Sketches of Strain

2003-06-01T20:52:00.000-04:00

The New Sketches of Strain

Well, kids, from here on out, you can find me at The New Sketches of Strain. Powered by MT!! I'll be a real blogger soon!!

Comments are enabled, so COME ON DOWN!!

See you soon,
DF

2003-06-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

Look Away, Dixie Land

So, I'm up at WUGA and was just running the weekend edition of "All Things Considered" and the mayor of Murphy, NC was on the radio talking about this in connection with the Eric Rudolph case. I have to say that I know absolutely nothing about Murphy, North Carolina or its mayor, but this guy's voice was so *sleazy* and insincere that listening to him was like having a bag of live spiders dumped over my naked thighs. He was, of course, denying that anybody in Murphy had sheltered or abetted Rudolph in any way.

When asked why local gas station owners and convenience stores had posted signs outside their businesses saying things like, "Run, Rudolph, Run!", this mayor hyuck-hyucked his way around the question saying that the people of Murphy were among the "kindest, most upright, most welcoming and hospitable people in the USA".

Why do I get the feeling that if I ever drive through Murphy, I better make damn sure I don't run out of gas or break down? I could hear the hidden klansman's robes in this guy's background just from his voice. Eeeeeeeeeeyuck. These kind of people are why so many of us in the center are wary of the far right. Cos we have to potentially allign ourselves with the people who bring us politicians like this guy and Strom Thurmond.

DF

2003-06-01T19:18:00.000-04:00

Moving Again

Well, it looks like I will be getting my own MT site soon, thanks to Kelley. Whooooooo-hoooooo!! Thanks, hon. Once again, my Blogmamma to the rescue.

Still, I should be around here through the end of the week. I think?

DF

2003-06-01T13:17:00.000-04:00

My Dad sent me this link.

2003-06-01T12:05:00.000-04:00

God and Big Jet Planes

Dean Esmay has opened up a can of worms he may regret by generously opening a forum for Gays and Christians to talk to each other in a civil tone of voice at Dean's World . The post is called "Gays and Christians: A Dialogue" and there are something like 86 comments posted and the list is still growing. I'm warning you, though, some of these comments are reeeeeeally long. And good luck, Dean. He is doing his best to keep the shouting to a minimum on both sides, popping back in every so often to say, "Now, now, kids. I said 'civil'." Go say something smart and kind if you can.

Over at A Small Victory there are two excellent posts by Michele, "Notice" and "Ode to a Supersonic Plane".

Enjoy!

DF

2003-05-31T20:49:00.000-04:00

Why We Have a Front Porch Swing

So, I don't know how many of you live in hot places, but here's the deal.

For a long, long time there was no air conditioning down south. There was no air conditioning at all. And for most people the south was uninhabitable because of the summer heat until some time in the 50's and 60's, I guess. I was born well into the air conditioned era. I grew up accustomed to the whoosh of cool fresh air coming from the vents in the wall day and night from May to September.

But for many years, you found relief any way you could. This meant hand fans, floor to ceiling windows, French windows that opened on to wide porches (That's a veranda, y'all!)(Can you say, "vur-RAY-uhn-duh"? I knew you could.), lemonade, iced tea and any other way you could find to cool yourself off and move some air around yourself on a hot still night. Which brings us to the topic of this post: The front porch swing.

Now, honestly I hadn't ever really thought about it. See, I've never had my own porch swing. But New House has a porch swing. A nice one. Spacious for two, but will hold three *good* friends on a hot night. And it was out there on the swing the other night that I realized that the whole reason grownups play on swings in the south. (If lazily extending a toe to gently nudge yourself back and forth could be considered playing.)

It makes a breeze. Even when it's completely still. The swing goes forward. Whoosh. The swing goes back. Whoosh again. EUREKA! This is why there are so many porch swings in the south! (DUH!) They cool you off. It's not like having a powerful air conditioner squatting down to the ground outside your house, but I suspect that back in the day, when the heat of the day still lurked in the stifling air of a house, it was just real nice to get out on the porch and gently rock back and forth, stirring the air and (maybe) drying the sweat underneath your hair.

Now, maybe some of you can help me out here, but somebody told me that back then when women carried fans, they used them as code to communicate with each other. Like, a woman closing a fan and holding it against her lips would mean, "Watch what you say. Someone is listening."

The closest I came to getting any more information about this was this page, which actually is pretty interesting. Who knew? The things people will come up with in order to communicate.

DF

2003-05-31T18:48:00.000-04:00

Spitting Tacks

This is my open hate letter to these rich white bitches and their kind who made it such a *special* pleasure to be at Urban Army today on a busy Saturday. Girls, there are some little things I think you need to know.

1. Talking to someone while you are talking on a cell phone is not a form of communication.
2. I am not a maid.
3. I don't think you're cute.
4. Even if I did, you would still be annoying.
5. I don't care who you are.
6. Pulling hygenic liners out of bathing suits and sticking them to walls, mirrors, doors, floors or anything else that isn't a garbage can is not just rude, it's disgusting.
7. Remember that big pile of stuff you were going to buy except it got run back out to the sales floor by mistake? That wasn't a mistake.
8. EIGHT GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING ITEMS AT A TIME!!!! ONLY EIGHT ITEMS!! THIS MEANS YOU, SUSIE!!! YES, YOU!! YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOUR DADDY SAYS YOU ARE!! I'M THE MOTHERFUCKING DADDY *HERE* AND I SAID EIGHT FUCKING ITEMS ONLY!!!

And that is all I have to say about that.

DF

2003-05-31T10:53:00.000-04:00

Whoa

Dude, the number on that site meter may look small to you, but it appears that when Some People link you, then your hits are gonna jump. Holy smokes! I better clean this place up. Uh, once again, I am going to try to enable contents before the weekend is out, so you'll be able to holler right into the microphone about what you think of the place.

Thanks for coming. For the time being, if you want to e-mail me, you can do it at tanka530@hotmail.com.

Thank you for your support. And thank you Kate, and Kelley for your help and encouragement.

DF

2003-05-31T02:13:00.000-04:00

Okay, in Case You Had Any Questions

Kate posted A Blogger's Manifesto recently. Y'oughta slither on over and check this out.

DF

2003-05-30T23:33:00.000-04:00

The Scarlet Pimple Rant

You know I used to bristle with that special kind of envy-tinged contempt when I would hear people complain about having "a pimple". What I would not have given for a single pimple and not a face-load of aching, itching rage and pain every day. They put me on Tetracycline. Retin A. Accutane. I tried scrubs, lotions, anti-bacterial soaps, peroxide, vitamin E. I worked my shaving ritual around nine ways to Sunday. I went high-dollar and ascribed to the Clinique for Men regimen. That worked for a while and then I broke out like Christmas and it just got worse and worse. I went to the absolutely simple Ivory Soap and water route. Nothing would stop them. Every morning it was a new adventure in the mirror. On the chin? The forehead? Maybe for an extra dose of humiliation, right on the tip of your nose, eh, Rudolph?

Then one day, they didn't come. It must have been pretty gradual, actually. Because I can't really pin down a time or place that I was living when my acne finally began to clear up and the red places on my face it left behind began to fade. It must have been somewhere between 28 and 30. But now I get a completely different species of pimple.

Take this honker on my forehead for instance. The check was in the mail as far back as a week ago, when a spot next to the arch of my right eyebrow started to ache when my glasses touched it. Yeah, he's a prizewinner, all right. (Pimples are all male, by the way. The come on all hot and heavy and swollen, squirt some white stuff, then disappear.) And he appears to be settling in. This is one of those "under the skin" ones that you can't just kill and then instigate cleanup measures, oh, no. I've learned my lesson. To go after this one with a needle and a bottle of alcohol is only going to result in a lot of eye-watering, swearing, and hate. And then probably an angry purple bruise that will do nothing but call further attention to the afflicted area.

Not that you could call any more attention to my forehead right now. I think this one is visible from space. I haven't seen one like this since the week before Christmas, when I got three of the evil bastards, all on the left side of my face. I named them. It was like a mob hit. A rub out. The Bugliosi grothers, Giuseppi and Antonio got me on the cheekbone and the side of the nose. But it was Vinnie "The Ghost" Giglianni who will go down in history, though. He came in right where the skin under my eye becomes the skin of my cheek. He lurked for a week while the Bugliosis stormed in, guns blazing, then swelled to face-stretching, boil-like proportions just when things looked like they would finally quiet down.

I think this is Vinnie's cousin, Big Al, currently making his stand on my forehead. He ain't gonna go down quietly, either. He shows every sign of running the neighborhood for the foreseeable future. Bastard zit. Leave me alone! It's my birthday! Go to hell, Big Al.

Oh, well. I got my wish. I have "a pimple". It's a mother, though.

DF

2003-05-30T23:03:00.000-04:00

Ya Know

It's been a sick week in the blogsosphere. This is one for all y'all haters.

Love,
D

2003-05-30T19:03:00.000-04:00

The Friday Five

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
My enthusiasm.

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
"Anything for a weird life." Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
Having happy healthy cats, being in a great relationship, learning to be a D.J. and to mix music and becoming an N.P.R. announcer. Pick one.

4. The past ten years?
Not skidding out, freaking out, bottoming out or becoming anybody's victim.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
To listen. Listen to people when they talk. Listen to your inner voice. Listen up. Be aware. Alert today, alive tomorrow, kid! Pay attention! The more you listen, the more you'll realize there is to hear.

2003-05-30T01:05:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to Me

Ayuh. One hour ago, your fearless host (that's me) turned 35 big fat years old. Hurrah! Now, being the doddering old fart that I am, I am headed off to bed. Send well wishes to tanka530@hotmail.com. If you feel like it. I mean, you don't *have* to or anything. It would just be nice of you. Brighten up an old man's day.

DF

2003-05-29T16:49:00.000-04:00

Blog Nastiness

Good heavens. Some people get so bent out of shape about things. See, I've got this one friend and she has made this other friend who I kind of like, too. Then friend two made a rather excoriating post on her blog that some folks took violent exception to and friend one has spent her day alternately standing up for friend two and defending her own blog from mean-spirited postings that were off topic and strictly personal slurs from one of the folks who took exception to friend two's posting. Why, it's a cyber cat-fight! It's like Junior High again. These girls now hate those girls because of what this girl said, and now they're gonna get her after school, hooboy!

I'm just off to one side watching the sparks fly. It is just like Junior High!

DF

2003-05-29T11:13:00.000-04:00

When I Get to Hell

I will be forced to spend eternity in a never ending 10-10-220 commercial. WIth a special eternal guest star, the DiTech.com guy. Is this effective advertising? Should advertising make you hate the company? Is this some behind the scenes layered conspiracy on the part of the ad men/women? Do they hate the executives that much? (Yeah, see, what we'll do is make your ads *really* viscerally irritating so that people will shudder every time your product is mentioned.) It's brilliant, I guess, in a way that seems to embody everything that is blazingly shoddy and mediocre in our culture.

Sometime in the process of falling in love with my Sainted Boyfriend, the Long Suffering One, I got a cable addiction. I avoided television for a solid decade, at least, between moving out of my mom's house and moving in with the Beloved. People would start to talk about television and I could just not participate. "I don't watch television."

It's got me now though. The big cathode media nipple has latched on to my face and shows no signs of letting go. We would save so much money every month if we just disconnected the cable. The withdrawals would be intense, at first. We'd probably go immobile at any squarish light-producing object, eager for a fix. Staring blankly into the dryer, the refrigerator, desperate.

"Baby, what are you doing?"

"Shhhhhh. I think the mustard and the leftover pasta are about to work out their differences, finally."

"What, you think she'll give up her thing with the syrup?"

"Well, they never got along anyway."

DF

2003-05-29T09:58:00.000-04:00

Contact Poisons

There is however one problem with Advantage flea treatment. If you get too close to the wet spot it leaves behind on your pet's neck, it will give you a nasty headache. The smell of it seems to waft upward into your sinuses and the next thing you know, your eyeballs are pulsing with it and your brain feels like it's been dipped in fire. I guess now I will be impervious to flea bites, too.

It's worth it, though. I could not watch my cats suffer for another day. And I could probably avoid this whole headache thing by not touching the cats or letting Juan Carlos sleep all night on my pillow, but who can do that? I am, as they say, pussy whipped. But not in the normal sense of the word, to be sure.

DF

2003-05-29T00:53:00.000-04:00

The Attack of the Wetneck Twins and my Haunted Stove

For those of you with pets, here is a caveat. Frontline, Frontline Plus and Top Spot do not work. Advantage works. Spend the extra couple of dollars. I don't know why, but vets always want to push Frontline on you. Maybe all of them are shareholders. We have Gus, of course, who is 14 (or so) and very sensitive to flea bites. If there is a flea anywhere in the house, it's going to find Gus and he's going to start doing St. Vitus's Dance, the flea bite jump-and-twist. And if we don't do something about it right away, he'll get itchy bumps which he will scratch until they bleed. It's pitiful.

Well, owing to the move and our strapped finances I caved in and got some Frontline this last time around. Now, I don't know if there were already fleas in the house. Probably. But, Gus has been miserable in spite of two Frontline treatments and before he went on his little hiking trip, Juan Carlos was starting to do that particular dance of misery himself. Well, we had to do a nip and a tuck financially, but we were off to the vet this afternoon to get some Advantage. Finally.

Now both boys are sporting fashionably wet necks. Shhhhhhh. Don't tell them. I convinced them it was hair gel. But also, they are both lying still and snoozing blissfully, which means the fleas are dying. Die, evil bugs, die. Let my people go. I feel so guilty when my cats don't feel good. All four of us are lined up here on the couch in a line. Gus is asleep with his head on my thigh and Jaun is flopped on Jimmy's lap, fast asleep.

Did I mention to you how relieved I am that Juan is home?

The stove in New House is ancient. It works perfectly well, however. It is a great, white-enameled hulk from who-knows-when; gas, of course. Everything I have cooked since we got here has turned out really delicious. I think I love this stove. I think it may be haunted. In a good way. Like guitar players must feel when they pick up a guitar that has been played by someone really great. Or a succession of players. How many awesome meals have been cooked on that stove? Thousands? How many people have been fed to bursting?

Gosh, I wonder if there have been any really bad cooks that lived here. Ripe as they may be with comic potential, it must be hell to live with a bad cook. Both Jimmy and I can cook like champions. Most of the folk I know who are soulful and sensual can cook. If Kelley Blight ever offers to cook you a meal, run to her house. Don't walk. Fly if you have to. My mother breaks all records, though. She can cook food that makes you feel happy all over.

E-mail poll. (Since I don't have comments enabled.) What is your favorite thing that someone else can cook? I would ask what your favorite thing your mom makes is, but not everybody's mom can cook. Mine is my mom's spaghetti and meatballs. It takes all day, but, oh, my god... That and my grandmother's baked chicken and dressing. How about you? Tanka530@hotmail.com is the e-mail address. Let's talk about FOOD.

I look forward to reading your replies.

DF

2003-05-28T11:57:00.000-04:00

He's Back

I went over to the old house, which is blocks away and across a busy traffic artery, and called Juan Carlos and out of the bushes he came. Thank god. Thank god. That's a relief. I hope he understands when I don't let him out for the next three years of his life.

DF

2003-05-28T11:14:00.000-04:00

Still No Kitty

It's the next morning now and still no sign of Juan Carlos. This and a couple of other stupid little things are getting my day off to a very unhappy start.

I have officially been spending Too Much Time on the Computer. Chatting with and sending e-mails to people who I will never meet, who, superficially, I have some minor things in common with, but ultimately I've been pouring time and energy down a hole in the cyber-ground. I am going to wean myself, now. I may be back here, but I am not sure.

Right now I am going to go on a long walk over to the old house and see if maybe my baby is stuck up a tree between here and there. Goodbye.

DF

2003-05-28T01:09:00.000-04:00

Juan Carlos Come Home

This is not such a good thing. Juan Carlos, our younger Siamese, has been gone way longer than I feel like he should have stayed gone. He went out about an hour before I went to work and is still gone. It's almost one in the morning. I do not like this. I will never be able to fall asleep if he is not here.

I know he is a smart boy. He's been going outside every day since he was six months old. and that was almost four years ago. It's just the first time he's been gone this long in the new neighborhood. He knows about cars. He knows about dogs. He knows about strangers. I'm sure he's fine.

Oh, please, God, let him be fine. And not gone for days. Let this not be the beginning of a long missing cat nightmare.

I must think about something else.

Well, that is the surest way to make your mind go completely blank on all topics *except* the one you are trying not to let sit front and center in your mind. Damn.

I am going to go zone out on BBC America and hope that my cat comes home.

DF

2003-05-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

You're In the Army Now

Oh, law. I do not want to go to work today. Not that Urban Army isn't a joy and a pleasure most of the time. Really, as work goes, the things that are bad about it are so not a big deal. No major burns or cuts. (If you've cooked in a restaurant, you'll know what I mean.) No dangerous chemicals. Although, those sticky hygenic strip things that line the bottoms of women's bathing suits keep ending up stuck to the walls and floors of the fitting rooms. (Thanks, ladies!) And while it would be a true stretch to say that they pose any kind of health threat, really, I cringe a little every time I have to peel one up off the carpet.

But here are some jobs I can think of that would be oh, so much worse, like:

1. Mine sweeper.
2. Child and Social Services Case Worker.
3. Cat food taster. (This job exists.)
4. Kindergarten teacher.
5. Toxic cleanup worker in the former Soviet Union.

And I can think of a hundred more, but it's time to hit the shower and put on a happy Customer Service Face and go clothe the masses.

DF

2003-05-27T04:07:00.000-04:00

Reasons to be Cheerful

These things are good:

1. It's really, really quiet.
2. Gus, our older cat, is asleep in my lap for the first time since we moved a week ago. It appears I have been forgiven. For now.
3. The top of said cat's head smells really, really good.
4. I boiled up some fresh corn on the cob to have with dinner tonight, put some butter and salt and pepper on it, and it was just about the crunchiest, steamiest, most delicious thing I have tasted in weeks.
5. But there are fat, luscious, ruby-colored strawberries in the fridge that look like they're spoiling for a fight.
6. And bananas.
7. It's summer.
8. I have a friend who met someone new and thinks she might be falling in love.
9. Said friend lost her father in December and could use some joy in her life.
10. I don't live in the Middle East.
11. I am starting to bond with our new house, as a matter of fact.
12. The Pet Psychic. If she's a fraud, I sure don't want to know about it, because she's so sweet and wonderful and seems to give people such good advice.
13. No part of my body is in pain.
14. The heinous ugly pimple that I do have on my forehead will go away someday and is not a permanent new feature.
15. I don't break out constantly all over my face like I did when I was younger.
16. It didn't leave any major scarring.
17. My cats and my man are healthy and happy.
18. I love them and they love me back.
19. I have a car that runs. For now.
20. I have a family that is loving and supportive.

Those strawberries are calling me.

DF

2003-05-26T16:28:00.000-04:00

Sharp Objects

Okay, I've been pissed at this blog for a few days because it ate my post. Also, I've been trying to decide whether or not this is even a worthwhile endeavor when I don't have the skillz necessary (yet) to embed links, cruise the net for random news particles and make myself any kind of presence in the blogsphere or whatever. People like Venomous Kate at http://electricvenom.com and good ol' Kelley at Suburban Blight are elevating this whole bloggin thang to the level of art, giving you the full multimedia experience and here I am hoping the strength of my own prose will carry me through, sort of poking along in my soap-box race car on the track in Daytona.

Also, I have been rediscovering my love for a certain blue Japanese fountain pen I found in a drawer while we were moving, so I have been writing back in pen and ink and loving it. I write more lyrics when I am using ink. I just get more ideas.

There are two things I really want to do before this year is out. Learn to speak Spanish and to play the piano. Or at least get started on them. I know it takes more than a year to do these things.

Bright Angels Guard Our Sleeping Heroes Dept: It is Memorial Day and the Beloved and I are celebrating our mutual day off work by lying here very, very still and doing as little as possible. Like real dead people.

I am doing some laundry. It is truly awe inspiring after seven years with a stackable washer and dryer what a full size washer will hold. My entire laundry paradigm is having to re-write itself. You mean I can wash more than one sweat-shirt at a time? And a pair of jeans? My God. It's mad. Mad, I tell you.

Speaking of which, laundry and insanity, that is, some lady locked her toddler in a washing machine in a laundromat in California today. Okay, I am in no way condoning child abuse. Yes, there should be a place under the jail waiting for the mother. But some very sick (very sick) part of my brain had to stifle a giggle when the police officer who smashed open the washer glass with his riot stick (has no one in this place heard of a plug? a fuse box?) and pulled the two year old girl free looked into the camera and said, very seriously, "Well, fortunately by the time we arrived, she was still in the wash cycle..."

Yes, but do you wash a toddler in the delicate cycle, or permanent press? If the water is too hot, do they shrink?

I know, I know. I'm going straight to hell.

DF

2003-05-24T19:11:00.000-04:00

Goddamit

I just wrote a lengthy post and then it didn't go up. Some kind of error message. Fuck. That was a waste of an hour.

Fuck this.

DF

2003-05-23T11:52:00.000-04:00

Might Have Been

I looked in the mirror this morning and saw the telltale signs that my chin and jaw-line are going soft and old-looking. It's been coming on for a while. Thanks, Marlboros. In a week's time, I will be 35 years old. Everyone scoffs and rolls their eyes when I tell them that I feel old. But you know, I was going to be a rock star. I was going to do something fantastic and wow the world with my passion and intelligence and charm and charisma. And I'm a 35 year old couch potato who sells people jeans.

My parents swear they aren't disappointed in me, but I know they wish I had turned out different. This morning, I do too.

DF

2003-05-21T06:09:00.000-04:00

"It's real early morning.
No one is awake.
I'm back at my cliff,
still throwing things off."
Bjørk

Woke up at 4:30 this morning. I have to be at Urban Army at 7:00a for markdowns. That's when we take all that super cheap clothing and make it even cheaper. It can be tedious, cranky work if you're not good and rested, so I went to bed at, like, 11:30, which I never do.

So, up I have popped like some kind of caffeinated dandelion this morning. The cats have had their morning can of Fancy Feast. If I still lived a hundred paces from the pool, I would go swimming. Instead I think I am going to pack my swim suit up and hit the pool on the way home from work.

I love the morning. If I have woken up of my own volition that is. This is the first of these mornings I have had at New House. They feel just as good as they did at Old House, to tell you the truth. It is good to have some time for myself after I wake up, to sip coffee, to write, to think about life without a whole bunch of other things clamoring for my attention. In my headphones it sounds like the Digipocalypse, so I can't really go on about the blessedness of silence or anything. The bass goes boom and the bass goes boom.

Did I mention to you guys that I love fountain pens? I am not one of those people who can go out and drop a thousand dollars on some jewel encrusted Montblanc. Nor am I one of those freaks who collects pens and then never uses them, but displays them in some glass box with controlled humidity and indirect lighting. I just have a whole bunch of fountain pens. I got my first one, a Schaeffer, for a dollar and 98 cents when I was in seventh grade. It was blue and used blue ink. It leaked like a motherfucker, though. You had to handle it with the utmost care and clean it constantly. I went through two or three just using the ink cartridges that came with it and then losing the pen. And then I discovered the joy of the ink refill packet.

I went through a long period of writing in that eye-bending shade of turquoise that Schaeffer calls "Peacock Blue". Since then I have always gone with a nice navy. I hate, hate, hate black ink. I mean for your disposable ballpoints, sure. Signing credit card receipts or making the grocery list or whatever, sure black ink is fine. As common as litter by the highway, but no great hardship. Black ink in a fountain pen is fine for some people but for me, after all these years, seeing my handwriting in black ink is like hearing a recording of my voice with absolutely no expression. My writing is blue.

The computer of course has cut way back on my fountain pen use. I have had this gorgeous tortoise shell Sailor fountain pen from Japan and seems like I hardly ever see it. Then in the move, I stumbled across a number of gorgeous pens that I have not seen in months or used in years.

Also, I came across that box of notebooks and journals that I still can't (and won't) throw away. I looked at it for a long time. I kept a journal regularly from about 1988 to 1995. Then I got bored with it or whatever. Letters to myself that no one would ever read. But I pulled out one black leather bound book and opened it to a random page and there I was, on tour with the Go Figures, in Chicago at the bar at a club called Thurston's.

Not only did I resolve not to ever throw these journals away, but I think it is time to try keeping one again. I mean, there's this thing, but there are some things I am just not going to talk with y'all about. Much as I love you. There's some shit that's none of your business and some other stuff that would just bore you to tears.

Aaah-ight, it's 6:06a, time to get showered up and make my way to the Urban Army for some re-pricing. Sucks not to have any money to buy any of that great stuff when it's so cheap. Moving is expensive.

Gotta hit it.

D

2003-05-20T11:22:00.000-04:00

Gotta Type Fast

Cos Kelley at "Suburban Blight" is waiting for me to call her back during a lull in her son's busy day of keeping her off the phone by tracking mud into the kitchen, coating the dog in rubber cement, unscrewing all the plates off the power sockets or whatever his little freakishly intelligent and curious brain can get him into today. I swear I don't know how she does it, not to mention my own mom who had to do it with twins on her hands and an active duty military husband. In the military, they call us "dependants" which is one of the biggest jokes on the planet. Military spouses and their kids are some of the hardiest, most self-sufficient, independent folk in the world. You learn to find your way around an airport at a really early age, to never pack more than you can carry, to rapidly assimilate yourself into new and unforeseen situations (ie, other kids), and to show respect for authority while secretly getting away with murder, but that is another story.

So things are looking really good at NPR. The big boss listened to me over the weekend and he really likes my voice. There is a slot coming open for the "All Things Considered" shift in a few weeks. That's the most popular program and I am high on the list of people for the job, apparently. That would be every weekday from about 3:30 to about 7:30. Hmmmmmm. What would that mean for Urban Army? I like both jobs. An embarrassment of riches, it is. Everybody should have my problems.

Oh, and I have inherited the Beloved's old BMW, now that he has a fancy new 2002 Camry (which I am not allowed to drive). The Beamer needs a lot of work. It could use a check up and work over from tail pipe to headlights just to ensure longevity as a work to home and back shuttle. But it is awfully nice to not have to walk everywhere again, or take the bus to work.

Now I just desperately, desperately want a hair cut. But that little extravagance is going to have to wait a few more days. I'll just love it all the more when it comes.

DF

2003-05-18T11:20:00.000-04:00

It's Oh, So Quiet

Sunday morning and the mist is hanging in the air and dripping off the leaves around the trees at New House. The Beloved is still snoozing. I am working on my second cup of coffee. I spent the first hour or so that I was awake playing with wires, trying to rig up the DSL so that I can write to you all from my accustomed spot on the sofa. A fifty foot telephone line extender was involved in this, so it took some doing. And then I ran an audio cable out to the stereo so I can have music.

All you fancy pants home wireless users out there can go ahead and feel smug now. Oh, and if you go to put on some headphones, be careful of your tiara, okay?

World events? Right now I am so out of the loop. Our cable is working and I have been applying half an eye to CNN, but after the Iraq war, I think I have had enough for a while. Until the next major terrorist attack or massive troop movements on our part, I am sticking my head in the sand for a bit.

Believe that when you see it, kids. I do work at a Public Radio affiliate. I'll be perusing the headlines at the top of the hour every hour to make sure there isn't something I need to check out on Headline News when I get home. Is there a twelve step program for news junkies?

The kitties have had their first outside adventure. While I was dragging wires around, I opened the front door with the screen door latched. Both boys came up to the glass with that funny wary/curious humpy walk they do; head up, ears forward, whiskers spread, but with their hindquarters low to the ground and their tails straight out behind them.

I opened the door a crack. Gus was out first. He shot about two feet out onto the porch and then stopped to assess. Juan hovered in the doorway to see if anything awful happened to Gus, which of course it didn't so he made his way out there, too, only to discover that the porch is made of his favorite thing. Cement. Both these cats looooooove to roll around on some gritty old concrete. Their fur fills up with debris and they squirm ecstatically and purr like little tanks. Then they make sure and come in and get in your lap so all that debris can transfer to your clothes. Ah, I don't care. The love is worth the dirt.

Then they dove off the far end of the porch to check out the side yard. Gus was back in about fifteen minutes, Juan Carlos explored for about half an hour. Both of them came back to the door when they were ready. I know, cats are smart and can generally find their way back to their people, sometimes over thousands of miles. So, of course these guys found their way back to the door. Still, it was kind of a relief that they went out, did their thing for a little bit and came right back.

Cats are smart. *I* am the dumb one.

Hope you all are well and happy.

DF

2003-05-17T21:15:00.000-04:00

Building the Nest

Here is the progress report: The litter box smell has been eliminated, so far. If this problems haunts your domicile, you might want to look into Arm & Hammer Vaccum-less Capret Deodorizer, the formula especially for pet odors. I managed to track down two particular spots on the carpet that seemed to be the trouble areas and laid into them with that stuff. It has kind of a perfume-y smell, but it fades in a matter of minutes and voila. Trust me, however, I am not one of those folk who are easily inured to evil smells, especially not that of cat excrement. So, should it come back, I will be ready. I have not yet begun to fight.

The carpet also seems to harbor a flea population. I am taking steps to eliminate them, especially for the sake of Gus, our older cat, who is particularly sensitive to flea bites. He breaks out in rashes and scabs up all over. He has been miserable, hiding under the couch. I treated him with some Frontline Plus, because it was cheaper than what I usually use, Advantage. It has provided some relief, but I think the vet is going to have to be consulted on this one. He is pulling out his fur in chunks and getting scabs. My poor baby. I HATE being poor. My cats need health insurance. How long am I going to have to wait until I can afford to see the vet? How miserable will Gus be by then?

Neither cat has expressed any interest whatsoever in going outside. This is something of a surpirse since Juan Carlos, in particular, is a rather outdoorsy fellow. But he still seems kind of jumpy. I don't blame him. He'll be howling and standing on his back legs reaching for the door-knob soon enough. There are lots of cats in the neighborhood. Sore territorial issues will have to be worked out. I'm not looking forward to treating those scratches and bite marks. Cats will be cats, though. For the time being I suspect they are worried enough about the cats they can smell in the apartment that going outside will have to wait. What if they go out and the other cats come back? Whose apartment is it then, under Cat Judicial Codes?

But, that aside, we are getting quite comfortably settled. J. and I are not the kind of men who tolerate disorder and chaos very well. Boxes and bags that say things like, "Teddy bears and jumper cables" or "Tax records and toiletries", well, that's just a little more stress than we need at the moment, so we have gone ahead and started setting up house. Art is going up on the walls, rugs laid down. The living room and kitchen and bedroom and bathroom are all unpacked and fully functioning. All the boxes are unpacked, broken down and taken to the recycling place. The boxes that needed to be stored have been stashed cleverly out of sight and while there are some things that time and money will be required to remedy, it's done. Our house is set up and functioning. We have access to all of our dishes and clothes. We've even cooked a couple of meals. Not bad when you consider that the move began on Sunday and now it's Saturday.

The clods among you may be perfectly willing to chalk this up to our orientation. Well, of course a couple of gay guys are going to be all over decorating and arranging a place, but listen, I have known plenty of queers who moved and lived out of boxes for a year until they had to move again. This is a testament to our strength of character and organizational skills, thank you. Nobody can set up a fantastic house faster than me and my baby. We want a nice place to live, and by god, don't get in our way.

And, thankfully, all of our stuff is going harmoniously in. With some storage space left over, too. We're going to be okay.

I had one bad moment today after Jimmy went to work. I thought I would make myself useful and go back to Old House and set about the scrubbing and sweeping left to do over there. I got there and I couldn't do it by myself. It was too depressing. I went and sat on the back steps and smoked a cigarette, fighting tears. I took a deep breath and went back in. The sunlight was still streaming in the windows like it always has and always will. The memories were still so alive there in spite of the blank walls and the echoes. I couldn't do it alone. No way. I know that makes me sound just too wimpy and thenthitive, but really. I could do it if Jimmy was there, but alone, no way.

So I went back to New House and unpacked and stored the last of the boxes. That was much better. And really, now we are moved in. We need some book shelves, a big tatami mat for the kitchen floor (the linoleum is horrific), a better way to light the bathroom, and a way to hide the decidedly Soviet looking fluorescent light fixtures in the kitchen and the mildew stains next to them, but then we'll be home free.

Oh, and Jimmy, who is in charge of window treatments and what art goes on the walls where, he needs to put some art up in the bedroom and some curtains in the kitchen and bedroom. I don't know what made him decide that I was hopeless at this, maybe the Miles Davis and Tori Amos posters on my wall when he met me, but this is a duty I can relinquish. He is welcome to it.

And, I confess, I am really starting to like it. No apartment will ever be as perfect and beautiful as Old House. And it wasn't perfect and beautiful when I moved in. But with all of our stuff in there, even the carpets don't look so bad. And one day I will find a place I can adore as much as Old House that won't nearly cost me my relationship because I can't afford my share of the rent.

One last semi-optimistic point: No apartment looks as cute and wonderful when you first get settled as it will in about six months to a year as you find perfect little things for this spot and that spot. We're going to be okay.

Hope all of you are well and happy.

DF

2003-05-15T14:13:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Casa Nueva

Well, here we are. No internet, yet, so this will have to be posted whenever the DSL modem starts running again.

Okay, so, New House has its flaws, yes, not the least of which is a lingering odor of cat-box, courtesy of the old tennants and the aforementioned brown carpets. These carpets and I are on a one-way course to combat, I suspect. No, sir. I don’t like em. Their time is coming. The landlord purportedly does not want them torn out because then he would have to do something about the wretched floors underneath, which would cost a lot of money and cause the property values to go up, and then cost him more in taxes. Ergo, the place stays ugly, the rent stays low. I can see that. But mark my words. These carpets’ days are numbered. I’m not scared to pull every staple out of a hardwood floor with a pair of pliers if I must.

What’s the urban legend about the death of Oscar Wilde? “This wallpaper is horrible. It goes or I do.” And with that he died. Well, I think I may be in somewhat more robust condition than old Oscar supposedly was when he made that alleged statement. Carpet, prepare to meet the dumpster. Maybe not this week. Maybe not for a couple of months, but oh, yes, your day is coming.

Meanwhile, the Beloved has gone off to the grocery store for various odor-fighting products. Baking-soda based carpet sprinkles. Febreze. We can fight a war of placation, if we must. Battle it on a shallow level in the short run, but trust me, folks. Once the smell of cat urine is in a carpet, the carpet has to go. It is irretrievable, an unrecoverable loss. God, it must have reeked when Jimmy’s friends who lived here before were here.

I have slammed down the rugs in the front and back rooms, put the bed together and placed it. The living room and bedroom are verging on looking almost civilized.

I had a terrible moment alone here this afternoon when the smell was suffocating me and nothing was in place and I just thought I was going to drop dead of horror. I left behind the most beautiful apartment I’ve ever had for this?! What have I done?

It was bad. I didn’t cry, but I was close.

Over time, I am sure it will look better. Eventually we will get that smell out of here. (Even if it does come down to a can of lighter fluid and a match.) It’s just going to take some getting used to and some work at trying to make it homier. This afternoon, though, I hated it. I was miserable. Seven years is a long time to spend in an apartment. But it was just the most beautiful place. And everywhere I looked in this place, I found something else to hate. It is hard to maintain a good attitude about anything when you smell cat shit.

We’ll get this place in shape. And we don’t have to stay here forever. If it ends up sucking, we can go find another place. Or we can force the issue with the landlord and get him to do something about it and bill the previous tennants who fucked up the carpets to begin with.

Y’all light a candle for me. A scented one.

Hope you are well.

DF

2003-05-11T22:01:00.000-04:00

Moving Day

Well, no turning back now. Actually, the option of turning back vanished several days ago. New House, here we come. Most of our furniture is already over there. The power comes on Tuesday sometime, so we are living on a mattress in our old house trying to soothe the cats until then. They aren't happy. They don't like moving any more than I do.

But ask my boyfriend. I've been an angel all day. Really. No tantrums. No tears. No sarcasm or even sullen silences. I got up this morning knowing that we were facing a big day of moving big stuff. To be a pain in the ass would only make things harder for the both of us. So, I put on my game face and we got a ten-foot U-haul truck at noon, then started picking up and moving all of the things in our house that require two people and a truck to move. We have the truck until tomorrow at noon. After that, everything will have to be moved in Jimmy's car. So, the worst is over. The sofa, the bed, the big chairs and kitchen table; the stereo cabinet and the dressers, the good coffee table, and the bookshelves have all made the two-block treck to the New Place. Ta-daaaaaaaaaahhh.

Tomorrow, we'll move boxes, take our junk furniture to the landfill, clean the old place, and start the work of trying to feng shui New House into submission. Already, it appears that we have a surplus of living-room and study items (there's no study at New House)(It goes like this: You walk in the front door into the living room. Then, comes the kitchen which is the size of two kitchens from Old House. Then there is the bedroom. Hook a right into the laundry room, where there are a full-size washer and dryer set, thank you God, and turn right again into the bathroom.) and a shortage of kitchen items. The new kitchen is huge. Our wonderful red and white fifties/sixties kitchen table has been sitting crammed in next to our refrigerator and stackable (ie, tiny) washer and dryer units in the kitchen at Old House. Spread your wings, little table. Your day has come. You will be the focal point of our new kitchen.

Now I am at work at NPR. Six to midnight, couldn't get out of it, not even for moving day. I am a strange combination of wired and tired. I kind of wish I hadn't had to abandon the Beloved to his labors on our mutual behalf. But, then again, me working is also in our best interest. It's just not particularly riveting stuff I'm doing, alternating between pre-recorded programming and satellite feeds and stepping up the mic once an hour to give a station ID, but at least I'm getting paid.

Really, I have to say thanks to whatever forces have made today run so smoothly. It hasn't been broiling hot. Also, our unduly rambunctious frat guy neighbors are apparently out of town for the weekend, so we have been able to use their driveway as a loading zone. So many things that could have been awful today weren't awful at all. So, thanks God. We needed it.

DF

2003-05-10T11:52:00.000-04:00

Stupid

Okay, now call me crazy, but...Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has announced that his department is taking measures to punish fast food outlets for their role in the United States' obesity problem and this strikes me as just about the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. Really, if you don't want to get fat, don't eat fast food. How stupid are we supposed to be, again? How much money are they going to throw at this issue? To what end?

This goes hand in hand with the mentality that makes people believe that they should sue tobacco companies for their smoking related illnesses. I smoke. I understand that it is bad for me. I understand that it is a choice that I make, however. No one is to blame for the ramifications except me. I take responsibility for this.

Is it me? Does this strike any of you as insulting? The government is telling us that we are so stupid and out of control that we cannot stop eating fast food. Therefore the food must be modified. Some McSprouts for you, sir? And a spirulina shake?

It just sticks in my craw that our government seems to think that we as citizens must be protected from ourselves. Yup, we're just a bunch of dumb-ass cattle, folks. We can't be trusted to make our own decisions about what to eat and drink and smoke. All-knowing, all-caring Uncle Sam is here to protect us. Don't you feel better now? I sure do. All this freedom of choice gets exhausting. Please, won't you hobble my car to keep me from speeding? Come to my house and pad all the sharp edges? Save me from myself. I can't do it.

A couple of you have written in wondering why certain singers did not appear on my list of greats. The three names that came up the most are Bille Holiday, Aretha Franklin and Kate Bush. Now, all three of these women are represented in my music collection and I enjoy their work. All three names flashed through my head when I was making the list. But here is my thinking:

Aretha made two great albums for Atlantic in 1970 and 1971, "Lady Soul" and "Respect". Then she proceeded to churn out a whole series of duds until producer Narada Michael Walden swathed her (seriously deteriorated) voice in tinny synthetic production in the 80's to bring us such utterly forgettable hits as "Freeway of Love" and "Who's Zooming Who?". I saw Frankin in concert at Chastain Park in 1993 and really, it was a disappointing experience. Not only was her voice virtually unrecognizable from what it once was, but she was SERIOUSLY bitchy to her musicians, tech people, and some crowd members. Stick with the 30 Greatest Hits album, kids. The important stuff is there.

Billie, oh, Billie. Yes, she was a major trail-blazer. Yes, her phrasing and timing have moments of transcendence. But here again we have an example of a singer whose work seriously went downhill over time. And no one seems willing to look straight at this issue. She began brilliantly, but then...? This is one of those instances where the artist's legend outdistanced their work. And the aura of tragedy that surrounds the facts of her life has made her something of a martyr. People seem to get off on the fact that she drank and smacked herself to death. I hate, hate, hate that poster I have seen so many times, "Billie Holiday, The Last Session" where she is sitting in a chair, drink in hand, an expression of anguish on her face. Only white people could be this morbid and wrong-headed.

Kate Bush, well, yes, there are moments of brilliance. Some of the most layered and exciting and thought provoking music ever, actually. But listening back, Kate, as wonderful as she is, falls prey too often to the excesses of her style. The sweetness turns saccharine. Clarity is lost to loopiness. And she hasn't made a really, really good record since 1986's "Hounds of Love". How can I include Tori Amos and not Kate Bush? Especially when without Kate, there would obviously be no Tori? How many times, really, have YOU listened to "The Red Shoes"? Or those leg-warmer sporting efforts from the late 70's, "The Kick Inside" and "Never For Ever"? I have heard them over and over and over, and lemme tell ya, it gets old. Like eating plate after plate of birthday cake.

Once again, you are free to spew vitriol into my Inbox. Tanka 530@hotmail.com is the address.

Here are some names that I really should have included on the first go-round though: Patsy Cline (duh!)(hand, forehead, smack), Gladys Knight (a voice that just gets richer, bigger, and roomier over time) and Etta James. Etta's voice has faced similar depredations over time as Aretha's. See smoking, drinking, and smack as the culprits, and yet on the second incarnation of her voice, Etta has found a new equilibrium. She has gone from smoky chanteuse with fire and gravel at the edges to howling, blues-house hurricane. Check out last year's live album, "Bringing Down the House". She actually segues into "Born to Be Wild" at one point and I dare you not to start tapping your foot and shaking your ass. Heavy metal thunder, indeed.

And there's just something about the way she growls, "I was born...to be wild/I was BORN...to be WILD" that you just gotta believe. And if you've read her autobiography, "Rage to Survive", you'll know, Etta has done her homework on this one, then came up swinging. "People don't mess with me in the morning," she writes, "'cos I'm evil." and my favorite quote, "I'm a big woman. And I've got appetites." No kidding, Etta. PLEASE tell me more.

DF

2003-05-09T21:34:00.000-04:00

Moving Blues

I have just come home from a particularly punishing shift at Urban Army. At my bookstore job, the customers were great, but the boss was terrible. At Urban Army, it is decidedly the other way around. The managers are great. But sometimes the people are just migraines looking for a place to land.

Rich bitches on cell phones. Huge broods of dirty faced and sticky fingered brats orbiting a planetary Venus of Villendorf mother who does nothing to stifle their piercing screams nor stop them from pulling apart every clean and organized thing they encounter. People who just knock things off hangers, look at the item on the floor, look at you, the sales person, then keep walking. That one's a kicker.

But the real treats are the women who bring in huge armloads of clothes, tangled in knots of straps, hems, tags, and hangers, and try them on in the fitting room, and then just leave behind all the clothes in wads, turned inside out, and scattered alongside the hangers and torn off tags on the floor of the cubicle. And they just walk away. Not a second thought. Someone will clean it up.

Men do not do this. Just women. Does that surprise you?

Of course, this tells you nothing of the adorable kids that do come through. I have at least one satisfying conversation with a child a day. Usually these exchanges are fairly simple. Kids get really shy with me. I say something like, "Hey, there!" And smile at them, and they duck behind their moms, grinning bashfully, hiding their faces.

And there's fun smart girls who shop. And Peggy Hill-ish moms who are thrilled to see Capri pants on the shelves again. (They were called "Pedal Pushers" before, by the way. Ask your mom.) And every so often there is at least one drop dead, heart-stoppingly sexy guy. Actually a couple of them work there. But their names I shall not reveal at this time.

Seems like everybody shops at the Urb at some point. Lots of good cheap clothes. Apparently quite durable as well.

Today was just hard, though. I was tired, underfed. And here at home we are preparing to move.

Ugh. The M-word.

Yeah, I have lived in this house for seven years, save two months Jimmy and I spent in a beastly sublet in the summer of 99 while this house was being renovated. It's a long, long story. When I moved in, this place was a caving in wreck. Cheap, and not without its charm. We've been through uh, four sets of landlords. It's been renovated and rendered luxurious. The rent has gone up and up and up. It is a really gorgeous place. 15 foot ceilings, hardwood floors, built-in bookcases, a lovely window seat. French windows. But it is not worth the money we (mostly Jimmy) pay(s) for it each month. For the rent we pay, we could live comfortably in the heart of Manhattan.

It has been a gradually tightening noose. Now a place that costs half as much has come open two blocks away. We have to take it. We simply can't afford to live here any more. I have accepted it. We must take the new place. In spite of the lower ceilings, slightly smaller floor plan, and brown carpet in the living room and bedroom.

This house has been so good to me. The whole last major chapter of my life has been played out here. Seven years.

I'll survive. And we'll make the new place a lovely cozy home, I'm sure. But here, at the end of the day, among the boxes and disruption, it kind of feels like my world is ending. Like I'm being torn off my ancestral lands. Oh, woe. Fie, fie upon me.

I think I am going to go curl up with one of the cats and take a nap.

Hope all of you are well.

DF

2003-05-07T00:37:00.000-04:00

Strawberries and Thunderstorms

Jimmy brought home a flat of strawberries from the grocery a few days ago, our first summer strawberries of the year. These are California strawberries, which is a shame. Just up the road in Watkinsville, Georgia, apparently some of the most delicious strawberries in the world grow. When I get a car that runs, I am going to make it a point to go get all my tomatoes and strawberries from roadside stands. You can’t beat this part of the world for certain kinds of produce.

My grandfather considers it a hardship akin to war-rationing to have to eat a “store-bought” tomato. He says they’re mealy and have no flavor. He also looks askance at Roma tomatoes. I tried to explain to him once in the Winn Dixie that Roma tomatoes are from Italy and really delicious.

A barely perceptible shake of the head was his only response.

I decided tomatillas would have to wait for another day.

But anyway, we’ve got these strawberries. The first strawberries of the year are rather like the first delicious sex a person has after a long interval of celibacy. And believe me, I’ve had some long dry spells followed by some really sweet sex. But it's just about as satisfying to just chomp down on a big fat red strawberry. Really, I believe that strawberries should never be eaten with delicacy or any degree of decorum or reserve whatsoever. Bite that fucker. Bite deep into it. Let the juice squirt all down your chin and run on down your forearms. Bite it again. Uh-HUH!! That’s what I’m talkin about! It’s summertime!!

I want to make big cool bowls of homemade salsa with lime juice and chunks of garlic. Keep it in the fridge. Bowls of chopped tomatoes and cucumbers steeped in vinegar with sea salt and cracked black pepper. Aw, yeah.

Eventually I will work my way around to making a strawberry shortcake. We just need some powdered sugar and a pint of cream. Oh, and there’s gonna be peaches. There’s a place on the way out past Watkinsville to Bishop, Georgia on highway 441 where you can get a huge fresh peach milk shake on a hot day in a tall styrofoam cup with a red and white striped straw. That, my friends, is living.

Time to eat some barbecue. Time to do some swimming, too. I love summer, it’s almost summer, superduper summer tiiiiiiiiiiime.

Thank you. Thank you.

North Georgia has been getting an awful lot of rain lately. We had tornado sirens and hail today, thunderstorms tonight and last night, too. Gus, our elder stateman, doesn’t even seem to notice a thunderstorm. Juan Carlos runs and hides under the couch. If he gets caught outside in one, we won’t see him until it’s well over.

We have some pretty dramatic thunderstorms here. Juan Carlos got caught out in an hours-long one last night. I contemplated several times donning my rain slicker and getting a flashlight to head out into the rain and find the little fella. Jimmy, ever the level head, reminded me that this tack his never succeeded in the past. If Juan is out when it starts thundering, he hides until it stops, no matter how much I call to him and plead with him to come home. I just get really wet and worked up.

So, I sat up and read until he finally turned up around 2:30am, soaked to the skin like a half-drowned Siamese rat-monkey. I dried him off with a fluffy towel and zipped him up in the 555-SOUL sweatshirt with me and held him on my chest until we both fell asleep on the couch, then sleepily relocated to the bedroom about an hour later without ever really waking up all the way.

My life does not suck.

DF

2003-05-05T01:50:00.000-04:00

A List of Greats

I have come home from NPR from the second of my two weekend night shifts. I made one spectacular on-air gaffe tonight by starting a program an hour early and then not noticing for half an hour. It's a very popular program and when I called my higher ups for help, they said to just play it again at its normal time, or the fans would be a-callin wanting to know where their damn show was at.

Tongue tied moments on the air are becoming fewer and farther between. It is all about learning the operations now, learning to read and sign a log sheet properly. And about NOT STARTING SHOWS AN HOUR EARLY. Run the boards. Use the sliders. Knowing which CD players are cued up to which dials and levers and blinking lights.

It's a fairly complicated business at first. Everyone assures me that it is like driving a stick shift. At first it seems impossible, but it eventually becomes second nature. There is a morning DJ they swear is never fully awake until his shift is nearly over.

God, I will be grateful forever to my brother for teaching me to drive a stick, but oh, what he suffered from my whining and attacks of sheer panic. Further proof (if any was ever needed) that mon frere should be beatified as a saint any day now.

Except when he mumbles on the phone and then gets irritable when you ask him to repeat himself. His single flaw. And yeah, sometimes he will mumble at you on the phone while he is working on the computer. We will make that flaw 1(b). But really folks, it is a shockingly short list, my brother's faults. He is a stand-up guy. I miss living close to him. If you see him today, tell him I love him and give him a hug.

And that I want back my blue t-shirt with the dragons and Japanese kanji on it.

The legendary 555-SOUL sweatshirt has returned sweet-smelling and extra fluffy and clean from the Blight Ranch. Mrs. Blight did some research and it turns out that Triple Five Soul is a hip hop clothes company. Go to:

http://www.triple5soul.com/site/index.html

Cool site.

So, I've been thinking about singers lately. I had a good satisfying singing session on my own here with the stereo after I swam today.

Here are some singers I think are amazing. This list does not include everybody I like, but I am going to try and throw in most of the ones I love.

Thom Yorke from Radiohead-This man has possibly the saddest voice on Earth. But god...so clear and gorgeous.

Bjork-Vocal technique from the canals of Mars. She is utterly and absolutely in a class by herself.

Ray Charles-A voice that never fails to make me feel all warm and fondue-y inside.

Marvin Gaye-Never has such exquisite rage been rendered so tenderly and intricatley as on the "What's Going On?" album. And then of course, there's "Trouble Man". (Sigh)

Ella Fitzgerald-Oh, Ella. Thank you for all the love.

Sade-What is it about her voice? That intimate whisper of breath on every note? That lurking voluptuousness? She makes me shiver.

Tori Amos-Naysayers be damned. I'll back this one up with both fists, so watch your mouth.

Annie Lennox-She saved my life as a teen more times than she probably would want to know. She has also made me cry more than any other singer ever.

And there's still more, of course. Stevie Nicks, Elissa Hadley, Paul McCartney, Elizabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins. And, I have to cop to this. I think Christina Aguilera has a fucking fantastic voice. Sorry. I am normally a hardliner against Mouseketeer Pop and would happily break both Britney's and Justin's backs over my knee if given the chance. But Christina, god bless her, she's got a real live VOICE in there. Let's hope she can hold it together.

If I've forgotten anyone in particular, you can e-mail comments to tanka530@hotmail.com.

Cheers, all.

DF

2003-05-04T19:52:00.000-04:00

First Swim of the Year

That's right, kids. The pool is finally open and your fearless author was more than ready today to get in there and swim some laps. It's not a very big pool, but then again, there are folks who swim in what look like big aquariums in their houses. So why not?

I swam vigorously for a good twenty minutes, then flopped down on the side of the pool on my towel and basked a bit, enjoying the endorphins coursing through my system. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Summer is truly on its way.

Really not much on my mind today. That is one of the joys of vigorous exercise. Cuts down on all the crap noise in your head.

I need a new band. I miss singing. Sigh.

More soon,
DF

2003-05-02T14:10:00.000-04:00

Walking in the Sun

"All I do is pray/The lord will let me/Walk in the sun once more." (Stormy Weather)

The weather is really coming into summer mode here. Up in the 80's for the last couple days. That rocks. Yesterday I had occasion to do some walking from this place to that place. So what did I bring? My walkman of course. (No, I don't have an iPod, yet. Can't afford it.)

I had forgotten what a blissful experience a walk with music can be. Yesterday's selection was Tori Amos's "Scarlet's Walk", a completely marvellous record. And particularly nice to sniff blooming jasmine and wisteria to. I know there are those of you out there who hate Tori Amos and think she's a loon (my boyfriend included), but I love her. So shaddap already. Damn.

It is even hot enough, potentially, for me to go and swim at the pool at the apartments next to where we live. This morning I put on my new bathing suit (camoflage "Board Shorts" from Urban Army)(I haven't worn straight up army camoflage since I was a punker teen, but somehow I had to have these shorts.)(And they were half off to eployees!!) and trekked over to the pool. The deck furniture they usually put out once the pool is open was conspicuously absent. There was some scummy looking black stuff at the bottom of the pool. I knelt down and cupped some water in my hands and smelled it. No chlorine. And not a very good smell, really. I decided to pass for today. On a brisk swim, pool water goes up your nose, deep into your ears, and inevitably you are going to swallow some. I will wait until I see legitimate evidence that the water is safe.

Gotta start organizing and getting ready to move. I need to sort through books and clothes. The boyfriend is convinced that we are going to be organized enough to have a yard sale this year. Forgive me if I scoff. I believe it will all be donated somewhere at the last possible minute.

Hope you all are well.

DF

2003-04-29T17:19:00.000-04:00

Adventures in the Land of Mog and a Pleasure Jaunt to the Blight Ranch

Just a few minutes to talk here. Gotta be at the UA for work at 6:00pm. It's the payroll crunch end-of-the-month blues where we are all jockeying for hours, trying to get more shifts if we can. Originally today, I was supposed to work from 4:00pm to close, but there was a message on the answering machine waiting for me when I got up that said that because they are having to trim hours, I should wait and come in at 6:00.

Now, I understand the necessity of working closing shifts, but really, I do prefer to start my work day earlier than this. But hey, I ain't complainin. It's an awesome job with awesome people. I just like to get in and work earlier in the day, so I can have the evening to wind down and relax. Given that I am an early riser, by the time 6:00pm comes rolling around, I am ready to curl up with a book and a cat and laze my way into the dinner hour.

Well, I am sipping an iced coffee with cream and that should get me going.

The other night I went and worked another inventory with a different set of Borg at the Mall of Georgia. MoG as we shall call it, is a place I have never seen before. It is huge. Like a city. And the Urban Army is twice the size of ours. These I-Borgs, from a different agency were much more efficient and seemed to be of an altogether superior grade and model. Inventory Borg 2.0.

So that was good news. The other good news is that MoG is only a hop skip and a jump from the Blight Ranch, home of Suburban Blight and my dear friend Kelley. So, she met me at midnight when the inventory cut us visiting employees loose. We agreed to meet by the giant toy robot at the entrance to some toy store. Said Robot was 2 storeys high. Hard to miss. And it appealed to mine and Mrs. Blight's somewhat warped sense of humor. Our spy movie shtick:

"The thin man walks at midnight. Meet me by the Giant Robot."

"No problem. The pearl is in the river."

"Ah, good. The dogs will fly with no umbrellas, then?"

"The Eagle has landed. Over and out."

Us old settled types take our amusement where we can.

I was welcomed as a royal guest in Blightland. Stuffed with delicious food, adopted by in house Jack Russel Terrorist as his personal charge. He guarded my bed at night and trailed me in the morning with the persistance and dedication of a paid bodyguard, waiting outside the bathroom door chin on paws while I took my shower.

Bob the Builder Blight, well, words fail to convey the charm and intelligence of that little man. A perfect gentleman at not-quite-three-years-old. Avidly curious and still courteous and jolly, too. What more could one hope for a dear friend's offspring? Well, the apple don't fall far from the tree, as they say.

Okay, gotta go get into my work togs.

Take care, y'all.

DF

2003-04-28T15:51:00.000-04:00

Busy, Busy, Busy

Hey, kids. Sorry I have not been around to write to you all this week. It has been all I can do to keep body and soul together lately with all the things I have been having to do to earn a living and all that.

But here I am with still, surprisingly little to say is spite of my absence. I've been working at Urban Army, training at NPR for my shifts coming up in May, and doing not much else. I am certainly enjoying having our cable service back to normal. After we got it turned back on, there was still a problem with the Box which only allowed us to watch channels 1 through 99. This was finally rectified last week and now we are knee deep in HBO again and BBC America. (hurrah!!)

Watching the news last night there was an average Joe Blow from Baghdad showing reporters the two or three small items that had fallen into his hands in the (ahem) redistribution of much of the pillaged loot from Saddam's palaces and those of his aides. One of the things this fellow was holding was a bottle of "Igor" cologne. I've never heard of "Igor" cologne. It is probably so riche and expensive that I will never hear of it again, but the things this man was saying were very striking.

"Thinking of the difference between the way they (Hussein and cronies) lived and the way we live was enough to make you want to go and throw yourself into the river," he said, "But you would never say anything because to speak out against the regime was an automatic death sentence." He pointed to one or two objects in his little room there and then showed the bottle of cologne to the cameras. "I am 47 years old," he said, "And I have never in my life smelled anything so wonderful as this."

And that sort of hit me funny. Not badly. Not really goosebumps. It just gave me a pause. I mean, who knows what "Igor" cologne smells like? It might smell like a hunchback crony of Dr. Frankenstein's for all I know. I just wonder what it must be like to go through your whole life and never smell cologne. I mean, really.

Many years ago, when I lived on Hill Street in Athens, my apartment was broken into and completely stripped of anything of value. They took my stereo, my coffee maker, my answering machine. They took my teddy bear, a frozen chicken from the ice box, and my deodorant and cologne. At the time, I was living in desperate poverty and that made it sting all the worse. Go steal from some asshole rich guy, why don't you? These were the only things I owned and they were all gone.

That was when I came into an awareness of how much a bottle of cologne could mean to a man. I had not realized how important it was to me, each day upon stepping out of the bath, to have a little squirt of something delicious-smelling to put on my skin. Having a bath was just a little more special when I had my cologne waiting for me at the end. And then, it was gone. Packed up and spirited away in the night along with everything else I owned.

This was in 1992 when Gus the cat was living with my brother. I remember heading over to their house and letting myself in, since my brother was out of town on tour and no one else was home. I scooped up the Gussy and sat on their living room sofa and just cried and cried all over Gus's lovely soft fur while he purred and kissed the tears off my face with his raspy little tongue. That was neither the first nor the last time I've cried on that cat, to be sure.

So, yeah, my heart went out to that Iraqi man on the news last night. I know that there are so many people who are missing arms and legs or have terrible burns or have lost their entire families in Baghdad. But something about a thing so simple as a bottle of nice cologne being a complete rapture and a luxury, well, that I could relate to, somehow. Call me superficial if you will. If I was a rock star, I would send the guy a whole trunk full of different colognes and scents to try. Some for him and some for his man or woman friend to put on and see if they like. The Red Cross and Red Crescent can send water, food and medicine. It is the little "non-essentials" sometimes that make all the difference in your day, that push you over the line from surviving to LIVING.

In recent news: Got a letter on Saturday stating that Adolfina's appeal to the Department of Labor to revoke my Unemployment benefits was overruled by the Administrative Hearing Officer because (get this) she did not get the appeal paperwork in within the allotted deadline. HA HA!! Evil cuntbag. I love it that it is her own fault she did not get her way. The determination was made final and "remains in full force and effect under OCGA section 34-8-192(c)" as of April 24. (Thank you, Georgia Department of Labor!!) I can only hope that things have continued to get worse for her, seeing as how many of the store's employees have fled, now, or been fired themselves. I hope this is the beginning of the downward spiral that ultimately disgraces her and gets her fired or demoted. That would be truly satisfying; knowing that her horrible attitude and her habit of persuing personal vendettas against her workers cost her everything she held dear. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

You reap what you sow, doncha know.

Hope you all are doing well.

DF

2003-04-23T04:37:00.000-04:00

Boy Am I Tired

But I feel the need to be here for a minute on the way to bed. Empty my mind.

I worked an inventory tonight at Urban Army. It was really long and I spent most of it up on a ladder. Not our normal grand rolling staircases which rock and are generally quite safe. We had to borrow utility ladders from "Party City" (Anybody need to buy some mylar balloons? Some Spongebob paper plates?) and some huuuuuuuuuge ladders from Bed, Bath and Beyond, down the way.

All of the guys that work at B,B & B are huge, by the way. Enormous dudes. Not like bodybuilder big. But just these really big people. Normal guys, but enlarged, somehow. The guy who helped us looked like he would be rushing from work to a Dungeons and Dragons tournament. He was just part giant or something. Hagrid's American nephew. He slung that biggest ladder around on his own like it was a toy. Then me and another skinny guy named Chris dragged them across the parking lot huffing and puffing to Urban Army.

Then the Inventory People came. Now, this is always an experience. The Inventory People are like sleazy Borg. They have uniform shirts and they all wear this terrific load of gear. They are wired up to these boxes that look like tricorders from Star Trek, those life form detection devices. These are generally strapped to the thigh upside down, so you can operate it without taking it off its strap. Then there are more wires and straps that go in all directions and little laser reader-guns they carry in their hands that run to the tricorder thing. And they count. That's what they do. They go from retail store to retail store and count whatever it is that they find there. They came to my old book store job. They go from shelf to shelf to rack to end-cap and count everything. Then their computers get "full" and they go and dump the data into a central command post, which has even more gear in even more cases and somehow the whole store gets counted. Everything. Every last flip-flop. Every tiny baby shirt. (And there's a LOT of the little bastards.) Every gaily decorated pencil. Counted. Then recounted by a store employee and verified, initialled.

Thing is, there's always somthing a little sad about the Inventory Borg. They're always about as randomly assorted as a catering crew. But it seems to be a strange, sad life. There aren't many wedding rings. A profusion of leather tans. Big hair. Blank expressions. Jailhouse tattoos. There's always a batch of new people. ("Darryll. Daaaaaaaaaaryll! Which button do I mash now?") They always come at night, and always with an air of chaos. Every new store presents a new set of dilemmas, obviously. Still, they always seem to arrive in waves of lateness. Inevitably, some people don't show. They just don't seem to have worked things out in advance, like who will take breaks when, or how long they will be. And yet, all things must be counted. So, among us they come, tricorders bleeping, and together we count. And count. Slippery nylon blouses. Big bulky sweaters. Dresses balled up on hangers.

My partner from among the Inventory Borg was a fellow I'll call Sam. And you know, Sam was a real good guy. I did not pry into Sam's history. He was a fiftyish guy, thick glasses, quiet and hard working. We ran like clockwork through multiple racks and "upstock" bins, these big overhead storage areas. We were a success story of amiable cooperation. And for that I am deeply grateful, because around me I could see that some I-Borg partnerings with Urban Armyites were not going so smoothly. Out of deference to Sam's years, I took ladder duty. I got one of the regular old painter's ladders from Party City, so there was a great deal of twisting and turning and lifting with the wrong kind of leverage. They tell you all this stuff about safe lifting in the orientation videos. But when Pharoah says to count, we lift the shit out of the upstock bins, balanced on a ladder, any way we can lift them. Very quickly I learned the value of the anchoring arm. Know which hand is closest to a genuine something-you-can-hang-from if the ladder should start to skid out from underneath you. Very important.

But now I am very tired. You'd never know it from the amount of varbiage I am spewing, though, wouldja? Well, it's time for bed. The last of the caffeine has drained from my system. Working is good.

DF

2003-04-22T02:58:00.000-04:00

I'm in Love With a Japanese Jacket

"If the clothes shout louder than the person, then the person cannot be heard." Tadashi Yanai, UNIQLO

Hiroshima based clothing company UNIQLO opened in 1985 and is today one of the largest clothing companies in Japan. My friend Yoko sent me their web address and that's all I needed. I don't spend enough time on the computer, doncha know. (And I certainly don't think about clothes enough.) Uniqlo is based on the idea that "style comes from within" and therefore all of their clothes are logo-less. Their mission statement reads (somewhat charmingly), "We won't tell you what to wear or how to wear it. We believe that as individuals, we all have our own sense of style. By offering a wide range of well-made, logo-free basics, we aim to give you the choice to create yours."

That's from their UK site. They are expanding into London and some other British cities. The shops all feature in-house tailors who will alter your trousers to specifications within an hour. Hot damn. For about $30/US, you can get this splendid windbreaker:

http://www.uniqlo.com/L4/getitem.asp?hdnItemMngCD=u49044&hdnSize=03&hdnLength=-&hdnBasket=0&hdnTime=&hdnColor=68

But you have to be in Japan because they don't do mail or internet orders outside Japan yet. And this jacket was not on the UK website. I had to check out the Japanese site to find this one. Oh, look at the lines. Look at the awesome buttons, but then the zips on the pockets. And a chest pocket for cigarettes. Ah, Japan. Oh, jacket. I am smitten from across the sea.

I covet. I want.

I have no money and even less business trying to get a Japanese windbreaker with summer on the way. But look at it. Groan.

Went and visited my mom for Easter. We feasted and then lazed about. My brother's new puppy, Addison was there, and adorable. I challenge your heart not to melt in the presence of a puppy. Especially a little black faced, goofball face-licker like Addison.

Oh, Addison. My aim is true.

DF

2003-04-20T00:05:00.000-04:00

Books Are Beautiful

I worked an eight-hour shift today at Urban Army. It's the day before Easter and just eeeeeeeverybody was out buying their new Easter clothes. When I was a kid, that was when my mom and grandparents would do one of the two annual clothes shopping trips. Easter and Back to School, one encompassing a range of clothes for the spring and summer and the other for the fall and winter, respectively. It seems that there are plenty of families out there who still observe this twice yearly ritual, because today the U.A. was rocking and rolling. In some ways, it was really exciting to be constantly on the move, meeting customers, showing them good stuff, making them happy about how they look. On the other hand it was kind of hard to watch our store get gleefully pulled to pieces by careless shoppers.

I worked noon to 8:00pm. The people stuck with closing the place down tonight may well be there now, still, at ten til twelve. Well, I put in an honest day's work. I probably sold more clothes to people than anyone in the place, and when I wasn't selling, I was busting on operational stuff. Getting the clothes people tried but didn't buy back out to the floor.

But the point of telling you all this, is to tell you about my lunch break, which I spent thoroughly engrossed in "Death on the Nile", by Agatha Christie. I feel that Agatha Christie novels should come with a warning label: "May be habit forming!" Because once you start reading them, you will want to read them all.

But there I was, across the street from work eating lunch at a Captain D's (A vice of mine. Malt vinegar and fried fish. When I have a plate of that, keep your hands and feet clear.)(I mean it.) and meanwhile I was sailing up the Nile with Hercule Poirot and some *rather* unscrupulous characters. It was awesome. Low tech. Fits in your pocket. Can take you anywhere. Bliss.

And once I've had my dinner, I'm headed back. The folks are starting to die off. It's getting curiouser and curiouser. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

If you have not read one of these books, DO IT. Read them all.

Gotta go.

More soon.

DF

2003-04-19T10:44:00.000-04:00

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Just to let you all know, Adolfina is up to her old tricks. I got a letter from the department of labor yesterday saying that she was challenging the ruling that awarded my unemployment benefits. If this goes through at the scheduled hearing, I will have to pay back every penny I got in unemployment, which is about $600. You can probably imagine how I feel about now.

Well, that's the way it goes, I guess. Still, can you believe that?

DF

2003-04-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

The Love That Won't Shut Up

Okay, three posts in a day may be pushing it, I know, but I just wanted to note something to you stoopidheads out there who are boycotting French products. Something you will notice if you look closely is that just about every US soldier you see in the Middle East with some down-time is chugging away at a big bottle of water. What kind of water is it most often? Evian, of course. Where does Evian water come from? France.

Respectfully (or not) I posit to you: If French water is good enough for our troops, then it must be good enough for you. Drink up!

DF

2003-04-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

A Big Shout Out

To my girl Kelley Blight who has turned her highly capable hands to the tricking out and decoration of my blog, not to mention importing my links from back at Urban Recall. Hurrah!!

Now that blogging is as trendy as black tribal tattoo work was five years ago, a man has got to keep up, right? Fortunately I won't have this blog embedded in my skin or dangling from my nose six years from now.

So, being kind of a moron still about html, I have had to appeal to a higher power, and that would be our girl, authoress of "Suburban Blight", Supermom, and occasional stealer of sweat shirts, Kelley.

Thanks, hon. My life would be a morgue without you.

But you better bring back my 555-SOUL sweat shirt. I swiped it fair and square.

Have a good night, y'all.

DF

2003-04-16T09:49:00.001-04:00

It's Official

Looks like I and the Beloved and the cats will be moving in about three weeks. This is both good news and bad news. I have had my current place for seven years. It is the greatest apartment ever, in a large and roomy house with gorgeous hardwood floors, massive built-in bookshelves, a charming window seat, and a living room with windows on three sides to catch sunlight all day.

I have a real horror of moving. We briefly had to sublet another place in 1999 while this place was being renovated and it was bloody awful, both ways. It's always last-minute, done in a frenzy, stressful, miserable, heart-wrenching. I think I would rather swallow a box of tacks, one at a time.

But if the BF and I are going to stay together, we are going to have to be under less financial pressure every month. In spite of my efforts, my wages have never been comperable to his and for a lot of the last couple of years I have given new meaning to the phrase "cashless society". The new place costs literally half as much as our current place. Rents in this area have skyrocketed over the last few years without any accompanying rise in wages. When I moved into this place in 1996, the rent was $450 a month. Now it's $775 and it's breaking our backs.

The good news is that the street we are moving to has a bunch of people I know already living there. Also, we will be two houses down from a house where I spent a lot of happy hours back in the glory days of my most popular band, The Go Figures. This was waaaay back in 1993/94. I will be just a couple of houses up from Todd, my DJ partner.

Okay, I can't think about it any more.

DF

2003-04-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

Micropundits

What does it mean that I just came here to write and then thought maybe I should watch the news today before I say anything at all? Hmmmmmmm. What are we bloggers, really, in relation to the media? Armchair pundits with more information at our fingertips than is probably safe for us. Little reactors to the big news organs.

Why did the freed US POW's have to board that C-130 and make the long trip home in flannel pajamas? Not that this did not make them (Especially PFC Hudson) look awfully cute and sweet, all comfy in their jammies running across the air strip. It's just one of those things that struck me as odd. Hope all of you are well and happy.

DF

2003-04-14T19:18:00.000-04:00

I Think You Should Read This

Hey, everybody-

A friend of mine in Japan sent me this today. I think it is important that we should remember that the news is not telling us everything.

"There are two scenes that gave me a great impact about the war. One was the photo of one hand on the ground, blown by the bomb and abandoned. This photo is taken one of the Japanese journalists staying in Iraq. I was wondering many things when I saw the photo. Where is the rest of the body? American or Iraq? Male or female? Young or old? I became very sad, when I thought about these things. The other scene was the one I saw on TV. It was the room of the 15th floor of the hotel, just after they got bombed. The journalist who got severely injured was bleeding so badly on the side of the bed. And the other journalists were running and screaming in panic around him. The blood was all over the floor.

I was very grateful for the media who showed us these scenes. I was glad I saw them. This is the real war scene, that everyone should see. These things are happening everywhere at the site and those two scenes were just a part of them. I hope everyone could see these things uncensored.

The journalist who took the photo of the hand was in the next room when they were bombed. He has been always telling that "I would never leave my camera no matter what." But, when he went to the next room and witnessed everything happened there, he was just standing there and couldn't do anything. He was so shocked and scared that he couldn't move. He told that later. He also confessed that he wanted to come back Japan now. It was my first time to see him so sad and depressed. He is very happy man. He has been to many places at war. He surely witnessed so many brutal things, but he said that this was something he has never experienced before.

There are lots of lies about the war. Iraq people know how to survive. If
A is winning, they go to A's side. If B is winning, they go to B's side.
This is how they grew up and this is the way they learnt from their life. I
was sad when I saw they were jumping with the excitement shouting "Viva America!" They know what they should do to please the will-be winner.

We talk a lot about the war here. It may be because most of us are not
supporting the policy of the Japanese government. It is okay everyone has a different opinion. But I hope that everyone would see more of such bloody scenes before they decide their opinions."

English is my friend's second language, but I think that her writing in English is so beautiful in its directness. It brought these thoughts home to me in a way that nothing else has. I wish my Japanese was good enough to read her writing in her native language.

So, it's everybody's lies vying against everybody else's lies now for the "hearts and minds" of the world. Yeah, we won, I guess. But there are so many people tonight in horrible pain. Pain that someone they love is dead, that their daughter or son or mother or brother or even their faithful pet who loved them when no one else gave a shit will never ever come home again. Never. There's just a hole in their life where that beloved person or animal or even their house used to be.

There is no surcease from the pain of something you love being utterly gone from the world. It follows you down into sleep and aches in your dreams. Or worse, you finally go to sleep and then dream that everything is back to normal. And then you have to wake up.

Then there's the agony of the wounded, pain that their body which ran perfectly and painlessly a month ago is now broken and destroyed. They are lying in hospital beds and if they're on the "wrong" side, they've got no water to drink or even wash away the crusted blood and filth from their wounds.

Wrong or right, I don't know. Right now I am sad for the people in pain. And for the dead who are beyond pain or pleasure or anything else.

DF

2003-04-12T21:27:00.000-04:00

I Know Why the Fat Lady Sings

Obviously, the situation in Iraq will go through many twists and turns in the months ahead, but boy is it ever sweet to see so many happy faces on the news. Folks just weeping with joy and dancing in the streets.

But god, what's this flap about that US flag over the head of that Saddam statue? Corporal Chen, the marine who did the draping, was on tv last night reacting about like you would expect him to. "WHAT??!!" Minutes later the statue was on the ground and the crowd was giving it a hearty shoe-whapping. Why should they care what flag was over its head before they destroyed it?

The mind reels.

In the meantime, I am just grateful to God (or whoever you feel is in charge) that there are so many happy people in that part of the world today. Just turn on the news and look at them. How can you deny the joy in their faces as they lay their weapons down and head back to their families? As they drape their arms over each other's shoulders and dance like Iraquettes at Radio City Music Hall?

Gotta go. Lots to get accomplished today.

Hope you all are well.
DF

10th Apr 2003

Tired But Still Talking

It's about a quarter to four in the morning. I just got home from DJ-ing. I'm so tired. But I need to eat something before I go to bed. And then I have to be somewhere at 9:00am. But once I'm done with that I have the whole rest of the day off.

You know what? I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm almost 35. I've got no money. This computer I am typing on is right on the verge of being repossessed. I'm drifting. I'm spending a lot of energy on things that are paying very minute dividends. I have a car that barely runs and has no insurance anyway.

You know what, though? I'm okay. I'm stressed out. But I'm okay. I really like my job at Urban Army, dorky as that may be. I'm a clothes horse, I can't help it. I haven't bought anything on my discount yet, simply because there's just no money for luxuries right now of any kind. But I covet. Oh, I lust in my heart for some new clothes.

Not that I don't have more clothes than I can wear. I have really good luck finding clothes. This is strange, I know, but I will investigate just about any stray scrap of fabric I see sticking out from under something or wadded up and stuffed into a corner. You wouldn't believe what people leave behind.

Okay, I hear some of you gasping in horror at the thought of me picking up some puke-splattered raver kid's abandoned t-shirt. Don't worry, bodily fluids automatically disqualify a garment. Nor do I bother with socks or underwear. And, oddly enough, all of the clothes I find are men's clothes.

For instance, both the t-shirt and hooded sweat-shirt I am wearing were found in rock clubs. The sweat shirt (which is perfectly huge and gray and says 555-SOUL across the front)(I'm supposed to pass this up?) was in a knap sack with a couple of other things I found under the stage at a club where a friend of mine works. There's no telling how long this adidas bag had been there, but it had this freakin awesome sweat-shirt in it, so I brought it home and washed the hell out of it and then washed it again and now it's mine all mine. Unless my boyfriend gets out of bed first on a chilly morning. Then he snatches it up. But he never beats me out of bed, so ha.

My favorite song this week is "Be Yourself (Be No One Else)" by someone called Celeda. I heard it on Dirty Vegas's album of remixes, "A Night at the Tables".

DF

09th Apr 2003

Blog Envy

Some of you reading this may also be reading my friend Kelley's blog, "Suburban Blight". Well, she's up and moved from these parts (ie, Urban Recall) and gone to Blogspot.com. Now she's got all these fancy features, embedded links, big colorful pictures, flashing banners. Sigh. I feel naked. I guess I will just have to hope for now that the allure of my turgid prose alone is enough to keep you all coming back. Maybe I will follow her over there, although it (blogspot) does not seem to be particularly amenable to Safari, my browser, which comes standard with OSX and is oh, so neat and clean with a lovely pop-up blocker and everything. When I view "Suburban Blight" on Safari, I have to widen my window as wide as it will go or the text starts mashing up on the side-bar.

Just came in from a shift at Urban Army. Man, I kinda like this job. I have discovered that I can sell things and that I am a natural with the public. That was one of the things I learned from my six months at the book store, that I'm a natural salesman. I didn't know, though, if I could enjoy selling clothes as much as selling books. Well, I do. I had a big time tonight. I like my headset. I am starting to bond with some of my coworkers. And I am learning my way around.

Something I was a little nervous about was selling women's stuff. Well, not nervous per se. I just don't know anything about women's sizes. It all seems so complicated. Tops versus blouses versus shirts. Bras.

Turns out though that it's not so rough. Everything is plainly labelled and laid out in sizes from extra small to XXXLarge, or in even numbers. Most women, it turns out, know their sizes. Our women's side gets a lot more business than our men's side, so I am working over there a lot. On Saturday, I worked in men's because the whole store was busy. That was a mixed blessing because every time I turned around, there was something I wanted to buy, and I just don't have money to spend on clothes right now. Even wonderfully cheap ones.

And it's fun to play dress-up, no matter who you are. Tomorrow morning I am going in early, early for mark-downs. I have to be there at 7:00am. Shouldn't be so bad though. It will get work out of the way early in the day so I can be good and rested by the time I go to the club to DJ tomorrow night.

Some things I am really enjoying selling is linen. We have linen skirts, trousers, dresses and capri pants in about ten different colors. It just feels so nice and looks so beautiful. I want some linen trousers. My blue suit is linen. The stuff we are selling is all machine washable, too. No linen on the men's side, though. I just think a pair of slate blue linen trousers would be just the thing. Not so dressy a cut. Something more boxy, slouchy. A perfect pair of nice-looking summer trousers. Dress em up, dress em down.

Jimmy the Beloved and I have a phenomenon that occurs with us every so often. We've never come up with a name for it, but it goes a little something like this: One of us will suddenly express an interest in a certain band or a certain song. Something totally random. "Twelfth of Never" by Johnny Mathis. I will find it and start listening to it, and then the massive retail clothing store Jimmy works in will get its new in-store music for the season, and three songs in, it's "Twelfth of Never".

I am trying to think of another example. Jung would call it synchronicity, I guess. Okay, about a year and a half ago, I decided that I could not go another day without owning some kind of Dusty Springfield collection. I found a used Greatest Hits CD somewhere and was listening to it when Jimmy came home. "This is nice. Is it a whole record of Dusty Springfield?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, "I've always sort of liked her. I wish I knew more about her. Her life was appartently pretty colorful."

Well, lo and behold, the next night we were watching TV and on came the A&E Biography of Dusty Springfield. Then when Jimmy's next in-store music tape came, it had "I Only Wanna Be With You" on it. Are you with me, here? I wouldn't call it paranormal, more like evidence of the collective unconscious. Or something.

Well, watch, now that I have decided I want a pair of blue linen trousers, they will pop up in the next shipment at Urban Army. And everybody will be wearing linen this year. If designers are smart, they will do away with the fussiness of linen and play with its potential as a casual fabric.

I can't believe I just typed that. I have so much bristling contempt and hatred for the world of haute couture. I would never have thought I'd find myself commenting on something like that. Well, it doesn't matter. Haute couture designers aren't smart. What I am doing is helping to clothe the masses, not some micro-elite of fops and anorexics. The world of high end designers is as evil to me as the world of pornographers in that it distorts human beings' perceptions of themselves and makes them covet. So you can keep your Gucci, your Versace, your Dolce and Gabbano. Me, I dig a bargain. $10 for a new shirt? Hell yeah!

OOOOooooohhhhhhhhh, I want to buy some clothes so bad.

Well, gotta go and eat something and hit the sack it I'm not going to be late for the 0700 call-up. You kids take care.

DF

08th Apr 2003

That Crashing Sound

My brother is very smart with computers. Very smart. I am sorta smart when it comes to the computer, but there are some things that can escape me. In what I now know was a thoroughly wrong-headed move, I was trying to clean out my computer some, delete stuff I have not been using.

See, I've been having occasional freezes while I'm DJ-ing. I need more RAM, see. I DJ by running competing media players and occasionally this will create a sort of bottleneck (this again according to the all-knowing twin). Grrrrrrrrr. Most embarrassing. The entire club falls silent. Really, a DJ's nightmare.

So, I figured I'd make some room in Diskneyland by dumping a bunch of stuff. WRONG! This is not, apparently, how RAM works.

In the process I dumped something(s) I actually needed. Then spent hours hunched over the computer Saturday afternoon trying to undo the damage and make things run like they used to. I want to point out here that I am a Mac user and one of the rights and priveleges of being one is that you almost never have to do that. The damn things practically run themselves, *unless* you go and shoot yourself in the foot and then shoot the other foot just to make damn sure you've fucked yourself up good and proper like I did.

Most everything is back to normal now, but the bottom line is: I need more RAM.

Damn.

04th Apr 2003

I Don't Give a Fuck About Human Rights

Every year in Athens we have this big outdoor festival in College Square, dead in the middle of downtown and across from the university's arches. It's put on by the Athens Human Rights Committee, a group of, well, fortyish hippies (and we all know how painful they can be). Some years the Human Rights Festival has been awesome, other years abysmal, all depending upon the quality of the bands. The speakers are almost universally bad. In fact, an instructor in public speaking would do well to videotape the lot of these mealy-mouthed wailing vegans: "How to Completely Alienate a Crowd in Under 30 Seconds. (Amaze your friends!!)"

Over the years, the core group responsible for the HRF has shrunk and shrunk, it seems. At some point, it actually did seem to be a kind of broad representation of various minority groups, but one thing you may discover in your life is that getting a bunch of habitual contrarians together in a group to make decisions is rather like trying to make a litter of kittens march in line. This group is offended by that group's use of violence in their cartoon for the HRF newsletter. Group C feels that the band chosen to headline this year has offensive lyrics and withdraws its support from the festival at the last minute.

This has resulted in something of a homogenization of the makeup of the committee. There has been a corresponding blanding out of the types of bands involved as well. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the phenomenon of "jam bands". They are all ultimately descendants of the Grateful Dead, in that they and their audiences tend to smell like patchouli and consume massive amounts of hallucinogens. This is the only way, apparently, to endure their music, which in fact defies description in its repetitiveness and directionlessness. The author Quentin Crisp once described rock music as, "The minimum of information conveyed with the maximum amount of noise." This could not be more true than in the case of your average jam-rock hippie band, who eschew formal song structures in favor of loose "jams" which have no real beginnings or middles or endings, just these ongoing loopy non-structures to give the girls in their bare feet and gypsy skirts something to spin and spin and spin to down there by the stage until the soles of their feet are black and the distinct tang of armpit is beginning to punch through the patchouli reek.

Meanwhile there are booths set up for information and places to buy yourself a lovely tofu dog with vegetarian chili and while you're at it, why not a hemp anklet and a vial of essential oil? And the bands play on. And on and on. In between acts someone will be taking the stage with a microphone and a speech in hand to holler about the government and corporations and the World Trade Organization at the top of their lungs. Just in case you had any questions about how Enron or Dow Chemical is ruining the lives of a bunch of Andean villagers, these helpful pundits are here to explain it to you until your eardrums bleed. It *almost* makes the music a relief.

I don't know why this has gotten up my nose so bad today. Ultimately, I know that I'm terribly lucky to live in a town where everything actually stops for a big musical street festival every year. How bad can that be? I was walking through the square on my way to work and noted the cluster of port-o-lets at the corner of Broad and College that are the first visible sign that a street festival is coming and for some reason, my stomach sank. I guess it is that it could be such a good thing, but it won't be. What a waste of potential, ground down over the years by infighting and internal squabbles.

Maybe this year they will surprise me.

DF

02nd Apr 2003

This...is NPR

Hi kids. I am writing to you from the control room of the NPR station. Today is my first day of training. I've been on the air three times today, already, although with someone else doing the dials and levers for me.

Fascinating stuff, this. Programming streams are coming down from multiple satellite feeds. Some of them go on the air straight away, some of them are recorded for later use. There is a lot of juggling of faders and you are responsible for catching some of these things on DAT to use later.

And then there are long periods of time you spend waiting around, like now, where the classical music drips down like liquid anesthesia and you just have to stay alert for the occasional station ID. Patrick, my sherpa for this control room expedition, is currently playing "Gulf War 2" from the link at your right.

I wonder what people here at the station did in between on-air moments before there was the internet.

Gotta go for now. It's going to be a busy day. Got to go and (FINALLY) pay the cable bill (War coverage, here I come!!), collect my check from the catering gig on Saturday, and then be at Urban Army in time for a 5 to 10 shift, and THEN...since it's Wednesday, it will be time to DJ until the wee hours of the morning. From zero to busy in 48 hours. Nothing like it. And maybe, just maybe, I will get to buy a single item of clothing at Urban Army on my discount, once I have picked up my check from catering. I saw something in there that I really wanted yesterday for only $6.99. Just one new shirt. That's all I want.

DF

01st Apr 2003

Welcome to Urban Army

I may have neglected to tell you guys that I, in fact, did land a steady, paying job at a certain retail clothing chain that for the sake of anonymity, shall be known as Urban Army. I reported at ten hundred hours for my first training drill.

Which, in fact, turned out to be no huge deal. We met with Urbania (not her real name), a spunky, quite pretty girl, who is the store's Loss Prevention representative. We pored over the Employee Policy and Proceedures handbook, a must for any first day on the job, apparently. Loss Prevention, for those of you who have never worked in a massive retail corporation, is kind of the law enforcement of retail sales. Their first priority is stopping "shrinkage", the phenomenon by which items go out the door without being paid for. Some of this is by theft by outsiders (shoplifting) and some by employee theft.

At some point however, it seems Loss Prevention got handed the responsibility for all forms of lawsuit deflection. So, today was the day we were briefly filled in on the specifics of what constitues breach of policy, what constitues harrassment, all that stuff, and then we watched a video on handling shoplifters in a non lawsuit-instigating manner. And then a safety video.

We filled out a bunch of tax paperwork, signed the appropriate non disclosure agreements, pledged our allegiance to the company, got a quick store tour, and that was pretty much it. Saw and fell in love with a few various items, some of which were incredibly cheap, but alas, little David had none. Not even some breath mints and lint in my pocket. They even issued us our discount cards today.

No shopping is allowed. Not until we're at least back up on our knees. No treats.

It was a whole lot less rigid and dour than Adolfina's same spiel seven months ago. I am getting the sense that at Urban Army, they are working hard and fast enough that they don't feel the need to bombard you with information that you will forget within a week of your training. They just want to get you in there and put you to work.

Well, y'all I think I need to eat something. These next couple of days are going to be very busy with training at the Army and NPR. More soon.

DF

30th Mar 2003

Do You Like Good Music?

Another Saturday night, another catering event for 700. You know there is a particular species of dirty-and-tired that comes from catering. The feeling of having slogged back and forth a cubic ton of food, drink, and dishware, of being sticky up to your elbows from handling plates of half-eaten food and (shudder) dirty silverware, well, you don't really know it until you've done it.

Many, many years ago in a galaxy far far away, I was a teen in the summer theater program at North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston Salem, North Carolina. I took a class in stage fighting. I remember the instructor not giving us July 4th off, even though the rest of our instructors cancelled classes that day. "I'm going to tell you this now, and you better get used to it," he said, "If you're going to be in the arts, you should learn this: We work when they play. You want nights off? Weekends? Forget it. You'll sleep on Monday morning when they go to work, but the nature of our business demands that the times when they aren't working are the times when we get paid."

I have heard these words in my head many times since then, whether bombing through Mobile, Alabama ass deep in traffic on a Tuesday morning on the way to New Orleans to play a gig or standing behind the line making waffles for a bunch of hung over brunch customers at the Five Star Day Cafe on a Sunday morning. We work when they play.

And a good deal of work it was last night. I'm amazed that more people don't get hurt with all those glasses breaking, floors getting slimed up with iced tea, vinaigrette, and hollandaise. Lifting, reaching, dragging, carrying. Hundreds of pounds of wilting lettuce. Fifty gallon trash cans full of the pouring out of the dregs of a couple thousand goblets, glasses and coffee cups. Yup, that's called a swill bucket for those of you who have been lucky enough to stay on the receiving end of the food service industry. It's what happens to those swallows of coffee and water and iced tea and wine you left behind. The clotting stuff at the bottom of the cream pitcher. Swill. Served in massive, dumpable containers and garnished with melting ice cubes, lemon wedges, red cocktail straws, and floating Sweet & Low packets. With special backwash flavor.

Last night it was a parents' night dinner for some sorority or another. Brittany, Whitney, Amy, and Jen had their moms, dads, and embarrassing younger brothers up to town for a buffet and a night of serious drinking with the family. Ah, group dysfunctionality. So entertaining from the outside.

The thing I found particularly interesting was these girls' mothers. Oh, yeah, there was some facial surgery on display last night. Women in their fifties with the eerie porcelain smoothness of a bathroom countertop stretched across their poor screaming cheekbones. They look like some kind of weird Druidic cult, these women. They all eschew tanning now of course, and with their perpetually arched eyebrows, preternaturally high foreheads and botoxed-to-neutrality expressions, they are like implacable, ghostly pale mystics in their sheath gowns and high coiffures. Chemical peel, what hath thou wrought?

The good news was the band. I never caught their name, unfortunately. They were an R&B covers band, playing all those karaoke standards, "Dock of the Bay", "Under the Boardwalk", you know. Those songs. But these guys were actually good. They had us all bobbing our heads and singing along. There were some real good voices in the house last night, mostly among the kitchen staff, a bunch of hardened lifers to whom it is nothing out of the ordinary to feed a thousand people in a night. We were just singing away, occasionally hitting gorgeous harmonies as we flipped glasses into their racks for washing, scraped plates, separated silverware into greasy piles, and skidded around on the slick floors, trying to find a place to land this goddamn heavy tray.

That's the power of music, though. You can make roses bloom in the darkness of the worst sewer stinking prison cell if you can call up the music inside yourself. It is evidence of God in our lives. It put a spring in our step, gave us the extra arm power to keep that tray level for another ten seconds longer than you ever thought you could. "Left a good job in the city/Workin' for the man every night and day...."

I cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis. Pumped a lotta tank down in New Orleans. We work when they play.

Get some rest!
DF

29th Mar 2003

The Iron, the Sacred Lamp and Other Matters

You know, I know most people don't iron anymore. Or at least they only do it when they have to, twenty minutes before they have to be at work. I only do it sporadically, but because both I and the Beloved have a penchant for dress shirts and trousers, every time we do laundry there are a certain number of garments that can't be worn until they have had their wrinkles smoothed out.

But, I have found that it can actually be very soothing, ironing. Fill the iron with water and let it heat. Spray down the items you are going to iron with starch and let them sit for a bit. Once the iron starts steaming and sighing, set up the ironing board and go to it.

One by one the shirts and pants march across the board. They come to you all wadded up and crinkly and go on to the hangers smooth and elegant and then you have a fully renewed supply of nice clothes for the week. Now, I can see that it would be a real drudgery to *have* to do this every day. And if it was my job to iron things in a laundry I would doubtlessly go insane inside of a week. But as it stands, ironing really Zens me out, lets my mind wander along its channels while keeping me anchored in the act of neatening, straightening, making order out of the chaos.

Okay, raise your hands, how many of you have a standing halogen lamp in the corner of at least one room of your house? Is it black? Or white? Does it work? I have a pet theory that 2000 years from now, archeologists will unearth our homes and believe that these lamps are sacred objects of some sort, "We've found them in every house. They appear to be some sort of ceremonial object. None of the filaments in the tubes we found were intact."

Oh, sacred lamp. You light our lives with your gracious dimmer. You pierce the darkness with your glow. Surely clarity and brightness will follow us all the days of our lives. You drive back the shadows and let us read, forever and ever, amen.

See you soon.
DF

26th Mar 2003

Bleak

You have to wonder after you hear the sixth or seventh story of Iraqi soldiers pretending to surrender and then attacking, or dressing in civilian clothes so they can get right up on US forces invisibly if the US's habit of fighting from the moral high ground will not be the thing that loses the war. It must be incredibly frustrating to the soldiers there to know that they are fighting by a completely different set of rules than the enemy.

I have always kind of wondered at the concept of "fighting fair". If you are fighting, you are fighting, and any weapon or means that comes to hand is fair, isn't it? Apparently not. It's one of those things.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think there should be Iraqi babies impaled on American bayonets. But I do believe that our need to look like "the good guys" to the world is going to make this war a whole lot more expensive, not to mention prolonging it.

Kinda reminds me of this Bill Cosby routine I heard at some point as a child. He was wondering about the pre-game coin toss from football, and what if there was a coin toss at the beginning of each war.

"General Custer, call it in the air."

"Heads"

"No, tails, you lose. You have to sit out in the middle of a mesa while all the Indians in the world run down on ya."

Or at the beginning of the US revolution. "Cornwallis, call it in the air."

"Tails."

"No, heads. Sorry, you the British Army have to wear bright red uniforms, march in line, and beat drums everywhere you go. American rebels, you can wear whatever you want, hide in the trees, and enlist the aid of the French. Now, let's have a war."

That's kind of what it looks like from here. We're trying to fight with a hand tied. Maybe it's a more "honorable" method, but if it is going to cost the lives of our soldiers, which part of this is fair, again? It's a WAR, folks. We're not talking about a basketball game.

Our government has disregarded world opinion by being in Iraq to begin with, but because we are so desperately afraid of bad PR, we're trying to fight a "fair" war against an enemy that has no concept of the same principles. Can't have any pictures of injured or dead children popping up on Aljazeera. That would make us the bad guys. The enemy knows this and will exploit it in every way they can. I wonder what's going to happen.

Hope you are all safe and well.

DF

23rd Mar 2003

Nobody's Talking About the War

At the catering job I did tonight, at least, nobody talked about the war at all. I didn't realize it until I got home. This is from a note I was just writing to my friend Yoko in Aomori City, Japan:

"And then there is the war, which in fact is so huge and terrible that I am doing everything I can not to think about it. I just realized that nobody else at work tonight talked about the war at all. I mean nobody. I can't think of anybody mentioning it. Oh, no actually, I briefly discussed it with one person. And that was that. We were pouring ice from pitchers into literally hundreds and hundres of glasses, then they brought out these huge rolling plastic cans of water. It was crystal clear and very cold. We scooped it up into pitchers and poured it into glasses. Chunks of ice were falling everywhere, water splashing. I looked down into one of these huge cans of bright clear water and thought about all the soldiers out in the desert who would be in absolute heaven to see all this water and ice everywhere, pouring out over our shoes and into the drains on the floor.

I turned to this guy named Joe, and said that I was thinking of the soldiers. He nodded and asked if I had been watching the news. I said I had. He said he has, too. But that was all we said."

It was a relief to get out and do some hard work. Even if it was in a black apron and a bow tie. Nice to meet some new folks too. There were maybe 50 people there just to staff this huge event for some departmental convention at UGA. It is the weirdest cross section of people at these things. Black people, white people, people from other countries. (England tonight, Mexico, Ghana, and Laos, too.) And all of these people are abruptly slung together and forced to conduct a mass feeding. Amazing what people can do when they work together.

DF

21st Mar 2003

Louder Than Bombs

I happened to be at home in front of the TV when they dropped the bucket on Baghdad. The sound coming out of the television was unreal. The roar of the jets, missiles screaming, and over it all the pounding of the bombs.

I have started reading the weblog of a young Iraqi man, "Where is Raed?". He lives in Baghdad. I have been afraid to look and see if he has been able to post today. (Go to "Suburban Blight" for the link.)

It made me realize that television has given us the dubious privilege of being able to watch people die. The first time it hit me that I was watching people's last moments caught on tape was watching the Challenger explode on television, over and over and over in 1986. Since then we've had 9/11, the Columbia and now these scenes from Baghdad. On the screen it is just a flash and a roar, but people are dying in there. This is not a special effect.

It seems like I have been praying for people's souls a lot lately.

This is from my cousin:

"I rolled over onto my stomach, pushed myself up onto my
knees to get up and crawl into bed. Then I remembered
something I had read in a letter that had been
forwarded to me a few months ago. The letter was from
someone traveling through Central America and being so
moved by the kindness and beauty of his surroundings.
The phrase in the letter that stood out most was,
"Everyday, I am humbled to my knees." I was kneeling.
And for the first time in ten years, I closed my
eyes... and prayed. I do not know if I was speaking
directly to anyone or anything, but I spoke
nonetheless. I've perhaps already revealed too much,
so I will keep my specific prayers a private matter.
But I did hear a voice echoing across a distant sage
field, singing to the night sky... "Lay down my dear
Brothers/ Lay down and take your Rest..."

I guess praying is something you can't do too much of.

And on CNN the news just keeps going on and on. Poor old Darryn Kagan. She does not look like she is a happy girl at ALL to find herself in the middle of a war zone. As the tanks rolled through the desert last night, Aaron Brown was just "gee-whizz"-ing all over his own lap from an air-conditioned broadcast studio in Atlanta and there was D.K., squinting against the Kuwaiti desert wind and into the camera. "Well, if you *could* sleep last night, you were awakened by three different air raids. Each one could potentially deliver a payload of chemical or biological weapons, so in each instance we were told to grab our gas masks and head for the basement, where we waited for the all clear signal."

I bet her knuckles are just white on the straps of that gas mask as she recites to herself the Atlanta mantra, "Buford Highway, Piedmont Avenue, Peachtree Street...". I know I would be a trembling, shell-shocked puddle if I were in her shoes. "I WANT TO GO HOME! I WANT A HOT SHOWER! I WANT A MARGARITA!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!! WHAT AM I DOING HEEEEEEEEERE??!!"

Hang in there, Darryn, honey. I will take you to Sephora when you get home, okay?

I hope you all are safe and well.
DF

20th Mar 2003

A Very Productive Day

Pushing gloom and thoughts of war aside, I sallied forth at dawn today bound and determined to scare up some work. An old friend set me up with an audition at the public radio station. Here's how it works: You audition, the station manager hears your tape and says yea or nay. Then you are placed on an on-call basis for when anyone goes on vacation or calls out sick.

The audition consisted of reading from a page of normal on-air text. They threw some names of Italian and German composers and conductors at you to make sure you can say "Mahler" and "Gvandhaus" (or somthing like that) without embarrassing yourself.

Then back to the staffing agency where I picked up a catering gig on Saturday. And onward to a certain retail clothing chain which shall remain nameless for the time being. Especially if they give me a job after my interview on Monday.

I got home and found out that I made the audition at the radio station. So, your faithful blogger will soon be a radio personality. And maybe have a steady job selling clothes. Why not?

So, now there is the only the matter of the dishes.

Hope you all are safe and well.

DF

19th Mar 2003

Speechless

You know what? I just don't know what to say. They started the war tonight while Todd and I were setting up to DJ. We went in and sat at the bar while the President made his speech. Thousands of people are going to die, aren't they?

I bowed my head and prayed for the families on both sides.

If you read this, go find someone you love and hold them and tell them that you will protect them and never leave their side. No matter what happens from here.

Pray for peace.
DF

18th Mar 2003

An Article I Wrote

Hey-

I wrote this article last week. It is coming out in our local music magazine today. But, I thought I would put it up here, too, for your reading pleasure. Hope you are all doing well.

Cheers,
DF

Southern Bitch Say Goodbye to a Dear Friend
Rick Conley, 1966-2003

Wednesday morning, 12 March 2003

It is hard to accurately describe the feeling in the air here in Southern Bitch's practice space this Wednesday morning. It is a blindingly bright spring day, one of the first real spring days we've gotten this year. Outside the world is shaking off its winter slumber and resurrecting itself. In these cool dark purple halls off North Avenue, however, the members of Southern Bitch are struggling to come to terms with a very recent and very deep personal loss.

On Sunday morning, March 9, Rick Conley, the band's drummer for many months was found dead in his Atlanta home of as-yet undetermined causes. The last time I saw these guys (singer/guitarist Adam Musick, his guitar-slinging wife Wendy, and bassist Chuck Bradburn), Conley was with them and they had just left the Nuci's Space stage, flushed and sweaty in the wake of a fantastic show. They were jubilant, optimistic. Conley was cracking wise from his chair, Marlboro red in one hand, PBR in the other, bantering with the other band members like a brother. The four seemed to be on top of the world.

Today, Bradburn and the Musicks are more subdued. They look tired, faint circles under their eyes. Yesterday they left town before dawn to drive to Conley's home town to his funeral and didn't get home until after midnight. In just a couple of hours, they will begin the long drive to Austin, Texas for the legendary South by Southwest music conference. Former drummer and old friend Patrick "Tigger" Ferguson (who also happens to be my twin brother) will be joining the band on the road for this trip.

"At first we cancelled all the shows," says Adam, "We just didn't think we were going to be able to do it. Then we thought about it real hard and realized that Rick would want us to go. This was one of the things we were really working for. Everything has sort of been building up to going out there."

The brave little smile that Wendy flashes me as she plugs in her guitar says it all. "I feel better after going to his funeral. Things feel more resolved after seeing him there with all of his friends and family. It gave us a chance to say goodbye."

When Tigger gets here, the band are going to do a fast practice, going over two new songs and getting re-acquainted after not playing together for nearly a year. Manager Margo Lenmark is quietly and quickly labeling demo CD's in her neat, precise handwriting. As she works, she is separating merchandise and t-shirts into piles.

I ask them what they would like the world to know and remember about Rick Conley. He was their friend and comrade for the last six months. Their faces light up.

"He was a rock and roll dude, man," says Adam, "He lived to make music and have fun. He was the best drummer we ever played with."

"We knew the first time we played with him that he was the one," says Wendy, "He had a real excitement about him."

"We called him 'Ricky the Kid' and 'Little Ricky', even though he was older than us. He would get so excited about things, he was like a little kid. He got us excited. He pushed us, made us into a better band," Adam says, pausing to take a sip from a bottle of water, "He was hilarious."

How did you meet him?

"He found us, actually," Wendy tells me, "He worked at Smith's Old Bar. He fell right in with us, as a drummer and as a friend. He was a sweetheart."

For the first time in several minutes, Chuck speaks up, "You know he liked to party and have fun, but with music, he was always really professional."

"Oh, yeah," says Adam, "Music came first with him."

"Yeah, anything you write about Rick, you have to put in that he was always professional. Nothing got in the way of having a good show. That was one of the ways he pushed us as a band," Wendy nods, reaching for Adam's water. I watch this small moment pass between them, husband and wife, and I realize why I am so comfortable with these guys. Southern Bitch are a family. They always have been. And this is what will keep them going through the rough times, the love between them as people and friends.

Moments later my brother arrives. Hugs and greetings are exchanged. "It's like Old Home Week around here," quips Bradburn, ever-present Camel Light screwed into the corner of his mouth. I feel lucky to be here.

Tigger installs himself behind the drum kit and pounds out the rhythm to "Mark of the Beast", the opening track from Southern Bitch's album, "Thunderbolt". Amplifiers come to life with a coughing roar and it's so loud in the room that Margo and I are both driven out into the hall.

It's eerie. These guys have not played together in a year, but it sounds like they practiced together yesterday. Margo and I nod at each other in the hall, smiling, bobbing our heads in time. I can tell this has been rough week for her and that to hear her charges sounding so ferocious, even through the wall, is a relief.

"I'M SO GLAD YOUR BROTHER IS HERE!" she shouts above the din.

Later as the band are packing up to leave, Texas-bound, I ask Wendy if she has wondered if Rick is watching from the other side, if that doesn't sound too hokey. "Oh, I feel like he is," she says, "And I hope he guides us to where we need to be. In fact, I'm sure he is, and I know he will."

As I watch their van pull away, leaving me at the end of my driveway, I wish that I could go with them to Austin. In my heart I wish them luck and hope that Rick is in a better place, although he was obviously deeply loved and appreciated while he was alive. Good luck, guys, I think, we'll be here when you come home.

17th Mar 2003

Would Anybody Like a Drink Before the War?

Hey, all. I tried to post a photo of myself singing on stage with Eli, today. (By the way, shortly after the band split, we found out that there were two other bands operating under the name Eli right here in the Southeast.) Turns out the photo had too many pixels or something and I'm not skilled enough to fix it. C'est la guerre, eh?

Speaking of which, the media is foaming and frothing with what is apparently inevitably going to go down in the Middle East. What on earth is one to think at this juncture? I have friends on both side of the argument and all of them seem to have valid points.

And then there's this new lethal pneumonia in China.

But, my isn't John King (Senior White House Correspondent, CNN) a handsome fellow?

I don't guess I have much to report today. It is gray and rainy this St. Patrick's day in Georgia. I am holed up in my apartment. I should probably get out there and do something productive or else face the consequences, but really I just want to zip my cat into the front of my sweatshirt (he loves that) and read a book that Kelley of Suburban Blight loaned to me last week.

Go read her blog if you haven't yet. She's a genius. And I'm not just saying that because she is my friend.

Cheers!
DF

16th Mar 2003

Hey, Mr. DJ

Hey again. Did I mention to you guys that I am a DJ? Right after I got fired I marched into a club here and announced to the owner that I would be DJ-ing one night a week in the back room of his bar. I have been teaching myself to mix music on my laptop for nearly a year now.

So, on Wednesdays, I head over to the club and plug my laptop into their mixing board. I turn on the fancy lights, crank up the massive speakers and bang, zoom! It's-a-disco!

Well, the music sounds great back there. It's a great place to dance. Trouble is, the word has just not gotten out. I have built it, but they have yet to come. I need a PR person or something.

I think I have taken a step in the right direction, though, by enlisting a co-conspirator. Enter Tattooed Todd, also known as DJ Edsel, another DJ like myself who is having trouble breaking into the ultra-clique-y Athens DJ scene. (Ach, God, the bloodiest of battles are fought over the meagerest of spoils.) Athens, Georgia is a great town, with a sometimes-great music scene, some real nice folks and a great climate. We are not, however, New York or Paris or London or Ibiza, but you would never know it for the size of the attitudes some folks wear around here. Whew!

Well, Todd is a super nice guy who I have known for a while. He looks a little scary to the uninitiated; covered, as he is, in enough ink to make a New York City subway car feel naked, and standing well over six feet tall. Then you get to know him and you realize that he's just as easygoing, gentle, and laid-back as anyone you'll ever meet. On the underside of his jaw are tattooed the words, "NICE GUY" just in case you had any questions.

So, I went over to his place today to see if we could maybe work together. Maybe the two of us combined can scare up enough people to convince the club owner not to sack us.

Turns out, he's a real DJ. Two turntables, CD mixer, multi-channel mixing board. And he's good, too. I saw all that technology and half expected this guy to walk right over me and any input I might have. Totally not the case. At points, we actually kind of ended up in the mixing equivalent of those moments when you arrive at a door the same time as another person and you are both being too polite to just charge right through. ("You first.", "Oh, no, you. I insist.", "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly.")

So, it looks like I have found a partner in crime for my little Wednesday night hip hop/r&b/techno/drum&bass/etc. groove sessions. You guys wish me luck. There are few things as dispiriting as spinning great music to a completely empty room. Well, singing to an empty room is about as bad, actually.

Speaking of which, you can access my old band's web site through the link at the right. Anybody want to buy about a thousand CD's? Eli was, to my thinking, a freakin awesome band that never quite found our audience. Oh, well. Download the mp3's, have a listen. I miss all those guys. We broke up when our guitarist got accepted to a prestigious New England carpentry school in Boston. (Sigh.)

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. Do we go to war tomorrow or the next day? I forget. Set your Doomsday Clocks one hour forward and have a pleasant tomorrow.

See you soon,
DF

15th Mar 2003

Welcome to the Workless Week

Hi, my name is David and welcome to my blog. Although I am hardly what you would call a shy and retiring personaliy, I have been filled with some trepidation as to how to begin. A first blog entry should be something of a manifesto should it not? A clear statement of purpose. A declaration of my mission.

But right now all I want really is to find a job. A month ago I was abruptly fired from a job that I loved. It was not a glamorous job, not even a particularly well-paying job ($6.50/hr), but it was a job in a book store (a certain retail chain which shall remain nameless) with a bunch of quirky and delightful coworkers and interesting, polite customers and I gave that crappy little job my absolute everything.

But see, there was this one manager. Let's call her Adolfina. I am sure all of you have worked for such a person sometime, male or female, white or blue collar, The Manager Who Hates You. Yes, that person for whom, for whatever reasons, you can do nothing right. The one who stands over your shoulder and waits for you to make the tiniest mistakes so they can harpoon you. The person who with one snotty, snippy comment or even a look can suck all the joy out of a day and make you want to punch a wall.

Well, ol' Adolfina had it in for me the moment I walked in the door. No matter how hard I tried, in spite of the piles of positive customer comment cards that came in from the box in the foyer, in spite of being late perhaps three times in six months and only calling out sick once, in spite of displaying again and again and again a consistent devotion to a high standard of excellence in my work, I was abruptly canned on a technicality, just days shy of qualifying for health insurance and benefits.

It was quite a blow. But you know, that's how the Adolfs and Adolfinas of the world work. Most of them claw their way to the middle somewhere and seem to really enjoy beating up on certain peasants with the flat sides of their swords. If this has happened to any of you recently, or ever, for that matter, you have my deepest empathy. I understand from the TV news that in February there was a record spike in the number of US citizens applying for unemployment, so I imagine there are plenty of you out there who know what I mean.

Getting fired from a job you hate is one thing. Getting fired from a job you love is like getting dumped by someone you are still in love with. I have spent the intervening weeks aggressively pursuing other avenues of employment, lying on the floor in my apartment and weeping ("Why, God, whyyyyyyyyyyyyy??!!"), and experiencing the creeping sense of alarm punctuated by bursts of optimism followed by moments of despair that is common, I think, to death row inmates, the unemployed, and other people who don't have enough to do.

Today I went to the Department of Labor office to look at the job postings. Not very pretty. Unfortunately a community like mine (Athens, Georgia, college town/music scene) seems to have a not particularly burningly high demand for liberal arts degree-holding, semi-computer skilled, artistically inclined workers. Imagine that.

Then it was over to the Temp Agency. Might as well while I'm wearing clothes that I ironed, right?

By this time it was mid afternoon and a low gray sky had come down overhead to spit rain on us all. As I drove home I looked around at all the other people in their cars with jobs and lives and everything. Credit cards. Health insurance. I don't want to be adrift for months on unemployment. I want a job.

My partner for going-on five years, Jimmy, is being wonderfully patient with me. As a writer and a musician, I have been known to display a tendency to be somewhat employment-impaired over the years. But really, I have learned that there comes a time when not having a job becomes more stressful than having a job.

And as for Gus and Juan Carlos, our two Siamese cats, they are perfectly content to have me around the house more often, available at their beck and call to let them out, let them back in, open cans, scratch their ears, and refresh their water bowl every few hours ad infinitum. Frankly, I really don't mind this end of the deal so much.

My advice to you guys out there like me who don't have a job: Find a way to keep yourself busy so you don't spiral into despair. If this means alphabetizing your spice rack, then so be it. Avoid tequila. And don't watch daytime television. It'll rot your brain.

See you soon,
DF