G ... G ... Giving Th .. Th ... Thanks ...

I don’t travel much, and don’t read much about the goings-on of the world outside of my house, so I’m not sure if other areas have a holiday known as “Thanksgiving.”  For those readers whose cultures don’t participate in the celebration, it’s a day of “Giving” of  “Thanks” for the things one is blessed with (or has earned through hard work and hard work alone, thankyewverymuch, depending on your religious/political views) in life.  The “Giving” of “Thanks” generally takes the form of stuffing one’s face with food from the moment of waking and watching three games of American Football, before rushing to Walmart for the holiday sales.

I spent a few days with friends a bit north of home, which was delightful.  Our gracious host had created an announcement/invitation for the event on a social networking site, which allowed updates and comments and general discussion to take place.  As I was unaware of the competitive nature of participation, I was a bit taken aback when he posted this graph a week or so prior to the big day, tallying attendees’ “Spirit” and “Traditionality”:

Above:  I can only assume that offering to bring corned beef and Li’l Smokies fell outside of the operational definition of “traditional.”  Also, I’m pretty sure that this was the host’s first attempt at using bar charts in MS Excel.

I eventually finished with positive points by offering to bring six folding chairs, but still in last place, which, unbeknownst to me (else I would have made a greater effort), carried no small consequence.

The host’s house, while quite comfortable, is not palatial in terms of sleeping area, and the number of people requiring bed space exceeded the capacity of his home, necessitating that I, as the low point scorer, and the unfortunate soul with whom I was attending, sleep in the overflow quarters:

Above:  I believe that by spending the night here, I can now increase my percentage of Native American lineage from 1/1024 to 1/512.

The tepee did have a small wood stove, which, while offering little in the form of actual heat, at least introduced the possibility of death by asphyxiation, which would presumably solve the problem of being cold once and for all.  (A particularly humorous event was the lighting of the stove, which was done by a guest who was a firefighter, who insisted upon performing the task, and who was extremely intoxicated, and who proved far less adept at starting fires than at extinguishing them.  At one point, I thought "well, it's going to be spring soon, and we'll warm up then.")

After a long day of revelry, we finally felt bombed out of our gourds enough to pass out it was time to retire, and crawled under our stack of 30 or so blankets and nodded off.  I must say that I was far more comfortable than I had expected to be, despite being woken several times by the unfortunate soul with whom I was attending; once to take her shivering dog inside, once to retrieve her barking dog from the house, and finally, as she was attempting to re-light the fire, which had apparently gone out.  As I recall, we had a conversation along these lines:

Dead Acorn:  “Sugarplum snookums, what are you doing?”

Unfortunate Soul With Whom I Was Attending: “Tr … tr ... trying to st … st … start the fire …”

DA:  “Gee, you look really cold!  I’ll keep the bed really warm so that when you get it going, it’ll be all cozy!  I know if we both do our parts, we can get through this night!”

USWWIWA:  “I fu … fu … fucking hate you.”

Anyway, we made it through relatively unharmed (and the dog was fine, so don’t go all SPCA on me), and were even promoted to the house the next night.

The entire trip was pretty dang fantastic … the Thanksgiving crowd for the meal comprised an eclectic mix of city folk, hill people, between 5-8 dogs (ranging from an 8 lb. Chihuahua to a monster golden Labrador) and an extremely vocal cat, with plenty of champagne, beer, rum, whisky, and who knows what else for the bipeds (and one of the dogs).

By the way, the corned beef was devoured, and is, I would argue, well established as a tradition, so I have high hopes of at least getting to sleep in the garage next year.

Time To Vase Reality

I recently celebrated lamented noted, with existential neutrality, the occurrence of the sun making another orbit around me (in the spirit of those who deny that climate change is occurring, I likewise maintain that there is insufficient evidence on the relative movements of celestial bodies to draw a conclusion one way or another, at this point.  Suck it, Galileo).

As is the custom around the North End of Boise, Idaho, I spent a good portion of the day with friends in a locale that offered spirits (well, beer, at least), with the group growing louder and more boisterous as the evening progressed.  (To those of you outside the area who may find this a tad foreign, just try it … there are no hard-and-fast rules, and you may soon find it a practice that need not be limited to the anniversary of your birth, nor to that of your friends.  Go on - try it!)

There was even (at my advanced years!) a bit of the traditional “gift-giving,” and this year, I was especially touched at the thought behind a particular bouquet that a couple of very good friends presented to me.  One’s first reaction might well be “isn’t it a bit odd for a man to receive flowers?” and if so, one would properly be chastised for maintaining outdated and sexist stereotypes.  Why do you hate progress in the realm of social equality?

Anyway, this was no ordinary bouquet, as you can see:

Above: Spatules magnifique, non? Très touchant …

For those who are unfamiliar with the fact that I reside with a demon dog: I reside with a demon dog.  One of her demonic characteristics is an unbridled lust for spatulas, and the transport outside thereof, and I awake each morn and immediately concern myself with whether I will have a spatula with which to stir my daily hash browns or not.  “Has she made off with yet another in the dead of night?” I ask aloud.  “I heard not the tell-tale tapping of toenails, yet her secretive stealth should not surprise …”

And so you see the reason for my somewhat emotional reaction to the gift.  No longer was I to be a victim of her ravenous habit.  Let her steal a spatula!  I would care not, for I now possessed a plethora of these magnificent utensils!  It … it … it was the gift of rest, of serenity, of mornings of awakening to calmness, free of trepidation.  (Also, the Necco wafers as baby's breath?  Brilliant!)

At least for a week or two.

[UPDATE:]  Oh sweet jeebus … I was looking at some of the other photos I had taken of the bouquet, and saw this:

Above:  Nothing different, except it’s lacking the tasteful arrangem OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD! …

Here’s an enlarged version of the section at the top, above and to the right of the black spatula:

Above:  Well, there goes my peaceful sleep.

The absence of a camera to my eye discounts the explanation of it simply being my reflection in the plate glass window.  No, the only possibility is that I’ve caught the very image of whatever minion of C’thulu is possessing poor Indy.  O sweet puppy, I shall try to understand your torment and swear to rid you of it …

I’ve yet to hear back from St. Mary’s on scheduling a priest.

Ahoy, Polloi ...

I hob-nobbed with the 1% a bit a couple of weeks back (technically, I AM part of a 1%; just not the 1% ... probably somewhere around the 30th percentile or so).  It was an interesting experience, to say the least.

A friend of mine was getting married (and since has, costing me $20 in my ill-advised wager overestimating the persuasive skills of the lovely and seductive Bambi, who was “catering” a pre-nuptial "luncheon"*), and I was invited to participate in a round of golf at a local private country club in advance of the big day.  Boy howdy, I was as excited as cousin’ Hoss before the pie-eatin’ contest down to the county fair!

I was heading out with another friend of mine, whom I believe has more experience in interacting with that stratum of society, and I have to say write that I was a bit insulted by the fact that he felt it necessary to send me a few orders suggestions via text message concerning the afternoon:

Friend With Whom I Was Heading Out:  “So, umm … it’s sort of required that you wear a shirt …”

Dead Acorn:  “Well, duh … I’m not completely white trash.”

FWWIWHO:  “Let me finish, please.  You need to wear a shirt with a collar.”

DA:  “No problem!  In fact, I don’t even HAVE a collar-less Hawaiian shirt.”

FWWIWHO:  “*sigh*.  Ok, I guess.  And you can’t bring a case of Schlitz hidden in your bag like you usually do, as the club pro is playing with us, and we, you know, might want to show just a BIT of respect and gratitude for them providing this opportunity.”

DA:  “This is a fucking joke, right?  RIGHT?”

As it turns out, it wasn’t a joke, but I supposed that I could suspend my fiscally responsible approach to golf course hydration for just that one day.

So we pulled into the parking lot, and removed our golf bags from the back of the car.  To my astonishment, it was no more than a minute before two young hooligans, obviously gangsta ruffians, judging from the fact that they wore similar colors, approached us, and attempted to steal our clubs!  Their cocky nonchalance was unsettling, as they aggressively said “Good afternoon, gentlemen!” and began to walk off with our property.  They may as well have said “it’s OUR shit now, right?  You got something to say, old man?  Yeah, didn’t think so.”

Luckily, my friend is quite a large fellow, and has obviously dealt with this type of situation before, because, sensing my befuddlement and anger at such an outrageous act, he said (with well directed intent toward the thieves) “Hold on, there, Dead Acorn.  These young men are just carrying our clubs up to our cart.  Isn’t that right right, gentlemen?”  They both nodded nervously, and sure enough, I watched them load our bags onto a golf cart near the clubhouse.  Having a large friend can be handy.  (The young thugs were obviously impressed with me as well, as I could see them looking at the various clubs in my bag in awe – they almost seemed to giggle uncontrollably in their amazement with regard to my eclectic assemblage of hardware.)

On the other hand, I can’t say he’s absolutely virtuous, because we walked in to sign up, and he grabbed a handful of tees and a divot-fixer-thingy from the counter and walked off without paying!  His explanation of "no, dude, it's free.  Trust me on this." did little to assuage my associative guilt.  I know that it doesn't sound exactly like a Brinks robbery, but I still felt a little uneasy.  My guilt was only compounded by the fact that we drove over to the driving range and he seemed to have no issue with hitting a bag of balls that someone else had obviously paid for and had left on the range while running off to the loo or the snack bar.  I’m still struggling with my mixed feelings concerning his behavior.

Criminal acts aside, the afternoon went very well, and the repressive elite overlords that ran the club pulled off their required act of appearing to be extremely nice and accommodating to the commoners with admirable skill. The next time I storm a palace in an attempt to reinstate fairness and justice for the bottom 99% of the population who actually do the things that make the world work, I will do so with fond remembrance of that day.

The golfers among them shall die the quickest.

* Tolly not true.

Just Another Day In The Life ...

There have been some strange goings on lately around Casa de Acorn.  I walked out of the house the other morning to find this li’l speedster on my driveway:

Above:  Behold the mighty THUNDER!

He was over a foot across, and he certainly had some attitude about him, as you can see from his expression.  My first thought was that I was suspected of being a replicant and that this was one of the tests:

Dead Acorn: "I've never seen a turtle... But I understand what you mean."

Holden: "You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back, Dead Acorn."

Dead Acorn: "Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden? Or do they write 'em down for you?"

Holden: "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

Dead Acorn: [angry at the suggestion] "What do you mean, I'm not helping?"

Holden: "I mean: you're not helping! Why is that, Dead Acorn?"

Luckily, he had a dog turtle tag with a phone number on it, and his person only lived a few doors down (which means he must have been wandering for days), so I was able to convince myself that I'm not a manufactured worker-bot.

I’ve also been trying to get a little work done in the hellscape behind my house backyard.  It’s essentially hard-baked ground in which nothing can grow but the hardiest of weeds.  While I can respect them for their tenacity, it was time for them to go.  So I start to pull these out (remember the shed project?  As you can see, it’s coming along right on schedule for completion around 2014!) …

Above:  After the nukes fly, it’ll be just the cockroaches and my backyard foliage left.

… when I discover this:

Above:  Perhaps the toughest fruit/vegetable that’s ever grown.

I assume that the seeds blew over from the neighbor’s yard, because I’ve certainly made no efforts at active cultivation.  There’s just the one cherry tomato, about an inch in diameter, having grown with absolutely no water or care of any sort.  I’m not a fan of tomatoes, but I think I’ll squish it into ketchup.  The corn dog that has the honor of bearing it will be one proud Pronto Pup, I’m certain.

Lastly, I believe I’ve mentioned that The Live Acorn has secured gainful employment, which, as it turned out, was excellent in terms of timing, as she was able to use her first paycheck to pay a fine for her jaywalking ticket, which she received as she was trying to goad her friends into crossing against the light as well.  We had the following text message exchange:

Dead Acorn:  “Way to go, outlaw.”

Live Acorn:  “Yeah, I’m a badass.  How many times have you jaywalked?”

Dead Acorn:  “Jaywalked?  Thousands.  Ticketed?  Zero.  I generally try to not make a show of it.”

Live Acorn:  “Dad, it was a motorcycle cop!  I couldn’t even see him!”

Dead Acorn:  “You should tolly plead not guilty.  The judge will buy that, I’m sure.”

Live Acorn:  “Shut up.”

Other than things like this, life is normal.  Not sure if that’s good or bad.

We Tried So Hard To Raise Her Right ...

The Live Acorn spent last weekend in the rugged heart of Idaho, listening to a bunch of hippy-folk play some twangy-ass music volunteering at/attending the Sawtooth Music Festival, which is a “festival” with lots of “music” that takes place near the “Sawtooth” mountains, which are apparently appealing to some people:

Above: Meh. Whatever.

I’m led to believe that she thoroughly enjoyed herself, as evidenced by this text message exchange we had prior to meeting at Boise’s “Alive After Five” weekly musical extravaganza last evening:

Live Acorn: “Father, will you be attending tonight’s “Alive After Five” musical extravaganza? I do so look forward to seeing you.

Dead Acorn: “o hllz ya 4 shr. Blugrass band. C U l8r!”

(I love modern technology and how it affords us the ability to communicate meaningfully disirregardless of our differences in expressive style.)

Live Acorn: “O Father! I truly am excited, for bluegrass music has literally changed my life!”

Dead Acorn: “Do u have any clu wat “literally” means? Dnt thnk so.”

Live Acorn: “Of course I do, Father. I refer to an incident in which I was struck in the head by an errant banjo at the Sawtooth Music Festival, which rendered me left-handed and speaking with a Sudanese accent!”

Dead Acorn: “Mad propz 2 the Boise skool sys.”

Actually, she’s always had very good taste in music, even though she’s had her short spells of listening to horrific Top 40 (it never lasts long, thank jeebus). After her profession of love for the bluegrass genre, I posted something along these lines on teh Facebook:

My daughter came out and told me that she loves bluegrass music today. I told her that there’s nothing wrong with that, and that she was born that way, and that even though haters gonna hate, the only thing this changes is the radio station.

It’s really too bad that Earl Scruggs didn’t live to see full acceptance of the gut-bucket as an instrument equal to others, but someday, Live Acorn … someday.

As it turns out, she’s learning life’s hard lessons about discrimination in more ways than one. She had recently applied for employment at a downtown ice-cream parlor, only to be told that the purple streaks in her hair are at odds with the image the parlor is trying maintain. I’ve only been into the establishment a time or two, but it’s apparently a Barbie-Doll-Stepford-Wives-Chik-Fil-A-Only-With-Hair-Dye-Instead-Of-Gay-Marriage kind of place fostering purplephobia, and even if they had a liquor license and gave away free Ouzo, I wouldn’t set a foot ‘cross their threshold. (Sure, I might have someone sneak me out some, but you know what I mean.)

On a positive note, she did land a job at a ceramics/art place, which has far more social value than a bunch of look-a-like bimbettes-in-training schlepping overpriced “artisan” ice cream to the overstuffed Americans gorging …

Ok, you know what? This may have more to do with me projecting my own experience at being forced to take out my 4th earring back in my days as a line cook. I should address the inner demons of my past openly and honestly.

On the other hand, what else are kids for?

I Look In The Mirror, And It's Not Me Looking Back ...

While one might assume that given my astounding level of productivity, blogwise (almost 1 nonsensical string of unrelated words post a week!), that I must be at the keyboard every waking hour, breaking only for the shortest times for necessary sustenance and hygienic functions, that is not the case.  I have, on occasion, been known to take in a ballgame on the television at the local tavern, partaking in a beverage or three, whilst chatting with various acquaintances.  Further, even in the realm of the Googly-Tubez, my activities are not limited to this little web-log, but extend to an area of what are called “social networks.”

A current development on one called “Facebook” has got me a bit rattled. (For those unfamiliar with teh Facebook, one can sign up and become “Friends” with other people and inform them as to the contents of your latest meal, and post vague and angsty “status updates” upon the discontinuation of a romantic relationship.  One can also designate “Friends” as “Close Friends” by marking them with a star in order to more closely track their activities.  I would think that even the most cursory knowledge of WWII would have quashed this feature, but who am I to say?)

Anyway, for some reason or another, I became “Friends” with a bloke* in Jolly Olde England with the same name as mine (The Dead Acorn is my given legal name, but on Facebook, I’m known as Beauregard Wilthingham III).  The other Beauregard Wilthingham III seems like a very nice fellow – though eerily, he claims to enjoy beer and cheesy jokes, does woodworking/carpentry projects around the house, and has a shot of his dog as his profile picture (as do I).  Fortunately, I believe he actually finishes his projects; otherwise, that would just be freaky.

The disconcerting part of the whole situation is that he’ll post something, and I’ll see it as something new from myself, and immediately panic over what I was thinking and assume I was on-line after the aforementioned “beer or three.”  My blood pumping, brow perspiring, hands a-tremble, I, without fail, go combing through my email outbox searching for ill-advised messages to ex-significant others and potentially obnoxious comments on the posts of others.  Last night, he apparently “Shared” a picture that another friend (who (whom?  whatever ... (but trebly-nested parentheses! Woo!)) I really know) had posted, so that it provided even stronger evidence that it was actually my action, not his.  Worse, the picture was an unflattering image of a woman wearing cutoff jean shorts that were likely not as well-fitting as they perhaps once were … that type of humor is not generally my cup of tea, and I wasn't particularly proud of myself for having “Shared” it. “That’s IT!” I said to the hound dog. “I’m off the hooch for good!”

Luckily, I discovered the truth in fairly short order (short enough that I hadn’t dumped all the hooch down the drain and taken an axe to my backyard still), and had a nervous chuckle over the whole incident.

As writer (and noted bedeviling scamp) David Thorne has noted, the internet is a playground.  And sweet jeebus, playgrounds can be confusing and traumatizing places.

* I hope that "bloke" isn't an insult in Jolly Olde England.  I'd hate to be responsible for some type of international incident yet again.

Zero Score And Four Years Ago ...

Happy Blogoversary to me!  Twenty-eight years ago today (the Hell Hound made me write that in dog years) was my very first post.  Woo!  Sure, the frequency of new posts has dwindled over time, but I assume my reader takes that as a good thing.  You're welcome.

I think I've only had to delete one post, and shut down comments on only one as well (probably because most of what I write is done at work, which is, as a general rule of thumb, my least intoxicated time of the day, and therefore least offensive).  Both of those factoids are on my résumé.

Thank you for reading.