Dairy of a Madman

CL is still CL. But I love her anyway, even if she does think she’s too good to take my last name.

Happy Anniversary, boog. Maybe this time next year I’ll be able to match Sarah Silverman’s anniversary gift to Jimmy Kimmel…

I really hate zealots — really, really hate them. Can’t stand listening to them. I lose any valid points they might make in the blathering invective they spew.

This includes the Mac zealots — the ones who insist that PCs suck, and that Macs are better, period. PCs have no good use. Macs blow them out of the water. Macs are, in fact, the second coming of Christ and would, in fact, walk on water and heal the sick if only they had arms and legs — something I hear might be announced at next year’s MacWorld.

And I thought about writing something like this for about a year now, only Sarah did it better than me.

I dream of a follow up to the surgery commercial where it’s three years down the road and the PC is going back in for another upgrade and the Mac says goodbye, very sad. And the PC says, “Mac? It’s okay. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

And Mac says, “No, you won’t. They’ve got some new standards for me, so I won’t be coming back.”

So go read, now. Move along…

Spiff and I sat talking at the bar the other night — about marriage, among other things. He and his RHC are coming up on one year of dating, and they’ve naturally talked about the prospects of getting hitched somewhere along the line. He asked if CL and I had talked about it, what I thought of the idea.

And I know I’ve written about it here — somewhere — before, because I distinctly remember contradicting myself at least once or twice. And I’ll probably do so again, right here, right now.

Continue reading “Third time’s a charm”

I’m not the best friend in the world. I know this straight up, and I’m not too proud to pretend otherwise. I rarely answer phone calls. I’m terrible at making time for others, far too often. I’m absolutely awful at keeping up.

But on the flip side, I do think I’m a pretty good friend, overall. I never break dates, unless there are issues with emergencies or what not. I’m honest (sometimes to a fault). I try to give thoughtful gifts, at the appropriate times. I mostly stay out of business that isn’t mine, except when asked.

But even moreso, I try very hard to be a decent person, especially to my friends. I am considerate of their space and property. I make no assumptions about things that I am welcome to do or use. I try to leave things the way I found them.

I don’t think any of these are exceptional behaviors. In fact, this is the least I think that people should expect from me, or anyone else.

Like anyone else, I get angry, even at my friends. They’re not perfect, and neither am I. But I tell my friends when they’re doing something that bothers me; I expect the same of them. Open communication and honesty are the cornerstones of any relationship in my world, much less a friendship.

And it saddens me to see any of my friends getting taken advantage of, or mistreated, or being on the receiving end of inconsiderate, self-centered behavior. There is very little that angers me in the world; you can, for the most part, do or say anything to or about me, and it’s water off this duck’s back. But don’t fuck with my friends; while I’m perfectly aware that any and all of them are well-capable of taking care of themselves, I still get a little protective. It’s the curse of being the oldest of four kids, I guess.

And I won’t do anything directly, because most of the time, I’m peripherally involved in or aware of the situations going on around me. For the most part, my life is soap opera-free; I cut ties with ninety percent of the dramatic people in my life years ago, and made a promise to myself that I would avoid such people as much as possible in the future. But my friends are grown-ups, and if they choose to befriend those types that I feel are best off left alone — well, it’s not place to tell them otherwise, and so I don’t. But when pressed hard enough, I will step in and provide a defense, even sometimes at cost to myself.

I’ve watched my brother James get badly mistreated by an ex, and it infuriated me repeatedly. I let it go, as it wasn’t my place to do anything about it (particularly if he wasn’t doing anything about it), but it still would creep into my field of vision every so often. It’s happened to many of my friends, in fact, and I have to keep reminding myself that the only person that can change things is them.

But it still makes my skin crawl: to think that there are people walking this earth, breathing the same air as me, who would call themselves your friend and then treat you as nothing more than a tool for their convenience. I know we’ve all had rough lives. Some of us weren’t raised very well or taught how to be decent people outside of our own gains, but I’ll bet we all know the Golden Rule, yeah?

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It’s really about that simple. To pretend otherwise is just selfish and ungrateful, and eventually, that sort of behavior will come back to haunt you — whether you accept accountability or not. And who will you turn to then, when you’ve pushed everyone who cares about you away?

But on the flip side, those people do serve a really good purpose: they make me look like the greatest of friend, even in spite of all my faults.

See? It’s all about perspective.

Yesterday is a cancelled check;
Tomorrow is a promissory note;
Today is the only cash you have,
so spend it wisely.
-Ancient Chinese Secret

I don’t remember my grandfather very well (speaking maternally, as it were; my father’s father died before he and my mother ever met, and so I know him only through the stories my father and his brothers and mother have told over the years). He was, if memory serves (and as I’ve noted many times before, if it’s prior to the age of 12 or so, memory serves about as well as most of the people I worked with at Ruby Tuesdays), a mean, grouchy old man who really had little use for children.

Keep in mind that I don’t say this with any bitterness. I don’t remember him ever being really spiteful toward me or Mandy, nor did he ever (that I recall) lay a hand on either of us. He just was sort of there in my peripheral vision when we would go visit my grandmother, Merv. I do recall Saturdays watching wrestling with him, six-year-old me sitting on their blue leather recliner while he sat in his customary position at the far end of the sofa, smoking his cigarettes.

The clearest memory that I have of him is him towering above me on the stairs in their house as he showed me old coins that he had, explaing what they were and where they came from. The specifics have gone the way of Theater Appreciation 102 in my head, but what I remember the most vividly was that he was talking to me, and even smiling every now and then. I think I was about seven or eight at the time, and it confused me; grumpy old Da was being nice to me, and even at that age I knew something was amiss.

It was shortly after that that my mother sat me and Mandy down and explained Alzheimer’s to the both of us, and our adventures in the world of the mnemonically challenged began.

I always thought it was funny, at that age — the idea of a grown man wandering out of the house in his underwear, getting lost in his own neighborhood, forgetting the names of grandkids, his only child, his wife and sisters. But I started seeing more and more what it was doing to my mom, and to my grandmother, and the seriousness set in.

He eventually died from some abdominal something or another; I was thirteen, and have little to no memory of him after the stairway conversation. It seemed, strangely, like a relief for my mom and grandmother, something I wouldn’t understand for another fifteen years.

Shortly thereafter, my grandmother moved down to Birmingham from Nashville, to be closer to my mom and us (my mother is an only child). That would have been around ‘87 or so; by 1990, my parents had finished building their new house with a connected apartment for her to live in. I had moved out in the summer of ‘89, after high school, and again, my memory gets fuzzy regarding family stuff, but I know that it was before my divorce in ‘94 that Murv, too, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Whether from youth or emotional distance from my grandfather, the only effect the disease had on me in round one was watching the effect it had on others. This time around, it was much different. Murv was the one person outside of my immediate family that I had ever (or would ever, to this day) feel any sort of connection with. It was painful to watch the slow decay of her memory — even more so, I think, because I wasn’t living with her and seeing it every day. Instead, I visited weekly, and thus the progression was more noticeable.

She would ask over and over, ten or twenty times in the course of a visit, if I had talked to Jen, if I had found someone new yet, how my classes were going (I hadn’t taken classes since ‘92). I never minded answering repeatedly, though, because there was still that grandmotherly concern there. It wasn’t long — maybe I mean to say that it wasn’t long enough — before she started misrecognizing me, first as my father (which was tough to spot, since we have the same name), then as my grandfather, then as one of her brothers who had passed away many years earlier (my mom had to tell me whose name she was calling me).

Her physical health got worse and worse; she was having small strokes, which were causing jumps of progression in the Alzheimers, and she developed some sort of cancer in her shoulder. Mom and Dad moved her into a nursing home, so that she could get the constant attention that she needed. I didn’t visit much; it was too hard for me, and frankly, she wasn’t my grandmother any more, not even in mild flashes of recognition.

In April of 1999, we went to Nashville for her funeral, and I finally understoof the relief that I had seen in my mom’s eyes all those years earlier. My grandmother had disappeared somewhere along the way back, becoming little more than a barely functional shell of meat along the way; she was in a better place, no matter what I believe or don’t about an afterlife. My mom had taken on the maternal apron for the her own mother, and now that extraordinary burden was off her shoulders.

I think there’s some sort of irony to be found in my memories of both of them being almost dominantly pre-Alzheimers. And that’s exactly the way I’d prefer it, honestly; maybe it’s delusional, or pathetically nostalgic, but I don’t really care. They’re my memories, and I’ll do with them as I please, knowing full well that genetics or an act of God may take them from me on a whim.

Once, long ago, I saw the sun inside the fire
But now my eyes are burned and blind
The time has come to walk the road into tomorrow
And put the memories behind
-Frames Per Second, Awakening

Dear Kate,

20 years ago today, I held your tiny little body in my arms.

Okay, that’s a blantant lie. I was at summer camp at Duke being smart and making out with a hot blonde nerd girl on the day you were born. But a week later, I did come home and poke at your fontanel to see if I could feel the ridges of your tiny postfetal headmeat.

I don’t think it had any permanaent effects. Do you?

Happy burpday, little one. I love you and miss you, and hope that Kansas is treating you well.

P.S. I know she acts all innocent and mature, but Mandy’s the one who told me about fontanels in the first place, and threatened to slit my throat in my sleep if I didn’t poke your soft spots repeatedly. So there.

It’s wonderful to know
That I could be
Something more than what I dreamed
-Dream Theater, Octavarium

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and not just about the usual weird positions that I’ve seen the neighbors trying out through my binoculars (I salute you, by the way — my girl is creative and experimental, but I’m fairly sure even she wouldn’t be willing to do that thing you did last night with the shoehorn and the kitten). Thus far, 2006 has felt like a year of realization, of fulfillment, of life coalescing into something more … I don’t know, maybe right is the word I’m looking for. I’ve finally seen my writing published on a national level; I completed my first short film (emphasis on film; Chance’s constant elitist berating has made that seem important). Even the steps backward (returning to bartending, for instance) feel right and natural. It’s as though I’m finally clearing out the chaff of societal expectation that I’ve always wrestled with and becoming comfortable with what’s important to me.

I look around almost every day and I see people wrestling with the past, clinging to it with some sort of sickening justification. Many of my friends are embittered towards women, because they’ve gotten hurt in the past. I see people scared to chase their dreams because so many before them have failed. I see people “growing up” and leaving behind their creative passions because they aren’t “important enough” or “there’s not enough time in the day.”

I don’t dwell on the past. I think I used to, to great detriment; part of me is such a romantic, such a dreamer, that it is very easy for me to drift into a sort of selective nostalgia, ignoring the bad and fixating on the good, making me wistful for what I imagine used to be. I’ve let that go, by and large, learning to focus on what’s ahead instead of what I see in the rear-view. I also came to realize that it’s all water under the bridge, gone and past; there’s nothing that any of us can do to change what has come before, and to live as though constant obsession will correct your mistakes serves only to waste more of the present. I don’t hold grudges, I don’t torture myself over the things I’ve done wrong (to myself or to others); I do my best to glean lessons needed from my experiences, storing them away for future application, and move on.

I think that this — combined with patience, determination and a slow-burning hard work ethic, and maybe more than a little self-examination — is what has allowed this year to be so good for me. Rarely in life do we see immediate results; for those out there with an inflated sense of entitlement, instant gratification is rarely something that you’ll find.

I regret nothing that has come before. Done again, certainly, I would do things differently, avoid causing pains for which I am responsible, steer clear of situations that left deep and permanent scars on my soul (anyone who has read Vonnegut’s Timequake can understand this). But everything from then has taught me important lessons that have helped me make now better, stronger, easier.

And I wholeheartedly thank everyone who has been a part of my learning up until this point. To my parents and siblings, who instilled a lot of things both good and bad in me, but most importantly taught me that it’s okay to question the world around me (and in doing so granted me the ability to distinguish the good and bad). To my friends, past and present, even those that have long moved out and on from my world, because it is through them that I have learned the real meaning of friendship. To all the women that I have dated and crushed on and stalked (my lawyer assures me that once the case has been acquitted, it’s okay to use whatever descriptors I want), because I have learned a lot about myself through them.

And especially to Melissa, who more than anyone in my thirty four years helped me discover and change a lot of things about myself, who set the bar even higher than what I had imagined for what a relationship with a woman can be, and for raising my expectations and hopes about the world and the people in it. Some might see it as sad that we didn’t work out, but I suspect that, in a lot of ways, she’s in a much better place with the man she’s seeing now, and I’m incredibly happy myself. But my current state of mind and being is indebted to my time with her, beyond any quantification, and for that I will always be grateful to her.

When we were in the process of getting divorced, she came into the apartment one evening where I was sitting on the counch watching Buffy, freshly out of the shower. I don’t remember the exact words, but she pointed out the tattoo I have, of the Mandarin symbol for love woven into the letter ‘M’ that is over my heart, and noted that I was stuck with it forever.

She was right, of course. I hope I never forget everything that we had; without what came before, what I have now — so much more than what I dreamed — would not be possible.

My oldest friend — at least, the oldest one that I can actaully talk to in public without commitment papers being drawn up on me — is a guy named Wade. Some of you might know him from his nine year stint at the Birmingham Post-Herald; others might read one of his two blogs every now and then; a few of the sharper-eyed among you might remember him from the post office wall wanted list pictures or his brief but climactic cameo appearance in Ass Pirates of the Carribean. Still others of you might recognize the name from Wade’s 101, a column that used to run in the Black & White when it was still a readable paper.**

Wade is a great writer, and while both his journalistic writing as well as his fictional pieces are excellent, his 101 columns are the true mark of his writing gift. Top ten lists are fun (if a bit hackneyed), but imagine taking a barely-slightly broader approach and coming up with 91 more ideas, and making them all funny… It may sound easy, but how many of you run out of interesting facts about yourself at 50, much less about a timely topic?

Stop lying. I read your blogs. Some of you were lucky to hit 30 before I moved on.

When he started his blogs last year, he brought back the 101 idea, and this time around he hits Superman. While he’s not the comic nerd I am, he’s well versed (like no one I know, frankly) in pop culture — and you’ll be amazed at some of the things he remembered to poke fun at. So go, now, and read Wade’s 101: Superman 2006. You will believe a man can try.

* Wade might be sexy, too, but I can’t honestly say. It’s not that I know him too well, or that I’m not into men. I just don’t have that fascination with Asians that most of my guy friends have.

** This has nothing to do with my freelance association with Birmingham Weekly. Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that they occasionally run Ann Coulter’s syndicated columns. Even my cats refuse to shit on that paper now.

I’m thinking today a lot about people, about the millions of types of people in the world, about how many of those types I can’t stand. All of them, actually, if you want to start grouping people together. As a general rule, in fact, I hate all people by virtue of their inclusion in a given group. Myself included — probably, actually, moreso than anyone.

My friends, acquiantances, and people that I can talk to for more than five seconds without beginning to imagine new and unfilmed ways of piercing flesh with roast tongs encrusted in yesterday’s gravy — those people are most unrepresentative of their groups.

This is what makes it impossible for me to describe people that I like. It keeps me from having a “type” of desired woman. It means, too, that I can’t tell you what I’m looking for in a woman, outside of “I want a best friend that I’m attracted to and have chemistry with.” Well, and a woman who doesn’t give me shit when I end a sentence with a preposition.

There are no rules, only expectations.

Just got this in the mail from Chance:

This just in — the first-ever TELEVISION BROADCAST of HIDE AND CREEP is only a month away:

http://www.scifi.com/schedulebot/index.php3?date=11-MAY-2006&feed_req=US:Eastern:E

Thursday May 11. 7 p.m. Eastern time. On the Sci Fi Channel.

More info later.

Viva basic cable!

Yup. Not only did Chance take his first-ever feature to DVD, but we’re getting what every director dreams of from day one:

Commercial interruption.

But yeah, we’re going nationwide, soon to be recognized by nerds everywhere. Whee!

I wonder if sci-fi will let the full frontal male nudity slide. Or the lesbian zombie strippers.

If you think I’m joking, go to Blockbuster or get on Netflix and rent it. No shit. Lesbian. Zombie. Strippers.

That also happens to be the scene that I’m in. And I’m not a lesbian, a stripper, or a zombie. But I do get eaten by one.

Ahem. Hi, Kiomi! Miss you!

Charmed life here, yo. What can I say?