Verona's Journal

What is this weed?

2011-10-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last year trying to figure out how to have a grass-free yard. It's harder than I thought it would be. I covered most of the backyard in a layer of old cardboard and covered that in mulch from the city landfill and in pine needles from Lowe's. Bermuda grass laughed at my efforts. My layer of hard-won mulch was covered in verdure within six weeks. That's fine, as long as the

I Salute The Late Jake Midnight

2011-10-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

Jake Midnight died about a year ago. I've written about him before here and here. I met him in the mid-90s, I think in the neighborhood coffee shop. We used to talk about getting out of debt and off the grid. He was more successful than I was with that kind of thing overall, and the chapper is, by the time I finally managed to get a yard and means to some self-sufficiency, he'd kicked the bucket.

Significant Others That Aren't People

2011-09-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

Earlier this season an episode of Doctor Who made me reflect on a similar situation in my own life. In "The Doctor's Wife," a living woman comes to embody the spirit of the Doctor's beloved TARDIS. As the Doctor's transportation, the TARDIS is an essential component of the Doctor himself. After all, nobody would watch a show about a bored Time Lord who did nothing but stay at home on on

Reverse Feed Bag

2011-09-13T05:57:00.001-07:00

On Sunday a friend of ours told us about an innovative and inexpensive strategy she developed for keeping vomit off the couch.This friend, we'll call her Mareva, spent a semester in Ireland when she was in college. Drago, one of her old Irish housemates, is visiting her now, and they came over for dinner. Mareva told us when she arrived at her student residence in Cork, she walked in to find a

Wrestling Fans 1, Ceramic Clowns 0

2011-04-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen my cousin Hoyt in a long time - he's MIA; perhaps he joined the witness protection program. Nobody's seen or heard from him in forever. My old friend Phoenicia and I have been waxing nostalgic about him lately. We've left messages for him at his job but he doesn't return calls. He is on of the most fun people I've ever ever killed time with, so in honor of Hoyt I'm going to dust

Squirrel Stomachs Are Bottomless Pits

2011-04-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Anybody have ideas about how to keep these guys out of the bird feeder? How can so much food disappear into such a small animal?

My neighbor, Mrs. Brown Snake

2011-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Was excited to find this Brown Snake under a paving stone in the yard. I hear they eat slugs. Yesterday was fabulous. I planed 3 Nanking Cherry trees and 3 American Plums. I have raspberry, elderberry, and dwarf blueberries on the way. I wanted to plant some apple trees but now I don't think I'll have the space. I moved a small mulberry tree from the north side of the house near the AC unit to

Setbacks

2011-03-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

Today I spent all afternoon making a new cage to cover raised beds. After much profanity, fit throwing, deep breathing episodes to regain calm, two trips to the hardware store, and glue (a lot of which I got on myself), I went out a few minutes ago to carry my new project off the deck and into the yard. I bumped the railing on my way out and the whole thing sprang apart.This latest version of

Groundhog Protection

2011-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

This is the cage we built to keep groundhogs out of our raised bed. I call it Botsford's Incarcitorium For Wayward Produce. It's made of PVC and chicken wire, and was both more expensive and more complicated to make than I anticipated. I don't remember exactly but I think it might have been around $50, and it took all day Sunday pretty much to put it together. I had planned to do it myself but

Getting started at last

2011-02-07T05:21:00.000-08:00

I started this blog because I wanted to write about Permaculture and self-reliance projects. At the time I'd taken a Permaculture course but lived in a 3rd floor walkup in a condo building where the board was hostile to gardening activities on the grounds. After much drama, suspense, and a lot longer than we originally anticipated, we have at last acquired a yard - and it's not in a historic

Jean Blues Update

2010-04-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

I recently got around to buying some iron-on patches for the holey jeans mentioned in my last post. I followed the directions for applying them. Then I washed the jeans, and the patch came off for the most part. The parts that stayed stuck are attached to the fibers within the tear, so if I try to rip it off it'll make the rip worse. I am really bitter about this.

Jean Blues

2009-08-31T04:22:00.000-07:00

Jeans of this breed are so rare I am almost afraid to wear them because they are so precious. I'll explain why: They neither bare your anal cleft when you stoop (jeans of today), nor make your ass look like an empty sack (jeans of the 80s/ early 90s). They don't grab you around the middle and squish your organs, like Calvin Kleins did in the age of designer jeans, and they don't have that dumbass

Alien Planet Needs Bands

2009-08-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

If aliens beamed me aboard their ship and said look, we want to clone some musicians so we can bring good music to our home planet, and we need you to recommend some, I'd start with this one:That's Nick Gilder of Hot Child In The City fame. So many of his songs were good, but he's pretty much considered a one-hit wonder. He's still performing in Canada with the band he left right before he hit it

Old People

2009-08-11T08:21:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, I remember hearing adults talk about who'd been in the obituaries lately. Especially my grandmother - she'd ask me "You remember so and so?" and I'd shake my head, and she'd get exasperated and tell me things about that person to jog my memory, to no avail. I'd be thinking, all you adults look alike to me. Then she'd go on and tell me all the details of that person's untimely

Sado-Masochistic Violinist

2009-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

So: To set the scene, I need to explain that I'd just gotten out of graduate school and had a crummy, hateful job that involved talking to demanding people on the phone all day for very little money. But I lived in a fashionably dumpy cheap apartment house with some good female friends for neighbors. We liked to make the scene in halter tops with short skirts and combat boots and drink malt

Third Grade Jail Trip

2009-07-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wyatt and I went to see Public Enemies on Sunday. It was okay. Has a lot of jailbreaks and so forth. At dinner we were talking about the movie, and he said he'd seen something on TV once about how prisoners can make weapons out of toothbrushes. "Oh yeah," I said. "They grind them to an edge on the floor to make it sharp. And you can melt them with a lighter too to get the edge started.""How do

Recent Awkward Guy Events

2009-06-29T04:07:00.000-07:00

On Friday the daughter of a good friend of mine died. I was a little shell-shocked by the news, even though she's been sick for a long time and everybody knew it was coming. I wasn't sure what to do - in those situations you want to be helpful, but you also don't want to intrude during a time when somebody might need some peace and quiet. Nadine, the surviving mother, has plenty of local family

Summer Stuff

2009-06-23T15:21:00.001-07:00

We've had enough rain for a change this year, and that must be what's spurred the boom in local four-leaf-clover populations. Before this spring, it'd been years since I'd found one. Now I'm finding them all the time. I sat on a park bench a few weeks ago and counted nine in a nearby patch.There are a lot more things blooming later this year than in recent years, which is cool. And the Orange

An Exception For The C Word

2009-06-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}Normally I'm against the C word, as many women are. But it's the centerpiece of the following story, which is the funniest I've heard in months, so I'll make allowances for it this time:Derrick from downstairs said he used

Five-Alarm Tick Warning

2009-06-09T05:14:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been camping yet this year, take heed if you have plans to go. You may need to keep some plasma in a cooler just in case the ticks you will encounter bleed you almost dry. For some reason, this year there are enough hungry ticks out there to create a rioting stampede the minute a warm-blooded animal such as yourself sets foot in the grass or the woods.During my recent camping trip,

Holiday Roundup

2009-05-28T07:08:00.001-07:00

Had a fabulous time in Charleston over Memorial Day weekend. Rode through a lot of flat, green country on the way there. Ate, drank, and lounged by a pool to excess. Walked on a beach in the rain. A change of scenery can be very liberating.Wyatt and I stayed with Claudine and her husband. It's become an annual event. We again sat on their back porch and drank Bombay Dry gin and ginger ale (we

Graduation Gall

2009-05-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

I went to a recent graduation ceremony that really pissed me off. There was a time in my life when I went to four or five of them every year. While boring, they were all inoffensive. But this one - at a college - really took the shit cake.It was because of the main speaker. We'll call him Fathead O'Douche. First, the guy who introduced O'Douche almost brought himself to the point of climax

Ugh

2009-05-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

To a certain degree, Wyatt and I are luddites. Me maybe more so. Before I married him, I hadn't lived in the same house with a TV for 10 years. Even now, we don't have cable. And I hate cell phones. Shit on video games. Fuck a Wii. Don't like power windows or door locks either - that's just more I might have to pay to get fixed later.But yesterday, a tsunami of new technology hit this household.

If God Said Boris Had To Turn Gay

2009-04-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

Boris O'Dan is a good friend all of the time but he's at his entertaining best on no sleep and too much Little Debbie and cold caffeine:"Now, I'm a straight guy," he said Thursday. "But if God came down and said, 'Boris, I've decided you've got to have a homosexual relationship,' I'd have to choose Hugh Jackman for that.""Don't blame you," I said."Or maybe Patrick Stewart" - already I was

Killers

2009-04-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday the guy who sits next to me at my temp job backed over his cat. Totally ran over it, so that it made his car lurch. The cat, a beloved pet of nine years, then ran down a storm drain and refused to come out so he could take it to the vet, and he assumed it would die in there. He was a wreck. On Wednesday I saw him with his head in his hands a lot, but I just assumed his eyes were

If Only We Could Have Musicals At Work

2009-04-10T13:58:00.001-07:00

Once again I've found myself at a temp job where mental focus is imperitive, and my mind becomes nomadic in response.Today I was dying for a musical to break out. The room was dead silent with about 70 people in it working. I scanned the scene, looking for the person who I thought most likely to jump onto a table and start singing this song:I never came to a sure conclusion about who that should

My Dad The Republican Communist

2009-04-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

Called home last night and got my Dad on the phone, something which often leads to a surreal conversation like the one I had. He's a devout Democrat-hating Republican; a man in a bi-party marriage who scornfully refers to Democrats as "Your Mama's people." Somehow though, his political sympathies have morphed until he's more an admirer of Che Guevara than Rush Limbaugh. He seems to have no clue

Spring Stuff

2009-03-31T13:09:00.000-07:00

Love it when the violets appear. When I have a yard, I want it to be full of nothing but violets, clover, and some other low-growing weeds/wildflowers. Hell with mowing.Yesterday morning I heard a Bullbat for the first time this year. That's what my father calls them anyway, but I guess most people call them Nighthawks. I love the sound they make (You can hear that in the link), the way they fly

Serendiptious Epicurean Bonanza

2009-03-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

I put cilantro on our grocery list last week, and Wyatt came home with a big bundle of kale instead. I cook with cilantro all the time, but if he had to identify it out of a lineup of vegatable suspects, an innocent one would likely go to the chair. Or into the food processor, as was the case here.No worries - I found this great recipe for kale pesto. It's incredible. As a consummate tomato hater

Went To A Dance

2009-03-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

When's the last time you went to a dance? In high school maybe, where you hit a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill in the parking lot outside the gym and then went in to sway under crepe paper streamers taped to the basketball goal? Or maybe it was at the Spring/Winter Formal in college, when you wore new dress shoes that blistered your feet.Well, I went to one Saturday. There was no cover

Self Reliance Training

2009-03-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Have been working too much to write and post regularly these days, so blogging has become one more thing for me to feel bad about not doing, filed alphabetically in the Guilt cabinet ahead of Cooking, Dishes and Laundry.Fortunately, somebody forwarded me the following e-mail about a cool upcoming event in Chapel Hill. Supposedly, similar events are coming to Greensboro in May.I think this will

What A Difference A Week Makes

2009-03-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Can't believe last week we were throwing snowballs, and this week we're breaking out the shorts. Have a great week everybody - go out and soak up some vitamin D. I hear the wintry weather isn't done with us. Hope that butterfly hasn't packed away the snow boots yet.

Snow Photos

2009-03-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to whatever weather gods read my blog yesterday. This snow was just the thing to get everybody excited and make the neighborhood beautiful.

Banish February

2009-02-28T03:55:00.000-08:00

Citizens of this hemisphere should take to the streets, bang pots and pans, shout and speak in tongues to banish the spirit of February from our lives. Maybe it sounds mean, but February is the month I truly hate. Every year I stock up on fish oil and SAM-E supplements in January because I think, this time, I'm going to beat February. It's the shortest month; this'll be a breeze.But every year I

Comparison Of Fun Things

2009-02-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

This weekend Wyatt and I had occasion to take in some musical events, and today I will compare them.Saturday night we went to see Willie Nelson at War Memorial Auditorium. He was backed by a superb band, Asleep At The Wheel, which had a smokin' horn section and was just all-around world class.Loved the music, but alas, big shows like that are such a pain in the ass. We got there a half hour

Robins, Real Estate, and Jared Diamond's Collapse

2009-02-16T12:37:00.001-08:00

Here lately in the park it's been kind of like Hitchcock's The Birds only with just robins. They're all angling for nesting real estate, I guess. Last year a robin nested in a Crepe Myrtle here next to the rear fire escape, so you could look down into it from the upper floor. That was kind of fun, but then a hellacious hailstorm blew in and smashed the eggs and toppled the nest. That was a real

The Best V-Day Song Ever

2009-02-14T04:25:00.000-08:00

This is TV On The Radio's "Lover's Day".Lyrics here.Have a happy one everybody!

(Pre) Spring Cleaning

2009-02-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot online lately about people who said Fuck It All, sold their big houses in the cities where they had good jobs, and moved out to the country to live in a tent while they constructed a 300 or 400 or 500 square foot home, where they proceeded to live a low-stress, off-grid life. As a result, I've decided to take stock of all my stuff. What stuff could I get rid of and not

Things You Miss

2009-02-10T04:23:00.000-08:00

I miss Verona Disco Hour. I haven't observed this weekly holiday in several years. It was something that might last 20 minutes or it might last 90, but I called it an hour so it'd sound snappier. I'd get out the songs on all the 45s, LPs, and CDs I wanted to dance to that week and pile them up for easy access. This was important preparation if I planned to drink beer or do shots in observance of

Community Gardens

2009-02-02T06:02:00.000-08:00

try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}I was glad to see this story about community gardens in the paper today. The whole reason I'm obsessed with moving out of this condo is because I want a yard to garden in. At the same time, this is one of the best places in

Straw Bale Homes And Other Alternatives

2009-01-30T06:21:00.000-08:00

Straw bale housing is hundreds of years old, sort of an old school housbuilding method actually, but it's considered alternative housing now. I was interested to see this article about planned public housing projects with straw bale construction in the UK.I've long been fascinated with dome homes. I like these because they're not covered in shingles. This company sells kits for attractive dome

More Solargon/Urban Homesteading Thoughts

2009-01-25T15:51:00.000-08:00

The cat was sick on Wednesday, and it made me glad we aren't living in just 700 square feet of alternative housing. Were that the case, the entire dwelling would likely have been polluted with cat shit.Tessa, our 11-year-old ginger cat, has been more affectionate and needy lately so I suspected she wasn't feeling well. I went out for about 20 minutes Wednesday morning and when I returned, my

Theoretical Urban Homesteading

2009-01-25T12:23:00.000-08:00

Was talking to a friend about my obsession with round alternative houses. She lives in one of those Glenwood bungalows I mentioned here. It's a great house, but like many houses built in the 1920s and 1930s in Glenwood, it needs a lot of work. I told her the larger Solargon house kits cost around $36,000. "It would almost make more sense to tear my house down and put up one of those," she said.

More Dreamhouse Thoughts

2009-01-25T08:40:00.000-08:00

Have been thinking a lot about the Solargon house issues mentioned in my last post, and have decided that daydreaming of the ultimate homestead site is a safe alternative to alcoholism or crack addiction, so I'm going to indulge in it.As long as I'm dreaming, I want a geodesic greenhouse too.And I want to put one of these freshwater fish farm and salad kits in it. The greens and herbs in the long

Internal Dialog about Solargons

2009-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

Love this - it's a house made from a kit.Problem is, once you pay for a foundation and land, it's cheaper to just buy a good old bungalow in Glenwood. But this Solargon is probably much more energy efficient and low maintenance. It looks so cool. But so what, they'd never give you a permit to build this in the city anyway, even if you could find and buy a lot to put it on. Well then, to hell with

Side Effects of Love

2009-01-22T04:33:00.000-08:00

Been feeling goth lately, craving to hear dark and gloomy/angry music. I guess it's the time of year. It makes me want to wear black and smoke cigarettes and be all existential. Was trawling YouTube for the music of my youth yesterday and found the ultimate combination of Country heartwrench and goth gloom - Sisters of Mercy meets Dolly Parton!Another thing that's casting a pall over my frame of

South Mountain State Park

2009-01-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

This is a great place for cold weather hiking, especially if you like waterfalls. It's about two hours from here.

Wanted: A Good Bar

2009-01-18T05:21:00.000-08:00

Wyatt and I sometimes like to play dominoes when we drink in public. This is a tradition we started in New York on our honeymoon. That bar was ideal because there were no TVs in it and there was no cigarette smoke. You could go onto the balcony outside to smoke in the searing cold if you wanted, and the view of Manhattan was worth the frostbite. Now I know we can't have a view of Manhattan in

Blessed Times and Thankfulness

2009-01-15T07:30:00.000-08:00

This week I needed some work done on my car, so I dropped it off at Cummings Auto on Spring Garden Street. That's a good location because a) They seem to do good work and they're not sketchy b) it's within walking distance of a number of good locations where you can kill time while your car's in the shop.It was a clear, cold day - hat AND scarf weather. I paused in the Cummings parking lot after

Just In Case

2009-01-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

This is a cool link to help people logically think about what they can/should do to prepare for uncertain times.I hate to be alarmist but when you remember how helpful the govt. was following Hurricane Katrina, it becomes clear that we need to be making our own plans in case things go to shit.Because the govt.'s plans for how to deal with the total collapse of everything is most likely to be this

Dating Myself With High Singing White Guys

2009-01-11T05:14:00.000-08:00

Former Styx piano player and vocalist Dennis DeYoung believes that the success of the band's song "Babe" can be attributed to the fact that "People just like to hear white guys singing high." So he said in an interview on VH1 classic I saw Wednesday night. What exactly did he mean by "singing high?" I've been preoccupied with that question. The weather's bad so I've been wasting a bunch of time -

Sad Ass Country Songs

2009-01-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

The other day I happened across Red Sovine's Teddy Bear on the radio. I didn't know what it was at first, but clocked it as circa 1975 because it was all about CB radios - had "Breaker 1-9" in it and so forth. It was so sad in that over-the-top-1970s-country way it made me laugh:"Now, I'm not supposed to bother you fellows out there Mom says you're busy and for me to stay off the airBut you see

Vacation Jones

2009-01-06T03:17:00.000-08:00

Wyatt and I had a shitty day Monday. You could say it was because he had to make four trips between a mechanic shop and Jiffy Lube to get his car inspection done, and then had to spend an hour in line to buy textbooks for his upcoming classes. You could say it was because I spent some time on the phone trying to straighten out something that was fucked up and I was unsuccessful, and so

People and Places

2009-01-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think personal names that are also places are very cool. Guys with names like Cleveland and girls with names like Georgia are almost always good people to know.The idea that people can also be places is captivating. In Neil Gaiman's Sandman series there's a section of landscape named Fiddler's Green that sometimes gets bored, rolls itself into portly human form, and

Resolutions

2009-01-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

My goals for '09: *Make a tenable living by developing my client base, *find a sustainable way to stick to a dairy and wheat-free diet, *increase my gym time to 2-3 visits per week, *return to yoga or chi kung or belly-dance classes or some combination of those,*continue writing at my current level of output,*give Wyatt better housecleaning support,*find a way to garden and grow some of our food,

Hickey Factory

2009-01-01T05:03:00.000-08:00

The cupping kit is a wondrous invention, but it leaves hickies, and those can be hard to explain.I bought a cupping kit to use at home on sore muscles. While some kits are glass and require the use of fire, mine are simply plastic suction cups. Put one on a muscle with a knot in it, suck out the air with the special air-sucking gun, leave it on for a few minutes and the knot lets go. I use it on

Anthropomorphism

2008-12-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

It's like these crazy-ass radiators wake up when they think we're all in bed and they hope to have some privacy to talk to each other. The hiss starts first, then banging and clanging gets going gradually. It's like they speak a language of bangs and clangs, that they're having a frenzied conversation with each other, and they're all hard of hearing. They must be saying awful things about us, the

Merry Post-X-Mas Hysteria

2008-12-26T05:21:00.000-08:00

try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}At last the torturous onslaught of X-mas music is over. I had an appointment this a.m. and I overheard a nurse say, "Thank God we can listen to regular music again." Regular music had an extra special quality landing on the

Why I hate X-mas Music (Part II)

2008-12-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

When I look back on this, at first I can't imagine why we'd still go "party" with a fat married man who'd just purchased about 40 condoms and whose wife was away. Then I remember we were about three years away from being able to purchase alcohol legally ourselves, and we were still living at home and not free to drink there regardless. We depended on people like Blane for opportunities to poke

Why I Hate X-Mas Music (Part I)

2008-12-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}My freshman year of college I worked at a mall during Christmas break. Twelve hour shifts at a kiosk selling T-shirts and decorator items emblazoned with ducks, big belt buckles with rebel flags on them, and pocket knives.

Narc Alert

2008-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}Friday night I went to a potluck dinner at a friend's house, and there were several two and three-year-old children there. You know how a roomful of adults act when somebody brings in a baby. They all turn to look at the

Sometimes This Room Is Someplace Else

2008-12-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes this room depresses the shit out of me. Especially in cold weather, because there's just not enough storage space for the extra bulk of winter clothing. It's a perpetual mess.But this room isn't always the same place. It can be quite different.Sometimes morning light hangs in distorted squares on the wall. Also, whatever's going on on the other side of the bamboo patch in the yard next

Dream Shoes

2008-12-12T05:05:00.000-08:00

Love me some shoes, now. Can't do much in high heels because of my wimpy ankles, but still have an eye for outstanding footwear. Especially these by John Fluevog. Those boots would really rock a skirt, and those others would anything else. Of course, shoes like these demand singular outfits, too, and maybe I'll post an ideal wardrobe later. But if I wore what I wanted to all the time people

I'm A (Hopefully) Temporary Half-Wit

2008-12-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Lately I've had a terrible case of dingbat's disease, as I do occasionally. I get freaked out when I notice changes in my brain. I fear it won't go back to normal. A couple of times when I became burnt out at previous jobs, the gears on my brain got stripped and the Broca's Area in there became a wasteland. I was unable to create syntactically accurate sentences and my vocabulary shrank 35%.This

That Man O' Mine

2008-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

So, I was reading Internet news yesterday when Wyatt got out of the shower. "I just realized something," he said as he toweled his head."What's that?""You know in that Superman movie, when he flies around the Earth really fast to turn back time so he can save Lois Lane?"I was surprised to find that I do indeed remember, though I saw this movie in 1978."Well, that couldn't really happen. He'd have

Heavy Sigh

2008-12-08T05:27:00.001-08:00

Well I took a little vacation from this blog location for almost a year. Now I'm back. Over the next few days I guess I'll be cutting and pasting from the other site and updating this one. Damn, what a lot of tedious work. On the bright side I haven't had much work of the obligatory, paying variety lately so I should have plenty of time.I hope everybody's navigating the holiday season with

Why I Hate Crocs

2008-08-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

It's because they remind me of Circus Peanuts. You know, those orange nasty-ass styrofoam chunks that masquerade as candy.

Bible Stuff

2007-12-24T01:31:00.000-08:00

Friday night at dinner, a friend of mine was talking about Bible-related conflict at his job. I won't go into detail, but Bibles play a part in the business they conduct at this workplace. So this guy, Ervin, picked up one of the office Bibles and used it as a flat surface on which to write a note, and somebody got pissed. He shouldn't do that, he was told, because it's desecrating the

Homage to Ridgeway Road

2007-12-14T05:01:00.000-08:00

There have been moments this season when I wanted to defect to a Muslim country governed by Sharia law - anything to escape the onslaught of Christmas crapola.Though I'm not exactly a sutras thumper, I am Buddhist in my religious practice. Yet I can't escape this Santa-loving Christmas culture I was raised in, both because of my family and because it's the dominant culture here. Maybe I shouldn't

Beefcake Bardem Channels Phantasm Horror Guy

2007-11-25T09:13:00.000-08:00

Javier Bardem, the star of No Country for Old Men, is arguably the hottest man alive. But I think it's pretty obvious he schooled himself in how to be un-sexy by modeling his performance upon that of Angus Scrimm, who portrayed The Tall Man in Don Coscarelli's Phantasm movies. Compare these photos. Clearly Bardem copied Scrimm's hairstyle, scowl, and general air of cold, existential menace.No

Ford Granada, Afro Sheen tan

2007-11-21T03:57:00.000-08:00

Wells' grandmother was an alcoholic who liked to do two things when she drank: Take off all her clothes and drive around town in her Ford Granada. Wow, you might be thinking. That's pretty bad. Well, it gets worse.Picture this: very small southern town in a dry county, circa 1980. In this place, ten-year-old Wells was on a Little League team. His team had a game one evening. The sun was still up.

Insidious TV

2007-11-12T15:53:00.001-08:00

Think about the people you watch on TV - in the reality shows, the crime dramas, the sitcoms that are supposed to mirror real life. What's one HUGE life activity (besides going to the bathroom) that people on TV never engage in?You almost never seeing them watch TV. But we watch them on it. What they're doing is so worthy of our attention we'll hand over our time and attention to worship how

Devil's Tramping Ground

2007-11-08T02:37:00.000-08:00

Wyatt and I had a misadventure at the Devil's Tramping Ground on Halloween night. We went to bed at 8 p.m., got up at 2 a.m., and drove down into Chatham County. There's a clearing in the woods there where legends say Satan paces and does all his plotting against humanity. I planned to burn a sacrificial fire there, of a nature I will explain later.The DTG is in a deeply rural area. We were

Energy Vampires

2007-10-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

One of the things we've talked about in massage school is the concept of the Energy Vampire. While this term may inspire some to roll their eyes and others to hum the theme to the Twilight Zone or the X-Files, it's actually a very common phenomenon. I was skeptical myself to begin with, but recent events have made me a believer. Perhaps another, more common term for the Energy Vampire is the

Siblings and so on

2007-09-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

One of my massage school classmates told a story about herself during one of the ice-breaking activities we had when class first started. Volga said that throughout her entire childhood, her older sister told her that she (Volga) was adopted. Volga said she was totally convinced what her sister said was true, until her mother got so tired of this nonsense she dragged Volga out to meet the doctor

middle age is a strange country

2007-09-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was examining the $1 sale rack at Gail's Consignments shop the other day, and a couple of other women were in there trying on clothes."Ooh! Wait til you see this!" said the woman in the dressing room. She presented herself shortly thereafter."Oh girl, you wrong," said her friend. "It's cute, but you wrong. That dress makes you look like a ho."The woman in the dress protested, insisting that

back lot death match

2007-09-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I was unsure of what ethical action was called for in this situation. I could hear the cicada stutter intermittently, and went to investigate. When I found it upside down in the monkey grass I tried to brush aside a strand, but shouted when said blade of grass turned to look at me with chilling praying mantis eyeballs that seemed to be saying "You're next."I used a stick to put some distance

Viva Lyle!

2007-08-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

This is Lyle. He got a shave down yesterday at the vet, so he looks like he's lost ten pounds. He's also still quite sleepy from anesthesia.Lately I've been thinking about the woman who gave me Lyle. I was in my early 20's and Airy was a couple of years older. We worked together in a medical supply factory. She told me about her new kitten; he had changed her life and she didn't understand how

Whon'tcha

2007-08-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Here in the south, there has been great cultural innovation in the realm of contractions: I mean the single words cobbled together out of two, like can't for cannot, won't for will not, and shouldn't for should not.Today we'll look at the word "whont'cha", a contraction of why don't you. The Microsoft Word spell check function lights up red underneath it."Whont'cha stop and get some beer on your

My head feels like a rotten melon

2007-08-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

I mean I have a headache, toothache, some kind of ear issue that makes me reel like a drunk if I tilt my head the wrong way, and my eyes are sore. So my head feels on the inside what I imagine the fermenting, hot, nasty mess on the inside of a rotting watermelon would feel like. I do not mean that the exterior of my head feels squishy to others. Yet.Wyatt and I won't be buying any houses and I'll

New River

2007-08-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing like a canoe trip to put a strain on a relationship.Neither Wyatt nor I have much experience with boats. We took a four-hour trip down the New River last Sunday, and the fact that we finished it without cursing each other or threatening to move out gives me faith that our marriage is solid.I’ve seen other people steer canoes, but I couldn’t communicate what I’ve seen to Wyatt. I

Rehab

2007-07-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Now I know why people join monasteries. A monastery is like a rehab program to get people off hysteria. It’s ironic how stress, anxiety, and bad feelings in general can get you to quit the mindfulness practices that are supposed to help you deal with those things. Daily life conspires to wear down mindfulness habits, it seems.It’s so much easier to keep up good habits when you’re not challenged.

Jake's house and other photos

2007-07-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of yard I'd like to have. Pesticide and fertilizer in one efficient package that also lays eggs. Not that this one can lay eggs. It's a rooster. But he does have a lady friend.I keep going by to see my friend Jake, the owner of this chicken and this yard, but he's never home. He's got the ultimate lifestyle in many ways, as far as I'm concerned. Jake lives in the thick of town -

carrots on sticks

2007-07-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I was planning to enjoy a few laid-back weeks of unemployment, where I would take some non-credit classes, ponder my next career move, and enjoy some hysteria-free space in which to do long-term planning and make decisions. I will (hopefully) sell my home later this week. I need to pay off some bills and begin contributing to Wyatt’s upkeep on his place, but I envisioned having enough

Bad Dreams

2007-07-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

Ever since my last temp assignment ended, I’ve been gloomy and plagued by bad dreams.Wednesday I dreamed I was having a phone conversation with a friend whose husband is in the hospital. He’s been sick a long time, and as soon as I picked up the phone in my dream and heard her voice I became so afraid she was going to tell me he was dead or dying that I stopped dreaming and woke up.Thursday, I

The Devil Talking

2007-07-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve been so sad and blueEver since you bid the Prozac fairy adieuEvery time my mother speaks to me here lately, I hear the voice of Satan. She needs a visit from the Prozac fairy, but she’s rolled up the welcome mat for antidepressants and thrown it in the Dumpster. Now that she’s given her prescription up, she’s making me need pharmaceutical help.It’s put me in quite a dilemma. I used to be a

Mangoes, Hayble’s Hearth, Michael Chabon

2007-06-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday my uncle Tiberius was bringing my grandmother and her sister by for reflexology treatments and to go out to dinner. I told him beforehand that Wyatt wouldn’t be home until 5:30 or 6:00 pm, and I assumed that this would communicate the fact that I intended to wait for Wyatt to go with us.But Tiberius shows up at 5:00. I open the door. “Come on,” he says. “They’re waiting in the car.”“But

Solstice Celebration - Who are these men?

2007-06-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

The Solstice Celebration at the Arboretum on Thursday was endlessly entertaining. First off, I saw this man, who said he was a reporter, interview these belly dancers. Take a look at his crotch. When I was a reporter, I made it a point to keep the sex toys on the inside of my clothes when I was interviewing people. Is this bottled water boner a 3-D Freudian slip? If you have to, click on the

In the wake of gaseous emissions

2007-06-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

My job requires a certain amount of mental focus, and any time mental focus is required you get a certain amount of brain rebellion. Last week while at work I took notes on the topics my wandering mind encountered during a period of less than an hour:CheetosRevenge I’d like to getThe nature of cynicismMy familyMy teethMoneyCheetosSustainable agricultureShould my Mom take vitamin B supplements?

Some Weird Ideas of Hot

2007-06-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

When repulsive and attractive meet in the same package, it makes for an interesting kind of sexy.On Thursday night, I went with Wyatt and Faye to the Empire Room downtown to see Los Straitjackets. This photo came from their web site. I’d never seen them before and when they came out in suits, ties, and Mexican wrestling masks, it was mesmerizing. They do manic surf guitar. They have choreographed

Belly Dancing Kicks Yoga’s Ass

2007-06-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Chi Kung and Yoga are meditative practices designed to quiet the circus of thought which takes place in people’s heads. As somebody who has a particular addiction to thinking, I decided to get involved with these things. But much of the time I wind up being angry at myself for not being able to stop thinking, or with the instructor because she so often warns us to “watch the mind.” I’d like to

Got shotgun, shells?

2007-05-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what this is, maybe it’s a heron or a crane, but I took about 30 pictures of it and only got one good one. It kept looking at me head on, and that’s not a photogenic look for most birds. Maybe it was purposefully not cooperating because it was sick of Spoleto Arts Festival tourists who descended upon Charleston last weekend. I didn’t attend Spoleto events, but I did hear some

City Corn

2007-05-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

We came across this smart use of space on State Street in Charleston, SC, this past weekend. Here we have some young corn. You can barely make out the round leaves of the Eucalyptus growing underneath it, and there's a Rosemary bush planted on the other side of the Palmetto trunk there.Evidence seems to indicate that the Permaculture Phantom may have struck here.I think there may have been

Ambush French Kiss

2007-05-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve visited Blaine’s place enough to know that when I go there, I need to clamp my teeth and seal my lips into an impregnable line just before I sit down. He has two dachshunds and dogsits another, and this breed has been genetically engineered to execute the ambush French Kiss.Dachshund tongues can violate the mouths of the unwary with the precision of greased drill bits. I hate to spend

Can't have it all

2007-05-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Friday night here at the Eleanor Roosevelt building, several residents were supposed to meet around the table out back for a glass of wine and then head downtown for an art/antiques festival. But as is often the case with a large group of people, we never could reach consensus about when to leave and thus failed to achieve escape velocity. We simply drained bottles of wine here and invited

The Al-Qaeda Box

2007-05-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Today I had cause to rethink my urge to move out of the condo and into a house. I had such a fabulously entertaining day that I may want to stay here in the Eleanor Roosevelt building for the rest of my life.Today was designated as “Basement Cleanout Day.” We had a lot of old air conditioners, some skis, old pipes, random stuff that didn’t seem to belong to anyone anymore and was cluttering

Fergus the Permaculture Prince

2007-05-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

Wyatt and I are looking for a house. But we don’t want to pay a whole lot for it because we want to pay it off quickly, and we need it to be in a safe neighborhood because we like to walk a lot, and it would be great if there were some cool restaurants or a coffee shop we could walk to from our home, and it needs to be on a fairly large lot so we can grow some of our own food, and IT’S JUST

Unexpected Information

2007-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days I’ve had some stunning opportunities to watch my mind reel following the effects of unexpected information.On Saturday I was talking to Franco, a friend from my current neighborhood. We were drinking beer and conversating and I forget what we were talking about, but he made a joke about priests molesting kids.I remembered that he went to a Catholic school. I also remembered

A cultural analysis of Doctor Who and Star Trek

2007-04-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

From a cultural standpoint, it makes no sense to me why Star Trek is an American science fiction fantasy and Doctor Who is a British one. You’d think it would be the other way around.Let’s look at the British, who are said to be more class-conscious than Americans. They have a monarchy, the House of Lords, and a history of limited social mobility. At first glance, they seem to be all about

Trouble Comes in Threes

2007-04-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon after work, I misplaced my keys in such a creative fashion that I haven’t yet been able to locate them. Sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, someone stole the statue of Kwan Yin that graced the planter next to our driveway. According to the superstition that trouble comes in threes, I could be at high risk for losing something else if “losses” is the theme of this bout of