Category: Personal

I’m not usually one to jump all over the news story of the day, much less the sex scandal of the day…evidenced by the fact that it’s been a full 2 weeks since the story broke…

And I have to admit, I haven’t followed the Eliot Spitzer story very closely.  Until just a couple of days ago, I’d have to say I didn’t really much care who the governor had sex with, for how much money, over which state lines, etc.  

I probably still wouldn’t care, if I hadn’t recently been clued in to the fact that Ashley Dupre, the woman who had said sex, took said money, and crossed said state lines, has a ‘magic vagina’, which has been called the prettiest vagina in New York.  And, no, the link isn’t to a picture of her vagina, nor have I seen any.  However, this picture attempts to show us the various ‘features’ which could, possibly, make a vagina worth $5000. a night.  Yep, that’s just a rental.  You don’t even get to keep it.  

“Blank document”. I recall older Word versions and I seem to think it used to be “New Document”. New is so much more positive than Blank.

I had an English teacher in high school, Teresa Brandon, who’d say “Go for the guts.” She was a rebel teacher who brought Dunkin Donuts to our early morning English Lit/Shakespeare class each Wednesday, in defiance of the “No food in class” rules. Beyond her exemplary teaching, she also had an extraordinary talent – she could neatly shove a billiard ball in her mouth without locking her jaw. These are skills that impress a high school junior.

You are forewarned: if you are not up for reading ramblings of a reminiscent, tangential and seemingly unrelated nature, please move to the next diary…;)

In honor of Ms. Brandon (though against her desire of clean, concise length), I’ll unashamedly go for the gut and dammit, I won’t apologize. And this is not purely a candidate diary.

That said…

(crossposted at Dailykos)

My nineteen year old son and I just finished listening to Obama’s speech from today. To say I was moved would be an understatement. I can’t recall being brought to tears by a political speech before today, though I’m not so sure you could really call this speech political at its core. What I heard from Barack today was a plea to humanity to pause for a moment, to reflect on the reality of the divided culture we have created, and to see through our anger, resentment and suspicions, that the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would seek to tear us apart. If there were any lingering doubt about this mans authenticity, his incredible will or his warrior spirit, they were certainly laid to rest today.

Please join me below for my personal thoughts and my own families journey with racism.

Over the past few days I’ve seen both new and long time (six months?)commenters remark how this is the site for reasonable adults and calm discourse and reflection and sensitivity etc.  Well, don’t look for that shit in this one.

If that’s what you’re looking for, stay on the Front Page or read the other Totally Excellent Recent and Recommended Essays.

Once again ms. moneysmith has enlisted her e-loveslave to do the Tuesday evening Pony Party.  Her reason this time was kind of vague, it may have something to do with this:

http://www.hkex.com.hk/news/hk…

because she had to fly to Hong Kong.  

Besides the Pony Party, she left me a list of other things to take care of: Paint a couple rooms, dust the plants, scrub the floors, do the laundry, weed the yard, reset all the flagstone, and walk the dogs twice a day. Plus she has me on a strict diet of fruit juice and protein powder, and insists on an exercise program for me.

All of this is kind of difficult attached to the dog-collar and cable and stuff, so doing the Pony Party is actually kind of a break for me.

While I was cleaning the tile grout with a toothbrush (mine) I thought I might need a little pick-me-up, so I, once again, hearkened back to my youth and thought of Joe Walsh.

The James Gang got their start in Cleveland, my home town. I don’t think anyone ever accused Joe of being too serious either.

I know on a day like today one should say something brilliant or witty or insightful on Obama’s speech, but I’ve committed to be the class clown even on heady days and so I offer up my darkest moment of political fatherhood…

With that out of the way…

If you have ever painted your own house or even a single room than you know that just the act of painting can free up the mind to wander. It’s pretty therapeutic actually. While the hands stay highly focused, guided by the eyes, the mind is free to go off in whatever direction it chooses. At least that has been my experience.  To my surprise I was visited by a part of myself – a very ugly part of myself – while painting. Like a cascading waterfall – images from a past chapter of my life- a time I am not proud of came back to me like a slide show. While painting my mind had started wandering and thinking about by distain for Hillary and just like that I realized that although some of my distain for her is reality based and a reaction to her actions, much much more is that she reminds me of a me I once was and never want to be again…. a me I tried to bury and forget and in the process stopped being a whole person

This meshes well with the Friday Night at 8 theme.

You many not know me, but I assuredly know many of you. In fact, I have been looking for you.

I was fortunate enough to cut my blogging teeth at a fantastic site called DailyKos. I could not have been any luckier than the day a business associate pointed my zombie self at that site. At the time, I was convinced I had gone mad because certainly the whole country couldn’t be crazy, could it? The news gave no indication that my reasoning was valid, and even the persistent warble and frequent shrieks of my bullshit detector was not registering on the MSM’s radar at all. More than just a social outlet, blogging became the real news for me.

Since I recognize many of the names here, I don’t have to tell you how great you all are; diligent, progressive thinkers bla bla bla, sharing common goals for the good of all man bla bla bla, not encumbered by dogmas or exclusive beliefs bla bla bla, who dispense wisdom in beautiful, susinct little bundles. Bla bla bla.

I would like to share with you a short tale of a brief relationship I once had. It is probably not the most politically correct story, but I’m worn down to a nub so I am just going to tell.

I am a male who is quite enamored with the opposite sex, and this can easily be exploited in much the same way as wrapping a hook with a tasty worm can exploit a fish’s… hunger for food. On one occasion, I fell head over heals with what at first I thought was a woman. She had all the qualities a naive young man might first look for in a woman – a pretty face, and an ample bosom.

Later, when it was revealed that she was not a woman at all, but some form of blood sucking life capable of mimicking human speech did I realize that I should stand on my wobbly legs, try not to pass out, and run for my life. I have talked with women who shared similar tales of encountering man-like creatures. A common thread in all the victims seems to be a willingness to suspend reason and an unwillingness to look directly at the glamor for fear that it is not real. Only when we accept the glamor for what it is can we move on to a happier place for ourselves. Sure nice tits and a pretty face are good, but hearts and brains are sexy too. I have done fairly (ouch!) very well since developing my heart and brain fetish.

It’s not always a case of being victimized; sometimes people simply change. Assigning blame does nothing. Keeping the other person in a hole until it puts the lotion on doesn’t help either. The bottom line is… we all want to be happy, right?

So is a blog a person? Sure many contribute, but it certainly has its own personality too. Off the top of my head, I would say the personality of a blog is about 50% that of the founder, and 50% that of the contributors. That sure sounds like an equal partnership, and either partner is capable of creating a sea change in the overall environment. If the environment becomes toxic to us, we must adapt, move, or die.

I’m not going to leave a GBCW at DailyKos because there are still people writing on that site whom I greatly admire and will continue to check in on. It is still a great font of information and a place I might still ask questions of. However, I posted two bitter diaries there in the last week or so before it hit me that I’m now arguing with a lover over petty shit and that we just cannot see eye-to-eye anymore. I would rather we remain friends than hurt one another.

I got lucky again last night when I noticed Buhdy’s kind tip-of-the-hat to Meteor Blades, mcjoan, and KagroX. I can’t believe it took me so long to take a look here – especially given my brains-and-heart fetish. It’s not like he tried to woo me by showing some leg, it was the comfortable name, comfortable brain, and great heart he showed to three great people.

I had lost the love and I guess I have been looking to be smitten once again.

Smoters, is what you all are; smoters.

🙂

All roads lead to Rove.  That was the message scrawled as an afterthought in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope I received in yesterday’s mail.  It contained a letter from an old and dear friend of mine.  His name is Don Siegelman.  He is the former governor of Alabama and he is being held as a political prisoner of the Bush administration in a Federal prison in Louisiana.

^{I am busy finalizing things for my move tomorrow. So I thought 73rd might get a kick out of the essay I wrote at dKos last April…}

The nephews are both on little league teams and their seasons opened today. This is the second time I’ve done the little league thing: about 15 years ago with stepchildren and now with my sister’s kids. and i swear to god, it was like I had stepped into a time warp, like I had left everything the way it was all those years ago.

I spend a fair amount of my time listening to Jimmy Buffett songs, so it won’t come as a surprise to those who know me that I can somehow tie my high school experience to a boat floating on the ocean.  Ever since I heard “Margaritaville” on the radio as a three-year-old, I have turned to one Buffett song or another for a flash of inspiration, a laugh, or a quote that’s vaguely related to the assignment at hand.  I’ve also spent these last four years trying my absolute hardest to avoid using cliché themes and phrasing in my English compositions; hopefully my streak won’t end in this last hoorah of an essay.

If, in terms of size and difficulty of navigation, elementary school is the pond in my backyard and middle school is the lake down the road, high school is the unpredictable ocean.  You cautiously venture in, hesitant to face the whitecaps in the distance but excited to speed toward that distant horizon.  Freshman year is a strange time to describe – by the time you hit the hallways for the first time, you’ve inevitably been scared to death by massively exaggerated stories of the big bad seniors and their vicious hazing parties.  You might hit a little wave here and there, but it’s mainly smooth sailing through basic classes like Health and Sports for Life.

Most students will tell you that sophomore year is basically like freshman year, just a tiny bit harder and a little less exciting once, considering how long 9th grade dragged on, you grasp just how much time four years really is.  I happened to hit my first storm in the summer before 10th grade, when my family moved to Clarksville and I, for some reason still unbeknownst to me, fell into the stereotype that every adolescent’s parents fear: the constant complainer.  It didn’t stop at school; rather, it covered everything from my neighborhood to having to go to baseball practice.  The calm after the storm eventually came, but sophomore year drifted by in an unmemorable fog.

I’d been dreading 11th grade since I watched my brother labor through six AP classes and a ridiculously long streak of sleepless school nights.  Luckily, my junior year didn’t turn into the “perfect storm” that drives so many students to total loss of motivation.  My four APs were challenging, but two of them were history courses with teachers I loved and subject matter that truly intrigued me.  I hit a wave here and a wave there, but none of them knocked me too far off course.  Like everyone else, I hit the college freak-out phase once the seniors starting getting accepted and rejected from the schools of their dreams.  Luckily, my hysteria was temporary and surprisingly beneficial: I started my essays and applications months before most of my classmates.

Now, quite suddenly, senior year is upon me.  I’ll knock on wood so as not to jinx National Day of Cruelty toward High School Seniors (also known as April 1, or the arrival of most college admissions decisions), but it appears that I’ve made it to calmer waters.  I’ve avoided the biggest icebergs by surprising myself on the SAT and saving my best writing for my college essays.

The ocean has been an obstacle to discovery and fortune since the dawn of history.  The explorers we’ll remember are those who crossed uncharted waters, eventually stumbling upon a helpful shortcut or a new continent.  I’ve discovered new truths and sources of happiness for myself, whether they be political involvement or the study of history, by steering through the treacherous ocean of high school and getting through with my ship intact.

What fun is an ocean without waves, anyhow?  You’ve got to get through the choppy surf to get to the open water.  Now, having caught the winds of inspiration and a bright academic future in my sails, I set a new course for the distant horizon and beyond.  After all, “some of it’s magic and some of it’s tragic,” but I’ve got a sea to cross.

For over a month now, I’ve been trying to assemble a piece in tribute to Mumsie that tied together some music with some of the memories that those tunes invoked.

I’ve finally completed it, in two parts:

__________

Stir of Echoes

and

Musical Deconstruction of a Life’s Worth of Memories.
__________

Many of you “remember” Mumsie — my mother-in-law who suffered and ultimately died from Alzheimer’s Disease. The tribute I’ve been working on has been my small effort to help you all get to know her even better.

I saw tabloids today. In the convenience store. In the drug store. In the supermarket.  All about Obama and his terrorist ties and homosexual liaison and god knows what else. And tomorrow? Move over Britney because tomorrow, Eliot Sptizer will get skewered in the great tabloid void.

I have to tell you. I was overcome with sadness. An unbearable sadness at these affronts in full-blown color, all screaming and prominently displayed. How did it come to this? How did we devolve to this?

We finally have a woman and a man of color in serious contention for the presidency of the United States and we’ve managed to make it cheap.

All the while the press plays hand maiden to a war criminal who, along with all the others of his ilk, are responsible for destruction and death on a scale hard to comprehend. It isn’t just Bush and it just isn’t Iraq. It’s Africa. It’s rain forests. It’s the oceans and plankton. It’s whaling and polar bears. And pushing for open season on wolves.