Divorcing Kindly

Hey, if anyone wants to follow along with my personal reflections and whining while I go through this marriage break, I went ahead and started Divorcing Kindly in attempt to purge. I'm hoping it'll let me flush out the in-process stuff - and get me back to blogging some of the better CFC content I've been ignoring for the last few months.

It's in progress and will get prettier, but I just started tonight.

Thanks for sticking. Hopefully I'll be around a bit more :)

Imagine, An Emotional Dump

(This is an emotional dump and catch-up to the divorce posts, so feel free to skip.)

Imagine, for a moment, that you daughter has just turned seventeen. Imagine she took and passed her test and has been a licensed driver for about a week when you buy her a brand new used car the day before Easter. (It'd been planned for a while; she got a job at the local amusement park for the summer.) Best parent in the world. And the very next day, in a sudden bottleneck on the highway, in something you could not have possibly avoided, you crash into that new car of hers while she is driving, rendering both un-drive-able. (We are both okay.)

And the following day you get the sore throat intro to the worst cold you've had in years.

And the following day you find out two of your credit card numbers were stolen - probably in-person where you used it - and your personal and business accounts have been frozen.

Imagine also that your 11-year marriage (that has been decided it was moving towards dissolution of marriage about two years ago) was finally coming to a head and since you couldn't hold onto the house solo, you're going to be the one moving out. Oh, and your spouse started kinda dating some guy a couple weeks ago - and thinks that's an okay thing.

So right now, imagine you're looking at apartments because you're moving out of a 6-year home and 11-year marriage in less than 90 days, trying to consider all the pieces that go with moving, with filing with the court, with becoming alone (and learning how to love yourself) again (if you ever knew), how 11 years of marriage will split in bills and books and insurance and furniture and your daughter's time, stemming a rising tide of depression, holding a job, sorting out how you're going to pay for anything, pushing due diligence in research for the purchase of your new used car which NEEDS to happen in the next week - all while closing off the anger of your spouse dating and blowing lung cookies out your nose while attending rehearsals for the local play you're headlining in a month.

Sometimes we have black clouds. This has been my last two weeks.


Sorry, but I warned you it was a dump.

Not Dead, Just Fat

Been a while. Since I posted, that is.

I've been going through some mild depression, trying to get my shit together, and finding myself overwhelmed with apathy when it comes to politics. I mean, when we get to the point where AM band conservative hosts up through the Republican vice- and presidential candidates can blatantly shift from generally-expected spin to outright lies, when those who would debunk those lies are ignored because the right is so brainwashed to ignore any Romney falsehoods or ideology switches while making the slightest fart from the liberals into earth-shattering Somemotherfuckingthing-gate, really, what is there to say?

One of the things I've been working on is my weight. I'm not fat, really, but a stocky (somewhat muscular) 205lbs at 5"8" and just got back from a visit to California where I quickly realized I was generally the fattest guy in the room. Oddly enough, the vanity that drove most of the people I met made me realize I was not taking good enough care of myself on a physical/health level. So I'm making some changes.

And I don't know if it's just today with the excitement of the hurricane or the promise that the intensity of the politics will deflate some after next week, but I was motivated enough to write this, and I'm posting a video a little later.

So maybe I'm getting back on the horse. We'll see. But I'm doing okay. Not great, but better than dead.

My Cat is Dead - Long Live My Cat

D, that foreground, paw-licking darling, was put to sleep today after about 15 years to the day I brought her into my basement college apartment.

She'd been getting skinnier over the past several months, but so slowly you don't even really notice that much. This morning she was fine, walking around. When I got home after work, she was laying in the hallway between the bathroom and kitchen and I poked at her with my foot and said "What are you doing there, goon?"

And she didn't raise her head to respond.

She wasn't moving much, and when I moved in to pet her, I could see her breathing was labored. When she did gain consciousness, she looked around, tried to get up, and failed. Repeatedly.

I freaked and called 3 vets (apparently Wednesday is a golf day) before finding someone open, while Mrs. Shambles pet her. I wrapped her in a towel and off we went. I was a damned mess.

As soon as the doctor walked back in with her, I could see on his face what we needed to do and listened to him explain the emergency option without any of the muscles in my face or throat or lips or tongue able to say "Shut up and please - PLEASE - can we end her suffering?" When he finally said "euthanize," I found the words - or word - and said "yes."

I got to be with her and pet her head and say "It's okay" as they gave her her last shot. And I wasn't out of town (which I will be in two days) and she wasn't alone here at home. And for that I'm thankful.

Though I'm still a mess.

D is survived by her foster sister, G (background pic). She will be missed.


Haha, and she was exactly like this:


:')

The Divorce Cometh, Man

(This is personal and not happy. You have been warned. Go away if you like. But come back. Van murals tomorrow.)


Ah, patient readers, you may recall this gem from two years ago - OMFG, it's been two years? - wherein I divulged that Mrs. Shambles and I had settled on divorce after growing apart and being at a dead standstill on either side of the fence about having a(nother) child.

Give it a look if you don't remember or haven't been around that long. Good read for a horribly depressing monstrosity of a life event.

And it gets even stranger-worse!

As we have not paid down our debt and have gone two years, we have lived in a relatively copacetic, visually emotionless void. For Little Shambles, of course. Big events that have happened since that post have been the passing of Mrs. Shambles's mother (only 60) and our ten year anniversary, both weathered with ---

FUCK!

Sorry, not even sure what the hell I'm trying to convey or vent here.

Brass tacks: last month we talked again, pinned down that we were still in those same places - although even more distant now - and now that Mrs. Shambles is back to work and my contracts are getting more lucrative, we may or may not be divorcing in the next year. Might wait until Little Shambles is done with HS in two years. Might not. For as much as Mrs. Shambles hit me up with being uncommunicative or too hard to engage during these past two years on the handful of times she did engage, when I pushed the issue, she had apparently not been sitting on a bunch of planning.

We did talk plainly, which was kind of nice. The impasse is far too wide and deep for a bridge. We are going to do our own thing (and have been for a while). And Bee-Tee-Dubs, what makes me happy?

It's no surprise to anyone that with my history of depression and this weirdness have left me completely perplexed at the answer to what should be a pretty down to Earth question. But ...I'm not sure. I have things I like, but in this situation I can sometimes only dwell on the fact that I LOVE making other people happy and how - when it came down to it - it was my selfishness that would not allow me to do that one thing for the person I loved most.

(Really, I only think about it in those terms on occasion. Totally in a healthy way. Right?)

So I continue to live in the void. The "I love yous" are ghosts if I hear them at all. Even texting I love yous quickly turned to KKKs (kisses, you racist), and then burned out like the cross on your lawn. Kisses on the lips? Nil. Sex? Can't remember when.

Communication, especially in the last couple months, has not just shriveled up but started pushing into disrespect. I'm a patient all-kindsa-zenny guy, but my lean is going from "let's just get through what we must" to "seriously, you live on your goddamned Blackberry but you can't even answer a text or two a day?" And it's not over "OMG work iz hard" but "Hey, I'm making dinner about six, is that good?" and not getting an answer until 7. Or 10.

And our daughter doesn't know. And her dad and my folks don't know. And it goes on. We haven't worn our wedding rings in over a year.


SO I guess my bullshit post here is more for venting than anything else. Not much progress, a little more frustration, and a lot more "What the Hell?" Sorry if that's disappointment.


I don't know. Maybe next week I'll tell you how it's all my fault because every major relationship in my life has ended this way: they just get longer. Or not. Because that would be defeatist. And I only think about it in those terms on occasion. Totally in a healthy way. Right?


ADDENDUM:
I've got that emotional hangover feeling after posting this yesterday. I'm not going to make any changes besides this add, though, as it accurately reflected the breakfast burrito explosion that I sometimes experience in the midst of emotional turmoil, threshold, and a coating of insomnia from inheriting my mother's propensity to imagine the worst possible outcome.

Truth is, writing bubbled it to the surface again and Mrs. Shambles and I had another candid talk, which was good. In the coming weeks, we're going to get finances and budgets nailed down, we're going to come up with a plan to talk to Little Shambles, and take the rest as it comes. She'll be more communicative and I'll be more patient. With a house neither of us could afford on our own, we'll probably be sticking it out until LS goes to college in two years, perhaps opting for a legal separation before the official divorce - legal research is also on the docket.

Anyway, with over 1500 posts, there are only a handful of them that directly relate to me and only me - hell, even my gout posts were at least curiously informative. So, again, thanks for reading, and thank you for your patience.

Now how about some van murals?

My First Heartbreak: Firestar

Warning: sappy content herein.



From 1981-1983, NBC Saturday Morning aired an animated show Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. I was five or six at the time, but I loved it: Spidey was always a quick-quipping badass, Iceman was, well, he made fucking ice out of his hands, and then there was Firestar. *le sigh*

I was absolutely head over heels in love with Firestar. I was many years away from feelings of sexual attraction, but somehow felt such a desire, such an affinity towards the character, that it made a lasting impression on me, even at such a young age.

I specifically remember my father - working for the local NBC affiliate at the time - brought home a 5x7 promo glossy of the three heroes sliding / slinging / flying in action. And me: just staring at Firestar, alone in my room, until my emotive threshold met up with my realism that she was a cartoon and the awesome adoration exuding from my eyes turned to tears as I truly realized I would never be able to experience her beauty/persona personally. I cried myself to sleep that night.

Firestar had broken my heart.

And it's probably 90% of the reason I have a thing for redheads.

And I look back on that as a magical time of sorts, because at its core, it was pure, not an overwhelming desire to possess, but just to know more, comprehend more. And a despair that came with the inability.

Years later, I still see a little bit of that pull to know an inner beauty in every person I meet, though it only gets intense enough to tear up when I stare at the clouds or the Hubble Deep Field.

Beauty is in everything. And, in a sense, love is too. And I think I'm concluding that a cartoon character opened my mind to both and handed me the tools to appreciate them at just the right age to become the person I am today.

Cat Piss & Cum Shots: Spring Stinks!

It's that time of year again! Oh, the stanks of spring. Cat pee is one of them. Semen is another. Now I love my honeysuckle and my lilac bush, but urine and jizz should not fit in.

You can read my giant treatise on cum bubbles and cat pee here, but here's the gist:

To me - and three other people I've been in contact with online - juniper smells like cat pee. My entire family thinks I'm nuts because they do not experience the same thing. And it's not a faint smell, a subtle waft of something encompassed in a cornucopia of exotic complexity; when I drive to the grocery store that's surrounded by it and my car vents are open this time of year, it smells like one of my cats just took a concentrated, stinking, steaming piss in the back seat. (I would love to talk to anyone who's had the same experience. It took me two years to figure it out.)

The Bradford Pear tree smells like semen. LOTS more people have experienced this one. It's not as horribly strong as the juniper, not like "Who just rubbed one off on my face?" - more like grabbing your laundry the afternoon after you had a wet dream and catching the odor of the semi-dry, cool, musty gob emanate from the pile.

It's spring! You've been warned.

My Senior Year Song: Tori's Winter

A little bit about me...

My senior year in high school, I was just popular enough to make it into the Senior Council and while we primarily planned the prom, we also chose the pool from which our fellow seniors would choose our class song.

During that meeting, I was sickened by the stupid, vapid choices presented. But I came prepared. When I was 18, Tori Amos's Winter was such a clear choice for a serious message of recognition of place and growth and fear that I couldn't but enter it.

Here's the song:



Lyrics? Yep:

Snow can wait
I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose
Get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart
When I think of winter
I put my hand in my father's glove
I run off
Where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice
"Your must learn to stand up for yourself
Cause I can't always be around"
He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Boys get discovered as winter melts
Flowers competing for the sun
Years go by and I'm here still waiting Withering where some snowman was
Mirror mirror where's the crystal palace
But I only can see myself
Skating around the truth who I am
But I know dad the ice is getting thin

When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Hair is grey
And the fires are burning
So many dreams
On the shelf
You say I wanted you to be proud of me
I always wanted that myself

He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change
My dear

And at the end of the day, I won. If by "won" you mean "got it on the ballot."

Two weeks later, the masses of our senior class, the masses that could not look beyond this wonderful, last year of their wonder, chose:



I wanna go back? And do it all over? Fuck that.

And that's why Winter holds a special place in my heart and why most of the people I went to high school with still live in Parma, Ohio.

This Is What I Write at 3am

No apologies, no explanations. This is what you get:

Yellow and Red

Mom was acting funny.
"The robots," she said. "The robots are, they're talking to me."
"What robots?" I asked.
"In the teevee, in the computer."
"Mom," I tried.
She turned around, slid the drawer, and pulled the biggest knife I'd seen in the house.
"Mom, please. Stop."
"You don't understand, Ingrid, they want me to destroy."
"Destroy what?"
"Everything," she said and forced the blade into her neck. Blood. So much blood. "Everything." She dropped to the ground, mumbling "Yellow and red. Yellow and red."

The home computer was glitchy, kept showing abstract images of rings of yellow and bars of red. I watched only for a few seconds before getting dizzy. Yellow and red.

Pulling the cords under the desk seemed to do nothing. The monitor would fizz out and then pop into life with the same images.

And there was a hum. I smashed the monitor and waited for a second only to hear the noise from upstairs. It was tilting my brain, making me just a little bit mad. I was waiting tables at a bar I'd never been to. Someone asked why I hadn't been there to pick up the slack. "I can do it," I said. "Then why aren't you here?" she answered.

The car's dead and I'm making a quick stop at the gas station down the street and I'm looking for a bag of Funyons. Funyons. But they're out and there's no beer and the only energy drinks they have are warm. Funyons. Yellow. And red.

I'm back in the living room and Mom's still alive and the remote I have has a big ON/OFF switch but when I walk to the television, I can't read it and the fizzled signal is pulling me in. I want to be a piece of face on the clothesline outside. There are already three out there, smiling, waving in the wind, flapping with the wandering joy of resignation. And I go out of the room so I can read the ON/OFF button and hold it and walk back in to flip it - and I do. And the television goes off, but only for a second, and back on. And yellow and red and yellow and red.

I feel myself going, losing my ground, but I run upstairs and I'm late for work and so ashamed because I haven't been in for a few days with no excuse and I'm just waiting on getting reamed out, waiting on getting fired. And the computer monitor is humming at me, is strobing yellow and red and I'm in an ocean-front hotel room and the giant wave is coming and I don't know how to avoid it, don't know why no one is not running away. They're all staring at me. And the wave is coming.

The television is still humming and mom is on the floor. Red. Everywhere.

"Why aren't you helping me?" I shout to no one. I run around the house pulling cords from the walls, but the humming only grows. A plane passes overhead so, so closely and crashes a few miles away in a ball of fire. Red and yellow.

Everything is pulled from the walls. The television is still on, playing a version of Super Mario Brothers I've never seen. But it's pulsing, pullling me in.

I run upstairs, turn on the shower, get to my room where the pillows are pulsing. The people-faces from the garden are stretched out, bleeding on the mattress. I can't stop anything. I can't keep my mind moving outside of the yellow and red cycle that's taking my head out. The alarm clock is even doing it, somehow making colors where there should only be sound.

We can't keep it. We can't.

The colors are daunting, consuming, and so, so wonderful.

And so: blood.

Personal: Homeland Security Laws Suck

Main Point: Under Homeland security law, if your passport will expire in less than 90 days, you will NOT be allowed to travel internationally.

This afternoon, I drove Mrs. Shambles to the airport so she could go to France to visit her good friend's mother who was recently diagnosed with colon cancer. After viewing her passport, they said "Sorry, we can't let you on the plane." Her passport will expire in 82 days.

I went back to pick her up.

Through much phone calling and double-checking we found out that it is a law under Homeland Security: If your passport will expire within 90 days, you will not be allowed to travel internationally. France says: no problem; your passport is valid. Belgium agrees.

But how does anyone know that? Do they post an alert when you buy your ticket? NO. Is there a common understanding that something you pay the government to license you for for 10 years is NOT honored for the last 90 days of that license? NO. Passports are good for 10 years, so when this law was enacted, were all passport holders who would be affected by this law alerted to this new policy? NO.

So WTF? Isn't Homeland Security's plan of "security" to keep dangerous people out? How the hell does it keep our country safer by making my wife - trying to visit a dear, ill friend - inside the USA?

Dear Washington: This is case in point of why Americans don't trust bullshit laws and Washington, D.C. in general. You create a law and don't tell anyone and don't back it with anything but a wall - the airlines don't prevent you from purchasing a ticket or ask you for your passport expiration or even have a pop-up warning that this is a LAW.

I'd guess that it actually ended up as a rider to boost revenue by 90 days.

I want a check for a 90 day pro-rate. Assholes.

Occupy Cincinnati: People Make Me Sad

I posted innocuously about Occupy Cincinnati because I'm totally going to go but because I own a business can't say "I'll be there fucking vampire corporations!"

Someone I consider a friend replied:

Socialism is not among the principles that have made this country the leader of the free world for the past 235 years... Life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness... Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Know history or repeat it.

Note: America has been the leader of the free world (kinda not so much now) because everyone else was either not industrialized enough, spending their money on kicking the shit out of someone else, or getting the shit kicked out of them.

Note: NOTHING about the Occupy movement has anything to do with socialism.

Note: It's about government-sanctioned corporate abuse of the system, lack of regulations on a financial level that - if they existed on the FDA level - would mean you'd be peeing out your ass once a week (or dead) because no one would make sure your Montsanto crops were anything more than leafy botulism.

Note: [person] knows very little about history, very little about the present. I'd guess he has a psychological receptor for anything that comes from the right-wing AM band. I still consider him a friend but mourn him as a casualty in the war of thought.

Made of Bees

Been swimming in my head a bit...

Lorn opened the back door and stepped inside. The shock of the temperature drop was a welcome stilting, but it wasn't enough. He tracked his grass-stained shoes to the window unit and positioned his dripping face in front of the blower. The chill ran though his joints in an oddly-ecstatic jolt and he picked up his phone. All he could smell was gasoline.

"Wouldn't get too close to that," said the imp sitting on his computer desk, in a tart, British accent. "S'full of bees."

Lorn passed him a sideways glance. "Bees?"

"Yes," he said, standing up off the mouse pad. "Yellow. Black. Stingy. Hurt quite a bit." He leaned on his tiny cane. "Did I say stingy?"

He checked for voicemails. Nothing. Rachel should've called. Scanning texts he said "Bees, really. My phone's got bees in it?"

The imp's eyes grew two sizes. "Oh, my, no."

"Yeah. Thought so."

"The cooling unit's full of bees. Your phone's made of bees."

"Oh, fuck, Jacob. My phone? Bees?" He sat down at the desk within range of the AC fan.

Jacob leaned back on the full 24-ounce can of Labatt Ice. "You carry a tiny computer that's connected to the entire world via voice, via text, via your stupid Angry Birds. No cords. No wires. And it buzzes."

Opening his Blogger account, Lorn didn't even twitch. "Yeah, so there's that."

Jacob stood, "Bees, you git! Bees! Your phone's made of them!"

Eyes. Rolling. "Yeah. Bees. Awesome. I'll take note."

"Well then. Okay." Jacob reached behind the pile of unopened mail and presented a thimble to Lorn. "Pour us a pint then?"

"It's a thimble, Jake."

"Then a thimble. Lorn? Lorn?"

"Okay, just a minute."

"No, Lorn, it's the bees."

Lorn grabbed the can as Jacob fell to the desktop. He cracked the top.

"No. Lorn. The bees. The bees."

And before Lorn could focus, Jacob's body collapsed, convulsed, pulled into the fetal position and then POP! turned into over a hundred bees, all angry, all hungry. And buzzing.

And how they stung!

Lorn dropped to the ground, thinking first of escape, then of survival. Sting. Survival. Sting. Did Jacob say *sting* anything about how to *sting* deal with *sting* these *sting* *sting* damn *sting* bees *sting**sting*? Maybe *sting* the beer *sting* is *sting* would be *sting* beer...

Maybe *sting* the phone *sting*

The remains of Lorn were never found.

Jacob never existed.

Gawker Star Time!

Hey, I just collected some awesome juice today. Yay!


Oh my Gawker!

Over the last several months, I've become horribly addicted to the Gawker Media sites, most notably Gawker.com that has an assortment of snarky articles concerning the world in general with a focus on news and entertainment. So to participate you sign up for your free account and comment along with the rest of everyone.

But there is a bit of an imbalance in the force: you must first be approved. That means that you have to comment a few times as an "audition" and then your account can be seen by folks other than the upper echelon. Once approved, you can comment like anyone else. However there is a third tier. After a while, if it looks like you're going to be hanging around and you are an active commenter and those comments are a nice combination of witty and snarky and informative, you shall be awarded a star.

Starred commenters can approve noobs, promote comments, and their comments always appear first.

I was starred today! Yay!

SO I'm not sure what's sadder: that I'm absurdly freakin' excited about this - it made my whole damn day - or that because my internet life is so internet-y and stuff I consider fun is done under the nom de guerre, I don't have one single person IRL who would know what I'm talking about, let alone appreciate it.

Either way, I feel pretty damn awesome.

You Have Something More Important You Should Be Doing

Almost 14 billion years ago, you were born. The Big Bang, plasma coalescing into particles, suns born and dying to create heavier elements that eventually built the framework of galaxies and the solar system and the big rock we call Earth. About 4.5 billion years ago that last bit happened and through upheavals in astronomical collisions and a Goldilocks placement and evolution from single-celled masses, life was born. 65 million years ago, a journey began that turned mammals into you. Right there. Now. A human being, reading these words.

The entirity of existence has conspired to put you right there. Right now.

You probably have more important things to be doing than reading this.

Go do it.


Yours Truly,
Ricky


(sorry, having a moment. but seriously, go do it.)

Lawns. WTF?

Fuckin' Magnets, how do they work?



I started this with a little ICP because: Lawns - WTF?

Ever turn around and see something so normal and think "WTF?"

I have a lawn in the back and a lawn in the front. In general, un-abused nature, these should be small meadows. But American (+ other countries) general wisdom is that this patch of plant, when trimmed properly with a machine that eats gas, is a wonderful, beautiful, necessary part of living in a house.

(Granted, in water-poor areas, dirt and stone is fine.)

It wastes water, it wastes fuel, it adds to our garbage if bagged.

What the hell are we doing?

Why am I growing a lawn in my front yard? Why am I feeding it to make it grow and hacking the shit out of it every week or two to make it "pretty?"

I propose every lawn in America be killed and turned into a rock or sand or dirt pile in order to preserve the water we DO have at this time. To reduce the amount of pesticides and other chemicals we regularly dump into our ground water.

And then I could focus on more important things like if Weiner's cock shot is real or not.


Fuckin' lawns, how do they work?


Well, ICP, they work by eating our resources for a stupid show of vanity.

Not-Gout Strikes Back. And the Winner is...

For those of you who have been poking around my blog (stop it! it tickles!) as far back as August of 2009 may remember when I had the battle with something that followed textbook gout.

Quick summary: within 24 hours my left big toe joint went from stiff to immobile and excruciating just to touch and I was a limping, whiny mess. I toughed it out for a couple days, resorted to using the broke-foot boot I still have from college, and when I got to the doc and the labs came back: not gout because my uric acid wasn't high enough, it was lasting too long, and the swelling wasn't huge.

That was my GP.

FF to yesterday where that thing I just said happened again to my right big toe. This time I went right away to a Orthopedic surgeon with a podiatry focus. And what did he say? Um, totally gout. Blood uric acid levels can be misleading and swelling varies by person.

And he stuck a needle in the joint and filled it with cortisone. That sucked.

So, we're going to revise my 2009 experience to say: WAS gout. And now I've got it again. Hopefully for less time, and hopefully with the clear memory of holding my head in a pain that bent my sanity at 3am as impetus to make some dietary and lifestyle changes.

Yay gout!

Cum Bubbles & Cat Pee: Ah, the Smells of Spring!

I've already written about the natural odors of semen and cat piss that accost me every Spring, so I won't got into all the details of self-discovery, but here's the skinny:


Juniper

This time of year I am overwhelmed with the smell of feline urine, like a poorly maintained litter box, and in this weather it's like a poorly maintained litter box in a warm, damp basement. I have discovered it comes from the Juniper, the fuzzy-looking bush that can grow narrow and tall or low and creeping. And I am apparently one of the very few people whose nose so knows the smell in quite that way. I've found about half a dozen online, but my family thinks I'm a little mad because they don't sense a thing.


Bradford Pear

And every once in a while, if I'm lucky, I get a chance to whiff something familiar, though not something you'd expect while walking about or driving, like getting my nose rubbed into a wet dream: semen. This comes from the Bradford Pear Tree, and appears to be a much more common recognition than the Juniper cat pee connection.

So there you go. That's my olfactory experience of Spring. Every year. Yum!

Minecraft Owns Me Now

So I watched this:



And I was like...meh.

Then I saw this yesterday:

More Minecraft Videos

I thought: Hey, something I could check out.



That's my dog. Well, it's not really mine. I've got this house, which is just kind of a hole in a hill, and I put a door on it and lit it with torches and I keep digging and digging and I made a work table and chests to hold stuff... - sorry, so occasionally when I go out to kill cows for hides or chop down trees (only during the day; night has bad monsters) and I come home I find a skeleton has spawned somehow and the bastard shoots arrows but I kill him, sometimes after a spawn or two of my own (still working on good armor) and when I do I get a bone. I found some wolves and fed one of them 4 bones. And his/her collar turned red and a little heart <3 popped out of its chest and since then it just followed me. And if I accidentally hit it with a pick axe while mining, it doesn't even mind. But I don't like that so I tell him/her to sit on my bed.

I don't have a name for him (or her) yet because I'm viciously mining, as I mentioned. Actually, it's dead. Let's stop playing games while playing games. That screenshot was from when I had it sit on the bed. But I felt so bad, cooped up all the time? So I let him/her follow me (as he/she is wont to do) and while mining away from home a creature called a creeper came around a corner and exploded (as they are wont to do) and Dog-With-No-Name was just gone. And now I have to use my wood to make planks to make a sign so I can put it in that mine and give my dog a name post-mortem as a memorial.

Seriously, this post was going to be happy. I love this game. Then Ricky died. Of course: Ricky.

Well, Ricky will get a sign, and I need to get back to mining. Because maybe a skeleton will spawn and I'll kill it and take the bones and give them to a wolf and I'll name it Rickyz and it will never be allowed off my bed. Evar.

Yay Minecraft! Right?

Star Wars Perspective: Darth & Luke

I was in a client meeting this week that turned into a geekfest of sorts (as is wont with us web guys) and my client said something that I had not really considered before in relation to his son: the differentiation in the view of the six movies that we know as Star Wars.

For me, in my mid-30's, I experienced Star Wars - albeit not all in the theater (I saw RotJ with popcorn when I was seven) - as a wonderful trilogy, an arcing coming of age story of the development of a boy turned man who eventually knew the truth of his past and confronted his father. It was a story about Luke Skywalker. Re-watching this tale on VHS (over and over) only reconfirmed this reading.

When I was out of college and saw Episodes I-III, I saw it as an origin story: these are the tales that lead to the story of Luke Skywalker - and the coolest part is we see how Anakin grows as "The Chosen One" and (we all know) turns to the Dark Side to become Darth Vader. Oh, how wonderfully complex and nuanced! I just about literally drool over the presentation and resolution and composition.

But kids growing up now - or from slightly-pre-1999 on - see this basic culturally-relevant, pop-culture reality in a completely different way. Instead of starting with Episode IV and mulling over it for years, they start with Episode I, with Anakin. And that transforms everything.

In the generation quickly slipping just past me, there is an understanding that these six movies are a tale of Anakin Skywalker turned dark to Darth Vader, his interactions with his son, and, finally, his death. For them, Star Wars is the life story of Darth Vader.

The story had to be told (maybe without Jar Jar), and the younger generation will still get the overriding themes, but when I watched Episode IV, I was watching the beginning of the redemption of a villain. When they do, they begin with some level of empathy and understanding of who this masked man is.

Neither one is right, but I would argue that the original presentation provides a more dramatic experience, and would argue that: if you have children or know children being introduced into the Star Wars cannon, do IV-VI first and then present them with I-III.

And one day, when Lucas realizes the world will not actually end in 2012, perhaps we can look forward to some VII-IX with Leia and Han's kids, and we can all - once again - be children in awe watching this saga unfold.

Some Vampire Movie or Something

What if the picture above triggered no recognition in your brain, no social relevance, no movie connection, no thoughts of the scree of a tween clawing at your eardrums?

Over heard this week:

GAL: What's your granddaughter's name again?

GUY: Bella.

GAL: Oh, yeah. So pretty.

GUY: Yeah, I guess someone asked [my son] if they named her after, I guess there's some vampire movie or something.

GAL: Oh. Really? Hrm.

GUY: But [my son] just likes the name Isabella.

GAL: I don't know, I never heard of that.

GUY: Me neither. I'm not really a movie person.

GAL: Not unless it's free.

*they laugh*

My first reaction, after picking my jaw up off the floor, was OMFG! How can you not know Twilight? How can you be so much not a movie person that you're completely unaware of one of the biggest movie and literary sensations in years? Do you not read books either?

Is it even possible to be unaware of something that is so completely ubiquitous? This happened in a "work" environment, so the people in question leave the house every day. With billboards and posters and radio and television and conversations with people who know someone who read the book or saw the movie, you never heard about Twilight?

Then I stepped back and monitored my own reaction. This doesn't make these people any less people, but am I a media snob for reacting like that? I don't think I come across as "OMG I know everything about everything," even in my private thoughts.

So what are your thoughts? About the interaction and my reaction. I'd love to hear what other people think.