hovel down

Hooray! The dingy little shack-nasty lean-to on the back of my house has been destroyed forever! If it was a witch and I was a munchkin, there would be song and dance right now. Oh, what the hell: deedle leet dee dee dee! It was super fun: first, we found the bird’s nest (next entry about that whole ordeal), then we cut the roof up, then I lifted the roof sections and toppled them over the sides and back of the walls, then I took the walls down with the sledge. We have a plan drawn up: first we are going to pour up the pad and expand it. Then, we have to rebuild the walls (the original plan called for framing the structure in, but I was never a fan of that plan, and further, since the top two layers of brick toppled over when dad pushed on them, it was decided that my original desire to completely demolish the whole hovel and start over again was the right course of action). We need to decide on a new roof style (flatdeck, which has leak issues, or gabled, which will look a little odd, but be better for everything we want to do). Then, you know, we has to constructs it. But it will be so beautiful when it’s done. Although, I will admit that I am loving the light streaming in through the kitchen door right now. ‘Course, the thing I don’t love is that I can no longer make brekkies in the altogether, since the neighbors would have a 360 degree panoramic view of my pink bits. Ah, well: sacrifices.

metablognition

I’ve been slacking blogwise, but only because I have been busy in the world of the real: the surprise demolition of the little utility hovel on the back of my house, the baby bird I accidentally killed, planning and preparing for workshops I am presenting, a trip to Tallahassee to visit dear friends. So, I thought I could sneak by with just posting some comments on some friends’ blogs. Then I posted a comment on my blog. That was when I invented my new word: metablognition. Metacognition is when you think about thinking; in education lingo, it means you are showing the kids what your thought process is as you read, solve problems, whatever. My word is rooted in that, but it is blogging about your blog, or something to that effect. No? Okay, fine. I have another new word: thoughtulence. It means the same thing as a brain fart, but sounds nicer. More details on my wacky adventures soon. Kisses!

Ha, Fool: A Loofah

I am currently wrestling with the moral implications of using a loofah scrub pad I bought at The Body Shop. Technically, sponges are classified in the Kingdom Animalia, which makes them animals. Realistically, they do not have nerve cells and are not "animals": sponges are a collective of colonial organisms, just like jellyfish or Mormons. In fact, if you take a living sponge and run it through a sieve so that the cells are all akimbo, it can reassemble itself (not so much with a Mormon, and you will get in bad trouble if you try. Don't ask how I know). This one is a real dilly of a pickle for me. So, like most Americans, I am content to let other people give me the answers. What do you guys think?

Pubic hair causes crime

Friday was another bear meeting. I went because there is nothing quite like having senior citizens pinch your nipples. No, I kid: there are a LOT of things quite like that, and none of them are pleasant. Anyway, I did have fun the last time, and I just really wanted to get on with whatever (the whole “I tried, so when I end up alone I deserve my bitterness” thing), so I went.

I arrived a little early (you know me: such the eager beaver when it comes to being molested) and I volunteered to help this guy Dusty run the “50/50”. 50/50 is like some kind of raffle: tickets are $1, 6 for $5, or the length of your inseam in tickets for $10. Of course, you are kind of expected to do some cupping during the inseam measure. I was not responsible for that: I was the pimp (I collected the money) and Dusty was my ho (he did all of the tickets and just a little bit more). We worked the room but hard. In fact, we apparently set a new record: $318, and the winner of the raffle gets half of that (hence the 50/50). Dusty and I received several raucous rounds of applause; I turned to him and said “I guess we have a new job.” Which is okay by me (although I don’t think I will ever be an inseam measurer: it’s just not in my nature).

Dusty was also instrumental in a big first for me: I gave money to a stripper. See, we had worked so hard running the 50/50 that we didn’t even have time for a drink. When we finally got time to take a break, we went over to the bar, and there was a stripper dancing on it. Now, I have very limited experience with strippers of any stripe: I don’t even know if I like them or not. That seems weird when you consider how much porn I own, but it makes sense to me: porn is movies, but strippers are like real and right there and I had a brief, irrational fear that he was going to teabag me (“teabagging” is when the stripper kind of bops his scrotum on your forehead. The stripper was wearing a onesie, so it would not have been a flesh-to-flesh contact, but still. You can actually see a good example of teabagging in the John Waters movie “Pecker”, which incidentally is where the title of this post came from).

So, Dusty and I, we were watching the stripper while we were waiting for the bartender to come over and take Dusty’s order. The stripper was very cute: buff, nice face… you get the idea. The stripper sees us watching him, so he dances on over to us. Now, this was obviously not Dusty’s first time: he had money out and was ready to go, felt the stripper up a bit, and was completely unfazed. I, on the other hand, had no idea what to do. I had never been this close to a stripper practicing his or her trade before (except for that one time at my college graduation party, when my Dad’s friend’s now ex-wife {she turned out to be a pill-head: it was very sad} showed off her new implants while I was standing right next to her). I was watching as he did his little dance for Dusty, and I felt like I should give him some money for getting a vicarious show, so I pulled out a dollar and handed it to him. He took the dollar, and quick as a wink, grabbed my hand and put it in his pubic hair and then moved it around to cup his package.

I must have turned six shades of red. I didn’t even really enjoy it. Not because he wasn’t hot, and not because I suddenly stopped liking dick, but because it just didn’t feel appropriate. I suppose I am of this old-fashioned mindset where you only touch the people you love and you do it in the privacy of your own home. Call me crazy. Of course, I also didn’t move away from the stripper, either.

Appetite for thought

I like to destroy stuff. This revelation came to me as I used the circular saw to slice up the deck in my backyard. It was awesome: I wielded the power to destroy what the crackheads who lived here before me had wrought so carelessly and half-assed like I was born to it. I can see now why my mother is so insistent on being the one to wield the sledgehammer most of the time. And then this brings up something that I pondered as I began to pull up the sections of planking: is this what the fags mean when they say “masc only”? I’ve never really understood that. For me, it’s not really an issue: people are as they are. I can use power tools just as easily as I can bake a dessert. Sure, I like to queen it up… but only when it amuses me or the people around me. Does that make me feminine? I like to shop with friends, but when I am by myself I transform into “straight guy shopper”: I am in and out, whipping the cart (if I even bother to get one) around the corners with two wheels off the floor. Not because I am afraid to be out on my own, but because I have a specific purpose for doing so and like to execute my mission with military precision and timing. And the cart thing is kind of fun. Does this make me masculine? Or, like so much else, I wonder if this has been driven to the fetish point, where the stereotype gender behavior is divided down a razor-sharp line and pity any fool who gets too close to that edge. I don’t know the answer, just the same way that I don’t know if I am masculine or feminine. I am beginning to think that it is like so much else: people see what they want to. So to one, I may be the butchest, baddest thing; to another, I might just be the swishiest nelly queen in the universe. All I know is, either way I ain’t getting no dick.

A Ride Home

Tried to pull out of the parking lot; blocked by sudden flow of traffic. Stupid bitch cuts over just to block my lane. I hate all humans. Finally get out of lot, go to make U-Turn; blocked by sudden flow of traffic that I would have beat except for stupid lane blocking bitch. I no longer hate all humans: I hate her.

Behind a man in a late 80s brown car. We stop. He picks up a bottle of something and takes a swig. The bottle shape and liquid color register: it is a bottle of Listerine. He takes a swig; we begin moving. I wonder how he is going to get rid of the Listerine: it’s not exactly the kind of thing you can spit out the window. I think He looks like the kind of guy who swallows Listerine. We continue moving forward long enough that I am sure he must have swallowed it. I am wrong; when we stop, he opens his car door and pukes out a mouthful. I try not to stare at the cloud-blue puddle as I drive by. I think Okay, so he was just swishing for an unnaturally long time. Contemplate the kinds of behavior that should be punishable by death; consider adding public dental hygiene to the list. He lights up a cigarette before he turns off in front of me; I wonder what he was trying to cover up with the Listerine.

A cubby-looking guy with a muscle shirt and tattoos on each arm and leg is walking. Either he is not too bad looking, or I haven’t had sex since September. I haven’t had sex since September. How many days is that? Cars are stopped; try to come up with the perfect line. Realize I am trying to pick up strangers off the street. Take one last look and drive on.

Stop at a light. A boat has fallen off its trailer and smashed into the back of the truck that was pulling it. The truck guys are standing around, looking at the truck. They try to maneuver the boat back onto the trailer; they are white, with baseball caps sporting fishing logos. I don’t even grin as I pass by.

Two cars in front of me: one with a “Choose Life” license plate, one with a Jesus fish. Line at light is long; Choose Life ducks into what I call the fuckstick lane: people who go into this lane must immediately merge back into the traffic they just left because the lane runs out. Only fucksticks go into this lane because they want to get ahead of other people. I hope that people block Choose Life out, so that he is stuck on the side of the road like the fuckstick he is. When he is let in, I hope that there is a heaven, and that Choose Life gets there, so God can put a giant asshole on his forehead. Realize this makes me a self-righteous prick. Imagine what it would be like to have a giant dick on my forehead. Remember I am not going to heaven anyway. Smile a little at the perversity of someone who would presume to stand up as a model of “virtue” being a total fuckstick on the road, while I, the “immoral” one, does the right thing and stays in line like almost everyone else does. Realize that I am uniquely equipped to appreciate the perverse ironies of life. Smile.