We tell him he's "special."

Sorry, re-post for Brent

I've recently heard from my hometown friend Brent, and I wanted him to read the following post, but for some reason the 2006 posts have dissappeared. Fuck them, but whatever.

This is from July 2006.



Bit of a travelogue this evening. You get bored, move on. But there
really is a point to this one.

This past weekend, I took a quick trip to the Homeland. You know, that
place near the Canadian border where I was cloned.

Here's the backstory:

The BeerHound has a not so secret desire to be "surprised" by a family
reunion. In the past, she's hoped that my brother would just randomly
fly to Texas when my parents were also visiting, and other suchlike
situations. She's a dreamer, that BeerHound.

So...she had planned a weekend with the Cloning Donors. They were to
come down to lovely southeastern Minnesota (along I90) to go to a car
show. Usually, the Donors come for medical appointments, or to stop by
while on their way elsewhere to points further South, but this was
just for a real visit, for once.

Offhandedly, my brother--The Boy--and his wife Little Deb-y said they
might also be able to make it down for the car show and family herding
opportunity.

So I started thinking. Always dangerous, that.

I conspired with The Boy and Little Deb-y to make the BeerHound's
dream a reality.

So I had to use subterfuge. To mislead. Bamboozle, if you will. (I
talk to the BeerHound daily.) She was frustrated (spittin' nails,
actually) at the changes the Clones and The Boy and put upon her, and
I can't lie worth shit, so I just didn't talk to her much.

Skipping the details, I booked the only flight I could to
Minnehopeless. It meant spending hours on my own at the Mall of
America, but it's not a bad place to spend time. Contacting several
college acquaintances (Doorkee had a golf tournament, Sandruska had
plans to be a lake bum), I made plans for supper with Shelley. Shelley
was my first college roommate. Shelley met me--as is required by law
at the Mall of America--in front of The Gap.

Shelley's exactly as she always was, but better. And I thank her
husband for letting her out for the evening. Thanks D!

Eventually, The Boy and Little Deb-y fetched me. We were rather
excited about our success at actually surprising the BeerHound. We
could barely sleep.

The next morning, they dropped me around the corner from her house and
entered and greeted in the normal manner. I snuck up to the house and
knocked. Duff Man (the boyfriend) answered. I motioned to him for
silence. I crept into the house, saw my mom's shocked face, and
motioned to her for silence. (Repeat with each family member,
until...)

I surprised my sister. She was overjoyed. Hugs, screaming, blah, blah,
blah, emotional outflowingcakes. Then she served breakfast. She can't
be less than she is, and one of those things is the perfect hostess.

Then, my dad finally noticed I was there. Hey, he turns 81 next week.
He's allowed not to notice.

We went to a car show. I shopped at WalMart and Kohl's with Duff Man.
The cheap bastard bought a cool shirt 'cause I said he should. Dogs
slept with cats. We went to Dave's Famous Barbeque.

Then we went to the Twins game. Since I showed up unannounced, we had
to scalp an extra ticket. The way that went down--and this is the
short version, I assure you--nine tickets were purchased for the lower
deck, outfield. We arrived and got the only thing available at the box
office, which was upper deck. Then we found a scalper who sold us a
lower deck ticket. He was a very nice scalper. I nearly kissed him,
and so did the BeerHound. Hell, if I weren't married, I would have
invited the guy to a private alley somewhere nearby. But he had
business to conduct, and I am indeed very married, so no go with the
private alcove.

The BeerHound made it to nearly the third inning before our
neighboring seatholders arrived, forcing her to her much better
scalped seat.

And the Twins were loosing, anyway, by three runs. BeerHound and I
shopped. Little Deb-y shopped on her own. Beers were consumed, peanut
shells strewn, and I couldn't find an Original Leinenkugel's to save
my life, though they supposedly sell them somewhere at the HHH
Metrodome.

At the top of the 8th inning, I bought my mom a beer. The turn of the tide.

It's all baseball talk, but here's the story of the 8th inning [link
didn't carry over. Go find it yourself if you can--keywords July 2006, Minnesota Twins, Santana].
Read at your leisure, baseball fans.

Best inning I've ever seen, live. Not that I've seen many, but I swear
I came, several times--all the while explaining what was going on to
Duff Man--the guy's not had much time for baseball in his life. (Try
explaining an Error to someone who's never had a reason to care what
it is. Can't do it.)

So, to recap. Big surprise for the BeerHound. Car show. Twins game.
What's the point of telling y'all this?

My dad's 81 on August 10th.

A few months ago I found a letter I'd written to myself at a New
Year's party, in 1989. Yep, 89. I thought my dad would be dead by
2000. Or in a nursing home. Or, something. Something that seemed
horrible in 1989.

But here we are in 2006, and we still have Dad. And he's still on the
farm, still mowing the lawn, still driving my Mom around, and taking
my nephew to play in Little League games and seeing that little squirt
hit a grand slam.

We're still here, still loving each other even when we don't like each
other. Still going to Twins games together. Having moments we won't be
able to have, come some time soon.

Scalping an extra ticket for a Twins game?

Priceless.

A Memory: Lola

We'd had a great date. I don't remember if we went anywhere to eat but I don't think so. We'd gone to see a local comedy troupe. It was their Christmas show, but this was an encore performance in early January.

I think we went to a bar; I was underage but for some reason they didn't card me. They should have; I was only 18 and out of my element that night.

We were on the way to his cabin in Northern Wisconsin. It was a two-lane road, lots of hills, and the snow was coming at the windshield like the stars as the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperdrive (which took its F/X from the view of snow coming at a windshield, so this is a paradox comparison).

The song came on the radio. My date sang along, putting my name in where the namesake of the song was, which was mildly disturbing as the namesake in the song is a tranny or she-male or something. That was also the night I first noticed that some versions say "Coca-Cola" and some "cherry cola."

Luckily, "Radar Love" also came on the radio that night. So in terms of "our song," since this relationship really deserved a fucked up "our song," I much prefer "Radar Love" to that other one.

Though I do think of him every time I hear "Lola."

Chuck Altman, you are an idiot

There's this guy in our town that's creating a program called "Keep Kids Alive Drive 25."

He's stupid. I also think he lives in my neighborhood.

A couple of months ago I complained about someone in my neighborhood who drove 10 MPH during school zone hour, even though they were nowhere near a school zone. I'm pretty sure that a couple of weeks later I ended up behind this person again. This time it was a guy in a Chrysler 300. I was stuck behind him when he was going 30 in a 40 MPH zone, and then he drove 20 in the 30 MPH zone. I did something I've NEVER done before, which was lay on my horn behind him for more than a block.

Geez.

I'm not ever going to advocate speeding, particularly in my own residential neighborhood. However, just about any cop or traffic engineer will tell you that it's just as dangerous to drive substantially slower than the speed limit (25% and 33%, respecively, in regard to the Chrysler, and SIXTY-SIX FUCKING PERCENT during the non-school zone incident). When there is a posted speed limit, people expect others to be driving somewhere near that speed, when conditions allow. In Texas, that's about 98% of the time. People who are turtling set up a situation in which cars get rear-ended, and often it isn't the person driving slow who gets into the accident; it's the guy behind him who has to break suddenly that gets hit by the guy behind HIM because the third guy couldn't see the road turtle.

At which time the road turtle will think his turtling is justified because, "See, those guys behind me were driving too fast and got into an accident." (When they were actually driving the speed limit and breaking no laws. Jerkoff.)

So now this asshole wants to encourage people in our town to drive 25 so that the town will change the residential speed limit to 25. The effect this will have, is that a bunch of self-important older men who need Viagra and have nothing better to do and nowhere to get to with any kind of expediency, will all agree to drive too slow. And the rest of the people will not have heard about this stupid idea, and will be driving 30, because THAT'S WHAT THE SIGNS SAY THEY CAN DO.

Say they did drop the speed limit to 25. How are they going to enforce that? Because if these guys want patrol cars to ticket people, I'm going to have to take issue with that. I'd much rather have the cops out actually preventing--oh, let's say--driving behavior that is actually dangerous.

Besides, it's not as if they'll actually catch any speeders with half a brain. Their usual M.O. is they will place one of those speed monitoring machines at one of the major streets that enter a neighborhood. Then the following day they'll set up a speed trap in that exact spot. So if you see a speed monitor one morning, the following morning you make a point to not speed.

Duh.

Some people will always speed. Since I try to "Drive friendly, the Texas way," when these people get behind me in my neighborhood and start tailgating, I pull over and let them pass me. I do this because there is a chance this person has an actual emergency, and also when they see me do so maybe they'll appreciate it and it adds to my good karma, or maybe they'll realize what a jerk they're being.

Whatever.

I Like Dreamin'

I dream a lot. When I was on Ambien, I didn't dream at all. I did all kinds of stuff I didn't remember on Ambien besides dreaming. Like eating and sex and taking care of my kids and stuff. Yeah, freaky. No, not up for discussion.

These dreams. It'll be your normal, toward morning REM sleep kind of dream, and there will be something that totally stresses me out, and then I'll say, "Oh, fuckitall, I'm going to smoke and I don't give a shit that I quit and this will fuck it up. I'm smoking anyway." Then, in my dream, I smoke a cigarette, and it's WONDERFUL.

I wake up feeling really, really, extremely guilty, because for a few minutes I think I've started smoking again. Then I realize I HAVEN'T started smoking again. I didn't fuck up; I just dreamt it.

The cigarettes I smoke in my dreams are wonderful. If that's all I have for the rest of my life, I'll take it.

Menu

In honor of today's election, my family will have Senate Soup for supper.

After viewing the behavior of folks out and about today, I have concluded that people act even weirder on election day, than they do when there's a hurricane on the way. Then again, we're a lot more used to the impending hurricanes than the elections, and even then everyone turns into a bunch of Chicken Littles.

"We need bottled water and toilet paper!" "Why aren't there any tomatoes?" "Why are all these OTHER people here?" "We need to move to Australia if this goes bad!"

Elections and hurricanes: "This, too, shall pass. Let us pray."

Eve of Destruction Election

I used to really hate election day. Used to be, back up North when I live in a township and not a town, Mother was an elected official. Town clerk, or something. I don't know what that entailed besides keeping an antique file cabinet in our basement, having access to #1 lead pencils (ever seen one? I have!), going to a meeting once a month, giving people money for killing pocket gophers, and sitting at the polls on election day.

This is now illegal. For some reason at the time they thought it was acceptable for the local elected officials to also be the election officials.

I hated election day because Mother was always gone from 6 AM on election day until sometimes 4 AM the next day. We brought supper over for her, and Father would usually vote at that time. She did sack breakfast and sack lunch, and the coffee flowed constantly; since it was Minnesota, they had the 40-cup pot going nonstop.

At the time no one thought to ask for volunteers, much less pay anyone to do the drudgery. Mother and the three others (Treasurer, Chariman, and The Other Guy) had to sit there all day, hand out ballots and #1 lead pencils, register voters, assist voters, talk to voters, make coffee for voters....

Then they counted the ballots. By hand. They had to do it at least twice. If they came up with different numbers, they'd count again. And again, and again until they were each sure that the tallies they came up with were correct.

Considering that Mother was ALWAYS home, election day was an anomaly. Until my Grandma Eleanora died, she would would cook supper for us on election day. Earlier that day, Father would have gotten us off to school, which I suspect wasn't that hard since Mother would have chosen our clothes and made sure our homework was in order, our jackets and shoes located, and the cereal and stuff would be sitting out. All Father had to do was tell us to get up, then pour us some milk and juice, and tell us when the bus was coming. He was a bit uncertain about it, and his uncertainty unnerved us. My grandparents would take over for the evening shift.

Going to the poll was fun but scary. I would get to sit by my mom--quietly, of course--while my grandparents voted, and then chatted. We would be teased by whomever was there. We didn't protest because we only saw most of those people once every four years. Then we'd go home and not get to watch our sitcoms, and have to go to bed early but not be able to sleep because Mother wasn't there.

Then my mom quit or resigned or whatever from her local political post and it didn't matter any more.

But I went back one more time, in 1988, to vote in my own first presidential election. I drove home from college specifically to vote. I drove 600 miles round-trip to vote for Dukakis. It wasn't a wasted vote because Minnesota went to Dukakis that year; the words "George Bush" were still a joke in my family.

Voting was always a very tangible thing to me. Everyone made an effort. They made arrangements. They might disagree--as I voted the first time, I was standing next to Father whom I knew was voting for Bush--but they didn't disrespect.

I just realized something, right this minute. No Presidential candidate I have ever voted for has won. Ever.

This might be the first year ever.

Cool.