I am sitting in Chez Coma sneezing as the end of Harvest has kidnapped my nose and is holding it hostage. Oh hay bales, you mysterious intertwined bundles of hell that kidnap my soul each year.
On the other hand, dear farmers of Hoots, thanks for feeding all of us because that is cool.
I have been thinking a lot about getting older this weekend. I guess it’s allowed sometimes. My late mother’s birthday was on Nov. 8th. I usually have a bit of a mortality check around this time of the year. On the way to Nashville, I noticed there is so much more gray in my hair than I even realized.
Now here’s the big secret. I love it.
I think it’s sexy and groovy. I don’t mind that I’m getting older. Yeah, I don’t heal as fast I used to but I’ve earned everyone of those bad boys by being a complete spaz for the last 44 years.
I think it’s glorious.
Now with that said, you freakin’ kids get off my lawn, I need a nap.
When I take a couple of days without blogging and leave you with a gif of a monkey drying off a cat, I just have to tell you, I get out of sorts.
I was without my computer this weekend and I’m waiting, thanks to advice from Jon at The Oblivion Bar, for my new Blackberry which went on the fritz, so this morning has been a loving montage of me looking at roughly 350 emails, thousands of RSS feeds and a Mucinex cocktail (you can ask my Memphis peeps about my lovely cough this weekend) that has made me want to crawl back into bed with Mabel and a bourbon.
Is the free story of one of the only stories that ever scared the poop out of me. Ambrose, you wicked man, we studied this in school and it still creeps me out.
.
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners–two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest–a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
And, for more Halloween fun, read Aunt B’s fake ghost stories. The Dodge City one made me cringe. Spend your Halloween night well and creeped out.
I am somewhat disappointed about Halloween this year. The issue comes down to that SQ has a soccer game tonight in a town 50 miles away.
Don’t these folks know it’s HALLOWEEN!!
Dang.
Last night, a dude from Budweiser, the grad student, the Engineer, Squirrelly and the fabulous Mandy decided to dress me up in Budweiser flair for Halloween. Me, being me, decided it was fine. So I have a Yeungling witches’ hat with the addition of some pink “hair” which is actually ribbon which is also on someone’s cell phone right now. (Note to self: Manage your own story or you might get in trouble.) There is also one of me wearing a Harajuka hat. Ode to joy, and I mean that. I assure you that sometimes it is more than okay to be goofy and to have a good time. Why not? We only have one life and sometimes silly is of the much needed.
Because silly is important.
We live in a world with recession beating us down, war, poverty and a lack of stability at times. So what’s wrong with being a bit goofy when it suits us. Doesn’t hurt anyone, and if other folks don’t like it, then so be it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about finding joy lately. I don’t know why. I am in a better place than I’ve been in a long time. I think it has something to do with living life one day at a time, Yada, yada, yada.
Anyway, I’m going to try to salvage Halloween today. My braaaainnss don’t always work, but I’m going to give the ol’ cranium a spin anyway.
Hey, Look At The Bad Picture I Took With My Cell Phone. Yay Me!
It reminded me of the first time I went to a blogger meet-up back in the day when dinosaurs smoked cigarettes and died due to massive shoot-outs due to some random turf war scandal with Yetis (It’s true, look it up.)
Rex L. Camino no longer blogs (I suspect that he was abducted by aliens but then again, one never knew with the fabulousness that was our man Rex) but you can read that first recap of when some of us got together and became buddies.The first meet up was roughly 50 people maybe (I don’t know) and yesterday at Cadillac Ranch had 700 people sign up to get their BarCamp on.
I felt like Rue McClanahan except not nearly as sexy when I showed up as my ill-dressed self, but I enjoyed myself royally.
Those ties remain, you know. Blogging is one of those things that folks either get or they don’t, but it has been a gift to me since the first time I opened up one of these silly things and realized that it was a lot of fun. I mean, come on, you can only have Mr. Jimmy yelling at you here in Hoots so much until you need a bit of fresh air and conversations with, let’s say, people who aren’t yelling at you. (Although I do love me some Mr. Jimmy.) Blogging got me out of Hoots on occasion. Can’t beat that with a stick.
The thing about blogging is that it creates, sometimes, wonderful precious things that cannot be explained to the average bear. Some people are techie gurus, other are marketing geniuses and then there are folks like me that wander around aimlessly making unfunny jokes and hoping my fly isn’t open. Yeah, just call me RubeComa.
The highlights were plentiful. I got to meet Megan (which is something I’ve been wanting to do for years and her smile is one of the loveliest things you will ever experience. Look at the picture Kerry Woo took. Isn’t she great!) There were twitterers I finally got to meet, I got to hang around downtown Nashville, I sent a guy looking for a strip club to the now gone Chute on 8th (he was really annoying so I gave him directions when he wouldn’t leave me alone and said “nekkid” roughly 97 times in one sentence. I was drinking a beer and enough was enough. Do NOT mess with me when I’m having a cold Hopps and Barley or there might be trouble.)
I am usually gobsmacked when meeting tech folks because they are clever (and my skills are limited to just talking to people and drinking beer as mentioned above) and I can only hope I picked up a few things. One of the nicest things to happen is that my old, dear friend Lesley was with Squirrelly and I. Her excitement was about the most fabulous thing I’ve gotten to experience in a long time.
Well done BarCamp. Well done. Your event was, once again, validating for those of us who attended. Our passions and our interests are confirmed and endorsed by events like this. I tip my hat to everyone who worked on making this happen.
Today, I met with blogger Aunt B. and we talked about being old school. I told her that I feel like in bloggerworld (which can be an odd funky place) that I felt like in the past four years, I started out as a Freshman here on the tubes. Now I’ve just graduated from Blogger World and am like a senior who just got out of high school that doesn’t know what to do next. There really isn’t an agenda here at Newscoma. I just tell you about crap I either like or don’t and that’s about it.
I suspect that what I will continue to do as long as it amuses me.
So for all of the folks I met this weekend, I dig you and I thank you.
The only downside is that the Squirrelly is sick. We had to stop at a motel earlier this evening on our way home and I fear it’s some sort of flu. Let’s just say that projectile anything is neither fun, sexy or endorsed her at Chez Coma.
Yeah, that flu shot was a winner she got last week. I, on the other hand being the uninsured girl wonder, am fine.
On a final note, friedApplepie’s poodle has a mohawk and there are pictures. That is yet another reason, campers, why I love hanging out with bloggers because of stuff like that. Makes me happy.
I’m known to be drawn to morbid things. I’ve known this about myself since I was a kid. We would head to Jackson and hit WaldenBooks where I would get the latest book on Bigfoot, ghosts, Stephen King if I was lucky, UFOs or the like. My mother was a woman who believed as long as I was reading, then she was fine with letting me read pretty much whatever I wanted to. I was smitten by things that I didn’t understand, and better yet, to things that I felt that I must figure out.
But, alas, you can’t always have an answer to such things that we cannot see. So I read because I had a visual in my mind of what is and what could be.
Over time, things changed a bit and I went through my Holden Caulfield and Scout from “To Kill A Mockingbird” phase. Works done far before I was born that caused me to go through those feeling in adolescence that I was perhaps not alone. Scout’s small town filled with images I readily knew, and Caulfield’s reasoning that we were impaled by our imperfections which we refused to acknowledge. When I was in my mid-teens, I went throw a fiery John Irving phase, although that lasted only for a brief period of time.
I’m easing toward 5,000 posts on this blog, although I’m not there quite yet. As I was recently perusing some older posts I realized that I write about death quite a bit as well as paranormal alternatives. My brother-in-law told me recently that I was one morbid person, thus the word in the first sentence.
I don’t think I’m necessarily ghoulish, I think I’m curious at best. Why do people do what they do? And, we are born into this world alone thus we die the same way. No one can do these things for us.
After you’ve been on a Mucinex bender for a couple of weeks, you start to see things in a purple hue. Why purple, I have no idea.
The whooping cough is nearly whupped and I’m so grateful it wasn’t something else. I have to tell you though I’ve had some wild dreams this past week.
I have never met Freddie O’Connell, but I dreamed he was going hat shopping with me. We found for me, he picked it out, a wool dove-gray fedora and there was a man behind the counter who took small blocks of wood to shape it for me as Freddie told him how to do it where it would frame my face in the best light. As I said, I have NEVER met O’Connell before, but he seemed to know a lot about hats. I paid for it then we went our separate ways. Shouldn’t this dream have been with Mark Brown? I don’t know why the human brain works as it does when we are in the arms of REM sleep.
I also dreamed I won the lottery. I hid in my house from spider monkeys who were asking for my change to buy bananas. The spider monkeys kept talking to me and that’s why I hid out because their mouth’s did that Conan O’Brien thing where they were not their own mouths. I finally went outside, conquered my fear and gave them all a dollar. I then was instantly at the beach. There is bound to be a lesson here but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
I also had another dream that Mabel was standing on my head, but I woke up and realized that was reality.
None of this makes any sense when one is on the hopped-up Mucinex train so enjoy Unknown Hinson.
I must admit, I’ve neglected Hoots in the last few days. As the local whooping cough champion, I regaled myself in my best clothing finery (which consisted of a Grateful Dead T-shirt, pair of shorts and whatever shoes were nearest) and headed out one day but it went poorly. I found myself coughing on strangers who I just wanted to tell me tales of their existence, when they found their zen (had a conversation about this with the Mango this morning) and the like.
I needed brain food.
Instead, it went like a pile of poo as I was infecting people so I just opted to go home and get well. I was told that this is what adults do. I wrote it down so I would remember it.
When one feels like the back end of an alligator, trying to Mary Sunshine the joint up is difficult. Actually, I wish that someone would come and Mary Sunshine it up for me. Yesterday, I had a bit of the melancholy. I was tired, needed to be around some human beings for pithy conversation and contemplated returning to my zombie book I was writing. Things just happened for the better and I grabbed hold of the reigns to ride it out with some cool folks. What better to do than have the Maxster, who has never seen an episode of the hilariously trashy Big Brother finale where he was introduced to Julie Chen’s Snuggie, a very dim but sweet winner and my new far-away boyfriend who I will never meet, Jeff watch crap with us. It’s crap we are fond of, a guilty pleasure of epic proportions.
Maxey looked at us with concern, but it’s not every day that you go to a gathering where the program director for the local PBS affiliate is watching this stuff with you and laughing as hard as you are. During commercial breaks, we talked of Ken Burns new documentary. This is how we hang in Hoots. We fight the boredom with the tools we have and we enjoy each other.
And you just thought we watched NASCAR in Hoots. Shame on you. (I still think NASCAR is a boy soap opera.)
After it was over, I went home to cough some more which created a new obstacle regarding spitting, which is recommended by nondoctors in this area of getting rid of this a bit quicker. I don’t know how to spit so I think that makes this particular ailment more long-lasting because it’s not (this is gross) getting out of my system. My family looks at me with anguish because of the spit thing. I sound like an emphysema goat. I’m practicing although I will never win this. (Yes, I’m practicing how to spit. I don’t know how. Shut up.)
Then something happened, which made me need to get out in Hoots more stealthily today but I read my note on being a grown up (see above) so I’m sitting in Chez Coma. CABIN FEVER! I realized due to unforeseen circumstances by just gazing at myself in the mirror that I needed a haircut, but due to money concerns, I realized I could give the blog a haircut. (Damned header that I can’t get to work.) I just felt the need to go old school.
I think I’m poised on a world of change right now. I’m doing new things. I’m not the guy/gal in charge anymore which is pretty cool. But, because I’m me, I need an adventure too. I also realize that we have to make our own adventures and I’m trying to figure one out. I need to do something, especially since I’ve been lying about for two weeks with the funk, that will entertain me.
And sometimes I need to just write and freestyle whats on my mind. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s a blog for crying out loud.
A lot is jumbling in this Captain Trips brain this morning. I guess the main thing is that the health care debate is lost, I think, to a large degree. Notice I used the word debate. We are still going to be seeing this. The Right and The Left are still going to argue about it. We are still going to see tea parties. We are going to analyze numbers, watch the Blue Dogs remain in a perpetual fog because there is a lot of noise and see photos that disturb us on both sides of the aisle.
I wish, sometimes, that people would come to Hoots and experience how we handle our political discussion. I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing we have going and it’s our secret although I’m writing about it.
Last week, a woman I love very much started in on the healthcare debate. Her attitude was somewhat similar to Joe Wilson’s and I found myself sighing very deeply because of my recent excursions in finding health insurance. My friends are a cornucopia of different and diverse backgrounds. I have some socially conservative friends who lean more moderately on civil liberties issues. I have a few buddies that are very liberal. There isn’t one of us who can’t just sit down and talk about it.
Shocking! We talk about our varying opinions and then we go and have a cup of coffee together.
She said, and let me say that it’s good to know what’s going on when one is having a conversation, “I love you kid, but I don’t want to pay anymore health insurance just because YOU can’t get any.”
This is where I sighed. I admit for a moment I almost let my emotions get to me. The words were harsh, but then taking that deep breath that my grandfather always instilled in me to take (yeppers, he was a Republican leader in these parts 30 years ago), I realized that we have two choices as people. We bark or we think about it and try to move the conversation to the next level. I opted for door number two.
You see, I also know she’s paying a crapload of money for insurance. She’s paying roughly $1,200 every three months. She is a widow living off farm lease residuals. Her insurance company recently changed the date for premiums to be paid. All in all, she’s worried and I understand that. I tried to put on her shoes. I believe that if you put on another person’s shoes then they might considering trying on yours.
I basically said I understand her concerns but I had a different point of view. “I’m not asking you to pay my insurance. I want to pay for my own insurance. But with a preexisting condition, I’m having trouble finding some. You see, it’s not like people just want you to give it to them. I think we are really looking at several different debates here.”
I went on to say that we are automatically assuming that people are, in essence, bad folks and we put too much stock in the “gotcha” nature that admittedly some people have but I don’t think everyone is that way and I’m not going to generalize a stereotype I don’t believe in. Not all people are “gotcha.”
I just don’t think that. I think that we have lost sight of the conversation that most folks are compassionate. Yes, you may think I’m naive and maybe I am, but I do believe that this argument of that “people are wanting you to do it for them” isn’t really fair.
The American spirit I know is better than that.
Our conversation moved from being confrontational to what we all believed in. That, despite what Gov. Bredesen states, that this is a problem with insurance companies. I know a lot of doctors, nurse practitioners and nurses (Big Daddy is married to a hospice nurse) who are compassionate and go out of their way to help people even when they don’t get paid for it. So, we sat, a couple of true conservatives and a couple of left-leaning hippies who agreed on some things and respectfully agreed to disagree on some other things.
“What do you think of the protests?” I was asked later.
“I think everyone has the right to protest,” I replied. “I may not agree but that’s what happens but I also want the right to protest on things I disagree with. I still disagree with the war in Iraq. I have protested it in small ways. This isn’t a new thing. People protest. Now we just get it on MSM news nonstop. It’s really no different though than what happened in my mother’s generation.”
We all chewed on that as well. I know that people that went to the Tea Parties believe in what they are protesting just as I passionately think this war in Iraq is devastating. (And, I must say that I was more agreeable with the war in Afghanistan because I wanted us to find Osama Bin Laden.) Passion is important. It shapes us. And, the only way to change minds, if that’s even possible, is to listen, to respond thoughtfully and to realize that everyone’s opinion is valid. My passion is just as strong about this debate.
The thing is for me, and as blogs are like ongoing letters to the editor, we can reach a plane of being respectful and kindhearted to those who we disagree with. That conversations can be reached without screaming and yelling. That we can treat our leaders despite if we voted for them or not with consideration and our citizens with an open ear. And we don’t have to agree on every little thing but when folks are just bellowing at each other, then we’ve already lost.
In Hoots, we can do this. Why can’t we do this in Washington?
I was on the road yesterday spreading Captain Trips to the masses. I’m a giving person.
I’ve overheard some weird things in the last week. Much of it amused me.
OH: Man, it’s like a cougar convention in here. (The term cougar does not offend me. I also am partial to manther. Both amuse me.)
OH from the very famous Dirk Diggler in where I got choked and spewed in a very unladylike fashion due to my Captain Trips and hacked on people.: HEEEY! I wore a Sasquatch costume in a haunted house. (He then proceeded to tell me he scared some dude one night by tapping him on the shoulder and saying Boo. The guy punched Diggler in the face causing a nasty nosebleed. Diggler said, “I couldn’t be mad at the guy. I scared him.” Man, I love that story.)
Not Dirk Diggler
OH in a convenience store on I-40 to a clerk: Hey baby, got any of the Miller 64. A man needs his beer but he’s got to look good. (He tickled me to death as this was a pick-up line obviously. And I was standing behind him trying to buy a V8 for my Captain Trips. I didn’t mind though. Love, or lust, ain’t a bad thing.)
Said to Yours Truly: You sound like you swallowed a yak. (Well, I sorta do.)
OH by new coworker: There is this spider in the bathroom. I have named him Strickland. (As spiders give me the wiggums, I avoided the bathroom but I do dig the name.)
Said to Yours Truly: You can’t talk? That’s f’ing awesome. (My friends. You gotta love ‘em.)
OH: Who the hell is Joe Wilson? (My first thought too.)
Death is on my mind this morning. I realize that may be a bit morbid, but it is what it is.
A text message was sent to me earlier from a dear friend this week about the death of one of the “Unemployment Club” as I called us this summer. It was a small group of “us” who had lost our jobs in May who bonded as spring turned into summer. There were a few of us and we talked about filing for unemployment (I’d never done it so I looked at them for guidance which was VERY valuable.) One of the crew was a guy a little younger than me. I’ve known him for a couple of years and usually we would talk about baseball. When I was down sized, he was the first one that gave me a hug and said it would be all right. I was yukking it up because it was better to laugh than cry and he told me to knock it off.
“It sucks,” he said. “But you are going to be okay. You are always okay. That’s what I like about you.” It made me feel better. He had faith in me when I didn’t.
To make a little bit of cash, he worked on the side cutting tobacco. He was quick to laugh and he always gave me a hard time in a good way. You see, he was a peripheral part of my life for the last couple of years but we bonded this summer because we had both lost our jobs, our insurance and a bit of our identity.
I saw him about three weeks ago where we talked about the Tennessee Titans and he tried to explain NASCAR to me, which I just don’t get other than thinking it’s like a soap opera on testosterone. He thought my analysis on it was amusing.
“I guess you’re right,” he laughed. “NASCAR is kinda like that.”
When I asked where he was because I hadn’t seen me and because he was always around, the rest of the club didn’t know assuming he was on one of the many farms around here earning a little bit of extra dough-re-mi and we just thought he was okay. One guy said, “He’s probably making some money out on the farm.” I assumed that was true.
No, he wasn’t on the farm. That text message said he had killed himself. He apparently left a note for his mom.
I guess he was just done.
I couldn’t even think about this the night I heard. I just couldn’t. I knew he was upset about being unemployed. Hell, we all were, but we had teamed up in an obscure weird way that no one who hasn’t been there could ever understand. We dealt with it by being self-deprecating and by some odd connection, we had each other’s backs.
Or at least I thought we did. I guess I was wrong. You see, I had no idea he was in such despair.
I haven’t really been able to talk about it. The other guys in the group (I was the only woman) aren’t saying much either. Suicide is a very difficult thing. I do, however, believe that it hit us all. It’s survivor’s guilt to a large degree because not one of us saw the signs.
It’s been my experience that people who kill themselves don’t talk about it. They just do it. If they talk about it, they want help. I dreamed about him last night which makes me think that this has hit me harder than I thought.
And death is a mysterious mistress, isn’t it. The only person I really talked to about this was Vibinc, who met this guy on his last trip to Hoots. When I told him, he said “That’s messed up.”
Yes, it is messed up. No truer words have ever been spoken.
Last night, on the third anniversary of the passing of Squirrel Queen’s father, we celebrated his life at a cook out at her mom’s house. The place was packed and there has been enough time for us to finally be able to lift a glass and tell funny stories about how he impacted us. I listened to his friends talk about his escapades and was reminded of how good he was to me. And to see his friends gather in his honor was heart-warming.
Two different scenarios on life and death, both with significance and value. Two scenarios with final chapters that are very different.
This post really doesn’t have an ending. All I do know is we need to live like there is no tomorrow and do things that scare us.
I thought I had no words for this meaningless death. I guess I did.
