good times in tampa

This is me and my beautiful little sister. Warhol style. It was her birthday this past weekend and we scheduled our Florida trip to coincide with it. I framed this image for a present. I also commissioned the endlessly talented Queen Bodacious (aka, "Dr. Ding") to whip up a little jewelry for her. Sister-the-Youngest loved it all. Reluctant birthday girl that she was, she had a great time.

We had so much fun. And got to watch her lovely daughter play softball and hang out with her sweet son. My mom and dad came down for the festivities. There was merriment. There were outdoor festivals. There was chocolate mousse cake.

I don't have a family member that lives less than a thousand miles away from me. I miss them greatly but it does make the visits pretty sweet.

On Friday night, Sister-the-Youngest and her best friend, who I affectionately call (Mr. Fabulous) "Anonymous," St. Barbara and I went out to the local gay bar for karaoke night. For the price of a $12 wristband, well drinks were free. I found the rum & coke fountain and made that $12 stretch like the fishes and loaves.

Ave Maria, did I get schnockered, plastered, lit, fucked-up, shit-faced, loaded, drunk off my ass.

What a great time. I danced. In public. I sang along with some bad karaoke. (I did NOT however, perform any karaoke...there isn't enough alcohol in the free world.)

When we got back to the house, the festivities continued. Well, that was the plan anyway. I walked into the master bathroom to use the toilet and passed the bed. The beginning of the end. However, when I lay my drunken self on the bed, it transformed into a Tilt-A-Wheel. Amazing. I slid off onto the floor, where the ride mercifully ended.

The next morning I woke up more hungover than I've been in 15 years. I stumbled to the bathroom and must have peed 30 proof urine. Swear. We had to sober up and get to the softball field. Where there were millions of people. Sonic boom level noises and blinding sunlight.

No regrets. Had a GREAT time.

depression update

Well, the cuts have been made and our department didn't suffer too badly but lots of good people have been laid off in other departments. (It turned out that, for us, it was just "Dark Gray" Tuesday and the layoffs affecting us were on Black Wednesday.)

For a bunch of reasons, good and lousy, corporations have a cold way of ejecting members of the "work family." It reminds me of images of out-of-favor politicos disappearing* from history textbooks in Stalinist Russia...all of a sudden a cube is empty with no goodbyes, no best wishes.

*Which leads me to wonder, as a designer, how those out-of-favor faces were erased so well without Photoshop. I know how to do it in the darkroom...but damn, it's hard.

how depressing

Welcome to part one (Black Tuesday) of two in the quarterly Houston version of the Nation's hit series: HR is Calling You. Between today and tomorrow (Black Wednesday), the Chronicle will cut 12% of its workforce.

Wish I could fast forward.

happy birthday, Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

via The Writer's Almanac

Goddammit, I love good poetry.

not guilty, your honor, by reason of t-shirt declaration

This via boingboing.net:

Man in "I [Heart] My Marriage" t-shirt arrested for domestic battery

Posted by David Pescovitz, March 20, 2009 8:59 PM | permalink

This gentleman was arrested on Monday for attempting to strangle his wife. Bradley Gellert, of Apollo Beach, Florida, was indeed wearing the "I [heart] My Marriage" t-shirt at the time of the arrest. From WTSP:

The arrest report says that the couple were arguing over drugs, and during the fight at their home, Gellert screamed in his wife's face, threw things, grabbed her neck and strangled her, and knocked her to the ground.


What's not to love about the irony of this story? Those I [heart] My Wife/Husband or I [heart] My Marriage or I [heart] My Filipino Mail Order Bride are already disturbing. If we are married and feel we have to assure the world in general that we love our spouse...well, it's just creepy public grandstanding.

Let's say I saw someone sporting a I [heart] My Newborn t-shirt. I would be tempted to run up to the parent and ask, "as opposed to...what? I am lukewarm about my infant? I loathe my baby?" Seriously, if you don't love your newborn then your t-shirt is not going to make it better. If you do love your newborn then plastering it across your tits seems to assume that the t-shirt reading public is extremely dull-witted and needs it spelled out that you do have warm parental feelings. Be that as it may, I don't think these t-shirt wearers have ironic sociological commentary in mind when they don their warm-fuzzy shirts.

Finally, I feel not a little umbrage at the opening line:

"This gentleman was arrested on Monday for attempting to strangle his wife."

I reject most notions of "ladies" and "gentlemen" in any culture but I'm pretty sure that attempting to strangle your wife puts you just outside the definition of being a gentleman.

back door to sci-fi

I have never been much of a sci-fi fan. For whatever reason, my introduction to most sci-fi left me rather meh.

Over the past few months, I have had boingboing.net on my ever-evolving Google Reader. I love the gadgetry and weird found on the internet and I am not unique in that respect. BoingBoing has an amazing following.

One of the editors, Cory Doctorow, is a science fiction writer (among other categories for which he is well-known). Well, it's become a private game with me to find something fascinating on that site and see how often the person posting or writing the entry is Cory Doctorow. The answer is: a hell of a lot.

So, it doesn't surprise me that he brought this* to the collective attention of internet viewers:

Between this and too much else to list, I may become a fan of sci-fi yet. Or at least C.D.'s work. (Not to mention John Pilger's work.) This video is stunning. Wikileaks is critical.

Uncharacteristic as it feels, I am more aware of the danger of posting ideas than I've ever been before. Truth is not only some pure hue on spectrum of information, it is also murky and dangerous. I am struck by Pilger's comments about Pol Pot, Rwandan genocide numbers and the difference between the assumption of 100% media/journalistic propoganda by citizens of fascist dictatorships and U.S. viewers' more naive expectations.

* John Pilger's speech was filmed in Chicago at Socialism 2007: Socialism for the 21st Century by Paul Hubbard. June 16, 2007

enough

Protesting my government's actions in Iraq does not make me unpatriotic.
Protesting Israel's actions in Gaza does not make me antisemitic.

I am so fucking tired of these dangerous labels being applied to divert attention and silence criticism.

redefine

My dear daughter sent me this link and it made me very happy:

3.15

If I owned a Cajun restaurant, I'd change the name of one menu item tomorrow to etoubruttee (et tu brute?). Served with a small Caesar on the side.

As if it needs to be said: Happy Pi Day, y'all! 6 more years to the best Pi day ever.

P.S. Friday the 13th, Pi Day, Ides of March. It's like the trifecta for calendar/number nerds.

the name of the rose

Hey, look: I'm only 20+ years behind on movie viewing! We saw The Name of the Rose this past week. This is my jumbled review.

The Intro
The director described his work as "a palimpsest of Umberto Eco's novel." Palimpsest. It's a beautiful word. With a poetic meaning:

pal·imp·sest n.
1. A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.
2. An object, place, or area that reflects its history: “Spaniards in the sixteenth century... saw an ocean moving south... through a palimpsest of bayous and distributary streams in forested paludal basins” (John McPhee). [bolded text my emphasis]

The Star
Sean Connery. Sean Connery's voice has the same effect on me as Garrison Keillor's voice: I am comforted and compelled by it. I also think he was beautiful as a monk.

Side Note Quote
"Females, by their very nature, are perverse." Yawn.

What I knew about the Story/Plot
Okay, I knew the basic components: monks are suspiciously dying, a monk and his acolyte come to investigate, set in the Middle Ages.

What I figured about the Story/Plot
This was a story about the power of religion (state, culture). Since it involved the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, it was a story about the extreme power of religion. And, there would probably be chanting and coarsely woven cassocks.

What was reinforced in me by the Story/Plot
One of the fallacies of ancient and modern religion is bastardized logic.

• Throw a suspected witch in the water. If she floats, she's guilty...and will be burned at the stake.
  
• Throw a suspected witch in the water. If she sinks and drowns, she is was innocent.
• If you don't confess, you will be tortured until you do.
• If you do confess, you will be tortured for your sins.
  
• And of course, if you disagree with the Inquisitor, you are a heretic.

And a modern application:

• If a baby is abandoned in a dumpster and dies, it was god's will and he's now with God and safe.
• If a baby is abandoned in a dumpster and lives, it was god's will and god intervened to save him.

You cannot, of course, argue with this kind of logic. Unfortunately, when religion begins to impose itself on society in a political way, it must be able to stand up to some logic or, you know, the whole innocent-until-proven-guilty fairness thing gets fucked 12 ways.

I was also right, there was chanting. Ditto on the burlap robes.

What I didn't Know about the Story/Plot
SPOILER: For those of you 25+ years behind on your cinematic education, you might want to skip this part.

This is a story about the perceived danger of COMEDY.

This was a surprise. The old, blind monk believed a rare, single copy of Aristotle's work on comedy to be sinful. To prevent anyone from reading this work and "converting" to Aristotle's ideas on comedy, he applied arsenic to the page corners that were routinely turned by licked fingers. Thus, poisoning and killing the readers.

As a former religious fanatic and convert to the joys of comedy, this is fascinating. Not new...I was aware how humor could be juxtaposed against sobriety with admonitions against too much levity. It's very difficult to judge medieval behavior by our modern standards--there's so much historical context to fully understand. But think about the incredible control an organization has that strips wealth, limits knowledge, forbids questioning AND bans humor from its followers?

And lest you think this only applies to dusty history, this type of control exists in every fanatical movement. Today. Because autonomy, laughter, questioning and knowledge are powerful tools against orthodoxy.

Indirectly related, I read this post by atheist blogger Greta Christina and particularly liked #3 on why she doesn't believe in god. It ties in here. Really.

me and my little iPlod

Like a mole in the tunnels, I'd been walking for a year-and-a-half before I had any rhythm, I mean, music. I don't mind walking to the thoughts in my head but they take a lot of taming and can't keep a beat for shit.

For Jesus' birthday I got one of those Apple things, you know the cute ones with the silhouette marketing campaign? An iPlod Shuffle. Yes. The people at Apple can thank me anytime. Because when you return from the holidays, logy, sated and out-of-practice, those first few weeks of The Return to Walking are not, um, peppy. Or strident. Or bouncy. They fall somewhere between a plod and shuffle. Suddenly I'm in that verdant valley between vocabulary and...v's be damned, design. Ah.

It's been 2 months or so since iPlod has been clipped to my bosom. I love iPlod dearly. (The accompanying ear duds, not so much. Don't fit my ear swirls quite right.) Anyway, I have been thinking about walking and musical beats. Like which time (4/4, 3/4, etc.) best matches my epiphenitan gait? Nike & Apple have come up with one fascinating, albeit expensive solution.

I, on the other–more frugal–hand, have begun to adjust my stride. It doesn't work with every song but works with quite a few of them. And musicians? Don't keep fucking with the meter within a song, I'm trying to not to look so white here.

The adjustment probably makes me walk funny anyhow but you know how much that's going to keep me up at night...iPlod, however, is going to have to learn to deal with embarrassment.

P.S. This is the second post in a week that talks about exercise. I will not go on again about this for a while. I find excessive references to exercise/diet tedious as all hell. This is borderline excessive. It's why my bloglob is not about one issue. I find it 2-dimensional; it bores the precious. So enough with the tunnels. On to glass-blowing or blow jobs or nose jobs or snotty noses...

sufferin' succotash

Okay, all I have left are the carrots and corn. I always eat those chalky lima beans first to get them out of the way.

An epiphenita, then: it seems that everyone around me is on anti-anxiety meds. Not judging, just noting. So when I start to torque out about something that seems...you know, like normal shit, I look around and everyone else seems so...fucking Calm. Placid. Unruffled. Being around people who have their anxiety medicated out, makes me feel a wee bit crazy. How's that for a side effect?
--------------
Oh, look a stray pea: my coworker shared this with me a while ago and I've forgotten about it until now. If you do a book review of the Bible, don't forget to include this (but space down below the fold so you won't ruin the ending for those who haven't read it).

NEW TESTAMENT SPOILER ALERT: Jesus dies on page 43.
--------------
I always feel like I have to apologize reassure people that my stress over the last couple of glob posts is nothing to worry about. There are things that I have been doing and things that I haven't been doing that contribute. One of the main ones is that I haven't been doing my daily must-control-fist-of-death walk. It is an unexpected form of therapy for the exercise-hater than I am. It also gets me away from that mind-numbing cube with the staring dual computer screens. Like big rectangular eyes boring into my soul...ha. Kidding. I can outstare them on my worst days.

Anyway, I resumed my constitutional today and have two observations (and feel much better).

1) I am the poster child for exercise discouragement. I do this walking thing five days a week (when the rare meeting or vacation doesn't interfere) and return to my cube in a lather. Seriously, be grossed out, I don't care. I'm a head sweater and I really push myself. And almost two years later, I don't look significantly different. Call it phantom metabolism. It kind of makes me smile. Because losing weight isn't my goal but I can see it is the only goal in the faces of the other regular walkers...damn, she's out here every fucking day and she's as big as she was 18 months ago. Aw. They noticed.

2) When I changed the clocks for Spring-Lose-an-Hour, I wasn't worried about extreme accuracy. What's 5-10 minutes difference on a Sunday morning? But, there was The Workday, tapping its schedule planner impatiently. So I started looking around for a clock while I walked so I could adjust my watch. The tunnels are a retail haven so I figured there would be clocks.

No clocks hanging anywhere.
Really, no clocks.
And that seemed odd.
Until I put my manipulative marketing hat on.
No merchant wants to remind patrons that time's awasting! Particularly during the work day. They want you to Mosey. Linger. Take a few more minutes. It's so subtle I never really paid any attention to it. It creeps me out that such a quiet, concerted effort to con the passerby is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, we are complicit in this shit. The merchants aren't duping the innocent. We choose buy shit we don't need or tarry when there's nothing we're really interested in.

Still. Marketing is eveeeel.

leftover succotash

My little craigslist listing [with addendum] has netted what seems like some promising tenant applicants. More on this when it actually pans out.

We're about to refinance our mortgage and that makes me...a little stressed. Not that I haven't researched it to death, kept tabs on the interest rates like a jealous lover and not that I don't have my neurotic ducks in a row. It just stresses me.

We're flying to Florida to visit family in a couple of weeks. I love seeing my parents and my sister and her kids. I feel guilty for only getting down there once a year, my folks are in their seventies and well, I want to see them more often. Family is supposed to make you crazy. And mine doesn't usually have quite this affect on me. So why am I all whacked out? I need to figure out a way to calm the fuck down. I am wound like a proverbial top and it's disproportional to my current experiences. Yes, there are stressors. There are ALWAYS stressors.

I'm just going to go to bed later and grind my molars down for awhile. That always helps...

succotash

I'm not a big fan of succotash (it's the lima beans. blech.) but if you did a CAT scan of my brain right now, sweartogod, you would see succotash.

I'm scattered. And that doesn't cover it.

A few items to mention: we finally saw Milk and we watched the documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk the night before. Sean Penn and the cast were able to accurately portray the characters (almost eerily spot on) without being imitative or wooden. Incredible performances. This is an activity that I usually avoid: watching an entire movie knowing that the whole thing ends in tragedy. I am a cinematic wimp. But we went anyway. The movie did what good movies do: it engaged me and drew me to the characters...humanizing even Dan White, who murders Harvey Milk in the end. It made me cry. (Which seems to be this month's theme song.) I hope my family will see the movie. Maybe when I go visit them I can talk them into going. (Not easy. As it involves 1) spending money 2) "wasting" 3 hours 3) sitting still and focusing.) There is power in understanding any political/cultural struggle. The abuse that was considered routine 30 years ago is chilling to watch today. Just like the Prop 8 struggle will be 30 years from now. I hope.

Last night we attended the reading of our dear friend Eric's play, Stop, Traveler at Stages. It was enjoyable and difficult because after the reading there was a critique of sorts with the audience. Led by a dramaturgist. No, seriously, the guy running the thing asked if there was anyone trained in dramaturgy in the audience. It's not a new word (meaning: the craft or the techniques of dramatic composition) but neither is drammock (meaning: an uncooked mixture of meal, usually oatmeal, and cold water) but I wouldn't make the assumption that everyone knew the word–even among foodies, the latter is likely to draw blank stares. Community jargon can be so insular. Remind me of that next time I'm waxing poetic about typefaces.

Eric's play is good. About a third of the criticisms were worth hearing, though not all the suggestions would be worth taking. Being the focus of such a critique is daunting. I am impressed that he voluntarily goes through this process repeatedly. If your craft involves presentation to an audience and you want to hone it, I suppose it is necessary. Other artists can create their sculpture, paintings or stories in solitary style and care far less what the general population thinks than a playwright who needs an audience to complete his work. However, good feedback is valuable for the most hermetically sealed artist. The "good" qualifier is the hard part. There were a couple of wingnuts in the audience (it was a free reading, after all) who were stunning in their idiocy.

again with the rudeness

Those of you who know me know that I can push the edge of the rude envelope from time to time. I call it assertive. I call it standing up for a cause. I sometimes call it chutzpah because I have Jewish-culture-envy and like to use Yiddish expressions as often as possible.

However, if you make an appointment with me and just.don't.bother.showing.up. then I feel that, unless you're making some bigger statement or have been maimed in a 18-vehicle pileup on the interstate, you're just a mouth-breathing cretin. Dirty Doodles never showed. It's not like I really thought this interaction was going to net me tenant-of-the-year but after emailing DD several times with address, phone numbers and a reminder that he had an appointment and that if, for any reason (hangnail, clouds, disconcerting horoscope) he couldn't make it, just contact me in any one of four ways to cancel.

Fucker.

I reposted on craigslist today with this little addition:

NOTE: If you have responded to this ad recently, made an appointment to view the apartment and never showed up nor canceled ahead of time, please don't respond to this ad again. We are very reasonable landlords. This isn't our business, it's our backyard, so we're pretty sure that if you're not courteous enough to keep an appointment you made, we probably won't be happy with you as a tenant.

Does that sound snotty? Self-righteous? Pissy? Good.

it's true. this man has no dick.

David Gibbs against robot love

At an anti-gay marriage rally Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, David Gibbs III, the Christian fundamentalist lawyer who fought to keep brain-damaged Terry Schiavo on life support in 2005, publicly expressed his deep-seated fear of machine love. From the News & Observer:

(Gibbs) told rally participants gay marriage would "open the door to unusual marriage in North Carolina.

"Why not polygamy, or three or four spouses?" Gibbs asked. "Maybe people will want to marry their pets or robots."

via boingboing

Robot love. The love none dare to name.
Btw, isn't "polygamy" and being married to "three or four spouses" the same thing? Wait. Let me go look that up...

po⋅lyg⋅a⋅my
[puh-lig-uh-mee] –noun
1. the practice or condition of having more than one spouse, esp. wife, at one time.

Yup. That's it.

And who knows? Gay marriage could lead to: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"

the things people say, part 2

We've been interviewing tenants for our garage apartment. We almost rented it to the biggest asshat ever...let's call him Biff or Skip or something equally bourgeois, pretentious and upper middle classless. So Biff comes to see the apartment, fills out the application and since I don't have to be in love with the tenant*, I figure he will do. His credit rating, which he spouted off during our first doomed meeting, (red flag noted) was good, he was gainfully employed and spoke in full sentences.

Well, long story short, Biff began to send me bulleted emails about changes he wanted made to the very standard rental contract we'd sent him. Next, he challenged the move-in schedule like he had just been put in charge of Epiphenita's Franklin Planner (no, I don't). Then, fatefully, he began enumerating what he wanted cleaned and how. Finally, god help his fucktarded polished penny loafers, he requested a lease change so there was "some sort of option to sublet or re-lease the place, given the quality of tenant is no less than myself..."

I'd say what balls he has if I thought he was the least bit conscious of how insufferable an asshole he was. "...the quality of tenant...no less than myself" Are you fucking serious? I am not a violent woman. But if I had to spend any time at all around Biff, I swear on everything demonic, I would haul off and pummel his neatly coiffed arrogance into a pile of whimpering apology.

Most of the other applicants have been flakey or unable to grasp the stated square footage limitations inherent in 1950 garage apartments. We are showing it again this weekend. To a guy whose screen name is "Dirty Doodles." I ask you, does that alias seem like a great idea when you have no idea if your potential landlord is skittish or a sociopath? I don't really care...it just doesn't bode well.

Have I mentioned that the last time we advertised for a tenant, I made a comment on the neatness of one applicant's printing (I'm old-school drafting-lettering trained; so zip it.) and he chuckled and said, "Yeah, it's like a serial killer's handwriting!" Wow. I like good psychotic murderer humor as much as the next girl, but we've only just met. Let's see how fast I can scratch your name off the list of potential renters, okay?

*I tried to resist this. Really. It's been days since this post and in my compulsive re-editing mode I keep wanting to add alternatives to the descriptor: since I don't have to be in love with the tenant. Here goes and my apologies to those that don't enjoy a good dead horse beating:

• since I don't have to wipe the tenant's ass
• since I don't have to clean the tenant's ears
• since I don't have to hold the tenant's inner child
• since I don't have to read the tenant's palm
• since I don't have to pray with the tenant
• since I don't have to tuck the tenant in
• since I don't have to pay the tenant's porn bills
• since I don't have to entertain the tenant's mother
• since I don't have to trim the tenant's cuticles
• since I don't have to suck the tenant's dick

I only wish that I were done with this.

the things people say, part 1

First off, people, you need to know I've been taking hits off a flask of Haterade® all afternoon. This was one of the those weeks that you take out behind the building at 5pm on Friday and beat to death. That's all the disclaimer I've got.

You know that fabulous website overheadinnewyork.com? Well, it's possible that some of those quotes are the product of a few creative minds. I don't know. If they're funny, I don't really care. Point is, the quotes I'm slinging here, are ones that I have heard with my own disbelieving ears. If ears have beliefs.

Evidently I was in rare form this afternoon. My coworker made a remark insinuating that I had something in common with the snarky audience in Mystery Science Theater. A metaphor: I like percussion instruments as much as the next music lover but on Friday afternoon at 4pm I don't want to hear a fucking cymbal solo in the next cube. It's jarring and sucks out what little remains of my soul...troglodytes.

Earlier today, one of the relentlessly enthusiastic sales types said about the same successful transaction: "You really boxed him in!" [Breath.] "Man, you squeezed him out!" Okay, which is it? Boxed in or Squeezed out? Because if you do both, you need to see a digestive specialist. Or you're in labor.

In the same vein, I was in church some months ago. [Pause.] Yes, I go to church for weddings, funerals and whatever inane rites my loved ones choose to celebrate with invitations. I go to church but trust me, I always breathe a sigh of relief that I am leaving as me and not a zaftig pillar of salt. Anyway, I was listening to the preacher wax folksy about one thing or other when he read a passage from the bible and said of the quote, "when I first heard this scripture, as a human..." Seriously. He referred to himself in the past tense as being a human, as if something transpired since then to change his status.

I hear this shit and look around at the placid, unaffected faces of the people around me and just know that I am either hyper-aware or demonic. (Why am I so black and white about it? I could very easily be demonically hyper-aware.)

wordtherapy

Some people drink when they're depressed. Some sleep. Some write limericks.
laconic
la⋅con⋅ic /ləˈkɒnɪk/ [luh-kon-ik]
–adjective
Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise: a laconic reply.

Still waters they say, quite ironic,
run deep 'neath the quiet laconic.
Rejoinders so terse
might intimate worse:
like someone who's 'most catatonic.

peripatetic
per⋅i⋅pa⋅tet⋅ic  /ˌpɛrəpəˈtɛtɪk/ [per-uh-puh-tet-ik]
–adjective
1. walking or traveling about; itinerant.
2. (initial capital letter) of or pertaining to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.
–noun
3. a person who walks or travels about.

(A modified limerick, then:)

There once was a peripatetic
who roamed on a wooden prosthetic.
His gait grew frenetic
and almost pathetic
from drinking a potent emetic.

shibboleth
shib·bo·leth (shĭb'ə-lĭth, -lěth')
–noun
1. A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.
2. A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword; A commonplace saying or idea.
3. A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.

Betrayed by his nelly shibboleth
and protesting impediments a myth,
"Velveteen pantaloons
and classic show tunes,
just prove I am very chivalrouth."

Goofy as it seems, I can't even tell you how much better I feel. My only regret is that these limericks are are not dirty at all.

the visitation

My son and his friend (now ours as well) came to visit. We had a week of laughter, conversation, good food and company. To have such a delightful relationship with one's grown child is amazing. Amazing. I feel very lucky and, since The Fates demand payment, full of sorrow at our parting.

Glass half-full, glass half-full...

Dammit.