Leggo My Ego

I have to begin by giving a warm Thank You to the people who have commented to me, electronically or in-person, about the blog regarding my dad. We are all witnessing loved ones getting older, and suddenly I feel like a grown-up and I wasn't ready for this degree of maturity. But we have no choice. Life brings you a new normal like it's counting to a random number in Hide And Go Seek, and I was lulled to believe I had found a safe, warm place to hide and grow in. Ready Or Not...
The friendship, care, and love people have shared with me is returned to each, and I wish you and your families health and happiness. Be good to those close to you. Some day you may need them without knowing you do. And they may hand you power of attorney.

Okay, get off me, people are staring... wink
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Making a conscious effort to put your self to the side and to listen to someone opens you up to a whole new world. First off, people think you are really nice. This is further evidence against the power to read minds.
Second, you can really learn the subtleties of a personality with how they talk, what they talk about, and how often they use the words "I," "me," and "my mom's only child."
Third, when you are open to a new perspective on life, you begin to take a quick inventory of yourself, and realize that listening to some people is not only a triumph, but a huge mistake.
Finally, if you don't listen and learn about other people, how will you ever be able to manipulate them? And isn't that what you want? Because you just bought a cattle prod and ball-gag off eBay, so let's not beat around the bush, mmkay?
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I'm off to Canada with the Amazing Alicia for her friend Rachel's wedding. All I know is that it's in Whistler, B.C., I'm wearing a new suit, and I finally found my passport after searching for just over 2 years. For those wondering, your passport is good for 10 years. Thank you Sweet Jesus, because my picture shows me with hair and no crow's feet.
My feet are really ugly.
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My new boss recently asked myself what my ideal position and profession would be. I told him that I've always dreamed of being a satirical columnist who gets paid to shed light on nuances of dead-ends in Western Civilization.
He feigned amusement by asking me if I ever proofread other people's e-mails. I didn't have the heart to tell him that my name isn't George. My new boss and co-workers are all in the same office, about 800 miles away in California.
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If you're looking for the hottest releases in Blues Music compilations, classics, and can't-miss discs, you need to go where you KNOW the broken souls of poor, Southern, hard-living black folks can be felt: Starbucks.
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I'm out. Check out the new Mars Volta release, "Frances The Mute." Keep the lights on when ya do it, though. It's non-classifiable music, what David Lynch would call "Uh... this is pretty far out. Punch me in the crotch again." Rock, pop, punk, trip, funk.
Gotta go, the turtles are fighting with the T-rex again.

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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

A Quick Lesson In Greed

The former CIO of a large Cellular communications carrier was hired by that carrier to lean it out. That is, cut jobs, costs, expenditures, etc. Why? Because it was top-heavy and hemmorhaging cash to pay for the Officer's flights and a boatload... literally... of contractors and off-shore work. Thus, the boat.

Ex-CIO comes in and does what he's known for: Squashing growth. His contractor buddy mismanages a major project costing the company upwards of $250,000,000, all while the contracting company walks with their full payment.
Losing $250-million cripples the Carrier, while the officers begin saying "work harder, and it will all work out in the end."

The Carrier never gets better, and becomes bait for larger, healthier, more bureaucratic Carriers in the world. Finally, someone bites, and the wounded Carrier's mismanagement of projects for 3 years (only 3 since it split from it's parent company) keep it flopping on the deck of a new owner. The Officers of the company, the same officers who caused the problems nobody could fix, all walk with upwards of $9,000,000 in severance packages, while the CEO walks with over $20,000,000.
Do the wrong thing, cut jobs, become a millionaire.

Some people got $140 out of the deal. And a new boss. And a new badge. And a new set of rules and regulations to learn. And they still have their jobs. Damn it.
So Corrado, Zieglis, and the incestuous Turkish Bath of managerial cronies can gargle my groceries. Hell was created for people like you, and deserve to be locked in a spinning HoneyBucket filled brim-side by Motorhead roadies.

If you don't have EBay stock, buy it now. Corrado is the new CTO at that company, which is losing money and pissing off customers. The stock will drop, someone will try to buy it, the stock will go up, you'll make upwards of $140!
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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

Two Heads Are Better Than... WHOA....

Why NOT follow up a blog about my dad with stories of freaks and whores?
Because I don't know no bettah.
Plus, This Guy And His Big Throbbing Blog followed a Happy Valentine's Day/Cock-touching command with a picture of his daughter's Valentine.
So enjoy the yogurt.
You bettah/you bettah/ YOU BET.
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Because not many folks believed me or heard of it... here's
a photo of the Egyptian baby with two heads.

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And if you didn't think they were re-tarted ho-bags before, perhaps this story from the AP Newswire about The Britney and The Paris will convince you:
Nevermind the catfight -- make that dogfight -- between Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. London's Daily Mail reported earlier this month that Britney dissed Hilton's Chihuahua, Tinkerbell, by claiming that her own three dogs "are stylin' and profilin'. ... Von Dutch just sent them the coolest little clothes. My dogs are so much cuter than Tinkerbell (Ruff! Ruff!)." Now Brit has backtracked, saying on her Web site that "I hope none of you really took my comments seriously when I was talking about Bit Bit and Tinkerbell. I was just being silly and of course I think that Tinkerbell is very cute."

For those scoring at home, that's another 2 points for the Dark Overlord Of Evolutionary Regression.

Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

Time To Make A Move

Attensheeowness...
This blog is not about comedy at all. You may laugh, you may cry, but I didn't want to spring a very important writing about my dad on you without some sort of heads-up.
Okay... enjoy your scone.
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Today, Sunday, February 27,2005, my family and I begin moving my dad out of the home he's lived in for 22 years.
We are moving him into a "long-term care facility," or a "rest home," or an "old age home." My mom, sister, and I are facing these fears like canoeing towards a waterfall. We're pulled and tugged and it's scary and people wonder why we don't just get out and DO SOMETHING... we have. We did. We tried. We tried again. We keep trying. Currents move without you in mind. They dictate.

I'll write more when I can. Right now I have to drive to my home town and... damn it... start saying "goodbye" to another part of my life.
Mrs. Garrett never covered this with Tootie on "The Fucts Of Life."
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Okay, more now.
I've decided that I will be writing more about my dad in this blog instead of the other one, which will have exclusively my dad-related writing. This is part of my life and shouldn't be squirrled away as if it's shameful or undeserving of equal exposure.
If you have not read any of that blog, please do. Especially if you have parents who are getting older, and you happen to love them, or ever have loved them.

One story that exemplifies my dad's nature and method of "dad'ing" has to be our Tackling Dummy story.
When I was about 5 or 6, my dad and I went to a swap meet and bought some old pee-wee sized football gear. Pads, helmet, pants, the whole deal. That Christmas I got a Tackling Dummy. We would head out into the back yard, me in full pads, cleats, and a mouthpiece, my dad in sweats, wielding a football and the Tackling Dummy. The T-Dum was a large blue rectangular column, about 5 feet high, with heavy-weight canvas straps. Full of high-impact foam, it was lightweigt but could pack a wallop when swung properly by a 5'6" Auburn University alum working his way up the ladder at Boeing, and the ranks of Kick-Ass Dad.

Dad would throw the ball up in the air, I'd catch it, then have to get past him and the T-dum without hitting the deck, or being decked. Holy lord, he would just CRANK me with that thing. He'd hit me high, from the side, in the hips, right at my feet, and I go ass over eyelids. Then I'd pop up and we'd laugh really hard about how high I got on that last one. It never hurt, it was always fun. We were both just cracking up the whole time.

3 years ago I was ran into a friend of mine who I played football with in high school. He had gone on to play four years in college, and said how much different it was, where the fun wasn't there as much as you had to be almost robotic about it. Very little screwing around, very little gamesmanship, just a bunch of pissing contests. You lose some autonomy and independence, and unless you're way up on the top of the heap, you aren't shit to anyone. Then it dawned on me...
When I was a kid, I really loved playing football with my dad. I was too big to play pee-wee football, even though I wanted to play every year. Youth soccer leagues don't have weight limits, so I learned to dribble for as many as ten feet before powering a shot at a schoolmate's raised hands, shielding the world from his or her screams. I wanted to win.
But since I couldn't play football with the other kids because of my genetic makeup (low-slung, thick-trunked peasant stock), I was never going to be able to play with the other kids. But I wanted to play football, full-pads, full-contact, full-speed hitting and thumping and getting dirty and knocked down and laughing it off and getting back up.
And my dad gave me that. I didn't realize it until 22 years later that I did play football as a little boy, in a game that had no score on a field that was no bigger than my living room, with a man who would do anything to make his kids happy. It was the most fun I ever had as a kid, and the best lesson I ever learned as a man. He still remembers it, and it never fails to get us both laughing again. I don't know that he grasps the importance and love when I thank him. I hope I've thanked him enough and made him proud of me enough times before his condition advanced to where it is now.

So when I write about how hard it is to see my dad's kind and handsome face blankly-masked behind the second stage of his early-onset Dementia, and how I think about how much he has done for me in my life that I am just now realizing the intent and impact of, I never fail to run a full spectrum of emotions. 3 minutes ago I was laughing about the time he whomped me at the ankles with the tackling dummy, and I flipped in the air and landed on my feet for a "touchdown," (just past the end of the awning) and my dad said "THAT WAS GREAT! HOLY SHIT! Don't say that in front of your mom." But now, I'm crying again.

It sucks to feel this. Helpless and almost hopeless and mad at nature and God and doctors and God again, because I can think of about 50 people who deserve to be stolen by Dementia before it ever sniffed my dad's Grey Flannel. But I have been given a lesson to learn. Among the homework is a little chapter on Perspective. I am sad and angry and crying and writing this because I love my dad, because of the man he's been to me and my family, and the lessons he's taught me. The perspective is that I don't cry, I don't feel one way or another about him, and I don't ever think of or talk about or have people he knows express their love and caring about him, because sometimes dad's aren't ready to be dads, for whatever reason. But he was, I was blessed to be "dad'ed" by him, and HOLY SHIT! He was great at it. And I will always say that, even in front of my mom.

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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad