The Rock And The Roll, The Hip And The Hop

The Live Acorn downloaded some songs on iTunes the other day – most of them say “Explicit Lyrics” next to the title. I assume that means one of two things – either it’s an indication that the artists take great care to enunciate properly so that the words can easily be understood, or the message of the song is very clear and not too obscurely veiled in symbolism. Either way, I think it’s very considerate of the musicians.

I like living in a world where there are songs with such titles as "You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison", "Kill All Your Friends (B-Side)", and "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)". I have a bit of a soft spot for kiddie punk, I guess.

No More Rehearsing, Or Nursing The Part

Time to get yer gear on. The bait is cut, and it's time to fish.

Drinking Season starts today.

A Holiday Classic

I remember Thanksgivings growing up in Pocatello. We’d always have a pretty good meal – a good sized Butterball and all of the traditional dishes. Well, one year, we decided that we’d try a fresh turkey the next time. We drove out to American Falls to a turkey farm in early December and got ourselves a little baby turkey, the plan being that we’d raise it and have the best turkey EVAH the next year.

So this thing lived in our back yard, and I’m sure you can imagine what happened. Of course we named him (Tom), and we’d play with him, and pretty soon he was sleeping inside, and would hop up on our beds, and he’d get so excited when we came home from school. Tom really was one of the family.

Well, come holiday time, there was just no way that we could do the deed. He’d come to mean so much to all of us, and to even consider following through on the plan was unthinkable.

So we ate the dog.

The Voice Of Reason

Johnny Drunk And Gone gives a clinic on the fine art of ranting:

Another thing, these are the same girls that will watch sports because they want to make there guy happy. They have no real input on anything athletic other than maybe they fucked a softball team in an abandoned hospital. But they root along like they have a clue, "Off sides!" They'll yell out, to bad we're watching baseball sweetheart.

Brilliant.

There's No Business Like Snow Business

The Weather Bureau has predicted it’s going to snow 3 ½ feet tonight a 20% chance of snow tonight in the valley. Actually, the Idaho Statesman reported that the National Weather Service “predicted a 20% precipitation”, as there are apparently no copy editors at the Statesman for the weather writers, at least in the online version.

I love the snow. Not just for the skiing, not just for the joy of making snow angels (Hey! Why does mine have a pitchfork?), not just to marvel at my dog’s awesome ability to write her name in a snowbank, not even for the beautiful blanket of white with which it covers the world.


Actually, that last one is related. It’s not the beauty of the snow covering everything, however; it’s the fact that it covers up the ugliness around us, even if only for a while, here in the lowlands. As beautiful as the trees are at the height of their technicolor splendor, that beauty is fleeting, and soon all that remains at Casa de Acorn is a soggy brown mold factory smothering what can only laughingly be called a yard. Autumn also brings as many grey skies as blue, and the irony is not lost in the realization that the color scheme of the grey ghost (the remains of paint and dark rust) coordinates with this, the saddest of seasons.

But then the snow falls. Not a dusting, as we might get tonight, but a good 3-6” covering, with big-ass flakes falling in a breezeless night. Enough to watch drivers who didn’t grow up in snow slide into curbs. Enough that moms are watching TV for school closures. And then … gone are the rotting leaves, gone is the oil-stained driveway. The skies are still grey, but now seem perfect as a surreal background as one stares up into the falling flakes. For at least a while, things aren’t as ugly as they were.

Of course, here in the valley, the snow never lasts. That’s okay. You can still see it in the mountains, you know that it will come again, and the memory of looking up with your tongue out and letting the flakes sting your eyes can sometimes be enough.

Sometimes.

This Changes EVERYTHING

Longtime readers of this blog (and really, don’t you both have something better to do?) know that I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the dog who lives with me. We generally match up pretty well – she’s got a few IQ points on me; I have opposable thumbs. We each have our days.

So I was raking leaves this morning, and she was on the rope, chewing on a stick. It was actually kind of nice – a brief respite, akin to the Christmas Truce of WWI. I almost broke down in a moment of sentimentality and scratched her behind her ears.

She’s attached to the rope by a caribiner, and she’s gotten off of it a couple times before. I saw it happen once, and I’m pretty sure she was just scratching with her hind leg and happened to pop the ‘biner off her collar. Random. No big deal.

Well, this morning, I walked into the house to get some coffee, and when I came back out, she was free. It was 30 seconds. THIRTY. FUCKING. SECONDS. I know that she’s opportunistic – she knows when I get in the shower that she’s got 10 minutes to wreak havoc. I’ve conceded that battle in our little war. But getting off her goddamned rope in 30 seconds … sweet pickled popcorn, I fear the worst.

So I ask this of you: if I should meet an untimely demise, please … PLEASE … don’t let the coroner brush off the dog as a ridiculous suspect. She’s wily, and she’ll make it look like I tripped over a beer bottle or had an unfortunate accident while eating toast in the bathtub. Don’t be fooled.

It's Probably Good That I Don't Write Jokes For A Living ...

Growing up, I always feared the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Now I scoff at it.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm working on it. Shut up ... at least I'm trying.

Reining In My Heart

The skies are charcoal grey
It's a dreary downtown day
But at the end of my 30 foot leash
Is my little dog Quiche
Quiche the poodle!

It was a little wet this morning – I really need to get one of those spray guard thingies for my rear wheel. I felt like the cat that Pepe Le Pew is always chasing around. Only, you know, my stripe was water, not white paint, and I’m a human being, not a cartoon cat, and there wasn’t a skunk bounding after me telling me that I could run, but I could not hide. So I guess I didn’t feel like that cat at all.

Ahhh, cartoons … the last safe haven for stalking/sexual predation/cross-species-skunk-on-cat-goodness humor.

A Little Of This, A Little Of That ...

Well, I’ve been called out as being a "blog slacker." This will not stand. Sure, posts have been a bit sparse as of late; I guess there just hasn’t been much to say. Either that, or the things on my mind are of such a deep and personal nature and so profound that were they posted on the internet, the emotional impact alone would cause readers to burst into endless tears of despair. I tend to think the first reason is the more likely of the two.

So just a few quick items:

* I remember, as I picked up my dog from the pound a few years ago, telling her that "I haven’t the means to provide to you the standard of living to which you have become accustomed." That’s when she jumped out the car window and tried to run back to the shelter. It’s been a battle of wills ever since, and alas, I fear that I’m losing.

* I set a new personal best last night with 9 tacos. I considered making this an installment in the ongoing lecture series "How To Stay Single," but as no one was there to actually witness it and have therefore been repulsed to the point where any potential possibility of future romantic commitment was snuffed out, I’ll just mention it here.

* Bears vs. Packers this Sunday. The cheese-grater hat will be making an appearance.

* Who the hell is going to cook prime rib this Thanksgiving? Damn! We’re in a tight spot here!

* When things seem bad, try to remember the Happiness Fairy:

Saturday Morning Music

Aimee Mann - Red Vines

From the near-perfect "Bachelor No. 2"

Sofa, So Good

I have a bad habit of falling asleep on the couch with the TV on, then waking up sometime between 1 am and 3:30 am to go to bed. It definitely has something to do with needing some sound going on to keep my mind distracted. I mean, really ... to get up off the sofa, turn off the set, and lie in bed alone in a quiet dark house? That way lies madness, my friends. That way lies madness.

Changing habits like that can be difficult. In the grand scheme of things, it really makes no difference whatsoever, and there’s certainly no one keeping a tally of couch/bed vs. bed-only nights. Still, it’s one of those things that creeps into your routine by stealth, like when a family goes from eating together and conversing at the dinner table, to eating together with the TV on, to eating in the living room on the coffee table watching TV, to not noticing that the family doesn’t really eat together at all anymore, until finally there is no more family, and you find yourself eating cold Spaghettios out of the can* standing in the kitchen in your underwear wondering how the hell you came to be leading such a pathetic excuse for a life.

So I think I’ll try to change that. I’ve got a good book and a new teddy bear to snuggle, and I can always put on some music to fall asleep to. The rational side of me knows that when I do go to bed and read, I’m usually out within 10 minutes anyway, so maybe Rational Dead Acorn needs to be given a bit more voice in the Dead Acorn Internal Community. God knows we’ve heard enough from Cross-Dressing Dead Acorn bitching about Halloween being only once a year.

And another thing ... I’m really going to keep up on studying this semester. Really! I mean it this time!

* I actually love cold Spaghettios out of the can. Now, you might be saying "Love is kind of a strong word, Dead Acorn - using it so nonchalantly may lessen its emotive force in other, more appropriate contexts!" But you see, it IS appropriate here. I really and truly love cold Spaghettios out of the can. Not in some weird sexual way, though.

A Good Day

So today, a woman whose father was a slave voted for an African American for president. Also today, lots of 18-year-olds voted for that same guy, who will be only the 4th president of their lives. The Live Acorn made phone calls for the 3rd campaign of her life, and she's now trying to stay awake at 12:30 to see how the House race winds up. I'm sorta proud of her.

We were down at the Obama party at 9:00, and they called California and its 55 electoral votes immediately, which put him over 270. It got a little dusty in there.

Pretty god-damned good day.

Although ...

Looks like Prop Hate is going to pass in CA. Way to go, homophobes. I hope the decent mormons feel good about their tithings funding hatred, fear, and intolerance.

The Importance Of Historical Documentation

So I was doing a little cleaning this afternoon - going through stacks of papers that should have just been thrown away in the first place (hey look! It's my receipt for the furnace filters that I bought in 2006! Thank god I kept that!) - and I found some chicken scratch that I jotted down when I went camping last summer:

"Lots of big-ass campers and fat people. Two tasks: 1) Don't get beat up, and 2) Address self - am I weightist?"

"Am regretting my decision of buying only one bottle of tonic water."

"Why would a bee want to drink my gin? It's fucking Gilbey's, for god's sake!"

There was some other stuff about Duke the wandering camp dog and my pride over having started a fire, but it was mostly illegible.