the wrong side of the bed

i don't know why this is making me so sad, but marvin zindler died yesterday. he was an "investigative reporter" on the houston abc affiliate. he reported daily for Eye Witness News, the station my family watched. he was well known for exposing consumer fraud and for uncovering restaurants with health code violations. perhaps his greatest contributions to the world were providing the impetus for sneeze guards on salad bars and buffets and uncovering the brothel that was the inspiration for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

i always thought he looked like a negative image roy orbison. you be the judge.

Labels: texas, tv

not that i forgot these, but today i remembered some things from my childhood.

the first is from elementary school. there were kids, mostly boys, who would find a social pariah of some sort, mostly ugly girls, and sneak up behind them to deliver a message from on high. a tap on the shoulder. "i love you," they would say, "in god's way." meaning that, though hideous and unpopular, they were forced to love you, but only the way that god might, in that he loved all of his children. needless to say, i was loved quite well by my elementary school classmates.

the second is not scaring, but funny. there were two music groups from my high school. one was a duo, a year ahead of me, who played folk music and called themselves the "peyote siblings." the other was a band made up of boys i had been in school with since elementary school. they were called "infinite eruption." i saw both groups perform at various events, but one stands out. at a party for high school kids in the park near my house, chip*, lead singer for "infinite eruption", performed wearing green lipstick. needless to say, his hairy was stringy.

* shit! i had chip's last name in this post, but then i googled him and found him on the internet. i don't want him to stumble on this post. anyway, google tells me that chip is in grad school now, pursuing an MFA in creative writing.

Labels: childhood, music, texas

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

while home for christmas, i didn't really see any friends, except for sean (he doesn't count because he is very nearly family - i did live with him, you know). jon, hilariously, ran into a friend from middle school at a comic book store. his friend hadn't changed a bit. he still lived with his parents and, according to jon, still talked too loudly.

have i changed at all since middle school or high school? yes, decidely yes. at my good grandmother's christmas event, i learned from my aunt cathy that my mom and brother called me the anti-christ** when i was in high school. i was sort of prone to fits of yelling and i told my family that i hated them all of the time.

in college, i suppose i was much better. i didn't yell as much. i just moped and hated myself in a more quiet way. but, i also got a bit quirkier. i mean, i was a freak in high school. i wore ties in my hair in place of scarves. i kept a giant orange pig in the backseat of my car. when people asked me what it was doing there, i would tell them that it was my car pig. duh. his name was claudius, i think. my friend clare and i developed mock obsessions with sting, woodpeckers, and my friend adam jacks.**** in college i took to dying my hair funny colors, wearing totally insane clothes, including a pair of yellow polyester pants that were too short, and covering myself in temporary tattoos. in high school, i thought it was a sign of weakness to laugh; in college it was spit take after spit take.

anyway, at one point in college, i had bright red hair. not the kind of red i had about 3 years ago, but a more run lola run red. when i had hair that red, men were constantly hollering at me from passing cars. the homeless guys outside of the store where i worked made comments every day. i never have random people tell me i'm attractive.

(okay, once, walking outside a gay bar, a woman told me, "you are beautiful, do you know that?" but that is about it. oh, and i guess there was that jim anchower looking guy who sent a drink to me when i was at paul's club. also, when i worked at a grocery store during high school, a woman told me that i had a nice hairline.)

when i had red hair, it wasn't always flattering what men said to me. i'm suprised i didn't get that "do the drapes match the carpet" thing. mostly guys tell me that i am fat. seriously, drunk men tell me that i am fat all of the time. hey, guess what? i totally know that i am fat. so, i guess, more people think i am fat and ugly than think i am attractive. in fact, at least one boy a day told me i was a "fat cow" when i was in elementary school. "do you want to go with me? just kidding, you are a fat, ugly cow." thanks boys, i get it.

anyway, what is it with guys and red hair? seriously. i like having red hair because i like looking like a comic book character, so it is either red, black, or blonde. black makes me look kind of washed out, and when i am blonde, there are practically arrows drawn on my face pointing out every blemish, so red it is. i kinda hate that i get more attention when i have red hair. aren't i attractive when i have brown hair? my ex-boyfriend sean didn't think i was cute at first (for the record and to be fair, i didn't think he was cute, either). he didn't think i was cute until one day when i had bright red hair and was wearing a white t-shirt and blue pants. he decided i looked like a fisher price little person. um, hot.

sean is constantly telling me that people find attractive what they find attractive. this is usually after i go on a rant about how his pal zak only likes pencil thin girls with giant breasts. i especially hate that zak dismissed me when he first met me because i wasn't (1) a hot girl or (2) a boy. boys, while not hot, are clearly more fun to talk to than ugly girls. sean doesn't realize that zak blew me off because sean is a boy, and thus worthy of zak's attention. he obviously didn't see things from my perspective. eh. fuck zak. but not in the nice sense of the word because he would just like that. at least he would like that if it weren't me.

anyway, i guess sean is sort of right about people being attracted to what they find attractive. i mean, my first crush was on keith from voltron. i've had a thing for people with dark brown hair and brown eyes ever since. sorry to all of you blondies out there. not that i wouldn't like you if you were towheaded. it just might take me a bit longer to, you know, get all warm for your form.

my hair is somewhere between brown and red red right now. best of both worlds.

* jon admitted in the car today that this was a good song. i think it is one of the best songs in reccent musical history, but what do i know. anyway, jon is such a metal head that i didn't think he'd like bob dylan. who knew?

** i am so johnny rotten.

*** my family rules the school. i am going to chalk my cruelty up to my undiagnosed epilepsy. what can't i blame on that? it is probably the most awesome excuse i have ever had in my life.

**** adam, if you are reading this, i had a tremendous crush on you. i'm sure you knew that, tho. you do have pretty brown eyes. in fact, i just google-stalked you and found a picture you from your brother's website. i almost posted it here, except you are wearing a dorky headband. you know the picture; it is the one from the from the MS bike ride. anyway, don't tell clare, all right? hey, i just google-stalked clare! i found clare! should i email her? i'm scared.

Labels: epilepsy, family, jon, sean, texas

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