If you can read this, you are being tagged

Working on various projects, including the Arts Festival, is taking up some creative time. Wish I was not so distracted and unfocused. A piece of paper flew off the table earlier, written on it are the names of two schools to research. My son will most likely be attending one of them next year. He'll be in sixth grade and in middle school.

Time flies.

I do not read comic books. The published works of DC Comics and Marvel and their filmed editions have no real meaning in my life other than small entertainment.

I have never watched an episode of the Wire and still, somehow, have managed to hold down a full time job.

I avoid doing anything in binge format, although I've watched a few episodes of The Kids in the Hall in a row since finding it on Netflix.

There is not enough Life to watch or click on everything that I'm told is important, or life changing or worth my time.

My own things are going. I do not telegraph everything I do months in advance. I got stuff going on even while I'm looking through who died this month on Wikipedia. You do not want me to post about how my physical health has been the past 48 hours. My TMI has filters that respect the audience. Even if I knew no one would read it, I would not post any details.

I'm in the last few months of 1962 in this fantastic book on The Beatles. I was mistaken in thinking the Bob Spitz book would be the end of a close to definitive biography of the band, but Mark Lewishon's research and scholarship is amazing. I hope to write more about this volume when I finish it.

I like Peter Capaldi as an actor and welcome his interpretation of Doctor Who. Is that a high crime?

I'm disappointed in the new Arcade Fire record, is this reason for me to get spammed?

As I write this, The American Music Awards are on. I have no idea who these people are that my friends are tweeting about. Nor am I particularly concerned enough to change the channel to find out. Life goes forward. No need to hack.

I do not take my pop culture personally when it goes against me, but find something else to take up my time. Maybe even do something that is important and life changing, but I usually watch a soccer documentary about a great player from Hungary on youtube through my television instead. A friend tweeted a link about the Hungarian soccer team in the fifties and I was intrigued, so I found the documentary on youtube. It did not change my life, but it was worth my time.

I hold grudges. Tom Glavine for giving up seven runs in 1 1/3 innings in a game the Mets needed to win. Kevin Dyson for catching that ball. I will go to my death knowing it was a forward lateral. At least one ex-wife hates me enough to block me on Facebook. I did not like Lou Reed after seeing him live.

You do not want to see me with facial hair. I tried it years ago. It looked like crap. I am not making myself look like crap for a month of manufactured awareness of a horrible disease.

And do not be that guy by correcting me about the Glavine stat if I'm wrong. I have not looked it up. I'm just a guy on my couch, watching New England get their ass beat on Sunday night football. It's in the second quarter, the game can change. The game can always change. I'm a Bills fan, I know this. I'm a Mets fan, I know this. I support Everton, I am used to mediocrity. I would never tell anyone that the Bills/Blue Jackets/Everton/Mets/Celtic are important, life changing or worth your time.

It's become much, much easier to scroll past than comment.

Buster Keaton though, you should consider.

Anyway, Arcade Fire's next record might be good, so can Mumford and Sons'.

What happened to the hope in all the vitriol?

I am imperfect though, taking in some schadenfreude while the Patriots are losing badly, at home.

Free Rant

So there I was, driving down Demorest Road on the way to hardware store number two of the evening at a speed of 15 miles per hour below the posted speed limit, stuck behind a silver minivan with a mattress tied to the roof, a back window with the word "Bazinga" written on it and the left turn blinker on for over a mile.

What exactly got me in this position?

On Wednesday we finally had a glass block window installed in our basement. A window that had a dryer vent installed. All I had to do was run the hose from the existing dryer to the vent and clamp it on. Simple, right?

Somewhere, on this planet, is a person, living or dead, who put a three foot square concrete platform about two inches high on our basement floor. The dryer sat to the right of the platform, the washer a couple of feet to the left of it.

In order to get the hose to the window vent the dryer has to be moved, to the left. It cannot go completely to the left of the platform because then there would be no room for the washer and the water heater. It cannot lie on both the platform and the floor because then the dryer would be out of balance. The washer cannot be moved to the right of the dryer because we do not have enough hose to go to the water source to the washer.

So I got the dryer balanced on the platform good and fine, which left me no choice but to leave the door of the cabinet above the dryer open, because the dryer is too high to be able to both open and close the cabinet door.

I thought there was not enough hose to get from the dryer vent to the window vent so I went to hardware store one and got eight feet of expandable aluminum hose, which came with a couple of clamps. Got home, got the hose and clamp on the dryer, got the end of the hose to the window, but was not able to clamp it since the vent is recessed a few inches in the window sill.

Pulled the hose too hard and it pulled loose from the dryer. Tightened it up to the dryer, did it too hard because the hose bent and tore up.

Released a fair number of curse words. Nasty ones that cursed the person who designed the basement floor. Want to find the person and rub their face in the dog shit they created on the floor.

Went to hardware store two and found a vent extension that would allow me to clamp the hose on one end and stick the other into the vent fairly tightly. Which kind of sort of worked but the hose is about a foot or two short so it may have the tendency to pop out of the vent from time to time.

And this is why I should never do home repair.

Bagger Vance, your days are numbered

Of course the autistic kid in the new Fox series, Touch, is a genius. It is good for ratings. He may not speak, but he's off the charts with numbers, their connection to the universe and is possibly psychic!

Honestly though, they're not Rainman. Not even close. Remember Rainman, despite his incredible ability to count toothpicks, was living in an assisted care community and could not take care of himself. Most autistic people are not savants, not even close.

And Rainman, like Touch, is fiction.

Once in awhile I post about my son and his challenges on Facebook, and get some off the rails responses. "Let him sit at the table, he'll eat when he's hungry" or a link to a behavioral training course that will cure the 'defiant child' for parents that specifically states it's not for children who are severely autistic or non-verbal. Sure, their hearts are in the right place, even if they're not paying attention past clicking "like" on everyone of your status updates.

Even if I know I'm wrong Aspberger's and Autism are two different things. With Aspberger's as a malignant mole on your ass that is easily treatable and the autism my kid has being stage four colon cancer. It's an extreme analogy, but it's all I have today.

It's been a rough couple of weeks with my son. Maybe I'm magnifying it with holiday stress and my own issues but his OT at the feeding clinic has reached the end of her ability to help him. I appreciate her honesty. So we're made another appointment with a behavioral psychologist. I have no idea how much his Grandmother's death has affected him. His mother's world has had some serious upheaval in the last couple of months. They're moving into Grandma's house, which is a good move for them, and out of the sketchy apartment complex.

Meanwhile someone who does pay attention to my Facebook updates hooked me up to another doctor who deals with feeding behaviors. We had a great phone conversation. He was very compassionate and gave me some good advice and confidence. I'll follow up with him in a couple of weeks.

I'm trying to get my son to use language more, to be specific in what he wants. He gets into asking, straining before finally pushing out three words.

I.

Want.

Lolly.

So much is happening in that brain of his and it is so hard for him to filter it properly.

Unfortunately, like the kid on Touch, he's not able to give me the winning lottery numbers. Luckily he's not climbing cell phone towers at 3:18. My wife thinks the Autistic Child with "Abilities" is going to take over what was formerly the place of the Magical Negro in popular culture. We're all going to get lessons in life from the silent autistic child who does not like to be touched. So sad and poignant. A long as the ratings are high we'll see more of this, and will continue to ignore what will happen to these autistic kids as they become adults.

In closing this rant we had this honestly charming piece of real life magic this morning. My wife needed a tissue and asked him to get her one. He picked up his shoes instead.

Not Electric or Authentic Enough

Small things set me back. A computer problem at worked slowed me down, made me feel like time was wasted. Today is probably going to be taken up by waiting for the problem to be resolved It wore me down when it happened and the day ahead wears me out thinking about it.

My son is obsessed with the covers of Veggietales DVDs and bouncing on a yoga ball. Slowing down is not how he operates. Full blast, bouncing on the yoga ball. Watching him saps my energy.

The chalazion on my eyelid seems to be getting a little smaller. Heat on it does not completely remove it. The leaking has slowed down so my eye is not as fused shut in the morning. I'd like it to be lanced or cut out on Friday as drugs did not work the last time.

Why am I not capable of building my own pedestal to shout my praises from or proclaim myself as a deity? Maybe I'll change my Facebook name. Post links, shake my fist at them and not follow anything up, like a good keyboard warrior.

On that note, I really need a vacation.

Philosophy, is the Talk on a Cereal Box

I haven't been punchy here for awhile. Or been self revealing in the form of navel gazing. While I'm in a good place, overall - there's always room for improvement.

There are things I'd like to write about, for instance, the Columbus Metropolitan Library levy, but anything I say, as a disgruntled former employee, would come across as me being bitter. So I do not criticize it, even though I'm more for the levy than I am against it. But, as I learned while working there, expressing any opposing view of that place was strictly forbidden.

It's not even that I'm censoring myself. I do not want to be negative. The trauma of being at my old workplace still exists. After three years I've finally found myself not flinching while being around my current coworkers when they talk to me, about anything. Only now am I coming to terms with it to find myself facing their levy campaign head on in the lives of the people around me. And I understand why it should pass, but there are still people there I want to slap with a dead fish. The bad stuff is not something that is easily let go, but this extension of my pain is not good either.

It's hard for me, like Edie Brickell, I don't get too deep. Yet, I do have my own passionate, yet often misinformed, opinions. Problem is, it comes out as anger, rage, a rant rather than anything with any real depth or intellect. Which is more about me than I care to admit but it's on the screen now.

The online interactions have all become a bunch of snarky one liners in lengthy Facebook threads, and they're starting to bore me. What's getting solved there? Opinions are not changing. I'm not going to retreat to this blog, shake my fist and give out links of things that I hate - there's nothing productive or remotely positive about that way of communicating.

The last thing I need, is a cell phone, another electronic addiction. I'm not a gamer. What I do here is the extent of my gaming. I watch very little actual television, outside of sports, and have no clue who these Jersey Shore people and their ilk are. Nor do I care. Why should I care about Heidi and Spencer, whoever they are? I read Entertainment Weekly and see the names and headlines and read that none of these reality people have done anything of any substance, other than making show. I'm not impressed. Television seems very boring now days and I'm better at entertaining myself than shouting old Nirvana lyrics at the world.

Sometimes I think even the poetry has suffered. Feel like it's rehash. Even when I challenge myself the results are mean. I can't even write a love poem. Should be grateful I'm not blocked. Stuff is coming out. Most of it I'd like to pitch. Some of it, I have not read in public and probably never will. Have I painted myself into a corner?

Never watched Lost. Don't watch Mad Men or anything on pay cable. Wish I saw The Wire, maybe I'll borrow the DVD from the library, but the rest seems a waste of my time. My dead boss used to say 'life's too short' before he dropped dead of a crack overdose at the age of 33 - and he was right.

I try not to pay attention to Glenn Beck, the group of inbred Palins or how the crazy folks in the Federal Reserve and Treasury have pushed this country into insolvency. At the same time it's so bad out there we've forgotten how to coexist. No one wants to share the $1,000 pizza though - and why should they? They paid for it. Then tweeted about it.

So do I lay on my deathbed wishing I had not wasted so much time on my laptop, or that I wasted too much time watching Gene Simmons' reality show? Heck, at least I did not do both. Now, if I could put myself in a situation to ditch both of those options for the real alternative - there's your hot action.

Turn the place to dust

A short rant to start. The Polaris Fashion Place, shopping mall or whatever it calls itself is the most car-centric area in the state of Ohio, perhaps the country. It is also the most convoluted in its design and traffic flow. The roads in and out are inadequate, the parking is not friendly to cars or pedestrians. I wish no harm to the businesses or employees (who must go through Dante's nine circles to commute to work) who work in this location. However, I would like to see them relocated to calmer and more reasonable shopping areas. Then, I would like to see the developers of this monstrosity forced to live in the buildings they created and have a sudden bomb fall on them, turning the place into what City Center is now.

Ok after soup and whisky at Claddagh, also writing here - I feel better.

I've been on a thrift store kick recently. Revamping my trousers due to wear and, full disclosure, a weight gain. I've found an Adidas Columbus Crew sweatshirt for fifty cents and am still searching for the right ironic t-shirt. Today we went to the Goodwill store in Powell, in search of designer cast offs at the right price. I did find a cool shirt, but was so put off by an idiot bluetoother talking to someone like he was on the surface on the moon. After he left there was a father talking to his baby in a carriage as if he was Curly from the Three Stooges. Which would have been fine and cute, if daddy was capable of using an indoor voice. The store is quite small, and everyone in the place was blasted by the baby daddy talk.

The good thing is that I was looking through my Scottish Wife's cds before the mini road trip and found this one.



I had not listened to it yet and a very amused and impressed by what I heard. Melvin by The Belles is worth the price of admission. It's a knockoff of Gloria, and yes, they spell it out!

My Scottish Wife is a music geek who has many, many girl group compilations in her collection. Including this one, which is a sound I've been hearing in my head for years.



In other good news, it was great to get up early today and watch Everton beat up on Manchester United. I went a bit crazy when Rodwell scored the third goal.



Kid's only eighteen and scored his first Premiership goal against Man. U., how awesome is that? Now Sir Gasbag is going to be sniffing at him all summer and offer Moyes all kinds of money for him. Everton creates stars while other teams can only purchase them.

Two to Four Inches of Snow is Light. Lighten up America!

Maybe I'm spoiled, insensitive and tough but when did the people of Central Ohio, heck, the rest of the country become so fearful of the weather?

Today is December 19th. The winter solstice starts on Monday.

It's December. This is winter. There is going to be snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain and cold weather. This is what happens in parts of the northern hemisphere during this time of year. What has happened to the culture of this country that has become so alarmist when there is a snowflake visible?

I spent a decade in the snow belt of Western New York and saw some serious snowfall. So back in March of 2008, when Columbus got twenty inches of snow - that was serious, the most I've seen here in twenty years.



I'm not a cold weather person, and I loathe ice on the roads. My car is the only Volvo in North America that does not start when the temperature is in the single digits.

So last night and into today, there was snow. How much? Two freaking inches and you'd think there was a nuclear war being waged. Blogs and Facebook statuses were updated with spewings of hatred and fear of snow. You'd think Osama Bin Laden was controlling the weather the way the venom was flying off people's keyboards.

And the weather forecasters on the news do not help with their calls of alarm. Their sending of reporters for live remotes to the city salt barn if the temperature drops below freezing and the sky has a dark cloud. What a waste of resources. Can't they report something more important? I remember Jym Ganahal on channel four years ago, practically crying on the air because there may be ice on the roads during rush hour and he said, "Our only hope is if the sun comes out to melt the ice." As if Satan and demons were conspiring to cause people to have to drive through inclement weather. As if the world could not be a perfect place unless temperatures are in the seventies year round. This is not Aruba. It gets hot. It gets cold. Sometimes it does not rain for a week. Sometimes it rains for three days straight. It's part of life.

An inch or two of snow is nothing people, drive sensibly and it will be gone in a couple of days. Deal. Be patient. Plan accordingly. Have a plan. I understand that many cities are not equipped with the resources for snow removal and it sucks when the power goes out because of excessive ice. The bad weather will end.

People, have a seat by your window. Turn off the news. Have something warm to drink. Watch the snow fall. It's pretty.

When did people become so afraid of nature?