Origins pt. 11

I grew up in a meat house. A week's menu would likely include fried chicken, meatloaf, hamburgers, roast beef, roast pork and spaghetti with meat sauce. No one made me eat my vegetables, so I didn't. For as long as I could remember New Years Eve was the apex of carnivorous behavior. All afternoon my mom would be cutting up steak into little cubes and making various sauces. As dusk fell, and my dad arrived home weary from another pointless day at the office, she would get out the avaocado green electric fondue pot (a wedding gift from 72) and begin heating vegetable oil. Once it was boiling we'd all gather round the table with our long, color coded forks (many an argument with my brother over who got red), and spear chunks of steak and dip them in the bubbling fat until they were brown enough to eat. This was a slow process, and dinner would stretch on for at least an hour and a half. Finally, after 30 or 4o pieces of deep fried beef I'd be full. We'd retire to the living room and watch movies until shortly before midnight when we'd tune in for the ball to drop. The kids would always get a cup of ginger ale for the toast. This went on until I was in 10th grade. That year I had a friend sleep over. He joined us for the weird flesh meal. By the next year I was completely immersed in my gone generation lifestyle and rang in the new year in the banging bass and day-glo of a Laurel, Maryland warehouse (at 11:58 the d.j. on the platform yelling out to a thousand of us "Just two more minutes mother fuckers!").

Origins pt. 10

In December of 1989 I began an art class flirtation with a beautiful Cambodian girl named Thy (she actually did model). We sat together, drew together, and molded clay together. On a Thursday afternoon shortly before Christmas she came to me as fourth period was about to start and asked me to skip class with her. I had never done anything like that before. We snuck off the high school campus and walked up Burke Lake Road to the King's Park Shopping Center bundled up against the cold. A few times she took my hand in her gloved grip. I was on top of the world, rebelling and falling in love at the same time. She took me to a Chinese restaurant where she knew the employees and spoke to them in whatever the language of Cambodia is. I had never eaten Chinese before and was too finicky to try it so I watched her eat noodle soup before we headed back to catch our buses. The next day I was in pre-algebra watching the clock waiting for Winter break to begin. She walked into my classroom and whispered something to my teacher. Ms. Weaver called out that I was needed in the office, and I followed Thy into the hallway. She wasn't even an office assistant. She was sucking on a candy cane and said "I just wanted to give you a Christmas card before we left, and this...", and she quickly kissed me on the cheek in the long hall of blue lockers and cold linoleum. I walked back to class touching the spot where her lips had been. I could feel the candycane stickiness of her kiss, and kept my hand there until the final bell rang. Over the break she called me. After talking for awhile she said "How come you haven't asked me to go with you?" I didn't know what to say, and stammered, embarassed. "It's because I'm Cambodian isn't it?", she sharply asked. All at once I realized that was why I hadn't asked her. I was mad for this girl, her adventurousness, rebel streak, and beautiful face, but I was afraid of what my friends would think. We were part of a group of all white jocky guys and gum smacking white girls. Thy was not someone known to my social circle. With her accent and skin color she never could be. I lied and said, "Of course not. It's just I'm not ready to go with anybody right now." And I lost her forever. After break I was ashamed to look her way and art was no longer a time of togetherness. I had given up the chance for the first great young love of my life because I was worried about others' racist perceptions. I had forgotten this for a long time, but Jeremiah's comment to Joe that "Tom's not a racist", brought it all back. I may not be one, but I let other peoples' prejudices break a girl's heart and my own when 14 was my only reality.

Origins pt. 9

In 6th grade social studies we were all at our desks doing round robin reading about Mesopotamia. The textbook informed my 11 year old mind that "human civilization began 5,000 years ago." Immediately I was overcome by dread, a darkening of my senses as I felt overwhelmed by my misunderstanding that before Mesopotamia there was nothing, in those days not knowing the difference between humanity and civilization. It was a crushing moment of insignificance and tinyness when I first began to contemplate how pointless everything was. It's hard to quantify now why this so disturbed me, but it did, and that feeling comes back to me sometimes when I encounter evidence of the past like the pottery shards I've found in my wanderings across the Colorado Plateau. I wonder if I was the only one in Mrs. Gorrell's class at Cherry Run that day who had their head blown off by the impermenance of their world conception.

Question of the Day?????????

Is Chik-Fil-A the only national restaurant chain with an openly right-wing agenda?

Name me one other fastfood joint that offers all customers free copies of The Washington Times (a great paper if you're one of the many who can maintain pro-war and pro-life positions at the same time-it helps to have a "wide stance"), and has little brass plaques on the cash drawers that say "Thou Shalt Not steal". Oh yeah, and they still honor the blue laws on Sunday. Also, mysteriously they are able to maintain a very white and English speaking staff even though every Mc'D's, BK, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and Arby's in the area tends to have an all immigrant workforce because teenagers here don't work anymore as they are too busy downloading songs onto their Ipods.

However, despite their allegiance to Brit Hume and William Kristol they do produce a superior frozen, breaded chik-n product when compared to the other grease merchants. And their unique waffle fries contain up to ten times as much surface area suitable for salting as your average thin potato snack(Wendy's excluded). And what other fast food restaurant gives you whip cream and a cherry on your milkshake? I'm told the cherry symbolizes the need for abstinence, and the cream stands for male depravity.

Origins pt. 8

A gray afternoon in spring with puddles in the cobbles at the entrances of alleys we walked up Lombardy. Jennifer shouted to us from her balcony. I pulled my BB gun from beneath the elastic of my shorts and in one quick motion had it pointing skyward towards her. She shrieked, probably an instant of brief terror, before she remembered we had those stupid guns.

Origins pt.7

It was around 11p.m. we were on the Beltway heading back from our first sort of date, an evening spent in the smoky confines of Murphy's on King Street. I was having trouble seeing my blind spot to merge left so I could get to the first exit for 66. I asked her "Can I get over?" She said "sure", and I followed her advice nearly getting smashed by another car. I said "Why did you tell me it was clear?". "I thought you were just asking my permission to switch lanes. I thought it was sweet."

Under The Tree

Rosemary Stretch

My buddy Roger is in a three-piece band, Rosemary Stretch. You can download their first EP here.

Dear Santa,
I would like the following:

• To win the Mega-Millions lottery so my family and I could live in comfort on the west coast of Ireland
• For John Edwards or Barack Obama to win the Dem nomination, and a similarly unqualified and inexperienced candidate win on the GOP side so that it will be harder to attack each other.
• To finish my GIS education and find gainful employment in either natural resources or politics
• A chance to see the Arctic before it's gone
• Impeachment
• For the U.S. to declare Israel as rogue a nation as Iran
• An improvement in the housing market so I can sell my modest home for great profit like I should have a year ago before the bubble burst
  

Schwarzenegger: California will sue federal government

Wow, that's a feel good headline if I've ever seen one. Way to go.


UPDATE: GM, Ford, and Cheney may be behind the head of EPA's decision to deny the recommendations of his staff.

Biofuels are insane.

One tank of ethanol is enough to feed a person for a year.

Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks do their best impression of Randy Newman in love with a soldier from Baltimore. . .for 6 and some odd minutes.

Seriously,

this guy? Stick to your source, bitch. Six days, SIX DAYS! And then some rest.

sick of seeing myself.

Turns out,

it could have been my half brother that took Tom's radio. The bottom right one is me drunk. Whoa, i look awful. Remind me not drink so much.

My Brother of Another Color

This is just too much fun.

West Asian Insects

Monkey Girl on Hyde St., San Francisco

Not that anyone will see it,

but there are allegations that clinton has rigged the Brown and Black Presidential Forum (only on HDNET?!? i mean i get it but i don't know anyone else who has it).

My Daughter the Chimp