On Monday, I read an article about Obama’s “back door” tax increases on the middle class, H/T Big Dick. Today, a friend had made a comment on Facebook about an IRS solicitation to obtain shotguns, and I attempted to respond with a link to that story on the middle class tax hit.
Guess what… It’s gone. Yahoo news took the story down within hours of posting it. Not too surprising, however.
So I checked Google Cache, and voila! There it is. I went on to post the Google cache URL for that article in Facebook, and would you know…
Seriously? A link to a story about the administration’s proposed budget is “offensive”? You’ve got to be kidding me!
So I used TinyURL.com to condense the…
Shit, I gotta go. Someone’s POUNDING on the door and won’t go away.
I started playing with Xtranormal.com web-based animation production today.
Totally lacking in originality, I tried my hand at re-creating what I believe was an old Robin Williams joke that I recall from many years past. I got the idea while walking through posts over at Pam’s, so I think it’s appropriate I dedicate this to her. Hope you warm up soon, Pam!! 
I slipped into full rant mode while responding to Pam’s comment and realized something that I find curious with regard to texting. I’ve noticed that the greatest “offenders” of behind the wheel texting seem to be equally divided between the genders under the age of say, 25. But above the mid 20’s – it seems that far, far more women text behind the wheel (and perhaps overall).
Seriously, how often do you see a 30-40 year old male construction worker type behind the wheel of his pickup truck working his thumbs over the keypad of a cell phone? Yet just about every time I see someone in that age bracket doing the keypad thumb tango, it’s a she.
Why is that?
I despise text messaging, and my male co-workers (all geeks) are of the same mindset. However, their wives and daughters seem to be texting pros. Mrs. Who is the exception – she’s even more vehemently anti-texting than I am. (Just ONE of the reasons I do love my beautiful, intelligent and sexy wife!*)
So am I way off base, on to something, or just a sexist redneck jerk? 
(*Points?)
Or maybe you can…
F’nH has a new look. I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep it or not, but I do know I’m not going back to the template I had before. As you can see, I don’t have the heart to get rid of “the girls” just yet.
The reason for the change is that I checked the author’s website to see if there was an update that allowed for threaded commenting (I love that at Pam’s site), and I discovered that the authors were New Zealanders! Oh, and self-proclaimed Marxists, too. Let me tell you, I knew a “Kiwi” foreign exchange student once…
Okay, so really it was the Marxist bullshit that turned me. They had their “manifesto” posted, and although it was quite comical, I really don’t want anything more to do with them. Here’s a sample:
We also don’t trust people with too much money. You gotta wonder how many kittens and puppies were strangled somewhere in their bloodline to become ’so damn money’. So yeah, we’re working class leftist marxist pinko scum, but we’re proud of that! At least it means we’re honest people.
Honest? Well, I guess. That still doesn’t make you right. A schizophrenic inmate tell you the things he hears the voices tell him to do without bending the truth even a little. That doesn’t change the fact that he/she is a danger to society and their own person… (whichever one of those ‘persons’ inside is weakest, anyway.) So I sure as hell won’t advertise or do business with you – even if it’s “free”.
Anyway, to you, my three beloved readers…
Please let me know if there is anything that doesn’t seem to be working – especially if the site doesn’t load or is terribly slow. I know some of you don’t like “dark” themes like the one I put up at the HoZ for Mrs. Who – so feel free to choose another skin down there in the control menu at the bottom left of the window. Personally, I like the “Water” theme, and might make that the default. Whatever theme you choose should show up again if you have cookies enabled.
So go ahead – poke around. If you know of any WordPress widgets that you’ve found useful or pretty, please clue me in. I usually test on my pathetic little blog before I do anything major to the HoZ, so consider you’re really helping Mrs. Who out in the long run. Anything I glean that I find useful or cool will undoubtedly find its way to the House. But don’t worry – I’m not about to overhaul HoZ anytime soon. I’m just looking for tweaks and corners to tuck in. She seems pretty happy with her blog, which makes me happy.
And yes, I expect input from all three of you. 
I feel like I’m stuck in a cattle chute, and it’s not going to end well. One thing for certain – there’s only one way to go. Will means nothing.
All of my dreams lately have been of things or events coming to an end: Arriving at an art fair just as the exhibitors are packing up their tents. Walking into my own graduation after everyone has already crossed the stage. Running up to a storefront just in time to see them turn the closed sign and lock the doors. Waking up and discovering everybody has gone and I’m alone in an empty concert hall – only a few stagehands packing stage furnishings remain, and they’re oblivious to my presence – they just want to finish and go home.
Is it all coming to an end and I’m either unwitting or unwilling to accept that fact? Are my doors all closed and locked, and opportunities gone?
That’s certainly how it is feeling. I don’t feel right or welcome anywhere I go. I’m constantly bothered by the feeling of being a burden – an extra chore… I am the annoying relative, burdensome neighbor, or that last, unwelcome customer at the end of a busy day.
I don’t know my family anymore.
I’m cold inside and out.
And there is just one way to go:
Through.
So it’s 2010. Now what?
Not sure where this year will take me. So far as resolutions go, I’m setting the bar pretty low. To borrow from an old classmate, my New Year Resolutions are: “1.) to get another year older, 2.) to accumulate more gray hair, and 3.) to work out less.”
Okay, so that last one is impossible for me… Divide by zero error: System halted.
Right now, my outlook for the year is grim. I’m just out of an active “police action” (we won’t call it a war) with Mrs. Who, and now active fighting has broken out on the parent-kid front. In the meantime, I still find myself living mostly alone in my late MamaBear’s house (blame the suck-ass weather) and getting more and more used to it. Don’t know what that means. But getting back to the active front…
My dumbass son “Goob” has chosen his path – one that doesn’t seem to have any room at all for stupid ass parents who lay “guilt trips” instead of pandering to his selfish whims (i.e., enforce responsible behavior). He’s determined he’s an adult, but acting like an overgrown four-year-old. Had the gall (not to be confused in any way with testicular fortitude) to ask me to turn over the keys and alarm code for his late grandma’s house so he could play house with his wounded-bird girlfriend.
It frikkin’ hurts to be a parent when you want to see them do the right thing and they are so caught up in hedonism and rebellion… I was rebellious, but I wasn’t THAT stupid. Shit. Okay, so maybe I was, but I was truly hoping to impart some of the wisdom I gained from my mistakes. Not much success in that, however, least of all when parental wisdom clashes with rutting teenager. Hell, in the few years since he discovered his “special purpose“, he’s already surpassed my own notch-count. It’s disappointing, but not entirely unexpected, I guess. Not that i can excuse his choices, however… since he’s choosing to be a little prick.
Case in point: he chooses to hook-up with a little tart that drops her panties on their first date – while he’s still in the process of “breaking up” with his previous g/f after providing her with a “morning after” abortion pill. Oh – she was under the age of 18, so that’s a case of illegal dispensing – and her parents were more than furious, wanting to swipe a chunk of his ass for the piece that he got from their daughter. He was more or less oblivious, leaving Mrs. Who and I to mop up while he went about his cavorting. In the midst of it all, he tried to demand that I “meet” his new piece of tail with him. Lacking a grain of respect for his little “Tragic Doll”, I declined.
Flash forward about eight or nine months, we get wind that Tragic Doll is claiming to have given birth to a baby boy – our grandson. Right away, I’m skeptical, since just a month before, she claimed to have had an inoperable brain tumor and lay dying in the hospital, only wanting to talk to Goob one more time. Dozens of times a day. Oops, she died. No, she didn’t. Maybe the brain tumor made her forget she was dead. Or that she was pregnant, since miraculously, she never had a brain tumor but suddenly she has a baby. Who has “a lung disease”. And some hell of an insurance plan, since he’s been in NICU for nearly three weeks and “all his bills are paid for and will be paid for until he’s 18.” She just wanted him to come see her to take a paternity test, even though such tests can be done with oceans and continents between the subjects. When we demanded to see proof of the child’s birth – of the certificate which bore my son’s name as the father, of the child’s illness… OOPS! He suddenly died. Oh, and she didn’t really have a baby because she was in Coast Guard Boot Camp the whole time. It must have been her cousin who was spoofing the whole ordeal because she wanted to make my son see how “special” Tragic Doll has become since he left her, and that “he would take one look at her and want her, but she’s not available to him any more.” Funny how Tragic Doll’s cousin sounds exactly like Tragic Doll in the telephone call recordings.
All the while we were uncovering Tragic Doll’s psychotic, hysterical claims and manipulative lies, Goob was getting on with Wounded Bird, who was evidently okay with the fact that his previous relationship was playing itself out with us in the middle, leaving him free to slip her some between the sheets. All evidence points to her being totally willing to betray her own self-respect by letting him poke her. But she’s learned sooo much from her life of hard knocks that all her decisions are intelligently and morally sound. Because she’s… you know… An 18 year old “adult”. And an admitted runaway. Rumored to have been fired for blowing a guy in a back room at Wendy’s. Pathetic and sad. Tragic, really. I feel so sorry for her. But there’s not a damn thing I can do.
The two of them are feeding on their past histories of abuse and claiming it “makes them strong” against the world. In reality, they’re indulging in that abuse, but they don’t see it that way. Of course, how would WE or anybody else know their lives? THEY are superior in their conjoined response to this terrible world – their tragedies having steeled them against the “false morality” of others… especially parents!
Yes indeed, if there’s one thing that heals the wounds of sexual abuse, it’s a good, guilt-free fuck!
Of course, Wounded Bird has no parents to speak of. She and Goob met in grade-school, and were trouble from the start. The gravity of sexual abuse trapped them in a violent orbit – nearly causing them both to be expelled at one point or another. Thank god for a tough little Irish nun who stood between them. I admit I always felt sorry for the girl, of course for the tragedy of her abuse, the absence of loving parents, and all… But also for the way my son had treated her back then. She was a year behind him, and in front of classmates, he had accused her of “wanting to suck your stepdad’s cock.” (Hence the near expulsion from parochial school.) I was mortified and ashamed of his actions then, but I understood where he was coming from. Then, she was a threat – she was a living totem of the abuse and the abused. No doubt there was a physical attraction – she pursued him from the get-go, and she was a cute girl. I know Goob isn’t blind… So to Goob, she was no doubt a bundle of desire, guilt and shame - and represented perhaps the part that “let the abuse happen”, and likely even the part that may have “felt good”. He responded with venom then.
Now, having come to terms with many of those feelings, I’m not surprised to see the abuse continue to play itself out as lust and nurturing for that part that is “accepted” or even “forgiven”. That part was evident in Goob’s indignant defense of his recent behavior, stating:
It is the past events in a person’s life that makes them who they are today, and honestly however FUBAR of a past, I am happy with who I am today, so I may not like the events, but I accept the past, I would not change a thing in it, even if that means getting abused by [ex-con felon scum].. it is something I have come to terms with and do not hide.
Jackpot! Going through all that got me all this (i.e., laid + kindred understanding + acceptance) today!
What worries me most about this is not the acceptance, but the evident embracing of this past. And I believe that has a lot everything to do with the sexual relationship he has cultivated with Wounded Bird. They simply have no clue of the dangers they are flirting with. Perhaps both are doing some rescuing, but WB is BAD needy – it’s written all over her. Her posture, body language, facial expressions, submissive glances and clinginess. (The unsettling way she hugged ME longer than necessary on two occasions screams her need for a “daddy” figure and goes that much further to my argument for her desperation for male attention and approval.) Most telling of all was her defensiveness when I tweaked her by telling her I pitied her. (And I truly do.) But I knew, and I was right; she came out swinging at the very notion and wouldn’t let it drop. They are both feeding on age-old hurts and new manipulations, and they’re too stupid-young to see any of it. They “love” each other out of need and pity, but don’t recognize that, either.
It’s a Catch-22. The more I say about it, the more Goob digs in his heels. Yet if I bite my tongue, he infers my tacit approval. Worse, it’s causing a rift between my son and myself that may never heal. On FaceBook, he commented on a picture of us at his Army BCT graduation:
lol, back when he was proud… seems like those days are gone, and so is he. Fuck it. dont need family, as far as im concerned they are all dead now to me, because obviously to them I might as well just be KIA.
I don’t know what to feel but sadness at that statement. Obviously it’s not true, but the alternative to him feeling this way is for me to accept the damage he’s doing to himself by allowing his stupid ass behavior to go un-reprimanded. Further, doing so would be my sacrificing someone else for my own benefit; WB may or may not be a hopeless case, but allowing them to recklessly indulge their shattered pasts is a recipe for a lifetime of failed and abusive relationships for both of them. It endangers not only them, but any children that might come about, as well as those who look up to them as role models for their own behavior (namely Buck). Call it “Tough Love” , but it would be irresponsible of me as a parent to do otherwise. Wouldn’t it?
I just don’t know anymore. The thing that often scares me most is my own anger – something of which I have an abundant supply. AT&T has “rollover minutes”, I have “rollover anger”. It just keeps stacking up. Of course I realize that my anger makes the things I say and do that much more difficult afterward. But my pressure relief is faulty. Plus, I seem to possess a flowing, predatory skill – of narrowing in almost effortlessly on the tenderest spot to land my blows. I read body language naturally, and within minutes of observing someone can pick the two or three of the most self-consciously guarded physical or psychological aspects of an individual to launch my attack. Heaven help you if I’ve known you longer.
I’ve had to check myself constantly in this battle of wills with Goob and his Wounded Bird mistress. I let it slip briefly once, and the damage was instant. It escalated into the position we find ourselves in now: after weeks of what can best be described as a “Cold War truce” since he left for Korea, we’ve recently broken-off negotiations and the hostility level has risen.
Where it goes from here, I have no idea.
Here’s a quick collection of Christmas images to “get in the spirit” and set the mood (okay, well… my mood anyway):
The next might offend some, so I’ll put it under the fold. It’s the “religious” message that pop culture and retailers would have us believe:
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