Random Little Things That Piss Me Off

• John Madden exclaiming over every freaking step in the football game. For one, he sounds like he's spitting when he talks. Also, he can't seem to control his compulsive need to draw everything out on the freeze frames with that damn pen. Why doesn't someone just take the pen away from him?! And finally, he should be made to choose whether he's gonna give the color commentary or the play by play because he tries to do both and he just ends up endlessly interrupting himself. "Okay now Thompson just called for a time out and that's the second time out this half, you know I heard that when he played for Georgetown that he used to pass his classes by hiring an underclassman to, and they're back on the field now, whoa did you see that snap?"
  

• Black Friday shoppers with nothing in mind to buy. There are about a dozen sale items in every store the day after Thanksgiving and usually about two thirds of the people in line are there for the same two or three things. But then there are those people who have no idea what they want to buy, who have woken up at four a.m. to stand in a cold parking lot just to browse the clearance rack. These people should be pushed to the front of the line so that the real shoppers can trample them.

• Sex Trend Articles. As the concerned mother of a 9 year old daughter, I can tell you without reservation that I DO NOT need to read about eleven year olds having oral sex, or how a rising percentage of teenagers don't consider anal sex to be violating their virginity pledges, or about the cuddle puddle craze sweeping the nation's middle schools. I don't need to fear colored jelly bracelets or the retro cherry pattern my daughter loves but I can't find because someone decided it was somehow sexual. Why can I not be allowed to believe that nine year olds watch Hannah Montana for the music and still see sneaking into Mom's make up as the pinacle of rebellion?

• Fattening food that's good for me. So olive oil is good for me, has lots of health benefits, but it's just fat so it's high-calorie and will make me gain weight? SO somehow I am supposed to eat like 20 servings of food every single freaking day to stay healthy, yet not eat too much lest I become a fat American stereotype? Suuuure. That makes sense.

• People who claim that cutting calories too much will stall weight loss. Explain to me how, if I cut the calories I take in below what I burn, I'm not going to lose weight? I mean, say what you will about the anorexic - they are thin. And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most people who starve to death kind of scrawny when they die? I mean, eating less isn't a real controversial and untested form of weight loss. It's pretty tried and true.

• Lawn Nazis. No I'm not going to rake. No I'm not going to fertilize. No I'm not going to do a damn thing about the brown patch. And yes, I like dandelions. It's natural, and I believe that my yard is my own tiny sea of nature nestled in amongst all the concrete roads and sidewalks and driveways. So please, stop raking and chemically treating and seeding my yard. You have your yard and I have mine and leave mine the hell alone thank you.

• People with secret upscale rules for living. There are some pretty basic rules for living in polite society, some conversational lines we don't cross and some behaviors we just don't engage in publicly. But some people seem to really make things up as they go along, just so they can then be disgusted when you break a rule. My brother is one of these people. He can share personal information that I never needed to hear and do it with a sense of camaraderie. But if I say anything personal back then suddenly he's all offended and all "TMI TMI". Like if I say something about a broken dresser drawer (hypothetical for instance but still), he'll jump up all put off like "I don't need to know about your bedroom." Yeah, little brother, cuz it's the PORN DRAWER and it's busted from the weight of all my PORN.

• People not much younger than me who speak like they're either a) from "da hood" or b) fifteen years old, and then try to blame my not understanding them on just how old and out of touch I am. This happened the first time my brother called to ask me for a solid ( A what?? Oh, a favor. Well, no, cuz you're being obnoxious, Mr Solid.) and also when a Canadian friend (and by friend I of course mean a guy I know online by a screen name and will never meet in real life) called a video game sick. And get this, he meant sick as a compliment. Because somehow "sick" is the new "awesome". And when I didn't know wtf he was talking about, he acted like I was all decrepit because I don't understand CANADIAN VIDEO GAME SLANG. I mean, c'mon, eh?

• People who point out my gray hairs as though their very existence proves me to be so old and cataract-ridden as to be unable to see them myself. Thanks, Mom.

• Parents who let their teenage (or younger) daughters wear tummy-baring clothes and pants with words on the ass. Also, why are these girls almost always obese? I mean, it's bad enough that your daughter looks like a hooker for the chubby-chasing demographic, but now I need to know that her backside is "Phat"? First off, why are you letting your kid show that much skin at that age, regardless of weight? Second, why are you not teaching your kid about shape-appropriate clothing? And finally, why do you let her wear clothes designed, with big bold font, to draw attention to her butt? And don't be all "You're a pervert if you see a kid that way." The fact is that no matter how asexually you see your kid, the guys her age don't agree with you and letting her dress like Anna Nicole in the 9th grade is just asking for trouble.

• People who act all hurt that you don't trust them, and then prove themselves to be untrustworthy. Gee, I wonder why I never told you what was wrong the other day, considering that I can name at least 3 other people who would have known by now if I had. And don't ask me what's wrong now either, because what's wrong is that you're still trying to get me to tell you my shit and it aint gonna happen.
  

I Finally Got It, And It's Signed!

It's a cell phone photo so forgive the quality.

GLBTCIQQPHalfdyke

When I log into blogger here, I have to use a google login. But for some reason, it's not set up as the same google login as my google homepage. That is to say, I have 2 main email addresses and the one that gets me here is not the one that gets me to the igoogle page with all my headlines and news stories and all that. So after every time I blog, I see a different google page when I hit the little house icon up by my address bar and go back to homepage. And the page that I see has topix.com gay/lesbian headlines front and center, as opposed to on page 2 under the "special interest" tab like it is in my real google account. So when I close out here, I see all sorts of depressing headlines like how Guiliani is disavowing gay rights and 3 people somewhere got arrested in a gaybashing death and a new state or two have banned gay marriage. Real upbeat stuff. But sometimes, in the second it takes me to click 'sign out', I see a headline that grabs my attention enough that after I click 'sign in' I go into the "special interest" tab and look up the article. And such is how I found Dyssonance.

I have been in an online argument for a day or so now with some face-face avatar bashing gays. It happens from time to time and usually I recognize the names and treat them like old feeble-minded friends. "Hey Wil, how ya doin? Haven't come out to the wife and kids yet, huh?" Or "Hey RMOG, I been meaning to ask you, as a biological male how has being diagnosed with micro-penis affected your life and have you considered going to a surgeon specializing in ftm srs?" Sometimes I slip up and, in defense of minorities I don't really belong to, accidentally offend someone. Like when I explained transgenderism as a horrible birth defect wherein the external body is wrongly formed. Yeah, apparently the actual transgendered didn't get their info from the same discovery channel shows I did.

So, after bitching at this bubblegum bimbo on topix for a bit (all in good fun and only during the football games I was powerless to stop), I decided to reach out to a fellow poster. I asked her if she would maybe be willing to educate me so that I don't make the same mistakes I have made before and stick my foot in my mouth. I have heard no response. But in a posting not long ago, she referred to me as "he". See, I have no picture up and since I often post in the gay/lesbian forums, and since I also have been known to mention a husband, and since I like the idea of online anonymity, I do not have a photo in my profile. So there is no reason why anyone on topix should know that I am female, or in a straight marriage. To be honest, there is a tiny part of myself that wants to hide the straight marriage thing, not because of Tom but because for years I clung to the gay identity thing so much and there is a decent anti-bi movement within the gay community. I don't want to be singled out as the one who took the easy way or the one who only does things half way, so I let them assume what they will and only correct what I feel like correcting.

So anyway, waiting to hear from Dyssonance got me thinking about why I don't claim my rightful bisexual title/label. Why do I invent terms like halfdyke? Well, here's what I've come up with: Too many people have too many separate definitions of the word bisexual already. There are just too many completely different pictures that pop into people's heads when they hear the word. If I have to wear a label shouldn't it at least be one that evokes an accurate description? Halfdyke does that. "Half" is pretty self-explanatory, and "dyke" adds a serious lesbian aura to the term and, I hope, pushes hopes of lipstick lesbian 3ways out of people's heads. To too many guys the word bisexual evokes porn cliches where the women are only too eager to welcome the plumber into their party. To a certain percentage of gays, the word bisexual describes a person who just isn't ready to accept their own homosexuality yet, who still desperately clings to the hope that they can be at least a little bit straight. And to some straight women bisexual just means sex, like "bicurious". I've known plenty of girls to whom sex with women was fine, but not dating, or marriage or children or any of the more fulfilling and mundane things. And even though I'm not shopping for it anymore, those mundane things were what I was looking for. I don't even think I really am bisexual. I think I'm probably more pansexual, although the titles don't mean near as much anymore now that I'm married. But I could have gone for anyone as long as I liked them. Gay, straight, male, female, TG, TV, I never really had a preference. I think when the gods were handing out orientations that I missed my turn in line. I could have fallen in love with Tom no matter what he was. The fact that he's a big old hairy mf doesn't seal the deal or anything. I'm not into bears any more than twinks or femmes or butches or pre-ops or post-ops or intersexed or any of it.
But there's no P in glbt so I don't claim pansexual. Or glbtciqq or whatever it is today. And also, the only title I need to describe my love life and sexual habits or leanings is "Married", a title I share with the world with a big fat diamond ring. But otherwise, yeah I still like halfdyke.

ESPN Is Gloria Steinem's Fault

In the 1970s women rebelled. They burned their bras and marched on Washington on a teat-flapping mission. They stopped shaving their legs and gave whatever frightened, cowering, leisure-suit clad man willing to fuck them a rug-burned trip to Hell, demanding the expert orgasms Cosmo promised. They saw themselves as the next formerly oppressed minority granted instant equality and tried to retrain American men overnight to become stay-at-home breastfeeding househusbands.

And for that, the sins of my mother's generation, I am being punished. What was once a weekly ritual is now almost daily, is daily if you have the right cable channels, and I am subjected to it almost constantly during Tom's days at home. I can't even protect my child from it, and in that way I have failed as a mother.

Televised football. Right now, not ten feet behind me, Tom is arguing out loud with the television. Did he drop the ball or didn't he? Did it bounce or not? Was it on the line or over it?

WHO CARES?!?!?!

Why have men lost all perspective? Why would my brother, an otherwise perfectly logical, if possibly sociopathic, man be happy with a home enema kit as long as it had a navy blue sans serif M on it? Why would Tom eagerly pay for a transvestite hooker if (s)he were wearing a University Of Nebraska jersey? Why do they forget that it's a game? It's a children's game, like tag, but it has been stolen by grown men and assigned so many rules, and so much funding.

I don't understand glorifying the athlete. Why do we have Olympics? Why do we have professional sports? And why do we televise these things? I can understand people liking to play sports. I mean, it's playing a game, by definition a fun thing. But to pay other people to play? And to have fun watching total strangers play? And the machismo!

Someone explain to me, please, how it proves your heterosexual manliness to writhe around in a pile with other men, fighting over a ball. And then on top of that, there's the whole "chase the guy with the ball till you score in the end zone" thing, and the tight pants, the butt-slapping, the group showers. I'm not gonna argue that all of these things sound vaguely bath-housey (even though they do) but they sure don't sound like the exact opposite. It's like the homophobia has looped itself, has rolled like an odometer, gone so macho that it flipped over into gay. The same sports that women aren't allowed into have spawned the most vulgar sexual terms. "Which base did you get to?" "Did you score?" And don't even get me started on wrestling. The televised folding-chair kind is bad enough (nothing gay about a 'tag team' in matching sequined unitards) but the official kind is even worse. Yeah, I know. It's ancient and Greek. Well, guess what else is ancient and Greek!

I don't care that the stuff is more than a bit homo-erotic. Hell, I gravitate towards the homo-erotic. I just don't like the Billybobs who have to watch it all the time to prove that they're straight. And by Billybob, I of course mean Tom. Because it doesn't affect me at all when other people's TVs are on for eighteen hours every day, and set to three consecutive football games every day. It only bugs me when it's my TV.

How I Know He's The One

A couple months ago I thought up the perfect idea for my first novel. I had read somewhere that Vonnegut had outlined Slaughterhouse Five on the back of a roll of wallpaper but lacking that, I scrawled a time-line out on post-its and stuck them to a dry erase board. They fell off after about ten minutes and I realized I needed a cork-board. Tom, in his infinite kindness, surprised me with a big cork board and some push-pins. Push-pins, not thumbtacks, since I hate thumbtacks because they always get pushed in too far and I have to push my thumbnail under them just to get them out of the damned bulletin board.

So Tom came home with a big gorgeous cork board exactly like what I needed, and he handed me a little clear lucite box of push-pins. "Is this what you wanted?" he asked. I looked down at the perfectly adequate ho-hum push-pins and nodded. There was no way to tell him that if I had been the one to buy them I would have preferred to get half the amount for three times the price just to get the brightly colored jumbo novelty ones my mother would never let me have. I mean, Tom's the one with the job and all and it's ridiculous to buy 25 pins for the price of 200. And after all, I'm thirty one and by all rights I should be past the stage of having to have every over-priced gimmick my mother wouldn't buy me. So I thanked him and I started hanging up my post-its in fictitious chronological order when Tom took a second little clear lucite box out of his pocket and handed it to me. Brightly colored jumbo novelty push-pins, just like my mother never bought me.

No matter how many times he burps into the phone or declares putting my bra into Ryan's dresser to be "an honest mistake", I will always know that he is The One. He knew to buy me the stupid frivolous waste-of-money push-pins, and he got them without complaint.

I Am Not That Demographic! (denial strikes again)

For my entire life, commerce has pandered to my mother's generation. She is a baby-boomer, and that's a huge demographic, lots of potential buyers. Freedom Rock compilation tapes for aging hippies, kitchen gadgets for the new working moms, and tons of junk being sold by celebrities from back in her day. Suzanne Somers exercise machines, Sally Struthers home diplomas, Lindsay Wagner sleep number beds, all ads aimed at my mother's generation. But now I sense a new trend. The market is pandering to me. More specifically, it's pandering to my childhood.

Bridge To Terabithia, the movie. Transformers, the movie. Psych, a television show about men my age who can't seem to move past the eighties, which ends every episode with an a cappella version of some twenty three year old pop song. Maybe it's just that the retro movement has hit an age I remember from the first time around, or maybe it's that people like me (what a frightening concept) are a big enough target group that they have to notice. I know that the 'skinny' jeans and leg-warmers are just retro fashion. I get that the neo-mullets and giant hoop earrings are a nod at the past and not the return of it. But a Transformers movie twenty years after people stopped buying the toys? What's next, a live action Jem? Thundercats? NOOOOO!

I am not old enough to be pandered to, not on my own dime. Look, manufacturers and ad execs pander to kids with sugary food and over-priced toys, because they know parents will sometimes give in and buy the crap if the kid yells loud enough. And they pander to the middle-aged, because they know that at that age it becomes very important to try to buy back youth. But I'm 31. I am too old to be asking my parents to buy me stuff and I am not yet old enough to be buying back my childhood, or reliving it through senility. I am still young, dammit! I live in the now, not in the past. Old people live in the past and say things like "back in my day," I don't.

Look, I have fond memories of the eighties too. But I also have a distinct connection to reality and the call on that line says not to bring back the big-hair decade. We don't need rockers in spandex, although the return of long hair is of course a welcome respite from insanity. We don't need colored jeans. We really really don't need the musical instruments of the eighties. Keytars, synthesizers, saxophone solos? Am I the only one who remembers how much the eighties sucked? Am I the only one here who remembers MC Serch?

The Dog Must Go

Tom's dog annoys me. For one thing, she burrows under my covers, UNDER MY COVERS! The dogs are allowed to sleep above my covers and under the blanket I have laid out for them, but she insists upon getting between my sheets. And since she is disgustingly obese, and very talented at going limp, she is hard to move.

Also, she licks. Not in a "Oh I seem to have a spot of something on my paw I'd better clean it off" normal doggie kind of way, but in a disgustingly slurpy slobbery loud sort of way, all night. She licks her paws, her crotch (ugh, like I need to hear that), the other dog's face, the inside of the other dog's ears, the blankets, whatever is nearby, and she does this all night. It is nauseating to try to fall asleep to the sound of dog slobber being slopped all over the room. And at least three times a night she wakes me up crying because she's decided she can't get on the bed without permission, despite the fact that this has never been a rule and that she hops up on her own all the time.

The dog, probably from being so obese (a beagle built like an eggplant, not pretty), farts. Horrible mustard gas dog farts, with no warning and a loooooong hang-time. It's like invisible fumigators sneak into my home for no reason, periodically throughout the day. It's an especially pleasant experience during dinner, the smell of doggie diarrhea permeating the room. And when she goes into heat, which Tom won't pay to stop, she bleeds everywhere because she is TOO FAT TO REACH HER OWN GENITALS and therefore can't keep herself clean. In my opinion becoming too fat to reach your own genitals should be punishable by death, no matter the species unless you are some form of water-life. Whales can get away with it, but the gods at least gave elephants trunks to compensate. And I don't overfeed the dogs, it's just that this one eats for all of them.

She howls. At nothing. I have hung tarps around the dog pen so she can't see squirrels or bunnies or stray cats, whatever it was that she was barking at. Now she barks at the crinkling and fluttering of the tarps. And when she howls, the other dog howls too. Yes, I have three dogs, but MY dog, the little unobtrusive dog I brought into the relationship, doesn't sleep on the bed and can only yip, not howl. And I do mean howl, a basset hound baying that carries throughout the neighborhood and gets me phone calls. (Remember Roscoe's dog on The Dukes Of Hazzard?) And when I open the back door and tell her to SHUT THE FUCK UP, she goes down into the dog pen and lays down. I refuse to think of what she might lay in.

Tom, if you remember (and I do), originally got the dog to ride in the truck. It was only when he found out that CFI charged a $500 non-refundable deposit to keep a dog in their truck that she ended up at the house full-time. But when he bought his own truck, he took the annoying dog away. Life was once again good, sleep was once again uninterrupted and slobber-free. And now he says he's not sure he's taking her back out on the road. It seems he doesn't like having to walk her, or listen to her cry, or smell her intestines die. Now, I am a dog lover; I think it's cruel when people leave their dogs outside all the time. Hey, if you're going to get a pet, make it part of the family! But this dog will not survive living at my house full-time. I will stop trying to prevent her from running out the front door EVERY SINGLE TIME THE DOOR OPENS. I will let her escape and then not try to catch her, not call her name out, nothing. I will simply hope that she doesn't wander into traffic, that she finds her way home like she always has without worrying obsessively that she won't.

Yes, I feel for Tom. He has this whole "a boy and his dog" thing going on where he is the happy white kid and she is his loyal beagle, but the happy white kid in the movies doesn't leave the beagle home with his sister for weeks at a time. If that were the case it would be called "a girl and her animal cruelty charge".

Come on, people. Wake up to the real threat.

Wish List

When I was eighteen I wrote out a list of things I wanted, which I have long since lost. It wasn't like an amazon wishlist, full of trinkets and gadgets and material things, although certainly it had on it some material things. It was a goals list, but without vague hard to define goals like success and health. It was full of things like 'husband' and 'children' and 'front porch', things that I wanted to acquire during my lifetime and which were at the time important enough to warrant being written on a list. Since then, of course, I have gotten many of the things on the list. I am married, I have a child, and I currently live in a house with a front porch. So now I am revamping the list, for a new millennium, hopefully not to be lost like the last one. So here it is, to be considered a constant work in progress and to be added to at random:

1) a front porch with a wood floor

2) a son, to even things out

3) a Prius

4) a soft chair all my own in a terribly ugly yet comforting pattern

5) a manuscript written by me

6) an anniversary ring, doesn't matter what kind, commemorating an anniversary higher than my parents achieved

7) a house with a tree

8) a full set of matching towels, every single one the same color

to be continued. . . .

I Have Become So Bitter

One of my favorite movie quotes ever is from a funeral scene, about a man who committed suicide and didn't leave a note. The preacher says, "Is not the satisfaction of being a good man among average men enough to sustain us?" or something close to that. I used to think that the satisfaction of being a good person was enough. In fact, I still firmly believe that the source of happiness is knowing that you are a good person. But now, I'm not so sure I am. I nitpick, and I judge. I have so little patience or tolerance. The neighbor guy across the street drag races and he spends whole afternoons revving the car up, I assume while working on it. Used to be, I'd close my door and turn up the TV and not care about the noise. It's the middle of the day and he has a right to his hobby. If I wanted absolute silence and solitude I should have moved to the country. And the guy is nice enough to wait until the afternoon rather than start at 8:00 in the morning. But now, I want to bomb his house. I have become bitter and bitchy lately, and I know why. It's a spiral. I want to move, to buy a house all our own in a city where a traffic jam doesn't mean a tractor. I want to have babies. I want Tom to get the local job he's been promising to get. I'm getting tired of waiting for our life together to start. I've always seen these first few years of our marriage as a short step. Someday I'll look back on them and they'll just be those rough times in the beginning when Tom was on the road. But I'm ready now for the rough times to be over with, thank you very much. Also, my novel isn't doing anything. I've stalled, and no amount of staring at a white screen seems to be helping, not that it would. Basically I don't feel productive, or useful. And I hate to go apply for a job and then have to leave in nine or ten months to have a baby. I plan to go to college when we move, to become a paralegal. I wait only because any classes I take here, in Illinois, won't be any good in Nebraska and no one here hires paralegals anyway.

So tell me, how do I get my satisfaction back?

A Nation Of Mental Progeria

I firmly believe that people in this country, as a whole, need to grow the fuck up. When I was a child I thought as a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things. -Corinthians I 13:11 The only bible verse I have ever bothered to memorize. I see middle aged men struggling to pay for their kids' college educations, yet they drive flashy convertibles in a vain attempt to recapture their youth. I see beautiful women in their forties wearing short shorts and halter tops and looking completely ridiculous, all because they want to be 21 again. These people need to grow the hell up. They don't have to wear appliqued sweatshirts with tissues shoved up the sleeves or play golf in a knee-brace, but they can give up the dream of reliving puberty.

That being said, I believe that some things exist solely to give joy, with no mature or responsible purpose at all. Games are one of them. Faith is another.

I have spent a good majority of my life living within a block of some grade school or another and I can tell you, when kids play they do it all the way. They scream. On the way down a slide, in the bounce at the top of the swing's arc, and while running away from whoever is "It", they scream. But when adults play, they don't scream anymore. They are too worried about looking stupid should they throw back their head and laugh with an open mouth. And they have so many rules. Organized sports are terrible things. Sports should never be organized, ever. They should be games played for fun in a park or an open field somewhere by people who agree in the beginning that referees are just bossy people who don't belong. Sports should be played by kids, no matter the age, not by professional businessmen more concerned with contract settlements and draft picks than with having fun.

I was raised by two parents with very little in common, except that they were both raised by parents who pushed upon them the importance of the church. As a direct result of this, my family never went to church. After years of reading about exotic belief systems and familiar doctrines, I have come to the conclusion that faith should be personal. Whatever it is that makes you feel connected to the universe is what's right for you. But when one man's method of connection gets written down, edited, footnoted, and bellowed into a loudspeaker in a building built just to house the loudspeaker, it somehow stops being personal. It starts being pushy, and condescending, and less about the joy. When religions have been organized, historically, they have gone from focusing on a connection with fellow man to focusing on the superiority over fellow man, and how to haul the fellow man kicking and screaming up onto a pedestal he may have no urge to mount. I believe that the only way to truly worship anything is to do it yourself, in your own words. How am I the one praying if I recite the words someone else thought up to describe how they felt? Does every single Catholic really feel an emotional connection to the Hail Mary?

I think the toys and the flings and the trends that adults cling to in an attempt to avoid being grown ups are about as ridiculous as if the same people were out riding bigwheels on the sidewalk. A little whimsy is nice, but when "Age is just a number" means you act thirteen rather than thirty, there's a problem. Some things are supposed to be innocent, and we corrupt them with rules and laws and grounds for disqualification. But the things that should be responsible and mature and adult, we seem to ignore. We are becoming, if we aren't already, a nation of tiny children in old creaking bodies.

New Floors & Shiny Gifts

Reason number three hundred fifty seven to hate the people who lived here before me: They glued down their carpet.

Reason number three hundred fifty eight to hate the people who lived here before me: They filled holes in the original hardwood floors with joint compound, and then glued carpet to it.

What are reasons one through three hundred fifty six? I don't have enough time to list them all but having to remove glued down and disintegrated-by-time carpet padding, some of which was glued to crumbling plaster, is definitely worth mentioning. But, aside from the quarter inch of bright yellow dust covering every semi-flat surface in my house, I am fairly happy with how the new kitchen floor looks. Ryan is of course disappointed that we didn't paint, which is what her limited experience with carpet-induced parental insanity has taught her should come next, but the kitchen looks nice. And the dust has given me the motivation to finally clean ten years of cigarette smoke off the kitchen walls. But Tom is hobbling around stoop-shouldered like an old man, and my flat feet are hurting more than they have in a long time and the curb in front of my house has a higher mountain of trash bags than any other house on the street. All in all, a productive couple of days.

On a lighter note, Tom seemed to like the new giant rolling tool chest I got him for our anniversary, even though it got wedged in the back of my mom's pickup truck and he had to provide the muscle to get it out, and then wrestle it down to his basement workshop. And I love my gift. A purse, a pair of gloves (three is the 'leather anniversary') and the black pearl ring that I have wanted forever. To hear Tom tell it, I have "been talking about that damn thing for the past three years." He spoils me so much.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Remember a couple months back when I got mad at my living room carpet? Well today Tom stepped on a wet spot in the kitchen. So tonight he announces, box cutter in hand, that the kitchen carpet must die. And I can't get mad at him for it, or point out how foolish it is to undertake such a project a day and a half before he leaves, because I know what it's like to get mad at the carpet. So this is the scene in my kitchen tonight:



PS- Today is our third anniversary. How fitting that we prove so compatible on such an auspicious occasion.

It's The Happiest day Of The Year

Happy National Coming Out Day!

Barnabus, You Dolt!

It's funny how you remember things years after the fact. My mom once told me of a story about a British lawyer's assistant who did amazingly good work but never left the office. In fact, she had read a story about a Wall Street lawyer's assistant who refused to work and never left the office. And how did I finally get the title to this masterpiece? From a reference I heard on the morning radio show I listen to. Ah, humanity.

Uncles

Four o'clock in the afternoon. Road construction on a busy US highway. I am driving, trying to beat my daughter home from Girl Scouts. I am buzzed, a combination of not eating anything yet today and drinking two beers. I hate myself.

My youngest paternal uncle is in town today. He lives in Florida and so my well-meaning aunt (married to my older, but not quite oldest, paternal uncle) chose to sync up our visits at the same time. He was stopping by while in town, I was stopping by to pick up some papers of my late father's. A little family reunion ensued, if by family reunion you mean two drunks, a middle-aged woman compulsively offering food to her guests, and me, the only available link to a dead man, sitting around a kitchen table trading stories. Ahhh, family.

My father came from a long line of drunk Archie Bunkers. If you were their color, religion, nationality, gender, approximate age and income level, and willing to buy them a beer, you were okay. To the rest of you high-falutin' blue-bloods, who needs ya! Being a non-racist inclusionary halfdyke like myself, I have always suffered some discomfort with my father's side of the family, especially since he died. See, they want to like me. I am Barry's blood, I'm all they have left of him. But I am not him, and that always disappoints. For many years I tried to be him; I slept around and I drank a lot and I pointed out the errors in other people's logic at the bar. But somehow the behavior one accepts from a middle aged war veteran isn't so well-received coming from a twenty year old girl. Also, the homophobe who applauds a hearty "Nice rack!" from a man won't always take it so well from a woman, not at the local VFW.

But still I try. I hate myself for it but for some reason, probably because these men are all that I have left of my father's blood, I try to find some common ground. So I laugh at their stupid jokes ("Want a bigger chest? Just rub some toilet paper between your boobs; it sure made your ass grow. Hahahahaha!") and I drink the beer they offer no matter the time, and I pretend for an afternoon that my father was the same man to me that he was to them, that he was a loyal and loving member of my immediate family and not some distant rarely seen face from my childhood. I try to pretend that I'm no longer angry with him when the most painful part of mourning him is my anger. And I really really try, harder than anything else, not to get a DUI on the fifteen mile drive home from the bar.

He does NOT have RLS!

TOM (lying in bed): I think I have RLS.

ME: You do not have RLS.

TOM: How can you know that? Do you even know what RLS is?

ME: Because no one really has RLS! In parts of the world where people actually know suffering, nobody complains about RLS! No one with any real concerns sits in bed at night going "Hmmm, I think my leg is twitchy." Get yourself some real worries and quit thinking your leg wants to kick something. Wanna know what it wants to kick? Your own ass, for being such a hypochondriac!

TOM: Nah, I think I have RLS.

E-Commerce At It's Finest

My mother only has internet at work. A week or so back she was rushing to work every day so she could go online, click the little link in her email, and track a package she had ordered. She so wanted this package to arrive. It was a purchase she had debated for months and she felt completely gluttonous for ordering it. So one day I got a call that she had rushed to work and clicked the link to track her package, which was due any day now, only to find that it had been outside her front door all night. So I had to drive across town in the rain to let the package in. All this for a fucking robot vacuum that almost choked to death on a dog turd last Friday.

May The Force Be With You

There is a force in the world for which I have been searching my whole life. This force, which only a few lucky souls ever connect to, is full of wonderment and joy and absurdity. I want to find this force, and connect to it. Sometimes I can feel it nearby, can almost touch it, but it never chooses me through which to emerge. This force is the line, the very fine line, which separates the ditsy (Joey Tribbiani) from the silly (Phoebe Buffay). It is a way of looking at things which embraces the obvious and then twists it, looking at in from a previously ignored angle. It is what makes people ask "Why not?" Most geniuses channel this force. Most successful inventors do as well, which is why most good inventions make the average consumer think, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Some people try to mimic the force, and they look so sad and obvious. The comedian who finishes every joke with "Huh? Huh?" waiting for the audience to laugh. The guy who does the funniest thing ever, a week after seeing someone else do it, in front of the same people. No, the force is what we love about fiction's greatest characters. Chris Knight, Shawn Spencer, Lucas, the people who say what we wish we could think of. The Jacks and Karens as opposed to the Wills and Graces.

I want that force. I want to be silly and fun, but not ditsy and flaky. I want to find that balance, channel that absurdist energy. I want to be campy and unashamed and outrageous. Oh, but to have a goal I could see.

I'd Hope They'd Change The Alert Name.

About a month ago a bunch of nuclear warheads went missing, flown around the country with no real security measures, and no one noticed for thirty six hours. Yep, nuclear bombs as strong as 60 Hiroshima bombs, floating around unsecured and not even missed, for over a day.

On a completely unrelated note, the Pentagon admitted a while back that it had entertained the notion of developing a non-lethal gay bomb. Yeah, see they'd drop this bomb (no doubt missile-shaped with a big purple tip) and it would simultaneously make the enemy gay and also release massive amounts of aphrodisiacs. So the enemy would forget to blow up us and just blow each other instead. By non-lethal I assume they meant that the effects of the bomb would never wear off. Because if the insurgents are nothing else, they do seem to be perfectly willing to kill themselves, and suddenly coming to with Achmed's cock in his mouth might be enough to push some guy in that direction.

Now, the gay bomb idea is offensive, sure. But more than that, it's hilarious. I bet no less than three dozen gay comics are pissed that they didn't think up the concept. I mean, the term "friendly fire" alone is a killer punchline. But come on, the premises on which this bomb idea is built are so laughably ignorant, it's hard to be offended.

1. We can make people gay. Because the fundies wouldn't have found the magical sexuality-switcher formula already, although in the Pentagon's defense, the fundies aren't really up on the latest science.
2. Gay people have no taste. So once the gay bomb goes off, they'll just screw whoever's nearby. Because when you think about it, it is the gay men and not the straight men who seem to exhibit less taste. That's why the gay men are the out-of-shape slobs and the straights are the perfectly groomed fashion divas. Uh, wait. . .
3. Somehow American troops are immune to "The Gay". That's how we know that the bomb vapors won't affect our troops on the ground. Wow, if a gay bomb had gone off in Cuba, the pictures from gitmo would have looked so much . . . exactly the same. (Btw, don't ever google 'gitmo pictures'. You get all sorts of war photos and small children with missing chunks of head are not that photogenic.)
4. The enemy will appreciate the non-lethal nature of a gay bomb and not be at all vindictive or bent of revenge just because we made all of them have lots and lots of hot gay sex. For the record, all gay sex is hot, even combat-sweaty stinky insurgent in the desert sex. Although, while under the effects of our mind-control homo-erotic bomb, they may be considered prisoners of war. And we've been assured by the current administration that we do not torture, or treat cruelly, any prisoners of war. So. . . we'd have to drop massive WWII-era propaganda bombs with single-serve tubes of KY jammed where the leaflets go. It's just courteous.
5. To avoid violating the Geneva Convention (again), we have to assume that somehow forcing people to have sex against their will is not rape, which historically has been considered a war crime. Sadly, current US laws see it differently. I mean, even if the people dropping the bombs aren't the ones getting laid because of it, it's still kind of a date rape drug.


Now, my question about those missing warheads is this: How much better security would the gay bomb have had? After all, nukes can kill you, but the gay bomb poses a serious threat. I mean, if I got my hands on a few of those, I'd be bombing those ginormous mega-churches on a Sunday morning. Take that, Promise Keepers!

And that's only if the Republican National Convention wasn't coming up.