BuggBlog

What once was, no longer is

Andrew Sullivan yesterday posted a face of the day that reached back into his own past -- namely, a smiling, tow-headed little toddler in a gray sweater vest who would one day grow up to lead the charge for gay marriage and beat the drum for a misguided war in Iraq.

Though you don't really get all that future stuff from the picture -- all you really see is a chubby cheeked tyke in a vaguely halcyon English backyard and, in a second pic, a backyard family get-together that doesn't look all that different from some of my own family's pictures from the '60s. 

Although I have to ask, is it wrong that I'm thinking Andrew's dad's kind of hot? 

Anyhoo, while the topic and Andrew's blog predictably turned into a whole thing about Sarah Palin, what's more interesting to me, at least, is the unformed nature of our childhoods and how we tend to imprint our adult experiences onto our blank(ish) slates. "Ooo, he was so cute when he was little! What on earth went wrong?" 

Just look at this picture of me and my mom -- how could you ever expect such a cuddly, sweet little thing to grow up to be the jaded, cynical monster I've become?

 

Or, from Christmas 1972 (or thereabouts), looking cute as a button and not at all like the guy who would go on to write obnoxiously opinionated columns and carry placards and agitate for all that gay stuff. In case you're wondering, I'm the boy on the right, next to my sleepy sister.

Things were so much easier then, especially because I wasn't always expected to wear pants.

Time for the holly jolly

On Sunday, Cavin and I finally managed to coordinate our schedules to the point where we could run out and purchase a Christmas tree. This involved, as every year, a trip to the local Home Depot, where piles of withered evergreens lay stacked and tightly bound with strings and plastic, and with nary a safe word to be heard.

Home Depot makes me weep for trees.

Leaving behind the depressing evergreen death pit, we went to the overpriced nursery just up the street from our house. Yes, each tree was at least $15 more expensive than their counterparts at the hardware store, but with the trees displayed upright and unwrapped in all their arbor-riffic glory, at least I didn't feel that I was stabbing Mother Nature in the heart.

At home, as we decorated our tree, what struck me was the sense of comfortable routine that has settled in on a tradition Cavin and I have shared for about five years now. Our tree always goes in the same place -- center stage at the picture window so our neighbors can see that, yes, we are merry. A certain set of special ornaments are first placed on the best branches before we move on to the lesser, plainer ornaments. We leave the top unadorned because our multi-year search for an appropriate angel, star or Buddha treetopper has been fruitless, and now largely abandoned. The tree skirt my mother made for us is carefully placed around the bottom. And then Cavin begins feeding the tree 7-Up by the 2-liter bottle because he once read it would keep the tree healthy and, frankly, it seems to work so who am I to suggest feeding it plain sugar water?

Creating new traditions in a young relationship is an exciting and heart-fluttering experience. But being fortunate enough to live those traditions over time is intensely rewarding. 

Even if it does require endless vacuuming of stray pine needles. 

Holiday shenanigans and other time sucks

Thanksgiving is generally my day to shine, but at the moment I'm feeling a lack of luster. Events of the past couple of weeks have conspired to eat up all my time and energy, so I've had not time to plan the giant, elaborate Thanksgiving me that I generally cook up at this time, putting together enough food for a small army when in actuality I only have 10 to 15 people coming by.

So, this year I'll be doing a scaled back version that might actually be right-sized for the number of relatives headed my way. Except for the 20-pound turkey my mother in law dropped off on Sunday -- I'll be dealing with that carcass for days.

Anyway, the unexpected time sucks of late November have also decimated my plans to finish National Novel Writing Month, so my little suburban horror story will have to be considered stillborn, since writing that pays my salary has to take precedent over writing that earns me nothing (at least, nothing immediately).

I know, I know, wah wah way, poor little me, etc. But what would a holiday season be without a liberal sprinkling of whining and self-pity?

What? Your family isn't like that at? Well, touch you, then.

Kiss kiss, bang bang

I don't even bother wondering anymore why I end up on the e-mail lists that I do, so the fact that I'm suddenly getting alerts from Guns & Ammo no more surprises me than all the right-wing-nutjob birther e-mails that still wend their way to my inbox. Actually, given that I grew up in a rural Kentucky culture where guns were prominently displayed in pick-up truck gun racks and such, I don't have quite the visceral reaction to firearms that a lot of my urban friends do.

Unless, of course, one is pointed directly between my eyes while I'm being mugged, in which case I'm just as close to pissing my pants as the next person.

Despite the predominant gun culture of my youth, I was raised to be cautious and wary of guns given that they are weapons and deserving of a fair amount of respect. So, when Granny got out her shotgun to take after the flock of starlings in her garden, I headed inside toot sweet.

That said, I am not comforted by this particular image from the e-mail Guns & Ammo just sent me:

 

Look at those eyes -- that's the look of someone who hangs out in book depositories and campus bell towers. This is not the expression of someone who's ready to have a rational conversation about the limits of the second amendment.

Just to make sure I wasn't mistaking junk mail for actual Guns & Ammo content, I shot over to the magazine's web site to see what they had loaded, and I found the handgun that -- were I ever to exercise my constitutional right to carry a small package of hot death -- I would totally buy:

 
 
ZOMG! It's so cute! It's like the result of a Project Runway challenge to design something inspired by Angie Dickinson in Police Woman. Go Sgt. Pepper!

So, WTF have I been doing lately, anyway?

Excellent question! I wish I had a simple answer. So I’ll treat it as a multiple choice question where every choice is a correct choice because even though I’ve been away it’s still my blog and that’s the way I want to do it.

Focusing on myself: I know, I know, the idea of me descending into a solipsistic revelry is so totally not like me. But while I came back from my vacation feeling relaxed, I also came back feeling like...oh, how should I put this...a fat fucking cow. Not only did I demure from going to the beach with Cavin because I didn’t want to be the beached whale sunning itself next to his Jack Sprat, I managed to gain about 10 pounds of weight and more than an inch on my waist -- all that despite the fact that I was playing at least two hours of tennis a day for the first week and a half.

Yes, that means the food in Provincetown is really, really good.

All that said, I hit 215 pounds and I can’t blame it all on two weeks of buttered lobster and scallop rolls. And since it’s nobody’s fault but mine, I realized I needed to fully commit to hitting the gym, doing some real work, and eating healthier. Which I’ve done, at least for the past five weeks, and that's gotten me back down to 195 pounds -- not exactly svelte, but certainly a very noticeable difference in a short period of time. I have a ways to go before I’m where I want to be, but I feel more like I’m going to get there than I have in the past couple of years.

Focusing on my book: I don’t want say too much about it yet, other than it’s coming very soon. I had mentioned through Facebook or Twitter or something a few months ago that I was thinking about self-publishing a collection of my columns from over the course of Metro Weekly’s first 15 years of publication, and I got a surprising amount of positive response to the idea. I’ll have a lot more information on when, where and how on the book soon.

Reading other people’s books: As always, my reading pile is daunting and likely insurmountable, but I’ve been in a particularly good groove on novels lately -- credit, again, to free time in P’town. I’ve resisted the siren call of re-reading Infinite Jest once again, and finished off some of the science fiction I’ve had waiting for me. One hearty and enthusiastic recommendation from me to you: go read Iain M. Banks. Consider Phlebas is actually a couple decades old but recently reissued in a very nice trade paperback; I wish I’d read it when it debuted, because it flat out blew me away. This morning I finished his more recent Matter, which had the same effect on me, but more so. I’m not going to try to summarize them beyond saying that they’re extremely literary, densely complex and hugely entertaining.

That’s enough reason to go go, buy buy, isn’t it?

Refocusing by disconnecting: Not only have I been remiss in blogging, I’ve radically curtailed my Facebook and Twitter updates, as well as taking an unannounced hiatus from Bilerico D.C. None of this was particularly planned out in advance, but the more I realized my attention span was being destroyed by a million small, constant tweets and beeps, the more I realized I needed some time away from it. Perhaps in the future I can see these things coming earlier and actually plan for them or something, but that wasn’t the case this time and I just tuned out. And while it’s cost me some blog traffic and friend requests and followers and so on, I’m glad I did. Now let’s see if I can get tuned back in....

That’s it, no more? Of course there’s more: family events, lots of tennis, video games to catch up on (another recommendation: go play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, it’s a blast), recipes to try, and, oh, yeah, a husband who takes priority. In short, I really don’t have anything to complain about.

For the moment.

An obligatory posting from P'town

I had intended to check in with a few posts from Provincetown over the past few days, but once I got here I became pre-occupied with actually having a vacation during my vacation. So sue me, etc. But I'm relaxed and refreshed, and while I'm not blissfully unaware of important world events and gay happenings over the past two weeks (I can't resist an occasional internet connection even if I can resist a television) I am the most unplugged I've been in months, if not years, and I feel fine.

That won't last, of course, as vacation's end is inching closer by the minute, so I'll be working hard to relax as much as possible for the next three days. Shouldn't be an effort, as most of the time has been spent on moments like this:

 

I've put together a quick album of photos Cavin and I have taken so far; maybe more to come later. Right now there's some tennis that needs playing.

A blast from the past

Because I'm the go-to guy in the family for cultural detritus, my sister e-mailed me today:

Do you remember the movie when we were kids with Richard Pryor as a baseball player and someone cut him up with a straight razor?

Um, yes. Yes I do. That would be The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. I had to google the title because I couldn't remember that. But I do vividly remember sitting in a dark Paducah theater watching what seemed to be a comedy about black baseball players and suddenly there being a straight razor and a bloody outfielder stumbling onto a baseball diamond and me sitting there on a sticky fabric seat with my eyes bugging and my heart pounding and a lifelong phobia about razors taking root in my heart.

Thanks for taking me to the slashing razor baseball film Mom and Dad.

PG my fucking ass.

Anal Rape: An exciting new marketing tool for far-right Republicans

This classy little number hit my e-mail box yesterday evening from AmeriPac, under the header "Bend Over for 'ObamaCare'":

 

Unsurprising from the kind of people who also gave us the bend-over onesie:

Because nothing says "good parenting" like mixing children's clothing and rape humor.

Brief moments in road rage

Say a middle-aged white woman in office-drone attire driving a pickup truck with "GLOCK10" plates and pro-gun bumper stickers floors her accelerator in order to cut you off when you gave a clear and early signal that you were about to change lanes. Do you flip off the gun nut or do you let it slide?

Myself, I flipped her off. If she shoots like she drives she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn anyway.

That was me then, this is me now

So every time I begin looking at old photos I end up down a rabbit hole of memory and I don't get anything done for, like, hours. I've just fixed a scanner issue that's been plaguing me for months, so I grabbed a stack of what I thought were Cavin's family photos I've been meaning to get into the computer. Somehow, a bunch of old photos of me out and about in D.C. -- taken by one of Metro Weekly's photographers back in the day -- had gotten mixed into the stack, as well as some more recent photos of me with the in-laws. All of which means I ended up in a navel-gazing reverie about the difference between then and now. Namely, then:

 

This was, if I recall correctly -- and you'd be right to judge by my eyes that my memory might be hazy -- one night at Trumpets, the old 17th Street haunt that was like a second or third home to me, depending on what other happy hours might have been going on at the time. Judging from the fact that I didn't bother to shave, this must be from my latter-90s, post-twink phase. Not my best look, but I imagine it was well after midnight, so cut me some slack. This is all, of course, a lot different from now:

 

She's not my baby, so don't think I've changed that much. She is my niece, one of a lot of nieces and nephews I have now, making my life here a lot more like my family life back in Kentucky/Indiana than I ever imagined it would be. Back in my younger days, I had a much deeper fear of getting older. These days, while I wouldn't call aging one of life's greatest experiences, I do appreciate that life changes over time. It makes me curious to see what happens later when now becomes then.