zombie blog

I found this post in my old blog. If you consider my old blog to be dead, and re-posting as a form of reanimation, then this is a zombie blog post. It stuck out to me, rather prominently, as a reminder that at one time i wrote imaginative things. i might be a little jealous of myself right now, cause there were lots of nice little bits like this...


earlier, my shoe got caught on the corner of a black hole and i fell down, and one arm fell into the whirling, spinning, cosmic void, and it felt really weird.


kind of like if you were daisy on opium, getting tickled by a pinstriped panda bear. but just one arm. I know a panda isn't really a bear, and that was the really odd part about how it felt.


And i was lying there, thinking: I wonder if audrey would want to try this, cause its pretty crazy, but is it too crazy?


Then I realized that it couldn't be a black hole, because if it really was a black hole, capable of sucking even light itself into its gravitational field, it totally would have pulled in more of me than just one arm.


So I mentally played connect-the-dots on the ceiling tiles, using a pale teal highlighter that smelled like fresh mint.


On a scale from one to Jerusalem, I probably was playing connect-the-dots for about three bloodworms, because Bloodworms were on that show, Dirty Jobs on the discovery channel, and it was pretty amusing.


When I finally pulled my arm out, there was this suction sound that was like when you suck a sobe tea bottle onto your lips, but with undertones of jell-O and a sort of shower-stall resonance. You could feel the daisy slowing defoliating, but i couldn't quite control my muscles well enough to wave good-bye to the panda.


As for the black hole thing, i know its a bit irresponsible, but i think i'm just going to let the janitorial staff worry about cleaning it up.

the old hit 'em while they're down move

I think almost everyone that knows me would agree that i usually manage to have a positive attitude about things, but some days its harder than others. I've been trying to brace myself for some bad news from my father, waiting to hear that his father let go and passed on. I wasn't at all ready to hear that dad now needs to find a new job. Dad has worked for the catholic church his whole career, at a lot of parishes and diocese(s) (what is the plural of diocese?), and when the economy sucks, people don't donate as much money in general, which means that churches can get hit. Well, his parish in Gainesville was always struggling to make budget anyway, and add to that the local diocese feels the pinch, and makes the supremely intelligent move of calling in loans they've made to their churches, you know, the old hit 'em while they're down move. Well, the parish had to make pay cuts as well as layoffs, and dad was 'lucky' and just got the pay cut. I don't know if it crossed anyone's mind that cutting someone's pay by more than a quarter is a lot like telling them loudly to clear up their desk.

i guess its obvious that i'm upset. Dad is supposed to be making final steps in recovery from his back surgery at this point, and that's sufficiently complicated without the added stress of trying to care for his failing father. This picture does not, to my mind, call for any further complication. Its a selfish way to see it, i guess.

where is the positive? well, my father has a really strong resume for a wide variety of work - that's good.

I was pretty excited about the USA world cup game tomorrow, and going to rochesterfest for a turkey leg or fried nonsense on a stick. My mood now is ugly, instead. I think i'll go watch a movie with lots of things blowing up. Second thought, maybe i don't need that... maybe a comedy.

Fathers Day!

Today was fathers day, so I was wearing my father hat a lot. Rae made pictures and a card for me, then hid them and made me search for them. Lucky for me she gives very helpful clues, like "Daddy, maybe you should look here in the play kitchen", or "There is one hidden on this shelf. No, wait, I mean this shelf." Cain and I played soccer at the park - he is going to a sports camp this summer, and will be spending a couple days playing soccer and baseball (he got to choose two sports). Anyway, between watching the Brazil-Ivory Coast match (shame on them for fighting) and kicking around the ball with Cain, I guess I also dusted off my soccer-player hat for a while today.

We watched Alice in Wonderland after dinner as a family, minus Ethan who mostly ran around, jumped off of things into my arms, and teased his kiki (security blanket) by sneaking cuddles with other blankets.

On the more difficult side of Fathers Day, I talked to my dad, who is facing the imminent death of his father. In talking on the phone with dad, as he has worked through his back surgery and watched his father sink further and further away, my task has generally been to distract him with humorous brainstorming, poke fun at each other, and generally be silly and happy. Today he spoke of his father fighting everything, stubbornly refusing to shake loose his personal mortal coil. Poppa hasn't made any effort to conduct his final years highlighting gracefulness, and I don't think he is looking for a graceful exit. In my head I keep composing sentences that belong in a memorium post, but that isn't what I'm looking for here - i just want, I guess, to explain to myself why my dad's voice was so full of grief and pain.

So anyway, there was good and bad, and there was also fun and inconsequential (put on geek hat): Audrey got me the lego evolution t-shirt i've been raving to her about, and I got my hands on the rules for an rpg that completely new to me, Coyote Trail - a wild west/frontier system. The rules at first glance promise to be as easy and flexible as claimed in the reviews i read. I picked this one, besides being interested in learning a new system, because I think it will be a fun setting for 1:1 gaming with Audrey. She has an idea of making a Madame character who owns a frontier-town brothel.

So, there was an attempt at self-exploration under the polyhatism convention.