I am a horrible blogger...

I haven't updated in quite a while...

Duh!

When I logged in I had to agree to all kinds of new user agreements, got a notification that my login is now tied into my Google ID or some such nonsense. Interesting thing happened though. I can now access my old blog, which was somehow lost for quite some time. That one is pretty old, the last entry is from 2002! I think that it was tied into my old domain, bigmisterc.com.

If you're curious what was on my mind seven years ago, go check it out. I know I'm going to go look it over, myself...

Hope vs. Fear

It's been hard for me to write. I've been so frustrated and a bit afraid. This is a time in my adult life, like never before, where I have had hope for the country and the direction in which it is headed. A liberal (often a bit too centrist for his own good)president, a congress controlled by the Democrats... An ambitious agenda, a busy 100 days... a president who is, let's just admit it, cooler than shit, a beautiful first lady, history has been made with the U.S. electing its first African-American president...

But I have had, for quite some time, had an awful sense of dread. And it's not about the resistance from the G.O.P. It's not about the misinformation and lies that are being spread by right-wing pundits. I expected that. It's not about the outrage from the right.

It's the crazies...

It's the nut who showed up at the president's town hall in NH with a gun on his hip and a sign referring to Jefferson's quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It's the people who are disrupting the town halls. And while I know that there is quite a bit of is planned, people are bussed in. But some of the fear and the desperation that these people feel, that they express is genuine. It's Glenn Beck on his show joking about poisoning Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Beck is a schmuck and may actually believe some of the idiocy that makes it out of his mouth. But there are some people who live and breathe by his every word and those people truly believe, in their heart, that the President is a danger to this country, that he will lead this country down a path that will lead to the absolute, utter destruction of our way of life.

Fear and desperation lead people to do horrible, desperate things. And seeing the coverage of Senator Kennedy's life and the life of his family I cannot help but think of his two brothers, their lives cut short. I am really, really afraid that with the hysteria that is in the air that history might repeat itself. Too many liberal icons, people trying to bring about change for the country that they love, every bit as much as any conservative does. We've lost Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy to assassination in the. I don't want to lose another.

Crrrrazy!

For a while now I have been spending quite a bit of time on Yahoo's Buzz feature. The way it's supposed to work is that people who use the site, "buzz up" news articles and other users can comment on them, buzz them up more, buzz them down, reply to other people's comments, yadda, yadda, yadda... It's basically a news-driven social networking site. Not a bad idea in theory. But, with the political discourse being what it is today, the Buzz has turned into a very nasty place. So, I am taking an indefinite break from going to, contributing to or commenting on anything on that site.

It's an ugly time in American politics at the moment, nastier than I've ever seen in my lifetime. The site is a reflection of that. Here are some direct quotes from things that people are actually posting on that site. Believe me when I say that I wish I was making this stuff up:

About Justice Sotomayor:
"God, what an ugly whore. She and Ruth Ginsburg are the ugliest whores in America. Congress obviously hates America to approve this bltch. I would like to see a list of names of those that voted her in, so I can help vote them out."

About Rush Limbaugh:
"He should be arrested immediately and sentenced to prison for inciting violence on a public official. Period. Republicans are very violent hate-filled people."

I don't see myself going back any time in the foreseeable future...

Vacation

I am currently on vacation. When I go on vacation it's usually a very low-key affair and this one has been no exception. Aside from a few appointments, (got my rear differential services, wifey had an OB/Gyn appointment that we cancelled) the highlight of the week was a July 4th cookout at a friend's house, where I served as grill-master and chief pyromaniac. We cooked five pounds of hamburgers, two kielbasas, half a dozen chicken breasts, two or three pounds of chicken tenderloins, a gang of hot dogs and about a dozen chicken thighs on the bone. There was corn on the cob, potato salad, rice, chips, and a big, old, mean apple pie with ice cream. There were only about eight of us there so there were leftovers aplenty. We've been living off of them for the past few days.

We bought about 40 dollars of fireworks which were ignited with much enthusiasm except our friend Ita's son. Poor little Elisha was scared to death of them. He would sit in his mother's lap as she covered his ears for him. In Connecticut, the laws prohibit fireworks that do anything than make a little noise and emit sparks, so I think that his fear was considerably countered by his fascination with them. When they were all gone he kept asking me if I was going to light anymore.

He's about three years old. I love kids that age. The world is still so full of wonder for them; I would love to see the world through their eyes for a day.

Now, there is a reason why my vacations are so low-key. It's not because I have a fairly stressful job (I do) and don't want to add any stress on vacation, worrying about itineraries, airline tickets, long car trips, etc. It's not because wifey and I cannot get time off from our employer's at the same time (she's a stay-at-home mom). It's not because the boy is involved in a summer sports program or anything like that that forces us to stay close to home. The reason we don't do anything extravagant while I am on vacation is simple: we can't afford it.

I would love to drive down to Florida and see Liz and my mom and finally meet both of their husbands. I would love to fly to Texas or Arizona to visit my sister or my friend Donna.

We, just like so many people these days, live week to week, paycheck to paycheck. It's not like we want for very much or are scrounging for food, but there simply isn't a lot of wiggle room financially. If something dire were to happen to any of us, costly medical bills could potentially bankrupt us. Thankfully I work in a hospital and anything routine is, for the most part, gratis. If something were to happen to me that would put me out of work for any extended period of time would spell financial ruin.

Vacations are not a luxury for me, they are simply a way to escape the stress of work for a very brief period.

...damn. I gave myself heartburn thinking about all this.

An ode to bacon

I just fried up a pound of bacon.

The house is now in the swoon of a heady bacon orgasm. It is altogether comforting, decadent, and wholly satisfying unlike anything else that comes out of the kitchen in the mornings. Just the act of standing over a hot frying pan watching those strips of smoke-cured pork belly brown, sizzle, and curl up into little strips of brown heaven is absolutely awesome. Since you really can't and shouldn't eat bacon every day cooking it is a rare, almost exotic while at the same time completely domesticated act. I love every part of it: the sizzle and pop as the meat renders the fat and browns; the smell that pervades the air, filling the whole house; the occasional pop of the grease that smarts my hand; even the film of spattered grease over the lenses of my glasses.

But cooking it is only a small part of the fun. With a mug of hot coffee in one hand a fork in the other who can resist taking one of the first pieces out of the pan after you've added the next set into the pan. The combination of slightly sweet, salty and greasy that wraps itself up in the intoxicating umami that just sits there on the back of your tongue.

I've started saving bacon grease like my mother used to, saving it for some yet unknown southern, cracker delicacy. I have a cookbook that I got for my birthday called The Cracker Kitchen that is filled with all kinds of recipes that call for bacon drippings, so many of them reminiscent of my childhood and the dishes my mom used to make us. And I guess there is also where part of the appeal of bacon lies: it is something that has survived the transition from my childhood into my adult life. It brings me as much pleasure now as it did then; it hasn't been diminished with the passing years.

I love bacon.

Vandalism

I know that I probably brought this on myself...

Wednesday I had a shitty day. Work was shitty, I was working alone; the weather was crappy; my back hurt. I could go on and on with a litany of reasons to curse Wednesday until I was blue in the face. Wednesday was so horrible that it refused to die. It laid in waiting, hiding until I had forgotten about it and came back to bite me in the ass this morning on Friday.

With the weather being crappy Wednesday, the pool here in our apartment complex was closed. If it's rainy, the management here just leave it locked. If the day starts out nice in the morning, rains at midday they lock it up and close it the rest of the day, even if the late afternoon's weather is flawless. But Wednesday, being a bad day, naturally had crappy weather to go with it. The pool was closed. Locked up.

As I am about to pull into my driveway, which is directly across from said pool, I see a teenage girl inside, in her bathing suit and a teenage boy climbing over the fence in his bathing suit. Having just finished an especially bad day at work and just being a miserable son of a bitch at that particular moment, I was overtaken in a wave of misanthropy. Normally, I would not care if some idiots were climbing a tall, wrought iron fence with sharp appendages atop, to get into 50 degree water. But I had just finished a day where it seemed that everyone around me did whatever they felt like with disregard to attendance policies, compliance issues or even just simple logic. Everyone around me at work was a mental case and I often feel like the only sane, responsible adult in the whole hospital. I was going to be damned if I was going to come home and be witness to the same idiocy at home as well.

Instead of turning into my driveway, I continued down the road and around the corner to the rental office. That's right; I ratted them out. I'm not proud of it, but I did it.

The property manager took off for the pool and surely lambasted those kids and drug them out of the pool and possibly even dragged them by their ear to their apartment and embarrassed them in front of their parents. ...she doesn't play around, believe me.

I had forgotten about the whole thing until this morning. I head out to the car, sit in the driver's seat and as I am looking at the building I see that someone had poorly drawn that stupid Bam Margera logo on the building in spray paint. Shaking my head, I turn over the car's engine, turn to my right to look over my shoulder and see that my back window had been spray painted. I get out to look and see that my tailgate has also received a touch of paint as well.

I look up and down the length of the parking lot. Mine was the only car vandalized.

Payback, evidently, for Wednesday. Next time I'll let the little shits freeze their asses off in the pool...

hmmm

So, I have an idea for a book, or at the very least a short story. I have the whole arc of the tale mapped out in my head. I could sit down and bang out the outline of it in probably about 10-15 minutes. Writing it would be, I think, fairly easy.

But I am afraid to start it.

What if it sucks? And I mean really, really sucks. Would I know enough to know that it was complete and utter garbage and therefore save myself the embarrassment of actually sharing it with someone. I generally take criticism fairly well, but I don't know if I could take someone that I really care about that the story I've spent hours pouring myself into was a big, steaming pile of shit.

What if it was slightly mediocre? An amusing little ditty with serious structural flaws and a meandering narrative... a highly descriptive narrative with a charming voice whose story kind of falls on its face? Would I maybe feel good enough about it or fool myself into believing that it's not half bad and subsequently submit it to a number of publishers and be utterly crushed by rejection?

Maybe I might write it and never show it to a living soul (but you and I both know my ego is way too big for that!) I don't know... I've never been this chicken about anything creative before. As an actor, I've gone on stage in my underwear, broken down the fourth wall and gone out into the audience and interacted with them. I produced and directed a play in college. I've put my drawings into various shows. Why is this so different? Why is this so paralyzingly terrifying?

YIKES.