May 19, 2005
Some bluebirds moved into our birdhouse today and we both cried.
04:08 AM part of personalMay 03, 2005
A letter to the black women who keep hitting my car
A letter to the black women with kids screaming in the back that keep
running into the back of me - three time now this has happened; count
'em up - and seem really nice but keep giving me huge headaches and
make my back sore
Fucking stop it.
04:11 AM part of a balanced breakfastMay 01, 2005
Rules for living:
1. Do not piss anyone off so badly that they are still mad the next day.
2. Find someone that you love and hold on to them tightly. (don't
screw up, don't screw up)
3. Find at least one thing that you are passionate about and make
sure that you make time to do it most days.
4. Stay alive.
5. Realize/remember/reflect on the fact that you did not make
yourself but were made by your Creator.
6. Don't play too many video games. (Go outside)
7. Be nice to your family, you are the reason you are screwed up more
than they are.
8. Remember that things aren't really that bad, you are just an idiot.
Happy Black History Month
One of the things that I should say first is where I am coming from. I am almost 26 and live in a "white" suburb in northern Atlanta. Well, maybe I shouldn't say "white" suburb because my neighbors on either side are black. Well, the family on the right is West Indian, well one of them is, the other from New York. The woman across the street is also black, but the rest of my street is white I think although nobody really talks to anybody else. The two Hispanic guys across the street may or may not be gay, but I don't know because I haven't really gone over and introduced myself really. Of course right when we moved in we were shaking hands and meeting everybody in the neighborhood like Anthony (who is from New York and black and lives way up the street) but the people across the street weren't there then - the land was just a lot back then. The family on our left is black and she is divorced with a son. We don't know anything about anyone else in the neighborhood. We are all middle class and our parents are proud.
Also let it be said that I am from Macon which is a medium-sized city in Georgia that is about 50-60% black or at least that was my impression because that is how all the schools I went to laid out. Well, once I got up to high school. Elementary was more like 20% then Middle was like 70% then High School 50% then college 2%. Funny how that works sometimes. I understand the drop off from Elementary to Middle because the Elementary school that you go to is in your neighborhood and everybody seems to live with people who look like them. I remember when I got to Middle and High I met people from parts of town that I had never even driven past.
Our neighborhood had one black family and we only knew this because the son, who was about 9, was always in the front yard looking like he was going to run in front of a car at any moment - drawing attention just sitting on his steps staring at you. My parents live there still and there are a few more now, but it is still mostly 90-year old white women watching Oprah (now Ellen DeGeneres - funny how that works).
As additional background please note the following. When I got to high school I was in an "advanced" program that brought students from the whole country to one high school apart from normal jurisdictional rules. A lot of these kids were black but by the end of the four years only three were left and they were all women. I was friends with a couple of them early on and we used to play basketball together. We used an old neighbor's court up the street and the ball was always rolling down the hill into the Brannon's or else going over the fence on the other side into the McClure's yard. Neither of them seemed to mind at all except when I brought David and Greg over, and then Mrs. Brannon (who had one eye and went to our church by listening to it on the radio) complained to my Mom about the niggers killing her flowers with the basketball.
Everybody in the neighborhood was very nice to us since we were the only kids in the neighborhood other than that kid down the street trying to get himself killed by running into traffic. Halloween was the only time I realized that there weren't any other kids around - nobody was ready for us so we got apples and not-so-shiny nickels. The Glenns, our next-door neighbors on the right, were an old sweet couple. Mr. Glenn used to play minor league ball for years and like always we never knew what he did for a living before he retired. He seemed really happy and used to watch us from inside when we would play wiffle ball in the front yard. We never actually saw him but he just came right out and told me one day that he came from a big family and that he loved to watch us play and laugh outside his window. He must have been in a giving mood that day because he also told me that day about how much fun he had on his honeymoon trip driving down to Florida. He had never really driven that far before and his new bride and him had the windows down while they flew down the southern part of the state where there just isn't much of anything to see. As they were driving along they saw a young black man walking alone along the road and swerved to hit him just to see what he would do. They were coming up from behind him and aimed to narrowly miss him which they did, sending him jumping in the air. Mr. Glenn's eyes lit up at this part and told it over and over: "That nigger liked to have jumped out of his coon skin".
Happy Black History Month
03:32 AM part of personal * Work on an outside project for two - three weeks.
* Only work on it outside of normal business when your wife is asleep, thus averaging 4 hours of sleep a night even on the weekend for three weeks.
* Stay up on the last night of the project until 2, go to bed at 3, and then wake up at six.
* Go into the bathroom, sit down, and place your palms into your cheekbones. Wake up with a start 20 minutes later when someone flushes.
* Cleanup and walk back out.
* If you are asked where you were, provide one of these lovely responses:
o Hazmat research
o Taking a walk (add a limp for realism)
o Processing a burrito genius, want the details?
o Dreaming of you.
* When you get back to your desk promise yourself not to work this schedule again.
Of all your household appliances your answering machine is the most afraid.
All of your other ones are about you and it; no connection with other people (even the TV), but the answering machine knows that it can get thrown across the room very easily and very conveniently when your boyfirend calls.
03:31 AM part of personalA message to all the people who think that I am a jerk
My walk from my cubicle to my car is very special to me - I put on my suit jacket and walk quickly around the cubicle wall, down the hallway and down one flight of stairs, then for a long distance through the large atrium in sight of the cafeteria, then outside all the way across the length of the building to the parking deck, then down five flights of stairs and across the deck to my floor, where I will walk the length of the deck to my car at the far end of the floor - as far from my cubicle as I can park. This walk is sacred and silent and beautiful. I will not ruin it with a simple "hello" to you, no offense.
03:30 AM part of workThe difference between the arts and the sciences is that while they
both solve problems, science solves a variety of problems while the
arts solve one: how to get the art prof laided.
While I was out jogging last weekend somebody threw a pinecone at me and hit me square in the face. Now, there are a number of things to talk about here.
First, why was I jogging on the weekend? Certainly this is a silly thing for a grown man to do what with all the freaking gardening and work-around-the-house that *has* to be done to prevent the earth from falling off its axis into the ocean. Ok, so that doesn't make sense to you but it does to me in the same way that running instead of sitting on the couch eating taquitos off my chest does.
Second, where did they get the pinecone? Oh, an important detail is that they threw it from a car. Most cars don't come with pinecones standard so it was either pre-meditated or a dirty-to-the-point-of-containing-live-evergreen-vegitation (DTTPOCLEV) car. Quick sidenote: as a former owner of a DTTPOCLEV, pollen season sucks.
Third, how did they throw it so accurately? The car was moving (maybe 15 mph) and so was I (maybe 6-7 mph). Perhaps they had calculated the attack in advance and had used cutting-edge mathematics ("trigonometry" and the like) to decide when and how to throw the pinecone in order to hit me squarely in the face.
Fourth, how did I react? The cone hit me in the face and shook my glasses almost off my face. After grabbing these and making sure that they didn't fall off I slowed down, stunned. I didn't know what to do in much the same way that black people don't know what to do when they are confronted by direct, in-your-face racism after years of being used to the indirect kind. No, I am not comparing this to racism - I am saying I didn't know what to do. I love all black people - they are great.
Fifth, how did they react? If they were teenagers messing around then I would expect a honk, spinning tires and perhaps some yelling with Freebird playing in the background. I heard none of this. The person who threw it didn't even seem to react to the result; after hitting me, again, squarely in the face, he simply leaned back into the backseat fully and they sped up and kept going. This can only mean one thing - they were assasins.
Sixth, what sort of assasins were they? Clearly, very stupid and ineffective ones.
Seventh, how should I have reacted? This point is clear. I should have sped up to match their speed without hesitation after getting hit, then thrown my shoulder into the "sweet spot" behind their backdoor thus causing them to lose traction and tailspin the car until they went into the ditch and burst into flames. Then of course piss on the ashes and continue my short jog.
03:28 AM part of a balanced breakfast