Been Busy Lately

I have really been busy lately, I have been meaning to post, but it seems that every time I sit down to write something comes up. Last Saturday night I was going to write about my latest venture to the local Walmart, but then a situation came up. My youngest son was spending the night at my sister in laws' house and we got a call around 11:00 because he apparently forgot to bring his athsma inhaler. So, I had to drive 45 minutes to go and get him, which was not in my plans for the evening. But, it was during this drive that I started to think about all of the little unplanned adventures that life throws our way. In my life, there have been many times where I have found myself doing something where I have suddeny thought to myself "What the fuck am I doing here? How did this happen?" Situations like the time I found myself in the kitchen of a biker named Little Bob getting a tattoo, or the time I was hanging onto the back of a firetruck, wearing a civil war military uniform driving through a small town in upstate New York, I even once found myself being bullied into doing the Chicken Dance at a petting zoo. It is at times like these where you mentally stop for a second, take stock of the stiuation and realize that every decision that you have made in your life has led you directly to where you are. Something as trivial as choosing the chicken instead of the beef at a wedding could have changed everything. But there you are doing something that really was not on your lifes itinerary, for better or worse.

By the way, if you do ever find youself in a bikers kitchen getting a tattoo, it is really time to reconsider the direction your life is heading. Especially, if like me, you are not a biker. It is one of those situations where there really is very little chance of something good coming as a result of you being there. When I did this particular stunt, all I could think about was the nickname of the guy giving the tattoo. Little Bob was not little, and for all I know maybe his name wasn't even Bob. I was obsessing about his name, was it one of those ironic nicknames, like the bald guy named Curley, or was there an even bigger Bob smewhere in the world. A Bob who was a mountain of a man making the earth tremble with each step, eclipsing the sun, and making bitches like me do his bidding. I never asked Little Bob about this, while I really do not have a whole lot of experience in these matters, I would think that it really is not a good idea to get a large biker angry while he is giving you a tattoo. Actually, I cannot think of a time when it would be a good idea to get a big biker angry, but especially not when he is giving you a tattoo. The reality of the situation was that Little Bob was in fact big enough to make a little bitch like me do his bidding.

While I am on the subject of tattoos, I am facinated by the neck tattoo, specifically the people who think it is a good idea to get one. I found myself in Walmart recently, I had to get the oil changed in my wifes' car. I had some tme to kill while waiting for the car so I was just walking around the Walmart. I was struck by the amount of people walking around with poorly made tattos on their necks. Now, I am obviously not anti-tattoo, but I do think that they do need to be strategically placed. The avereage person should be able to hide their tattoos for certain situations, like weddings, job interviews, stuff like that. The people who get neck and facial tattoos really interest me. There are certian occupations where you can pul off a neck tattoo. Professional atheletes, and rock stars can get away with them, as can tattoo artists. These are the types of people who are really not going to be held back by a neck tattoo. Outside of that, there are few situations where a neck tattoo will not hold you back. When your average jerk off the street gets a home-made tattoo on their neck, they think they are saying "Fuck The World", when in reality it is the world that is going to fuck them. For the average person a neck tattoo says "I am perfectly happy with minimum wage and subsidized housing". You are now pretty much embracing the world of social service intervention and law enforcement officials knowing you on a first name basis.

The Horror of it all

I teach High school. Last week I was teaching an 11th grade English class, getting the kids ready for mid-term exams, doing my part to shape the minds of the future generation. Which, if you knew anything about my misspent youth, is pretty ironic. So the class is going great, kids are quiet, learning, progress is being made. I was explaining something to a kid on one side of the room when there was a sudden commotion on the other side of the room, and kids start calling my name. I turned to quell a possible uprising, because I have been teaching for a while and I know that it is pretty easy for these kids to turn on you. But, I do not find an uprising, instead, I find a kid throwing up all over his desk. Within minutes the room smells horrible, almost nightmarish. I have a stinky room full of teenagers who now are all freaking out. At this time I thought to myself "What an undignified way to make a fucking living". I have a masters degree and my job includes such duties as being told to fuck off for asking a kid to take a baseball hat off. I also, at times have to break up fights, and let me tell you when two teenage girls are fighting, they fight dirty and do not care if those breaking up the fight get hurt.

In reality though, it is not just my job. Life in general is full of a constant barrage of indignities that we all have to suffer through each day. For instance, I have the worst hair known to man. It is puffy, frizzy and sticks up all over the place. If I don't keep it short I pretty much look like I am walking around wearing a clown wig. Why is it that I have to walk through life with hair such as this?

The other day I was at a convenient store. There was some asshole at the register, who, apparently had just cashed in his 401k plan and was now investing in lottery tickets. I was stuck in an agonizing wait for my cup of coffee. There was a guy in front of me in line who was well dressed, professional looking, I suppose he was a nice enough man. While we were waiting this poor guy sneezed, and when he sneezed he farted loudly, and you could tell he was embarrassed. I thought to myself 'there but for the grace of God go I'. But, this is just an example of one of the many little things we all have to put up with on a day to day basis. Bad hair, seezefarts, acne, spilling shit on your shirt on the way to work, random cat fights at work are all examples of things that fate throws at us day after day. All of these constant little indignities either make us stronger, or reduce us to whimpering quivering shells of humanity, and when you wake up in the morning you never really know which way it is going to go.

If you were wondering, the sneezefart guy played it off like nothing happened. He just kept waiting in line and all of us tried to avoid making eye-contact with him. What can you really do in a situation like that? My first instinct would have been to drop my purchases and run out of the store yelling "You all suck".

Oprah

Oprah made me cry yesterday, I am not usually big on showing emotions, I almost never cry, in fact I am pretty much an emotional cripple. The only time I seem to find myself crying is when I watch Oprah. Yesterday she had this story about a kid who was a twin and his brother died of cancer and he was apparently inconsolable. He managed to find comfort in baking and started his own business and donated the profits to all of the different charities that helped his family while hos brother was sick. It was fucking heart-wrenching. Then Oprah asked the kid who his favorite celebrity was and he said it was Paula Dean; and guess who pops up with a plate of cookies. At this point I am sitting on the couch bawling.

Next, as if this was not enough, Oprah gives the kid and his family ten grand to buy stuff for his kitchen and expand his kitchen. This is when it dawned on me that Oprah is the real life version of the Wizard of Oz. She just gives people stuff and their lives are better. I once watched her show and she gave a guy who lost weight and she gave him a Porsche. I have this dream of going to see Oprah only instead of asking for a heart or courage, having her give me a stronger work ethic. maybe that way I could make something of my life.

The News

I watch the news a lot, I am middle aged, so I feel as though it is a requirement. This past week there were two stories that really caught my attention. First, Mike Tyson apparently went after some guy in an airport. The second was Mariah Carey making some speech while apparently drunk. While these two stories obviously were not the most important things going on this week, I have stuff to say about both of them.

Now Mike Tyson is a boxer. He makes a living kicking peoples asses. That is what he does. When he fills out his taxes, under profession, he has to put that he is a can of whupass. We as a society have given him fame and fortune based upon his extraordinary skills at violence. I have listened to interviews that he has given, and he seems like a nice enough guy, and I feel deeply for anyone who has had to bury a child, but he is a fighter. So, should we really be surprised when he goes after some annoying reporter in an airport? In fact, in light of the stuff this poor guy has had to go through with the death of his daughter, combined with the fact that he is a pretty violent man I think we should actually be a little more surprised if he manages to make it through an airport without attacking someone.

Mariah Carey is a pop star, a musician. When the hell did a drunk musician become a newsworthy item? There was a time when we trusted our musicians to do stuff like that. Kieth Moon drove a car into a hotel swimming pool, Kieth Richards had to get a blood transfusion to enter the country. I am sure that a star like Dean Martin not only would have given a speech while drunk, but he probably would have continued to drink while doing so. This story either says that we have become so obsessed with the lives of our stars that we take a certain ammount of joy in their weaknesses, or it speaks to the double standard of the standards we set for male stars as opposed to woman female stars.

Christmas Gifts

For Christmas this year my wife got me a hat. I really, really wanted this hat, it is cold here and I need to keep warm while out clearing the driveway. This is upstate New York and during the winter that becomes a major task, one which takes up a tremendous ammount of time. Especially if you have kids like mine, who will without fail come up with a incurable ailment, or suddenly remember a pressing homework assignment whenever the driveway needs shoveling. Actually, while I may bitch about it, I really don't mind shoveling. I can listen to my i-pod, and I kind of find the solitude comforting.

Anyway, back to the hat. The hat I wanted was a mad bomber hat, the kind with the ear flaps and all, and as you can see it is wonderful. The only problem is that my wife absolutely hates the hat. She is mortified when I wear it, and says that with my beard, the fur on the hat makes me look just too hairy. She also complains that I look like I have just stumbled in from the frozen tundra, perhaps returning from hunting rabbits.

The thing that gives this tale an O Henryesque twist of irony is one of the gifts I gave to her for Christmas. I got her an electric mattress heater, and I hate this damn thing. It gets the bed way too hot and it is impossible to find a cool spot while falling asleep. Even though only her side is turned on, it gets warm. it kind of makes me long for the Lucy and Ricky days, where married couples each had thier own beds, and I guess would schedule conjical visits. But this is just like "The Gift of the Maji", only instead of the giver sacrificing their most prized possessions for their spouse, gifts were given that annoyed the living shit out of the givers. While admittadly, the story is not written as flowery as my favorite author would have written, it is still romantic in a real world sort of way.

Facebook

It was with great joy that I first signed up for a Facebook account. I was promised the opportunity to reconnect with old friends, meet new people with interests similar to mine, stuff like that. It was going to be a total reworking of my social life. I am not the friendliest person and I wanted to abandon my misanthropic ways, reach out to people, be normal.

It was not long after reconnecting with some long lost acquaintances that I started to realize why it was that I lost contact with these people in the first place. People drift in and out of your life all the time, it happens. I really do not have a lot in common with someone I was friends with in grammar school. Maybe we used to be close, but life has taken us on different journeys. There are people with whom I am very glad to be talking to or writing to again but for the most part I really find the whole Facebook experience to be a waste of time, do I really care if someone who I have not seen for years has found an imaginary lonely cow on a farm that does not even fucking exist? No, not really.

On another front winter is here, I live in the northeast. People bitch and complain about the snow, but it is what it is. We choose to live here, it gets cold, it snows. If people do not like it there is a whole country to live in, and there are places where shit like that does not happen. I love the first snowfall, when the trees get all covered, and you stand outside in the silence where the only sound is the almost imperceptible hiss of the snow falling. This year the first snowfall came during a full moon, I stood outside in the blue light, and it was almost spiritual, and I am usually not a sappy person but it was nice. Of course, not the snow is all just grey shitty sludge, filled with dirt and pollution that you track all over the house.

Winter has also brought chipmunks back into my life. I live in a pretty rural area, and I am constantly trying to fend off nature from intruding itself into my little area of the world. It is a continuous epic struggle, with wins and losses on both sides. But, I am constantly trying to keep stuff from growing on my roof or doing battle with some woodland creature who has made its' way into my house. This past weekend my youngest son found a chipmunk sitting on the stairs. Now there is currently a movie in the theaters that depicts having chipmunks in the house as a hilarious affair with a lot of singing and dancing and general shenanigans going on. In reality, it is not like that. First of all it is very very hard to get the little bastards to sing. Oh, they will wear the sweaters and dance all right, but just try to get the little fuckers to sing. They really hate it. So, I captured the offending creature, and I would like to say that I released it gently back into the wild, but in reality I made an example of the fucking thing, hoping that the other chipmunks would see what happens when you mess with me. I won the battle but not the war, because yesterday I noticed my cat playing with something, something that was dead, another goddamn chipmunk. They are now throwing themselves at me like cannon fodder. They know that I have the size and certain advantages like technology and thumbs, but they have numbers. They know this and they are using it to chip away at my fucking sanity.

The hopeful Return

It has been way too long. I almost forgot about the whole posting thing. You see I tend to fall into kind of a depression from time to time, feel lethargic, no motivation crap like that. Once this happens it is hard to jump back into stuff, so I fell out of the habit of writing. I , unfortunately also fell out of the habit of working out, something I was doing rather regularly, so while I have not been posting on the blog, I pretty much have just been loafing about becoming a large mammal, wallowing in the mud affecting the tides that sort of thing. Hopefully this will jump-start me into restarting some of those healthier habits. As I am writing this I am having a hard time I don’t know why.
So, what is new there are tons of observations about life that have happened while I was on hiatus. The thing is where to start. Well I had something interesting happen to me, I went to a christening. It was for my niece, which was wonderful and all, but that is not what was interesting. You see to go to the christening I put on my suit, my only suit. I am not really a suit wearing guy, I only have one and I do not wear it very often. So I guess that it has been almost a year since I last wore my suit. I pulled it out of the closet, dusted it off, and made sure it fit before I began ironing. So, I put the thing on and find that there are all sorts of thing left in my pockets from the last time I wore the suit. I start pulling objects out of the pockets, and I am finding things like an almost empty pack of smokes, a cocktail napkin, some skee-ball prize tickets, and a small wrench. I begin to wonder, what the fuck was I doing last time I wore this suit that would cause me to amass such an eclectic assortment of objects. I mean the smokes and napkins are pretty understandable, but what is the deal with the tools and skee-ball tickets? The problem with me and my suit is that I often wear it to events that are open bar. This is not a good scenario for me. I lack one of the essential ingredients necessary for a successful open bar affair, that being a modicum of self control. There are people in the world that can go to a wedding, enjoy the open bar, dance, mingle and have a good time. They may wake up the next day with a cloudy head, perhaps an embarrassing photo or two that will be posted on Facebook. Unfortunately for me I tend to wake up the day after an open bar event with unexplained bruises, a list of apologies that I need to make, and an appointment for court ordered therapy. And to be honest I cannot wait for the next one to roll around.
While I am writing I need to get something off my chest, I hate the predictability and standard formulas that have taken over mainstream movies. For example, have you ever really paid attention to a standard car chase in a mainstream movie? I was watching the movie “Wanted” this summer when I noticed that in every car chase all cars pretty much go the same speed. It is like this, in the movie Angelina Jolie and some other guy are being chased. They jump into their car which happens to be a Dodge Viper and the guy chasing them jumps into a bread delivery truck. They cannot lose this fucking guy. They delivery truck for some reason is not only as fast as the viper, but it seems to handle as well as the dodge. What is the purpose of buying a car like a Dodge viper if you cannot outrun a fucking delivery truck? I would be pissed if I spent all of that money on a sports car and could not manage to shake the goddamn UPS guy.