Graduate School, Year One: A Recap, Part Two – or – Johnny Spreads his Wings and Drops a Hunk of Birdshit on Your Windshield

That cold day in January, I had a boner the size of New Hampshire.

I was just waking up,…  What?  You don’t know about these?

That’s it.  That’ll be the extent of the boner references in this blog entry.

Maybe.

I’m back in grad school in January.

Let’s skip past the Christmas holiday.  It was good.  It was a shit ton better than the year before that.

Again, I’m taking two classes and an Independent Study class.  The seminars are four credit hours, and the Independent Studies are one.  (I’m gonna have to come up with a shorter term for “Independent Study to shorten it up.  Jesus typing Independent Study one more time would drive me up a fucking Vaseline-slicked wall with Sentinels attached to them – forgive me,… I watched “The Matrix” last night,… Anyway the point is, “Independent Study” sucks, so, for this weblog episode we’ll call it the “chubby.”)  So, nine credits.  (See how these fucking things get so long?) 

“US History Since 1945” is the first class.  Subject matter seems fairly standard, yes?  Okay, how about this: the notion of “American Exceptionalism,” urban de-centralization and suburbanization, the growth of consumerism, the rise of the new left and the new right,… and their intersections and similar fractionalization of, The Vietnam conflict, and finally (and a theme throughout) the overarching trend toward conservatism in the late 1970s and 1980s  How standard does that feel?  Add in that you have to read a book each week (A BOOK EACH WEEK) highlighting one or more of these topics.  Oh,… and as a little bonus for you, you get to go and try and sound intelligent in front of eight other great minds.  Plus you get the professor.  A published author who graduated from one of the top-ten history programs in the country and was mentored by another published author.  We briefly talked about the syllabus and the readings for the semester

“Southern History Since 1865” is the second class

Did I mention that I signed up for two classes on the same day.  One class (the “first class” in case any of you are drunk when you’re reading this)  I thought it would be cool being able to only have to drive to Tampa one time a week,… and the traffic wouldn’t be bad.  Just what was I gonna do with only 40 minutes between classes.  Can’t really go anywhere.

Anyway,… the point is “Southern History Since 1865 is the second class,

(Quick aside,… I just had a thirty-second struggle closing a cigarette box at 5:40  in the morning.  I finally just gave up, and threw it on the arm of the futon,… and it shut by itself,… fucking paper.)

Southern History is taught by a Yale graduate.  When I walked in,… okay,… I peed my pants just a little.  But then I remember that this a mixed format class: five grad students, ten undergrads.  I’m not necessarily getting behind this.  And these fucks are even younger than me (I know, grammar nazi, its “younger than I.”  We’ve talked about this before.  Enough about the grammar!)  But, the professor was smart and hip,… (really, that combination, John?,…  Why yes,… and I’d use it for myself!)  But then, toward the end of class, he did something very innovative – he used an episode of “Family Guy” to characterize the caricature of Southern culture pervasive in US society today. 

The reading wasn’t as quite as heavy as the other class (although, it was way heavier than the undergrads’),… but the writing!  I nearly shit myself when I realized I had to write a paper of 6500-8000 words by the end of the semester.  The normal length of the paper would have been much shorter, but the professor was facilitating my "chubby," so there was extra work involved (I'm really glad I chose that word to replace "Independent Study" now).  But the truth is that I really enjoyed writing that paper.  And I did well, as far as the grade went.  But the consistent encouragement I got from this professor was really superb.

And then there were the undergraduates trying to discuss graduate school level material.  I won’t say anything bad about them,… I could,… but I won’t.

But during this second semester of grad school, I also developed personal relationships with some of the other students.  People who had been in one of my two classes from the Fall term now recognized me.  That first term was a lot of casual, see-you-as-you-go-by kind of talk.  But this time, I actually spoke to them as a fellow student,… a cohort,… a peer.  And, in more than a couple of instances, I actually made friendships.

And that was cool.  It felt like I was doing the right thing,… for fucking once.  (It’s been a long time since I hit the big one.  Gotta be since that whole getting married thing.) 

And my boner had never been more tremendous.

Okay, I lied,… there were more boner references in this chapter.

Remember,… every time a boner goes unused, a little baby cries,….  That’s why they cry so fucking much.  I hear babies crying, and I all I can think about is all those boners going to waste.  Stupid crying babies!

Until next time,… piss off.

Next Time: Pupar.

Graduate School, Year One: A Recap

Still in the top three days of my life, that February 1.

Every now and then, I think back to that day and I wonder how it is that I got so old so fast. I mean it,… seriously old. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and I can’t believe who I’m looking at. I mean,… it looks just like me,… only really fucking old. I can’t be about to turn 44 years old, can I? It’s just dumbfounding to me that I can remember things that happened in 1982 so vividly, it’s like it was last week. And I wake up one day, and Dorian Fucking Gray is looking back at from over the bathroom sink.

Just a minor – really depressing – observation before we move on to the subject at hand (you can’t go very far in this blog before you hit something depressing,… or observational,… I find it humorous,… you might not,… what the fuck are you still reading for, then, douchetube?). But my age does serve as a nice transition to observations about my first year in graduate school.

Remember,… I’m old.

I didn’t sneak into graduate school – nobody really does. But my undergrad grades were pretty exceptional when I finally got around to finishing my degree. My GRE scores were pretty high, too. I thought getting into my program would be pretty much of a slam dunk. It was,… but only after begging a professor to please send my letter of recommendation (that she had offered to write two months prior) in by way of email on the last day of the application period. And she wasn’t pretty,…. Sorry,… just had to get the word “pretty” in this paragraph for the fourth fucking time. (Don’t you know any other adjectives, John? You dummy!)

So I got in. The problem turned into how to handle it. I spent the summer preparing myself mentally for the challenge,… by going to the pool and watching marathon sessions of “24” while eating Publix sub sammies with my kid. Seriously,… I think that’s all we did in the entire month of July. I knew that the workload of my first term in grad school was going to be daunting – I wanted to put that off for a bit. Plus there was all that shitty “crazy” part going on in my head that comprise the early part of this blog at the time. “How to handle it” turned into “can I even try?”

By the time my first class rolled around in late August, I was still pretty much bat shit crazy. Angry, depressed, skinny, ugly…. Okay, I threw in that last one as a sort of editorial comment. But on Tuesday night, I walked into my first classroom. Only eight other people in this class – nowhere to hide.

I can’t really talk any shit about the people I went to school with, because they might actually read this blog in a moment of sheer panic at the prospect of actually dying from complete boredom. But, honestly, even if I wanted to talk shit about them, I really would have no basis for any sort of argument to that extent. But that night (and Thursday, too, when I got into the other class with fifteen students) they scared the ever-living piss out of me. I knew they would be smart and articulate, but they were smarter and,… uhh,… articulate-r,… than I thought. I knew they would all have a significant scholarly background in history, but their knowledge of history and historiography exceeded my expectations. I knew they would be young, BUT THESE FUCKERS NEEDED FUCKING DIAPERS! Holy shitcake, did I feel old when I got in there. Now,… to be fair (to myself, fuck everyone else), there were two students in the class that were older than I. Shocking, I know, but still true. But these other ones,… Jesus-Christ-on-a-pony, these fucks were young. And then,… just to make me feel completely ill-suited,… the most profound, prescient, well-thought-out points came out of their little baby-like mouths. I truly wanted to punch somebody in the testicles. (Isn’t “testicles” a great word?) It made me feel like my knowledge of history consisted of, “I like old things that happened.”

And then there were the professors,… now I’m CERTAINLY not going to talk shit about any of them. But, again, no grounds to do so. These people are brilliant. I mean top-ten history-program graduates. Published writers. Ivy-Fucking-Leaguers. Together, they could build a generation of superkids. Which is helpful, because some of them are married to each other. (I really might be giving too much away about these people, but I’m saying nice shit about them, so I think I can get away with it. Fuck it.) Anyway,… the point is,… I was intimidated.

Both classes that week were just introductory,… letting students know what would be expected of them for the next fifteen weeks (so they were relatively short). And, ever-so-briefly I thought, “I might be able to do this.”

And then, the reading started.

I’m not saying it’s a lot of work, but you read 500 pages about the nascent days of what we consider to be the modern era of U.S. foreign relations and the historiography of the budding professional historian in the first week and tell me how you fucking feel then. So,… yeah, I guess I’m saying it’s a lot of work. It was so much work that I actually e-mailed one of the professors and told her that I felt I was underperforming and was unsure I was good enough. Well, she gave me real encouragement and strongly suggested I gut it out and do my best. So I did. In that first semester, I read thousands of pages. I wrote thousands of words. I spent thousands of ten-minute intervals doing work to prepare. (I can’t say “thousands of hours,” because that just wouldn’t be true,… and “thousands of minutes” just sounds stupid,… then again, so does what I actually wrote.)

And I learned a ton. I learned about trends in historical thought. I learned about methodologies and theoretical schools. I really learned how to read better and with deeper, more-thorough understanding. But most of all, I learned that I did belong in graduate school. I DO belong in graduate school. I’m not saying I’m as smart as some of the baby-faced motherfuckers in the department, but sometimes I keep up with them. Plus,… I can kick most of their asses,… so I got that going for me.

But that first term was devoid of something that really would fill out the whole graduate-school experience. I kind of insulated myself, and didn’t make any real friends. I could talk to people and maybe exchange a laugh or two, but I didn’t have any sort of real connection with any of the other students. In fact, I probably felt more comfortable with my professors than I did my classmates.

That was something I had to rectify in the spring.

Here I am, twelve-hundred words in, and I haven’t even gotten to my second semester yet (some of you fucks knew this was coming, too, didn’t you? I can be a long-winded prick).

We’ll pick up in January when we all come back to the rodeo. But I have to end with my little literary trick:

That cold day in January, I had a boner the size of New Hampshire.

Next Time: Graduate School, Year One: A Recap, Part Two – or – Johnny Spreads his Wings and Drops a Hunk of Birdshit on Your Windshield.

That Day in 1994

UTERUS!

That’s was I was thinking about when I woke up in the early morning hours of February 1, 1994. My ex-wife’s uterus, to be clear. For it was somewhere in there that what was to be my first baby currently was.

Babies are carried in the uterus, right? I know a lot of shit about a lot of shit, but I know very little about anatomy – especially female anatomy. And more especially about female reproductive anatomy. I know there’s a uterus (by the way,… since it begins with a vowel, shouldn’t it be “an” uterus?), and I know there’s a cervix, and I know there’s some sort of tubing up in there – it’s made of copper, if I’m not wrong. I guess I just have to declare my complete ignorance of female anatomy – I just know nothing about it…. Kinda like Canadian geography. I can point out just about any state in the U.S. on a map. But I couldn’t tell you the difference between Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg if I had to. I just don’t care enough about the lay of your land, America Junior…. And, by the way, don’t those three provinces sound like a personal-injury law firm?.... “If you’ve been hurt in an accident, call the firm of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg. The insurance company is already working hard against you, don’t you want the comfort of tenacious representation working for you?.... Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg: for the people!”

Anyway,… back to what was going to be my first baby (for the record,… still my only baby,… as far as I know and blood tests have been able to prove). Unnamed baby to come was sittin’ in the uterus (or somewhere close by, fuck you) on this chilly Tuesday morning. 5:30 am, and Johnny had slept as long as he could. I was a restaurant manager at the time down in Port Charlotte, and I worked the breakfast shift five days a week. I had to be there at 4:45,… so sleeping in until 5:30 was like a vacation, or a spa day, or something like that (What? A guy can’t have a spa day? I like people rubbing my feet as much as anybody.). My ex-wife and I had driven up from Port Charlotte to my mother’s house in Sarasota the night before because she had an appointment with her gynecologist at 8:30. We wanted to have the baby at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Not because we didn’t trust the hospital in Port Charlotte,…. Okay, it was because we didn’t trust the hospital in Port Charlotte.

5:30 is still pretty fucking early, so I went about my morning routine as quietly as I could. Made some coffee. Read the sports page. Made some more coffee. At about seven, the ex-wife woke up, and I went to go get doughnuts. I should probably make clear that at the time, she wasn’t the EX-wife. I just can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to marry the woman, so there’s no way I can refer to her as my wife in writing this blog,… she will always be the ex-wife,…. Maybe I should come up with some sort of name for her, so I don’t have to keep referring to her as the ex-wife, huh? Dragon Lady? Aileen Wuornos? Delilah? Lizzie Borden? Plaintiff?.... Ah, fuck it, ex-wife will have to do.

I got back to my mother’s house with the doughnuts. The ex-wife ate two,… I had bought,… two. Nice. Fuck it. There’s more coffee, right?

We made it to the doctor’s office right about on time. Which is amazing, because I’ve known very few women who are on time consistently. I’m not saying ALL women are ALWAYS late,… you cannot be taken seriously if you make such general blanket statements about an entire group of people,…. Let’s just put the figure at 97. 3% and realize I’m giving you women some credit (although I think my estimate may be off a little,… on the low side).

We were at the doctor’s office, right? So, we go into the examination room. And the doctor comes in and does her poking and prodding down there,… by the uterus and close to the copper tubing,… and announces that the ex-wife is nine centimeters dilated and eighty percent effaced,… which means fucking nothing to me. So, I figure I have to come up with some sort of astute query whose answer will produce information that makes more clear to me exactly what the situation is,…. I came up with it! “What the fuck does that mean?”

“That means that this baby is coming today.”

“TODAY?” Shit. I wasn’t sure I was ready for “today” being the answer. But there it was. Ears beginning to ring and breath becoming shorter, I thought I heard the doctor tell me to go home and get the overnight bag that had been packed for a week already, and take the ex-wife to the hospital. The doctor told me she’d be by to yank the baby out in the afternoon. (Okay,… I don’t think she said “yanked,”… I think it was actually “lasso.”)

I drove the normal speed home. Kept asking the ex-wife if she was okay. She mumbled something about doughnuts bothering her stomach. (“Shouldn’t have eaten two then, selfish bitch.”) And then, I raced to the hospital! In my shitty little Chevy Spectrum, I floored it all the way to the hospital, and I was hoping that a cop would catch me, and I’d get to do that old 1950s spiel about driving a pregnant woman to the hospital and get a police escort or some shit like that. No luck. Just old people flipping me the bird. Fuck ‘em.

We got to the examination room in the maternity ward before ten o’clock. On the way there, we saw half-a-dozen fat women (okay, pregnant women is the correct nomenclature,… doesn’t mean they weren’t fat) walking around the halls with IVs in their arms. Fuck, did they look miserable. I asked the nurse what was going on with these women in the halls as she was strapping all sorts of monitors and electrodes on the ex-wife. She told me they were ALMOST ready to have babies, but that in order to induce quicker labor, they were told to get up and do some walking. (“What? Just through gravity? Should they, like, jump up and down? Should I get them a basketball?”)

One of the monitors apparently measured contractions. Every couple of minutes the arc of the display went up just a bit. Those were when the contractions were taking place, the nurse told me. The ex-wife reported that the contractions didn’t hurt at all – not even mild discomfort,… maybe just a tiny tightening. So I went outside to smoke a cigarette or two. Downstairs between the hospital and the Medical Arts building, I looked to my right across the street, and I saw my mom walking toward me. She was taking the rest of the day off to spend with me and the ex-wife (and, ostensibly I guess, new unnamed baby still in uterus, or WHEREVER). When we both got back upstairs to the ex-wife, Mom confirmed the contraction arc explanation.

The doctor eventually came by around three in the afternoon. She took a look around the ex-wife’s chassis and said “okay, you’re ten centimeters dilated and one hundred percent effaced.” Still fucking Greek to me,… back to the old stand-by,… worked last time.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“That means this baby is coming now,” the doctor said.

“So do we get to go walk the halls and play basketball and shit with the other fat women?”

“No. Too late for that. I’m going to manually break her water, and I’ll be back in an hour or two to deliver (“lasso”) this baby.”

Water broken, she left with the attending natal nurse. Funny thing about the monitor measuring contractions the next time one came around. The tiny little jump in the arc now spiked all the way up the top of the screen. The ex-wife grabbed me by the brim of my Gator ballcap (“bitch, this is brand new!”) and squeezed while saying, at hair-band decibel level, “GET ME THE DRUGS!!!!”

I ran out the door to see if the doctor was still in the hallway. Nope,… but there was the nurse. I ran up to her and said, “she needs drugs in there, and I need another new fucking ballcap.” My mother told me to stay in the hall while they administered the epidural tap because she thought I would feint if I saw it. She would have been right too. I have tons of feinting stories,… but that’s for another episode.

After re-entering the room, the ex-wife seemed in considerably less pain,… and consciousness, for that matter. The nurse said it was going to be another ninety minutes or so, and in order to let the ex-wife rest, I should try and be as quiet as possible,… so I went downstairs to smoke some more and grab a sandwich. At least I’d be in the room for the birth. My mother tells me that when she gave birth to my twin sister and I, that my old man was downstairs in the parking lot with a quart of beer listening to the Red Sox game on the radio. When I went back upstairs, I brought the ex-wife a doughnut, and she threw up on my hand.

The doctor finally showed up again at about 5:30 and – upon probing the area again – announced that unnamed baby was coming out of the copper tubing soon,… like now. The ex-wife only had to push for about twenty minutes and, PLOP! Baby. We didn’t want to know the sex of the baby before it was born. I had picked out the boy name, and the ex had picked out the girl name. The most beautiful baby girl in the history of the planet was sitting there in the arms of this doctor, and I was never so happy to come up on the short side of an agreement. I cut the umbilical cord (like a very-thick, undercooked piece of pasta), and they rushed baby to the french-fry lamp.

I turned to the ex-wife to tell her how proud I was of her,… how she had been a trooper,… that she owed me a new fucking hat,….

And then I heard it. From behind my shoulder, the nurse,… examining baby underneath the french-fry lamp,… said, “oh my god,… do you know what she’s got?”

My heart sank. The ringing in the ears and shortness of breath returned. I felt feint (of course I did!). “What?!?” I thought to myself, “what does she have?!? Jaundice??? Six fingers??? Asian features??? WHAT?”

“She has really long eyelashes.”

So I punched that bitch in the back of her head…. Okay, I didn’t,…. I spit on her.

Still in the top three days of my life, that February 1.

Next Time,… Graduate School, Year One: A Recap.

People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume II

If that offended you, I was kidding!

Then again,… I can understand. I can be an annoying, offensive asspipe.

Baseball season has started once again,… and I’ll have less time to be that annoying guy everybody loves to dump on. It’s okay, I’ll be back as soon as the Rays drop out of contention – which looks like it’ll be sooner in the season than anyone in the Tampa Bay area will be happy about,…. Except the transplanted Yankee and Red Sox fans,… the fucking douchebags. Seriously,… all Yankee fans are jagoffs,… every one of them. They’re everywhere, too…. Here’s something to think about next time you’re toodling around town,… if you see someone wearing a cap and jersey with Yankee shit on it, they’re going to smell like they bathed in really crappy cologne,… also, look at their neckline,… there’ll be a dangly cross necklace resting gently on a tuft of dark chest hair poking out at the top,… and those are the girls.

But before we move on to the purpose for which we have all come to this crazy little wing of the interwebs, I again feel the need to precipitate this episode with a small caveat,… a little “Surgeon General’s Warning” of my own (Nobody smokes cigarettes anymore, John,… outdated reference, jacknut.)…. Do NOT take this installment seriously at all! Do NOT take anything in this blog chapter to imagine that I am actually advocating any type of real, physical harm directed toward anyone. This recurring storyline is solely an effort to entertain,… and by the way,… I don’t get nearly enough thanks from you fuckers who are reading this,… I do this all for you out of the goodness of my own heart,… there’s no upside for me here at all,…. Anyway,… the point here is,… don’t do ANYTHING that you read in this blog! Someone might get hurt,… and if someone does, I’ll be hoping it’s you. Silly shithead.

So,… in honor of baseball season and the most obnoxious, shit-consuming fans anywhere in the world – well, that might be a little strong,… there are those soccer thugs around the world (and, yes, soccer fans,… that’s the name of your sport,… soccer,… not football,… Americans are always right),… then again, never mind,… Yankee fans still suck worse – I here at the blog proudly present to you, “People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume II.

You know who deserves a heinous beating? The Florida House of Representatives. For those of you who may have missed this little news-type nugget, a member of the Florida House was comparing government’s willingness to further de-regulate business while at the same time more stringently regulating a woman’s power over her own body. He made his point by saying something to the effect that for his wife to have more control over her reproductive choices she would have to “incorporate her uterus.” Well, that got some people hackles up because there might have been a few teenage pages working the floor at the time he said it. So the representatives were told to refrain from using the word “uterus.” “UTERUS!” Fucking really? This guy brings up a very salient point in a very clever manner, and the bottom line is nobody is allowed to use word “uterus” anymore? Shame on you, Florida House. That’s a really shitty example to set for the pages that might be working there, actually. “Hey, kids. Umm,… we’re going to willingly allow ourselves to be censored in clear violation of our Constitutional First-Amendment rights, just so you kids won’t be exposed to any discussion of reproductive organs in clearly, clinical anatomical verbiage. And, as an extra added bonus, we’re going to do it in an actual government setting where real laws and policies are discussed, debated, and voted upon.” Somebody ought to chase them all around with a stick! Fuck you, Florida House! Kiss my uterus!

You know who else should get a red-hot, alcohol-soaked razor blade shoved in their eyeballs? People who look at my ankle tattoo and ask me why I have teddy bears tattooed on myself. (For those of you who might not know, I have two-inch tall Grateful Dead dancing bears marching in a circle around my leg…. Also,… why don’t you know me? I ain’t good enough for you?) Seriously, people? I can almost understand my kid’s friends because they’re still in high school. But then again,… shouldn’t they at least have been exposed to the Dead by now,… at least to the extent that they would recognize the dancing bears? You can tell me you’re not a fan of their music,… personal choice and all (even I thought they hit a dud with “Go To Heaven,”)… but how the fuck can you reach adulthood and not have at least seen this shit before? Where the fuck have you been? What’s gotten your attention all these years that you’re this fucking ignorant? Get stuffed.

Here’s another guy who should have his necktie shoved into a woodchipper with him following closely behind,… Michael Moore. Personally, I could give a shit about your politics. I thought “Roger and Me” was relatively entertaining. “Bowling for Columbine” was stretching it more than a little. But my point is not about his films or his points-of-view. It’s his consistently shitty personal appearance. Mike! Time to fix yourself just a little, bubby. You’ve been carrying around a few dozen extra pounds for a long while now. Push away from the buffet, and you’ll still be okay, I promise,…. Mix in a fucking salad every now and then. And you’re not doing yourself any favors with the khaki cotton dockers, sneakers, ball cap, and windbreaker look. Holy shit, did your mother dress you today, you goofy, over-aged whining baby?

I know I’m missing a whole shit-ton of douchebags in this episode,… so, I can guarantee that we’ll revisit this topic again soon. And, remember, I’m still soliciting ideas about what types of shit I should write about. Tell me what you’d like to see here, and we’ll see if we can’t accommodate it. “Friend” me on facebook, if you’re interested. Look for another episode in the next week or so. More god damn free entertainment on the way, you fucking leeches.

Until next time, bitches,….

UTERUS!

Next Time: That Day in 1994

Warning: May Contain Content not Suitable for Some Readers

I have so much to read, I can’t believe I’m taking this time to write.

Seriously,… graduate school is a bitch,…. I’ve spent the last ten weeks going blind on history. U.S. History Since 1945 and Southern History Since 1865. The books are long and, usually, mind-numbingly boring. I do get a kick getting together with the rest of the class and talking about them, though. And it’s not like undergrad work at all. I went to school at Eckerd College,… good school, right? But every class I went to there – every one – I knew that I was the smartest cat in the room. My work made everybody else in that classroom look like Lennie Small, for christ’s sake. Grad school is an entirely different story. Bright people in every class,… and most of them are close to twenty years younger than me. (Yes, I know the correct grammar is “younger than I,” but this is a blog, so kiss my dick, grammar nazi.) There a couple of fucks my age – or even older – but not many. I was very intimidated when I started last semester. I mean, these kids were smart,… and,… they all seemed to know each other already. (Makes sense, John. They do go to the same school.) But here, I was the ultimate outsider. In walks this old, fat, unfortunate-looking douchebag. And whenever I’d open the door,… they’d all be looking at me…. They knew I was weird right away. I knew I was weird, too,… and out of place. I also knew what they were thinking: “What do you think you’re doing here, you old, fat, unfortunate-looking douchebag? Take your stupid bipolar ass outta here. You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby. You’re gonna die.” All of a sudden, I was in a room full of hyenas,…. And here I was, an aging zebra with a sprained ligament in my ankle and a bad case of heartburn. (It’s hard to run when you have heartburn, you know…. By the way, do zebras have ankles? I wasn’t sure if they did, but I don’t care enough about it to google “zebra ankles.” Now, if I were to google “zebra cocks,”… different story,…. I’d make time for that.)

Anyway, the point is, I do a lot of reading. Some weeks I feel like I’m on a Dostoevsky/Michener/Hugo bus ride through Dante’s third ring of hell sitting next to a drooling hobo who last showered in 1993. And I’m getting tired. If I fall asleep, slide over just a little bit, and my head starts to fall on his shoulder, I’m gonna get hobo slobber on me, and there’s gonna be a lot of violence and crying. (Mostly violence from the hobo, and mostly crying from me.) I know that “hobo” is probably not a nice word to use, but fuck it. I think people are way too bunged up over language. We talk about gendered language, and racist language, and exploitative class language in almost every seminar we’re in at the history department, and I get that. Yes, there were – and are – entire sets of people who use derogatory words (or even vocabularies) to insult and injure individuals and groups and to cement an ideology of hegemony in a relationship of power,… I get it!…. But sometimes,… words are just words. If I say to my friend sitting next to me, “shut up, faggot,” I’m not really insinuating that he is gay. Neither am I being homophobic or gay-bashing. I’m just trying to tell him to shut up more emphatically. Believe it or not, “whore” is a term of affection between my wife and I – it’s just a word. Words only have the power to offend if YOU give it that power. They’re only collections of letters placed in a particular order in order to convey meaning. We shouldn’t be concerned about words,… we should be concerned about the thoughts and motives of the racist, sexist, bigoted asshole using them…. Here’s a rule of thumb for you people when talking to me: if I’ve offended you by what I’ve said,… I’m kidding. If you look at me askance with raised eyebrows,… it’s a joke. I don’t really mean it when I say I’m going to punch a baby. I’m like Tony Montana talking to Elvira in “Scarface,”…. You know,… without the violence,… and the cocaine,… and the killing,… and the general meanness,…. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example. But I never trusted Omar, either.

Anyway, the point is, I do a lot of reading. And a lot of times, it’s somnambulistic,…. Seriously, I’m reading a book about the labor movement in the 1970s right now,… and I’m sleeping about 17 hours a day. Sleeping rules. I hear people say, “oh, I slept in until 10 am, and I feel like I wasted my whole day.”… Fuck you. If I DON’T sleep until 10 am, I want to shoot a puppy in its stupid little puppy face. Alarm clocks totally suck. I’ve gone through three alarm clocks this year alone by throwing them at the tile floor. I am never more angry than when my alarm clock snatches me out of a dream – unless it’s a bad dream. You know the one’s I mean? The dreams like when the cops are chasing you because you just stole a goat, took it across state lines, and brought it with you to break into a federal armory,… and then raped it. I hate those dreams. I had a dream the other night about an old high school friend of mine named David. He was fun. We used to hang out together all the time. And we’d make bets with one another,… about anything. We couldn’t find anything that we wouldn’t wager on…. And the funny thing is: we’d never actually bet money,…. We’d bet that whoever lost had to do something really embarrassing. One time, Dave lost a bet, and we had to go the gas station. I went inside to “browse around,” but what I was really doing was waiting for Dave to pump ten cents worth of gasoline, just so he’d have to walk in and say to the cashier, “uh, yeah,… I got a dime on pump number four.” Another time,… when I lost the bet, Dave went into the McDonald’s after school one day. I followed him in about a minute later and yelled “I GOT A BIIIIIIIG DICK!” Everybody in the fucking place stared at me for about four seconds, and I said, “Well, I do,” and walked out.

Anyway, the point is, I do a lot of reading. I didn’t write about it too much, but I do…. And I really should get back at it. 1970s labor history, here I come. Uhh,… good night.

Until the next chapter,… later, bitches!

If that offended you, I was kidding!

Next Time,… People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume II

I’ve Seen Blue Skies Through the Tears in my Eyes. And I Realize,….

I’m going home.

I didn’t dream at all that night.

There,… I followed my stupid literary device designed to grab you attention and make you feel some emotional attachment to my ass-kissing, tug-at-your-need-for-consistency, bullshit opening statement. I did it. We’re moving the fuck on. It’s been four months since I wrote my last episode, and in that installment we were still examining and covering last summer. I’m older now. I’m wiser. I’m a little less crazy. Oh,… I’m still bat-shit crazy,…. Just a little less so.

Like I said,… moving on.

Okay,… you wanna wrap up the psychotic episode in a neat little box? I can’t do it. If I could even try, I would. I take the medication religiously now. I have to convince myself that I have the power to control my anxiety. It takes a great deal of concentration, but I can normally talk myself through it. The problem there is when I’m driving. I have two things to concentrate on at the same time,… I have to drive,… I have to keep myself calm,….

This being the Tampa Bay area,… these two concentration requirements are completely diametrically opposed. I find myself literally white-knuckled on my steering wheel and speaking in some sort of evil tongue,… and I try to remind myself to be calm,…. And I forget about driving…. I have almost driven into the backs of slower-driving fucks just because I had to close my eyes ever-so-briefly to pray to the gods of road rage that I would not INTENTIONALLY drive into the backs of these slower-driving fucks. Driving rules. Driving in close proximity to really shitty drivers sucks assballs. You know this; I’m not telling you anything new.

But I know I have to catch you guys up on shit. At least those of you who might be reading this thing after four months of no updates at all. I just can’t write about last year’s issues anymore. Maybe with a little more perspective, as time allows, maybe I can get back into it…. I’m in a different place right now…. I don’t know that I even want to look at that “me” anymore. … So, maybe I’m not gonna catch you up,… maybe I’m just gonna try to interest you in what I have to say from here on out…. You know me,… I’m still the same guy.

You’ve read my stuff up until now,…. I was an asshole.

I’m still the same guy – an asshole,…. Just a slightly-less-crazy one.

So,… we’re gonna talk about new shit. New friendships,… New opportunities,… New difficulties (what, you weren’t expecting them?).

I’ve got ideas about where I wanna go,… but, if you wanna make a suggestion, I can try and do some requests,… (shit, I feel like a lousy 80s cover band.)

There’s more stories about baseball,…. There’s more stories about growing up as a kid and then growing up again as an adult (maybe more than once),…. There’s stories coming up about my grandfather,….

There’s just no more bipolar stories,…. For now,…. Be cool with that,…. I’m asking you.

I’m back, bitches. Thank me by leaving comments and spreading the word. We’ll be updating more often from now on,…. Go out and sell me, fucks!

Token literary device:

I have so much to read, I can’t believe I’m taking this time to write.

The Days of Reading, Pools, and the Worst Music You Could Imagine

And then,… it wasn’t.

We made it back to my mom’s house by mid-afternoon, the kid and me. It was ridiculously hot, and there was nothing we could do outside,… at all,…. Except for the fact that Grammy—that’s what my kid calls her—has a pool.

How can you live in Florida and not have a pool? It’s beyond fucking hot down here. Seriously, it’s like walking on the surface of the sun. Imagine the biggest fucking parking lot you’ve ever seen. I mean like thirty-square-miles of parking lot. And the only space you can find is right in the middle of the lot. (I don’t know, you got a late start,…. It’s Christmas season,…. Whatever)…. You gotta park in the middle of this huge fucking parking lot and walk to wherever it is you came for that has this huge parking lot. (Who’s stupid enough to do this, John?.... Uh, anyone who’s ever been to Disney World,… or Six Flags,… or the annual AVN Porn Convention.) Then imagine they turn the heat up to eleven…. That’s fucking Florida in June. You literally walk to the street corner to get a newspaper and you need a fucking nap.

So we went in the pool. Of course we did. Oh,… and we made plans to go to the Stoneweood Tavern and Grill for dinner. Mom had left us a gift card she had received as a Christmas gift, so dinner would be on Grammy. (Why ain’t you used the gift card in six months, Grammy?)

So,… as we’re about to get in the pool, the daughter asks me if she can bring her laptop onto the patio,… she wanted to listen to her music.

It’s funny stuff: time and space and music and the relational quality of their intersections. To this day I can tell you that the most emotionally evocative thing in the world that can snap me the fuck back— to another place when I was another person—is music. If you play “Kiss on my List” by Hall and Oates, I’m at the skating rink in eighth grade,…. If you play “Luka” by Suzanne Vega, I’m driving to my summer job at the Operations Center for Barnett Bank in 1987,…. If you play “Let’s Go” by Wang Chung, I’m heading for Crescent Beach in Zippy’s passenger seat going seventy-miles-an-hour with a six pack of Miller High Life in my lap catching about sixty feet of air when we hit that fucking train crossing near Starke (and, by the way, Zippy wasn’t supposed to be the dude’s name—his name was Dave—Zippy was the name of the stupid Ford Fiesta,… but I’m the only guy that remembers that, right Zippy?),…. If you play “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Mӧtley Crüe, I’m at ANY strip club on the ENTIRE west coast of Florida from 1988 to 2003.

So, my kid,… who used to be a smaller kid,… had to sit in the kid’s car seat in the back of the car (you know,… when she was smaller). And resultantly, she had to listen to the music that I would play (her little fucking baby arms couldn’t reach the stereo from all the way back there,… stupid little baby arms)…. Anyway, the point is that she had no choice but to be subjected to what I was listening to…. Indigo Girls,… Duncan Sheik,… Fiona Apple,… Grateful Dead,… The Jayhawks,… The Smiths,… fucking kid should have gone on strike!

And then, a funny thing happened (actually, it’s not that funny, it entails me getting fucking old),… she grew up,… and started listening to music that SHE liked,….

And then,… she grew up so much that she got to move up to the front seat,… and she didn’t have little fucking baby arms anymore,… she had full-grown fucking big-kid arms. She could reach that god damn stereo now. She could insert CDs,… she could change stations,… she could adjust volume,… and she was MY kid,…. Something inside of you dies a little bit when you reach a milestone like that,… your kid is getting older,… your mortality stares you in the face a little more threateningly,… you just LOST YOUR FUCKING STEREO, MOTHERFUCKER!

So,… then I listened to what SHE listened to…. And,… strangely enough,… I liked most of it.

She turned me on to some really great stuff,… Fall Out Boy (I don’t care what you say, they didn’t sell out), Motion City Soundtrack, Matt Pond PA, The Higher…. Circle of Life, indeed, bitches.

Meanwhile,… back at my mom’s,… the kid wanted to put her music on while we fought off the blistering heat in the pool,…. Ah, what the hell, I was just going to watch a baseball game anyway. I could do that without the sound, right? Don’t need sound to count from zero strikes to three, do I? What am I, an asshole?.... Don’t answer that.

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” she said. (Did I mention that she’s polite?)

And she put on Say Anything,… oh my god, do these guys suck!... Five minutes in, and I can’t take it anymore. “Anything else?”

And she puts on Of Montreal,… oh my god, are these fucking guys possibly worse?.... Why, yes,… yes they are! “Killing me, kid! Gotta find something else!”

MGMT.

Vampire Weekend.

Passion Pit.

And that’s why I killed all the neighbors on the block, your honor.

The truth is, it wasn’t all that bad. I had gotten through the relative trauma of the day. I had my daughter with me. We were going to have a nice dinner…. And, she wanted to watch a movie with her old stupid dad that night. I told you before about the tremendous collection of DVDs my mother has,…. I mean, she was as good as Blockbuster (of course, they’re going out of business, so mom ain’t all that shit).

We figured out that she had never seen “Primal Fear” with Richard Gere and Edward Norton,… (Jesus Christ, Marty,… if that’s what you think, I am disappointed in you,…. There never was an Aaron, counselor.). So we sat there in the living room watching the movie and drinking IBC Root Beer.

Ten-thirty rolled around. I took my crazy pill.

Three days without drinking. I let the kid have the master bedroom,…. The truth is, I wanted the room with the cool Brookstone ambient sound machine.

And then,… she stuck her head in the room,…. “Daddy,… and it’s fine if you say no,… but I was wondering if my friend could come down here and hang out with me,… with us, I mean,… just until we go home on Wednesday,…. Her mom is out of town, and she’s at her house all by herself, and,….”

Another kid? Not just me and you, baby?.... “No problem, kiddo.”

“Thanks, Daddy,…. I love you.”

She should have added, “even though I make you listen to shit music.”

I eventually fell asleep.

I didn’t dream at all that night.

Next Time,…. I’ve Seen Blue Skies Through the Tears in my Eyes. And I Realize,….