the wrong side of the bed

karaoke was delightful last night, until things got ugly. i think we left around 1:00, and i guess things must have turned bad around midnight when a group of people wearing headbands and matching shirts showed up. one man, an undergrad, did a horrible rendition of a song i can't remember ("let's get it on" maybe?), including impromptu cries of "motherfucker" and air fucking. it was disturbing in the extreme, and i was upset not just by the aggression, but also by the speaking in tongues. i'm not keen on making fun of religion - i just recently asked my christian coworkers to stop making fun of mormons - and the speaking in tongues came off as racist on top of that. we asked erika to move "total eclipse of the heart" up to the top of the queue and then jj and i got the fuck out of there.

on the street outside there were multiple women dressed lik a college student's approximation of a hooker. there were men making loud barking sounds. we passed the corner with wando's and were somewhat relieved by the presence of police officers, even if they were just giving out tickets to underage drinkers. the parking garage was remarkably asshole free, but driving out of it was more of a challenge as jj had to maneuver the car passed drunk people. when we made it to johnson, i commented that things seemed so much calmer by just driving one block. just then we saw a boy and girl in a parking lot running in a circle because... they were chasing a rabbit. drunk undergrads chasing a bunny in a circle.

Labels: fucked up, karaoke, really really weird

i don't know about boys. a kid* from my high school called me at 3:55 in the morning last night. yeah. we had a class together my freshman or sophmore year, i can't really remember. he was a nice boy, but very odd. we sat in the corner with a girl named julie. we all used to write funny little poems about history because the class** was so boring. i used to think steven had a crush on me, maybe. once he started telling me how great i was and i told him there was a wall between us (that is actually what i said). honestly, he was a pretty nice guy. anyway, he called out of the blue at 3:55 AM. he told me that he is in madison, passing through to milwaukee to see a sick relative. it was an odd conversation. as soon as i picked up the phone, he said he was sorry for waking me up and i probably had to worked tomorrow. yes, i said, i gotta make a living.

anyway, the conversation was quite odd. he mentioned some friends of mine that he had seen after we graduated from high school, but they were all references to events immediately after high school. he also asked me if i remembered working at randall's***, which of course i did. after all, i am the one who worked there, and he is the one who did not. i said that i hated ironing my uniform before i would go to work. he said he likes a crisp collar.

he told me he was applying for an assistant manager position at one of those horrible check cashing places*, and i said they were evil. he said if he got the job, he would stay in madison, but otherwise he was just passing through. he also said that he had worked in houston for a while for "internet companies" but that he left town on bad terms and that there were people angry with him. he said he had gone to school in indiana and that he had been in the navy.

it was quite odd. at the end of the conversation, i said, "well, don't stalk me." he said, "what?!" i said, "don't stalk me." he said, "you are allowed to call one friend from high school at 4:00 in the morning." i said, "don't stalk me."

thing is, he must have known i lived in wisconsin. probably found me on the internet. was coming through town and thought he would find my phone number and call me in the middle of the night. don't you think that is sketchy?

the other weird thing is that i mentioned chip, the kid from infinite eruption, who i wrote about in my last post. i said that i had just found him on the internet. it turns out that steven didn't know him. he said something about how i must have liked chip in high school. i didn't, i just knew chip from elementary school through 12th grade. and i thought the name of his band was freaking hilarious. at one point i think my friend clare and i were going to pretend to be groupies. i guess i am a bit weird, too, as i googled chip just the day before. who doesn't google old friends? i guess the difference is that i don't call them at 3:55 in the morning.
* he is a kid in my head, but i suppose he has actually aged at the same rate that i have.

** another boy in that class started out as my friend, but then he took to calling me a feminazi all the time. what the fuck?

*** a grocery store owned by mormons. they wouldn't sell alcohol or cigarettes. it was explained that this was because they were a mormon owned store. they did, however, sell caffeinated beverages.

**** at the cash store, you are cash-worthy with us.

Labels: childhood, fucked up, really really weird

i have met, but do not know well, someone who is currently incarcerated for... something weird. should i say what it is? is that the kind of thing that you shouldn't post on your blog? i mean, what this person is in prison for is so unusual that i would guess it would be pretty easy to figure out who it is that i know if you were, um, the man. there can't possibly be very many people currently locked up for this crime. if you wanted to figure out which of these people i know, and you were a federal agent, you could just take that (very short) list and circle the one or two people on it who might live where i used to live. maybe.

i will just say this: when i was telling jon the story, he misheard me as saying "organ smuggling" instead of the kind of smuggling it really was. i don't know an organ smuggler. i don't even know a former organ smuggler. i don't know any alleged organ smugglers, current or former.

he is the husband of my mother's friend. after being out on appeal, he was sent back just reccently. my mom's friend says that he is back in the "big house on the prairie." get it? so, the news of his imprisonment isn't new, just refreshed. anyway, this person is about 70 years old now. he is in poor health. i guess i feel that, given the fact that he is 70 years old and has diabetes and a heart problem makes me wonder if maybe he shouldn't have been sent back. if he were a white collar criminal i'd advocate a life sentence (i'm probably kidding), but this seems a bit different. does it seem like i am being to "soft on crime"? will you still elect me to office?

(okay, wait. i just did some googling found that this was a pretty publicized case in the houston area and among orchid hobbyists. so, there, i said it. he allegedly smuggled some orchids.)

(okay, i also guess there is something to be said about the endagered status of the orchids. that is usually why they are illegal to import. the status of these orchids is iffy. i won't get into it b/c i wasn't at the trial. regardless, this man didn't really follow rules very well, so locking him up isn't really unreasonable.)

Labels: fucked up, strange, texas

okay, am i the only one on earth who is not just kinda sick, but actually really sick of sally field? because i am. i guess i got worn out after gidget. sure, i wanted her for my valentine then but stop making those sad eyes or talking really fast when you are angry or looking so shocked at something we all saw coming. just chill out.

sorry, that isn't really what i was going to write about. it just didn’t seem to warrant a post all of its own. anyway…

about a month ago, when careyoke was here, it actually got cold. cold enough to freeze. i was supposed to drive to one of my communities for work, and i pulled into a gas station before i got on the road because, well, my tank was pretty much totally empty. my gas tank has one of those little doors that you pop open with a lever on the floor by the driver’s side door. i lean over, yank, and … nothing. yeah. nothing. it doesn’t budge. okay, i pull it again with the same result. it is frozen. now, i am from texas and we don’t have cold, cold winters, so you might think this was some dumb problem that i have just yet to experience but that everyone goes through up here. thing is, i have lived through winter in madison before. i have lived through very, very cold winters. not only that, my car has lived through cold winters. and the gas tank door has always come open.

i drive to a different gas station because the one where i am doesn’t even have an inside, just a booth where you pay for gas and buy cigarettes. i try the lever again, but it still doesn’t work. i call jon all freaked out because i am supposed to be in lodi, wisconsin. i tell him that my gas tank is frozen closed. he says i should poor hot water on it. how? how do i do that? anyway, i get angry with him for offering me no good advice. i call my mom. she tells me to pry it open. i get mad at her for the same reason. my mom calls the toyota dealership in houston, but they don’t know what to say. she calls back. i kind of apologize. i decided to skip lodi and just go home.

i head down park street. my car sounds weird. i am terrified that i am going to run out of gas and have no way to add any. i glide into a midas station. i leave my car there because they are about to close for the night. i call tara or careyoke or jj, i can’t remember which, and they are all in the car together on their way to get dinner. so they save me and we get eats.

the next morning, i get my car. overnight in the garage, the cable thawed and the door could be opened. they tell me there was moisture on the line. they tell me they put silicon on it and that it shouldn’t happen any more. they put silicon on the cable running to the trunk, too, because the automatic trunk popping thing is frozen, too. they don’t charge me and i am happy and i go fill up my tank.

fast forward to this monday. i am on my way to columbus, wisconsin, where there is a christopher columbus museum because, you know, it is where his ship touched ground, and i stop to get gas. after a million days of warmth, it is finally cold enough to freeze. the door to my gas tank won’t open. i turn my heat up high and drive to sun prairie wisconsin. i figure if i get to sun prairie and am able to get gas, i will keep going. if i can’t open the tank, i will turn around and go home. the tank won’t open. i drive to jon’s house because he has a driveway. i drive with the heat on high. i check the lever at every stop light. it opens a block from his house. i fill up the tank. i close the door.

flash back to summer. did i forget to tell you that my car flooded?

flash forward from summer to this wednesday (i am getting kind of back to the future here and am about to marry my own mom). i am at the toyota dealership. they don’t understand what i am saying about the door not opening. a mechanic makes me pull the lever. nothing happens. he asks me to pull it again, i don’t know why. not surprisingly, it doesn’t open. he tugs on it. he gets some other guy to tug on it. they decide that they will leave it in their garage for 30-45 minutes until it thaws and then try to figure something out. i watch CNN in the customer lounge. i realize that the ice storms in texas are worse than i thought. i finally call my family. they are fine.

after 30-45 minutes my gas tank door could be opened. they decide that if they remove all of the ice from around the cable everything will be just fine. they say that if it isn’t i can order the part. they shut the door to the tank. i drive to work. by the evening, the cable is frozen again. i drive to cottage grove without issue. on the way home, i turn the heat up really, really high. i go to jon’s house because he still has a driveway. i leave my car idling in his drive way. after 10 minutes, i check to see if i can open the tank. no, but the lever to my trunk moves freely. wait! it moves freely because it is broken! most likely, it is completely disconnected from the cable! i curse but then shrug because i can still open the trunk with my key. i go back inside. jon drinks a beer. i ask about dinner (i love dinner). 10 minutes later, i check and the lever can finally move. the door eases open. i leave it open, turn off my car, go inside jon’s apartment, and complain about wanting dinner. we decide to cook something at my house and head over there without stopping for gas. i park on the street by my apartment. it is silly, i know, but i am worried about leaving the door open. not because i think someone is going to siphon gas, but because i think someone will walk by and close it. i would because i would assume that the owner of the car forgot or pulled the wrong lever or something. i try to figure out a way for the door to sort of close but not all the way close. i push and poke the door a few times. i realize that i have actually closed the door. i worry for a second until i realize that the door hasn’t stayed closed. why? because now it is broken in the open position. i don’t laugh.

if you want to siphon gas from my car, you know where i live.

where i don’t live, though, are any number of small towns to which i have to travel. lodi (population 2,929), marshall (population 3,432), waterloo (population 3,259), cambridge (population 1,227), deerfield (population 1,971), columbus (population 4,479), and fall river (population (1,097).

do you know what is different about these towns as compared to my “hometown”? main street. there is no main street where i am from, despite the fact that it is a real hometown. do you know what is the same if you compare madison with the smaller towns? main street. do you know what is different about these main streets? in small towns, main street is in fact the main street. in madison, it is kind of unassuming. i am easily able to forget it exists. i crossed it today. i cross it whenever i go to jon’s to let my car idle with the heat on. today i remembered to notice that it was main street. i guess main street goes to the capital, but it is not a street i would ever take to the capital. state street for sure. definitely the wash. not main street.

small towns, like my car and sally field, don’t make much sense to me.

Labels: friends, fucked up, pity party, worry

but they wouldn't stop showing it!


last night when i got back from a really dull meeting in cambridge, wisconsin, i decided to veg out with some TV. there was nothing on except for one tree hill. i decided to watch madonna's special: confessions on a dance floor.

A+ will be happy to know that, at least in my opinion, her singing was as bad as normal. plus, she has decided to move down an octave. okay, whatever. anyway, the weird part to me was, while they really focused on her dancing rather than her singing in the video/concert, they really, really focused on her bum. and her crotch.




rather than sing along, they seemed to want us to masturbate along. rather than being cuter and younger than i ever was, she is older and hotter than i ever have been. good work madonna, i suppose. still, i think i would rather be remembered for something other than my bum.



* ass

Labels: fucked up, icky sex, tv

Labels: fucked up, scary

still, 39%?!?!?! i'm kind of sickened.

Labels: fucked up

today at rocky rococo's, connie and i saw a girl with a confederate flag baseball cap. she wasn't wearing it, it was just on that ledge thingy behind the headrests in the backseat. it prompted a continuation of a discussion that we've been having ever since we saw the confederate flag cornhole set. though it seems somehow impossible to us, it seems as though people really don't associate the confederate flag with racism. i do and i'm from the south!* maybe this is just what my parents taught me. maybe other people just think it is about southern pride. still, what is "southern pride?" and if it is just about pride, how come i've never seen an african american or latino wearing a confederate flag hat or belt buckle?

anyway, as many of you know, i am looking for a job. on the jobsinmadison website today, i found an interesting factoid. i've crudely highlighted the part that you should look at. you might want to click the image to make it bigger.





this makes the civil war sound like a game of capture the flag in which the south ultimately lost because they weren't hardy enough to withstand the cold.

i am beginning to wonder, really, really wonder, what the heck people think the civil war was about**, what they think being "northern" and "southern" means, what they think the "legacy of the civil war" is, and why we continue to think the things we do. on our walk this morning, jeff, connie and i were talking about history. jeff, a historian, was saying that much of what he is interested in the field is research starting in the 80's that tries to undo all of our misconceptions about history that we have woven through the ages. you know, like undoing all of the lies about pilgrims and founding fathers, etc. so, the next question i have is whether or not i am curious enough to look for books that might tell me what people in the north and south think about northern-ness and southern-ness. given that i am lazy, could someone just recommend a book for me?

* normally i would argue that texas isn't really the south, but, in this case, if i am honest, it really is. i mean, you could buy confederate flags from creepy stands on the side of the road. in houston, you could also buy parrots and gulf shrimp*** from vans on the side of the road. it always seemed like a very bad idea, especially the shrimp.

** as a middle school student, i was told that the civil war was about slavery as a racist institution, in junior high i believe i was told that it was about state's rights, in high school i think i was told that it was about slavery as an economic institution. in college, i didn't take too much history. i only know that texas history was required again! all hail that mighty state and whatnot.

*** the shrimp was from the galveston area. so is the juneteenth celebration. last night my girl scouts (mostly african american girls) and i were talking about juneteenth. madison has its own juneteenth celebration. i asked them if there were a lot of white people there this year. they said there were a few, but wondered why i was asking. i said that it was a holiday mostly celebrated by black people. but i couldn't remember what it was a celebration of! when did i become such an idiot? anyway, i got home and looked it up online. the emancipation proclamation went into effect in january of 1862, but many former confederate states didn't recognize this. on june 19th, 1863, federal troops arrived in galveston and sort of reiterated that slaves were to be freed. the former slaves were understandably relieved to hear this and there was widespread revelry. every year since then in texas there have been juneteenth celebrations. it has spread to other states, too.

this is how the order actually read: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

Labels: fucked up, south, texas, work

yesterday at jon's apartment, his roommate's girlfriend asked if she could open a window or turn on the fan. she felt it was stuffy in the apartment. jon's roommate said, "of course you can. in this apartment, girls can do whatever they want." i said, "so i can do what i want?" "no," he said, "you aren't really a girl. well you aren't girly."

right. i suppose he wouldn't consider the fact that, while walking to their apartment, some guy screamed out his car window, "hey, you have a fat ass!" because people scream that at boys all the time.

Labels: complaining, fuck off, fucked up, gender, jon

the other day, i posted about the game of cornhole, but i didn't really explain why. kids* in my neighborhood have started playing this game, first at the house next to mine, and now two blocks away. last weekend i saw four different groups of kids playing. one of the groups uses what i have been calling the "civil war commerative cornhole set." one of the targets is the flag of the US (current) and one is that of the confederacy. i have no idea why one would use a set like this. i want to confront the kids and ask them why they are doing it. WWMDD?**

here are some images for you. some of these are "baggo" sets, which is exactly the same game. i think that some people for some reason don't like to call it "cornhole." i'm sure that in cincinnati, where the game originated, they call it cornhole. keep it real, that's what i say.


* college kids
** not wah-weapons of mass duh-destruction. what would mitch dunier do. i suspect he would walk up to the kids, play dumb, and start asking questions.

Labels: fucked up