, too. Until, until. The dot-com bubble burst, and it all came crashing down.
First it was the email service. The size of my inbox shrank, and then I was no longer able to use a pop3 client to download my email from them without a fee. Like most people who are asked to pay for something they've always gotten gratis, my reaction was a bit huffy, to say the least. I closed several of my Yahoo email accounts forever, and swore never to trust them again.
Then they decided to make all of their adult email groups unlisted. This meant that you could make a group if you wanted, but if it was dedicated to an adult subject, you had no effective way to advertise it. You were limited to the groups and friends that you already knew, and had no way to reach the wider world. People got very upset, but once they learned that the groups were all still there, they calmed down. So, Yahoo started deleting adult groups, sometimes apparently at random. Granted, some of them probably contained questionable subject matter, but many others were no more pornographic or violent than the latest copy of Cosmopolitan. This made a LOT of people upset, which Yahoo apparently liked, too.
Then, they started unveiling their "premium" services. In most cases, this meant that they took the best features of services they already offered, and said, if you want to use those features, you must pay for them. Well, I suppose (in retrospect) that this wasn't so bad, but at the time, I was (understandably, I think) upset by the whole deal. I mean, I had five Yahoo addresses that I relied on, and once they made the pop3 access unavailable, I stopped using them. I've never really liked webmail, and I have always found Yahoo's mail page design subliminally frustrating without being able to put my finger on the feature that really causes my annoyance. So, there went my groups and my email addresses.
Since then, I've continued to use Yahoo, but warily. Every time they come out with a feature that I like, I use it with utter trepidation, sure that they'll snatch it away the minute I depend on it. In fact, I have only recently begun to use their messenger again, and that only because I can play my Launchcast station in the messenger while I'm instant messaging. I know that they have recently expanded the size of their email inboxes and the attachment size limit, but I still haven't gone back to my old email addresses for fear that I might come to rely on them again. They continue to have free radio and videos on Launch (or at least, sort of free), but I use those with caution, too, sure that very soon they will become entirely pay services.
So that, in essence, is the major part of my beef with Yahoo. They once symbolized everything the Internet was then: free, unrestricted, and instantaneous. Now, they symbolize a great deal of what the web's become: lots of advertising, lots of pay services, and not much more than one long commercial in a variety of formats.

Still Trying to Make Up My Mind

2004-06-28T13:03:00.000-04:00

Charley Reese is probably one of the only political columnists I still read on a regular basis. Not so much because I rabidly endorse everything he says (I don't), but more because I really can't make up my mind whether I like his work or not.
He would, I think, be mostly likely to bill himself as a 'conservative,' which is not what I'm all about. He is also a fan of Ronald Reagan, another thing I'm not so much into. So, you ask, why would I be so driven to read his column every day?
Well, it's like this. Almost every political writer I've ever read pretty much sums up their opinion in every column, at least in the broad strokes. If they're liberal/democrat/independent, then they make pretty sure you know it's all the republicans' fault -- especially the Republicans in the current administration, who want to make war with everyone, cram their values down every American throat, and generally rule you people like a king. Conversely, if they're conservative/republican/pro- family values, then everything is the fault of Democrats who want to raise your taxes, lower your moral standards, and sink our culture into a cesspool. Oh, yes, and spit on God. Can't forget the religious angle to the Right, can we.
But this Charley Reese guy, he's different. He starts out from right where I'm at: 'this is the situation,' he says, 'and here's why it's wrong.' I'm usually totally in agreement with him, too; the war in Iraq is wrong, not because it accomplished the wrong goals, but because it was fought for the wrong reasons. There will never be absolute equality for everyone, because everyone is not the same. All that sort of stuff. He gets me to go along with him, especially when he's listing the things that are wrong with George W. Bush (but he tactfully leaves out the whole Bush/Chimp resemblance thing, very classy). He gets me to believe that he's got his head on straight, that he's in it for the truth, and that he's not like the rest of those, those.... Republicans. (boo, hiss.) And then, just when I'm teetering on that brink, he says something else. Kind of like he does in the article linked to above: he goes on about how government is an ongoing act of coercion (true, very true), how redistribution of wealth is a trick and a plot (I'm a bit more dubious, but I'm willing to try to reason it out for myself), and then he comes up to the kicker. He says that, and I quote: "rather than try to achieve phony equal results with double standards, we should try to construct a society in which everyone, regardless of his or her abilities, can find a niche in which to live with dignity and respect. A good janitor should be no less admirable than a good CEO. If we put more emphasis on character and less on income and position, we might realize that." And that's where I get off the merry-go-round, kids.
Oh, it's not that I disagree. Far from it. Rather, it's exactly what I might have said fifteen years ago. If anything, I would say that I'm closer now to agreeing with the whole "redistribution of wealth" thing specifically because I'm too disillusioned by the world in general to still think that people are suddenly going to start recognizing the existence of character, much less judging individuals on the merits (or lack of merits) of their individual character. I loved idealism, but I can't stand to see what happens to people who try to apply it to reality.
And that's what worries me about Charlie Reese: has he really managed to hang on to his starry-eyed dreams of a better country and future, or is he selling his own agenda just wrapped in starry-eyed dream paper?
It's a poser.

My Great Car Adventure

2004-06-28T09:25:00.000-04:00

They recently graded the road I live on. For those of you living on paved streets somewhere in civilization, that means that the city where I live sent their crew of helper-monkeys to my (dirt) street in big trucks, tractors, and a road grader (like a snow plow, but with the plow underneath instead of in front). Once there, they fire up these 20-ton diesel Matchbox toys and have a good time playing in the dirt. They plow the road down six inches, and then cover it in loose dust and gravel; the stated purpose is to keep the road level, 'smooth,' and draining well. The actual result is to make a slipperier surface than highly polished ice (the gravel and dust rolls under your tires, and you can actually travel ten yards after your tires have stopped rolling). It also guarantees a major cloud of dust from even the slowest moving vehicles (or pedestrians), worthy of a movie about dust-bowl Okies.
Okay, so they do this every year, and I'm past even being upset about it. Now, I just regard the whole process with weary, amused contempt. Or, at least I did, until Friday....
My wife, who was already upset with me, drove one block down the street and came back with a bolt stuck in our back tire. Now, like most bolts, this one was as big around as my middle finger and utterly blunt on the end. Unlike most bolts I've seen, this one was around two feet long. I have no clue how she could have picked it up, but she certainly did do a wonderful job of it.
I looked it over, and thought to myself, this looks like it could be plugged and saved, if I can just take it off and put on the temporary spare. So, I grabbed the tire iron and gave it a try. The lug nuts would not budge. Not one to give up, I kept twisting on it until I thought I'd have a heart attack. At that point, my loving oldest son said, "let me try it, Dad." Because I still see him as the cute little boy I remember and not the freakishly tall, aggressive teen thug that he's become, I meekly handed over the tire iron. He applied the socket end to the lug nut, flexed his bicep, and BROKE THE LUG NUT AND BOLT RIGHT OFF.
Needless to say, I became somewhat excited by this turn of events. So excited, in fact, that I was pretty sure an ambulance and oxygen mask were going to be required. Fortunately, my father showed up and looked things over. God bless him, he may be getting up there but he's still got his head screwed on straight. He got me to drive it to the tire repair shop at the bottom of the hill, where they plugged my tire, replaced the broken bolt, and soothed my shattered nerves for a mere $22.50. God, how I love the hicks I live with, and while I am at it, thank you Jesus for making me one of them.
So now, the car is as good as it ever was (worth less than the $22.50 repair bill, but still running!) and I am back at work instead of being fired for failing to show. Also, my son has finally demonstrated that he is now stronger than I am, in addition to being taller, smarter, and better looking.
Don't you just love weekends?

2004-06-27T20:28:00.000-04:00

My gargoyle is spawning.

2004-06-24T19:38:00.000-04:00

They say watching fish in an aquarium is a great way to relax. I have an aquarium, but when I get the kind of stress my job inspires, a frog is the only thing to do the trick.

Politics

2004-06-24T10:54:00.000-04:00

It was always the conventional wisdom when I was growing up that you got more conservative as you aged. I, myself, am in fact getting a bit older (though nowhere near as fast as the rest of you), and I suppose I might fall victim to the trend myself, were it not for just a few minor niggling details.
Number one, to be a Conservative (and I mean every pixel of that capital C) nowadays means something rather different than it used to. To me, at least, to be a conservative in this day and age means that you are preoccupied with religion, money, and appearances. To clarify: by religion, I mean imposing your beliefs on people who do not share them. I don’t mean this in the tired old sense of “everyone’s beliefs are morally equivalent,” because I don’t think that. Jeffrey Dahmer believed it was okay to kill (and eat!) young men as part of his pursuit of the perfect sex partner. Obviously, even people who are not fans of his chosen victims’ lifestyle are pretty much opposed to this belief. No, I mean beliefs like the commonly held conservative tenet that stem cell research/cloning/genetic engineering science is immoral because Pat Robertson or James Dobson said so. To further clarify: by money, I mean the worshipful pursuit of same, and the requisite withering contempt for anyone who doesn’t have any. I don’t remember who said that ‘greed is good,’ but it might as well have been their holy icon Reagan, because they’ve made it a personal maxim ever since he first held office. And, to finally beat the clarification horse to death, by appearances I mean that the conservatives are still holding to the same old biblical injunction that it’s bad to be different, and to be creatively different is punishable by death, preferably via stoning at the hands of an angry mob.
In sum, that is why I will never be a capital-C Conservative. Now, this is not to say that I still agree with everything I so passionately felt as a teenager. Not so much because I think I was wrong back then, but more because I think the world is just too damned ugly and hopeless for any of those bright dreams to ever come to pass, at least here on this planet. The human race just has too many shortcomings to ever put forth anything better than the confused, half-good/half-bad gestures we’re so familiar with today.
As an example, I would cite the war in Iraq. No, I don’t think that going to war to liberate an oppressed people is a bad thing. Yes, I do think that going to war because the President is still miffed about an assassination attempt on his beloved daddy IS a bad thing. No, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Hussein has been deposed, and yes, I do wish that someone would do the same (via a democratic election, natch) for George Bush. I don’t like him; I thought he totally railroaded his way into office with that whole electoral college/hanging chad debacle, and I’m not ready to let that go no matter how many times Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly tell me I should. Then, he made the most of his under-reaction to 9-11 by using it as a pretext to go to war. Yes, that is not just how I feel, but what I believe actually happened. Tell me I’m a victim of liberal spin, tell me that the media have misled me, tell me that I should start wearing a tin-foil hat because the Martian mind-control rays have me under their sway, I still think what I think based on the facts in evidence. Want me to change my mind? Show me some new evidence, such as… Oh, I don’t know, how about a dozen nuclear missiles in Iraq? Some kind of proof that Iraq was behind al-Qaeda, instead of Bush’s asshole buddies the Saudis, perhaps?
But let me just be totally, unabashedly honest before I put this post to rest. The total bottom-line reason I still don’t like Bush is his obvious distaste for anyone who isn’t at least comfortably upper-middle class. Really, he’s made it obvious in a thousand ways, with his policies and his pronouncements and just the general sneer in his voice and on his face when he speaks about anyone who’s poor in America. I get the sense that Bush would prefer we didn’t exist, and if that meant that we all quietly starve to death because we can’t find jobs, why, that’s fine with him. It’s obviously Osama Bin Laden’s fault, anyway. If I had only one opportunity to say anything that mattered to our President, it would be simply this: America lives on the labor of the working poor, and deciding to exploit the working poor of other countries while leaving Americans to starve is NOT a patriotic act.
So there. And (as far as politics goes) that’s all I have to say about that.

The Class Divide

2004-06-23T14:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, here's a little something that ticked me off. I read this about Winona Ryder:

Winona Ryder no longer a felon

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., - The judge in the 2001 shoplifting
case against actress Winona Ryder has reduced her felony
convictions to misdemeanors, The Hollywood Reporter said
Monday. Los Angeles Judge Elden Fox also ruled that the
star of "Girl, Interrupted" and "Little Women" may complete
the remainder of her probation unsupervised. The judge
acknowledged Ryder had successfully completed court-ordered
counseling and community service, but warned her that she
could still go to jail if she violates her probation, which
is scheduled to expire in December 2005. Actress Winona
Ryder was sentenced in December 2002 to 36 months probation
for stealing $6,355 worth of merchandise from Saks Fifth
Avenue in Beverly Hills.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering, whatever could be his problem with this? Winona Ryder is a sweet young girl, and deserves whatever leniency the judge opted to give her, right?
Please. If that had been me stealing $6355 worth of crap from Saks 5th Avenue, they'd have locked me up and thrown away the key. Come to think of it, if I even tried to get in the front door of Saks 5th Avenue, I'd probably get the bum's rush from security. Why do I think that would be, you ask? Why, simply because I'M POOR.
That's right, it's all about the money. As a society, we've made huge inroads in the fight against racism, sexism, ageism, gender bias, homophobia, all of that bad stuff. In the meantime, the stranglehold the rich have on the poor in this country has strengthened and solidified. If you ask me, that's what Bush's entire presidency has been about; helping the rich get richer, and to hell (or Iraq) with poor people.

2004-06-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

Still hard at work, guarding my modem.

Computers Taking Over

2004-06-22T20:39:00.000-04:00

I've been a computer junkie ever since my job at the phone company, lo these six years ago now. My friends there cobbled together a hard drive from their leftover parts, and gave it to me as a going away present when our entire department was laid off. I had that computer for almost three years, with its one gig hard drive and 28 -- count them, ladies and gents, twenty-eight -- megabytes of RAM. Back then, our dial up was abominably slow, and I remember all too well simple web pages that still took five minutes to load.
Well, not any more. Now, I have DSL, and I absolutely love it. I can't believe I ever lived without it, and I think I might ransom my mother to keep it. My whole family loves it, too, which I am less thrilled about -- more competition for my seat at the monitor. Still, it's kinda neat that I never even saw a personal computer until college, and my son who's not yet two can number three different website titles among the twenty odd words that he can clearly say. I was about to go on to defend his online time by saying that he's behind a firewall, the sites are very safe and clean (especially compared to primetime TV these days!), and he's learning something... But why bother? The fact is, it's an ASSET to him to be as familiar with computers as possible. Sure, the ones he'll use when he's my age will look nothing like this one (beautiful as it is, with its 1.7 gHz processor, 30 gigabyte hard drive, and 500 megabytes of RAM, love it), but at least he'll be acquainted with the flow of technology, and also the fact that media platforms have a way of sinking under their own weight, and the way that today's technology keeps on providing the endoskeleton that tomorrow's tech grows on like a coral reef.
No, I don't have that many qualms about what my kids do online (but then, I have keystroke monitors everywhere, ha ha!) It's the fact that I myself am so tied to them that bothers me. I used to be the most voracious reader I knew. I could (and probably still can) read two or even three books a day, provided there are no frivolous distractions like work and children and real life. Now, I never read books. I read blogs, I read Google News like it was the Oracle at Delphi, I read opinions and commentary and even e-books when I can get them, but I never crack so much as a magazine any more.
Oh, well, better for the forests I guess. But I have resolved that I am going to start reading again, and I'm going to start with one of my very favorites. It's by Ursula K. LeGuin, and it's called The Dispossessed. Probably not a popular choice with a lot of people, but it's gonna make me happy tonight.

2004-06-22T20:32:00.000-04:00

This is the monitor I'm glued to at home. The gargoyle on top of my modem is an old friend... too bad he can't protect me from viruses.

End of the Reprieve

2004-06-21T20:13:00.000-04:00

I'm back to work tomorrow, and I must say I don't feel all that much up to it. I suppose I should decide that it's all just clover, eight hour days guaranteed, no real work in sight, and yet somehow that's the worst part. It's boring right now, and I don't really feel like I have too many friends there.
Big Sigh.Oh well. I got to chat with my brother on Yahoo messenger, using our webcams. I haven't seen him in the flesh in about, oh, seven years, and virtual is still nice. We got to see each other, and he got to see all of my kids. He hasn't seen them since they were small, and hasn't seen the last two at all. Until today that is. We emailed each other pictures, chatted, and webcammed all at the same time. I never thought I would offer Yahoo a free plug (long, resentful story), but the new messenger is really my favorite. I can play my launchcast radio and webcam at the same time, plus IM'ing, which makes it pretty much all in one for videoconferencing.
Lest I start to sound like a shill for Yahoo, whom I mostly despise in a disinterested sort of way, let me conclude by saying that I'm making it my resolution to concentrate more on the moment I'm in, rather than waiting for the next big exciting thing to happen. Each moment is precious, and you never know if the next one is coming or not.

2004-06-21T08:45:00.000-04:00

I love my place, and my kids. It was a good father's day.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

2004-06-20T16:05:00.000-04:00

Well, as lazy as anything can be when you have to spend part of the day working. C'est La Vie, I guess.
You know, lately I cannot get past the way employers treat their workers. I work in a rather intense academic environment during the week, and I freely confess that I currently hate it. I suppose you could call my position a "pink collar" job, in that ten or twenty years ago it would much more likely be a position filled by a woman than a man. Still, I don't think that's a very good reason for the rather poisonous atmosphere that pervades the entire office where I work, as I am the only man in my position (as compared to the other five women). Let me tell you, those ladies are not giving up one inch of ground gracefully; they've made it their business to really make my job harder, and mostly because they think I'm being paid better (from what they've said, I am, too) and that I have a better chance of being promoted (which recent events have proven resoundingly NOT true). Let me be the first to say, an integrated work force has not proven to be an asset to that school.
But then I go to my weekend job, and it's actually fun to go to. I work in a plastics factory on the weekends, and I must confess that I really enjoy it. The atmosphere and attitude are so much friendlier and looser that I find myself looking forward to arriving there during the long and arduous hours at my other job. It's an integrated work force there, too, but it has been a great boon to that shop, because it actually makes it so much more bearable to work there.
If I had a point here, I guess it would be that gender and class are still defining the limits and liabilities of the work force today. It's pretty much the same as it was before the labor unions and workers' rights, and it probably always will be the same. Just one more reason why it sucks to be poor in America today.
Okay, I'm done ranting for now. I'm gonna go take some more pictures of my kids with my digital camera, and try to enjoy what's left of father's day.
Have a happy!

First Time for Everything

2004-06-17T15:20:00.000-04:00

Okay, here goes, first post to the new blog. Have another one, but I find that there are some things I need to keep private, and the things I vent about there are most of them.
So, what's my blog about? Why, me and what I think, of course! What good is the Internet if you can't offer your two cents worth free of charge to anyone with a modem and a strong stomach?
So please, stay tuned!