Pig in a Poke

One of my favorite things to do growing up was run around with my dad on a Saturday afternoon when he visited his friends who were farmers. They would shoot guns or go out for a couple beers, and I would get to tag along; so it was a special treat yesterday when his friends called and said he should come out because they were cooking a suckling pig. Of course mom was upset because she remembers the days where, like all men, dad would go out for "a couple of beers," and now that I'm thirty-three and look more and more like my father, I guess she didn't believe either of us, but we went for two hours, had a "few beers," got free American Dairy Farmers hats (cow print), and ate some pig.

cOrnHlOe (I tried)

Yesterday I made the ten-hour drive from Jersey to Ohio stopping at my friend's house for the night, and it was eerily similar, and by that I mean exactly the same, as last year: I drove ten hours stopping only for McDonald's breakfast and later on for a soda; I got a trucker tan on my left arm; Brian had a birthday party for his two-year-old son, Lucas; I ate a lot of fried chicken, his siblings and 2,ooo toe-headed nieces and nephews were screaming and yelling; after everyone left, we drank beer, played the most intense game of cornhole ever in the twilight, and had a camp fire listening to my ipod on computer speakers; we ate some more chicken and drank some more beer, I fell asleep on his couch, ate a piece of chicken for breakfast, and drove back to my parents' house. There were some discrepencies, but not signifcant enough to count, and if I can do this every summer for my homecoming, that will be alright with me.

My First Fish

I actually wrote this as a comment of "Daily Sentence of Dave," but I thought I would double dip and post it here too:

I can actually remember when I caught my first fish at Camp Wakonda in Piqua, Ohio. It was a bluegill(sunfish) and when my grandpa and I brought it back to the camper, my dad pulled it out of the bucket and threw it right on the grill. I screamed my head off, so he put it back in the bucket, but it floated on its side with the grill marks facing up.

Channel FORE!

"Sometimes I like to think about the people I hate.
I take my room at the Hate Hotel, and I sit and flip

through the heavy pages of the photographs,

the rogue's gallery of the faces I loathe...

...like a general running his hands over a military map—

and my bombers have been sent outover the dwellings of my foes,

and are releasing their cargo of ill will"

Hate Hotel by Tony Hoagland

I gave the poem this comes from to my students for the exam today, and as I was reading it, I could only think of the guy who interrupted me yesterday as I was trying to order a roast pork sandwich from the Cuban deli* for lunch. I was in the middle of placing an order for the sandwich when this guy** comes in and says in a booming voice, "Channel four, do you get channel four? Turn on channel four!" I was shocked at first, and thought something might be wrong, and even the man who runs the deli looked at him in disbelief and asked if a plane had crashed or something. The man, who hadn't stopped talking says, "The Open! The Open is on channel four, can you change it to channel four?"

.......GOLF!!!!? This only solidifies my general opinion of golfers, which is not based on the game of golf, but the opinion that most golfers have of themselves because they are golfers. I should have said something, but that is usually decided in a fraction of a second, and he must not have crossed that line that irrevocably sets me off, but I realized today after seeing this poem that I hate him. I know, "hate" is a strong word. How is this possible? Simple: I can forgive anyone just about anything, and I hate no group of people*** because there is always something good about people or circumstances that drive them to be difficult or unlikeable; however, nothing horrible was going to happen to this guy if he didn't get to see some stuffy white guy tap a ball into a hole with a $400 dollar piece of slag at the end of a stick. I know nothing of this man outside of those few minutes in the deli, but he interupted me mid-order when I was hungry, and I can find nothing redeeming**** in him.

* http://esoderica.blogspot.com/2009/05/call-me-jack.html

**a-hole.

*** Golfers are not people.

**** Not What JWD

Something is Afoot...

I have really had some great runs lately. Last week I ran 3.6 miles in 27 minutes, which puts me at about the seven and a half minute mile time. Of course when I went two days later, I was a bit slower, but my legs were a bit tired from my previous performance because I'm not in the best shape. So today, after a three days of rest and a fried chicken dinner at eight o'clock last night, I thought I would be charged and ready for a record-breaking run. I was actually a little excited about getting out and running, and I decided to take my phone just so I could time myself. The run sucked. The humidity was visible, which made it hard to breathe, plus I was wearing an uncomfortable, thick t-shirt that I ironically got from running a 5mile race, and it was chafing my nipples. I was determined to not look at the timer until I got back in hopes that maybe I was running a good time, but around the three mile marker, I rolled my ankle, felt a pop, and heard a snap (or I heard a phantom snap from feeling the pop). I was hot, sweaty and pissed, and I had to call Lib to pick me up. Then I realized that I had not looked at the clock when I rolled my ankle, so I checked when I called Lib, which put me at about 25 minutes for 3miles, so at least I wasn't breaking my record, but I guess I won't be for a while. Normally I would say this was a bad day, but Lib took care of me; she bought a "Vitamin Water: Balance" and some ice, and when I awoke from a brief nap on the couch, she had warmed up my leftovers from the fried chicken dinner, so I could stay on the couch in case I needed to play guitar or video games while she went to tutor--keeper!

Adult Listeracy

Sometimes when Lib makes a shopping list for me, she just draws the items on the list for fun and because it's cute; I like when she does it because, like a five-year-old, I think it's cool, and a seemingly mundane chore becomes more like an exciting scavenger hunt; however, when I pulled out the list to double check it in the checkout line, I realized the person behind me was also looking at my list, and I felt stupid for being a thirty-three year old man with a picture-based grocerly list; moreover, I realized that the woman probably thought I must be illiterate if someone had to draw my grocery list, so I texted Lib a rather lenghty text explaining all of this just so the woman knew that I could read and write, making sure she couldn't see what I was texting, but so that she would know I was texting.

How I Didn't Save a Bird

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
-- D.H. Lawrence

Unlike the time I made a hummingbird feeder with a styrofoam cup, labelling stickers, a red marker and Gatorade laced with sugar to save a hummingbird; unlike the time I caught a bird out of mid air with a garbage bag, and unlike the time I caught a parakeet barehanded and took it to a pet store in Brooklyn, this weekend, I did not save a bird. I went to Lib's cousin's graduation party, and not long after we arrived, her aunt, a mother of four young girls, came inside because they had all witnessed a bird fly into the window. The girls were concerned, and the bird, seemingly less concerned, was walking around the patio in a daze. It's wing was broken, but it looked fine, unless it tried to fly. Her aunt asked me if what was going to happen, and I said, "One of two things: either it's not as bad as it seems, or..." and then I saw four little pairs of hopeful, concerned eyes staring up at me, and Lib's mother interjected, "It will fly back to it's mother, right?" I went with it, but her aunt kept pushing me for the truth, and I kept saying it would probably fly away because the girls were right there, but as hard as Lib's mom and I gave her the look that adults give each other when they are trying to lie to children, she just kept pushing me until finally, I had to walk over and say in her ear, "It's going to die" without the girls hearing me. So I decided to "release" the bird by throwing it over a privacy fence into the woods. The girls followed me out, and I told them they should name the bird before we "released" it into the wild; in a tributary gesture for my efforts, the eldest said we should name it Eric. So I dubbed it Eric and perched it on top of the fence where it quickly rolled off the other side into the forest. And as grateful as everyone was, I had the privilege of knowing that my namesake would be dead before sunrise the next day, and I felt sorry for myself.

Not Every Bald A-hole...

When you shave your head and have a goatee, people automatically feel the need to tell you, "I saw a guy the other day that looked just like you" just because they saw some guy with his head shaved and a goatee. I have even received picutre texts of bald guys from friends, and my stock reply is: "not every bald a$$hole with a goatee is me". Some were offended, but I stood by my claim. My students last year told me I looked like a "white Montel." Then, yesterday I got an email from someone telling me how funny it was that my yearbook picture wasn't me, and, of course, when I looked, it was the other bald teacher with a beard(but it looked like a goatee in the picture) who is retiring this year. Then I typed in "bald goatee" in image search, and the first picture that came up is the one above. Even though it doesn't look exactly like me, if you saw him walking down the street, you would think it was me because you're stupid. So, I guess every bald a-hole with a goatee is me.

Orange ya glad...

After reviewing for the exam, my students commented on how colorful and vibrant my orange marker was on the dry erase board, and they asked me to draw an orange. So I did. Then they said I had to draw an orange wedge. So I did. But then it didn't make sense that there was a wedge and a whole orange, so they said I had to draw the space on the orange where the wedge came from. So I did--but it looked like an orange vagina, and I could hear them giggling, so I kept adding detail in the hopes that it would start looking less like a vagina. It didn't. Sadly enough, this is not the first time I have drawn a vagina or a penis on the board. I don't know if its just me or if it comes with being in a room half-full of teenage boys, but when I have drawn an unbloomed flower(I only had a red marker at the time), Manhattan Island or a thermometer, if it looks even vaguely phalic the kids let me know. Even if they are not brazen enough to point it out, the laughter gives it away. The only solution: just pretend it's not a hooha or a dingdong.

Just for the Halibut

Interesting little story. This eight-year-old girl entered herself in a fishing contest in Alaska with the hopes of catching a mermaid. To her dismay, she ended up cathching a 138.8 pound halibut. When the little girl got it close to the boat, her father pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, and she said, "you are not going to shoot my fish," but of course he did. The story is much funnier if you imagine what it would have been like had she caught the mermaid.

2008-2009 Mural

Today was the last day teaching, and last year we started a little tradition of drawing a colorful, yet ephemeral mural on the white board in the English office of all the little events and inside jokes that have taken place since September. If you notice an egg with a goatee, that is me, or was me at the Halloween party that I did not go to because I was in Portland, so a coworker drew eyes and a goatee on a balloon and took me to the party (it also spawned a series of comics starring the same balloon). Unless you work at the school, this is just a bunch of--that's right--esoterica, but my favorite, which was captured quite well, is the t-shirt at the top. When one of the clubs held a dance competition and ordered shirts decorated with a silhouette of woman dancing and blowing fire, the company convinced them to save money by making the fire white; as a result, the two-toned white flame that was right on the chest ended up looking more like a liquid than a gas; something more than molecules got excited (if you know what I mean). So it's been a good year, and our mural was better than last year's-- and when I think about next year, I am not thinking of how to be a better teacher, I am thinking about how I can make a better mural.

Bastardized Bastard

I guess that when my cousins were small children they must have picked the up word "bastard" somewhere, and when their parents told them not to say it because it is a bad word, my cousins must have asked "why?"; in order to save themselves the awkwardness and difficulty of explaing to a child the complex issue of fornication, unwed mothers, and sex in general my aunt or uncle gave an alternate, repulsive and completely fictional story that was horrible enough to suffice as a properly acceptable story to a child. As a result, I was told the same story when my cousins introduced me to the word and subsequently explained it to me. So for years growing up, I thought a bastard was "a baby born without arms and legs," which is absolutely the most horrible thing to say to a child when you are trying to protect them from the truth. I think if I could do it all over again, I would have rather learned by saying it, getting smacked in the face, and told never to say the word again, which is much less cruel than making up a disturbing story so fundamentally grotesque that a child will never want to say it again--or at least for a long time. Needless to say, this post needs no picture.

Street Fare

New York City street fairs are the best place to walk around, look at cheap crap, eat a ton of amazingly cheap food and not feel guilty because you just end up walking it off. Eat--walk ten blocks--eat--walk ten blocks and so on. Lib and I pretty much did this the entire afternoon, and it was perfect because we split everything, so it took longer to get full when on half portions, so we got to try even more: chicken pita, Mozzarepas, watermelon, etc. I had even convinced myself to get a ten-minute Chinese massage in one of the chairs, but it always seems a little sketchy when I pass by. On our way uptown, we came across a rather vibrant Hare Krishna parade, then we walked twenty more blocks, so we earned a Guinness and had dinner with a couple of my friends at Yum Yum Bangkok. After that we walked about ten more blocks to Grand Central just so I could look at the ceiling, but it's always worth it. And to top it all off, I came home with four bottles of my favorite hot sauce, Matouk's Calypso, which should last me a good year.

Misnomer

I was just thinking of when I was a child and at some point I had heard a term used in conversation, and more through logical deduction than through context clues(I obviously did not understand the adult conversation going on at the time), I figured out what I thought it meant. As a result, when I was at a restaurant and needed a wet-nap to clean my hands, I asked my mom if they had any sanitary napkins. I was quickly corrected, but to this day, I think wet-naps and sanitary napkins were misnamed.

Keepin it Real

After my students finished annotating their poems today, one of my students asked me to give him some feedback on some of his rap lyrics. I was hesitant, but the kid swore it was just a hypothetical story; otherwise, I would have to send them to a counselor. He was just trying to catch the real experience of the NJ suburban streets. The story seemed to be about a kid who was on sleeping pills and was falling asleep in class, and then I think some girl stabbed him in the head, but I stayed away from the stabbing and asked why a kid would take sleeping pills before school. He said that the kid was at home at his desk trying to do homework, so I asked why a kid would take sleeping pills before doing his homework, and he explained that the kid could not sleep, so he took some pills and was doing homework because he could not sleep (but if he was falling asleep doing work, why wouldn't he just go to bed?). So I told him that I did not see that part of the story in the lyrics; it wasn't in the story, so how were people supposed to get that part if it wasn't in the lyrics? But he explained to me in all seriousness: "Oh, that's in the beat."

Early Bird Special

At this very second I am having a conversation with Lib about what time we should eat dinner. She thinks that if we order dinner at 5pm, we will not get to eat dinner until 5:45 which is too late for her today. I say that is the earliest reasonable time to eat dinner unless we were seventy-five. Now she says that if I want to eat at six, and she wants to eat at 4:30, then 5:15 is a reasonable compromise--I disagree...as if that matters.

Live in Mono

Not that anyone would ever care, but I realized today, after two years of recording, that the button on my FastTrack audio interface that determines whether you record in stereo or mono is broken, so all the times I made sure it was on stereo did not matter one bit, and I need to buy a new one. This answers why I have had such a difficult time mixing the levels to my songs and would have to do them over and over, to very little avail. Sure, I could try to complain to the company, but it would only be fodder for them to make fun of me for being a clueless idiot. And much like Emma Bunton(I have no idea who she is, but she was on my image search for "in mono") I have been living my life in mono.

Old Fart

I recently turned thirty-three years old, and for the first time I got a card with the words "old fart" on it, specifically, "Old fart, my eye!" in a dialogue bubble coming from a rather large, old, seemingly dutch woman on the front wearing an apron. I don't personally believe I should be receiving this calliber of birthday card yet, but I might be wrong. My girlfriend told me this morning that I breathe loudly, and I noticed that this week when I was walking around the classroom checking the student's work. It's not like I'm winded or exhausted, but I have noticed, while at rest, that I have heard myself breathing through my nose quite noisily recently, just like my father and my grandfather. But they seem to be getting along just fine, and my grandfather has always been a hit with the ladies, even at the age of 87. Plus, I typed in "old fart" on yahoo images for a pic to go with today's blog, and the search yielded an entire series of horribly obscene pictures, but the people involved looked like they were having a good time. I guess you're only as old as you feel.

North for the Summer

I know it is a bit strange, but I have noticed recently that I get very excited when I hear Canadian geese honking overhead. For example, last week I was finishing a four-mile run on the final stretch toward home, and a flock flew overhead, honking and carrying on like they do, and I found myself running a lot faster, like some atavistic button was pushed and I reverted to trying to keep up with the flock and make it to Canada. Even though the common ancestor of humans and geese probably dates back to long before the dinosaurs, I felt a little bit of peer pressure to step up my pace. I'll admit it sounds crazy. It's like when I went to San Francisco and saw the sea lions at the pier constantly vying for supremacy on the floating platforms and barking like crazy; it made me want to jump in the water and play king of the platform, even though I would be no match for a 400 pound ball of muscle and fat with millions of years experience. Maybe I never lost that quality that kids have that when they hear a lot of noise, they just go crazy. Or maybe I'm just crazy. Either way, I generally have it under control; otherwise, I would be somewhere taking a break in a farmer's pond and getting ready for the next leg of my journey over Lake Ontario instead of writing this blog entry.

Killing in the Name of...

Quick blog today. For those of you know who would like to see Josh's band in San Francisco, here's a link.

Blow

I went fishing down at the shore last night, and if there were an award for catching trash fish, I would have a plaque for every year I have been fishing the beach. First, I caught a skate, a small ray, which fights about as hard as a turd on a string, and a sea robin, which looks like Jarjar Binks, that is commonly left on the shore to dry out and die a horrible death because fishermen hate them so much. I had one decent strike, but I was baiting my other pole, so I missed it altogether, but I can just blame that on Lib. There was a nice surprise, though; I reeled in my line expecting another skate, and I had hooked an adorable little blow fish. I had never seen one close up, and it was pretty cool. I'm going fishing again today, and hopefully a shark will bite my leg off so I have something good to write about tomorrow.

Hell in a Handbasket

I went the to movies with Lib last night and saw Drag Me to Hell, a Sam Raimi film about a girl who is cursed by a gypsy woman for not giving her another extension on her home loan. Sounds ridiculous? Well, it is. While I wouldn't call it scary, I did jump out of my seat about fifty times, and even more so, found myself bringing my fists up to my face in anticipation of something scary. If you liked the Evil Dead movies that he did ages ago, this is pretty typical of that series, but Raimi has more money and sway now, so it looks like he just had fun making this movie; it really makes me want to go back and watch the Evil Dead movies again. You have to go see it in the theater for the full effect, because it is the sound that really makes it, and if you can find the guy sitting behind us who was continually scared out of his pants, and who then followed each terrifying moment with a comment of disbelief and hearty, jolly laughter, you should have him go with you.

Good Friends...Prizeless

For those of you that know my friend, I'll refer to him here as Ryan Leiman for discretionary reasons, but others have called him Bribo or Ply-dog. In an attempt to inflict one of his guilt trips upon my friend, John, because he moved to Colorado recently after moving back to Ohio from Kansas, Ryan, in an attempt to accuse him of betrayal, called him a "trader" in an email. To make it even better, when the misuse of the homophone was brought to his attention, he replied in another email, "Nice. I laughed pretty good on that one. TRAITOR!!! INDIAN GIVER (explanation: you gave me your close locale and took it away)!!!! RAT SCALLION!!!!"

Dictionary.com says,

Rapscallion: noun--
a rascal; rogue; scamp.

Origin: 1690–1700; earlier rascallion, based on rascal.

esoderica.blogspot.com says,

Rat Scallion: noun--

a mix between a rodent and a green onion that has absolutely nothing to do with anything!

Origin: 2009; idiot's version of rapscallion. Believed to be created by the same man who coined "Quick as a cat, smooth as a rat," and there may be some connection to the nonsensical nature of the two terms.