A dirty little secret…

My blog friends in Ohio seem to be very environmentally conscious. Gumby is getting a Vespa scooter in an effort to be kinder and gentler to mother nature. D and Vinnie are riding their bicycles to run errands near their home(s). Yellow Dog is a master gardener and uses a technique called interplanting so that vegetables that mature at different times can use the same space.

Very admirable and eco-friendly pursuits by each of them.

From what you’ve read here, I’m sure most of you know that I’m pretty much liberal politically. You would think that I would be an environmentalist as well.

I’m not.

I drive a gas guzzling 4×4 SUV. Justin drives a (slightly more fuel efficient) pick-up. I have a ‘68 Pontiac convertible that uses more gas than both of these combined. (Catalytic converter? Hah! No such thing when this baby was built!)

I do not recycle. We have recylables curb side pick up here, and I still don’t. The City of Memphis and their solid waste management department pissed me off about the whole thing years ago. (This is a story that is too long and involved to get into here, but it did involve a call to my local U.S. congressman.) I would rather throw my recyclables away than ever deal with these F’ing F’ers again.

If I see a bug or weed in my yard, I pick out the strongest pesticide or herbicide that I can find and douse them. I used to have a tree in my back yard, but after a few limbs fell on my house, I had the damned thing cut down. I mean, how many times are you going to repair the roof?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-environment at all. I don’t litter. When I change the oil in one of the vehicles, I don’t just dump it on the ground.

I’m not against environmentalists, either. (Except for some of the real extremists that deface others property and what-not. You know, the ones that set SUV’s on fire and stuff. That is so not cool.) These people certainly should be applauded for all of their efforts.

But these are the facts for me: I like my SUV, it is a handy vehicle for me due to some of the rural areas I must travel to. The Pontiac is just fun. I have seen the solid waste engineers throw recyclables into the regular trash when they thought no one was looking. My yard is well manicured and weed and pest free. That damned tree was costing me time and money (and destroying my house).

Perhaps I’ll make a donation to the Sierra Club or something. Or I might try riding my bike (Yes, I’ve got one. I just get embarassed when I’m riding along with a cigarette in my mouth and have a cell phone to my ear. People start to laugh, you know.) every now and then for an errand. Take some baby steps. It might ease my mind a little.

So there you go. A dark little secret I’ve kept from you. But really, if there weren’t people like me, who would you guys talk about, anyway?

Meet me in Memphis

I had an Engish teacher my freshman year of high school that I still keep in contact with. (It’s been eighteen years. )

She lives in L.A. now, but still comes to Memphis to visit. Whenever we get together it’s like no time has elapsed, we’ll just sit and talk for hours about everything or nothing at all. You know, just a natural easiness in communication.

Over the years we’ve talked each other through trials, tribulations and the good stuff, too.

Guess who’s coming to visit Friday? Yep, she is, and I just can’t wait!

Ooooo. There will be some stories!

Of course, being the good blog host that I am, I’ll be sure to share them with you.

Once again, if you’re interested, you can catch me on the Flip side as well.

Photo courtesy of flickr, by emdot

Darts, shyness, and finally, margaritas.

It occurred to me that I had discussed in a previous post how I met Jamie, my ex, but I never told you the story of meeting Justin.

I used to have really early days with my previous position. It was uncommon for me to work past 3 pm on any given day. On my way home in the afternoons, I’d stop by the bar, have a few beers and throw some darts with a couple of friends. This was my routine.

One afternoon, I’m there, with my friends, and a handsome young man, 6′6″, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a great smile, walks in. I’d never seen him before. I assumed he must be visiting from out of town. Although Memphis is a good-sized city, the gay guys all run in circles and I thought I had seen or at least heard of them all. Because, hell, at that point, (I was 29) I had been out for ten years.

I was throwing darts and kept looking his way. The cool thing was, whenever I looked, I saw he was looking at me too. Every time our eyes met, he’d grin just a little. Justin looked like a cute muppet of some sort. (Although quite a bit taller than your average muppet, mind you.) It was just something about his facial expressions.

So, we just looked back and forth that afternoon and never talked to one another.

A few days later, I’m in the bar and Justin comes in with a friend. Once again, no talking, just general glances at one another. When he leaves that evening, I ask the bartender if he knows the “tall, good-looking guy’s” name. He tells me its Justin and that he bartends at another bar. “How strange”, I say, commenting that I should have met him before now. The bartender says “We’ve all met him, he’s been there for a while.”

Next time I see Justin, no conversation between us once again. Just as he’s leaving, I walk to the door and say “It was good to see you again, Justin.” I tell him my name and he leaves. It’s not until the time after that I see him and we even get the chance to talk.

And let me tell you, I fell and fell hard for him. We made plans for a lunch date over Mexican food and margaritas. It really was a lovely time.

Also: You can catch another post I’ve made at Flip’s blog, where I remain the guest blogger, only because I have yet to be fired.

Blog infidelity

I made a post over at Flip’s blog today. I really don’t have anything left for here. Nothing exciting going on in my world, anyway. No news is good news, though.

I hope you’re having a good week, so far.

Maybe I’ll catch you on the Flip side?

Joke off Monday 7 (and a surprise!)

A guy walked into a bar one day and said to the bartender, “Give me six double vodkas.”
The bartender says, “Wow! you must have had one hell of a day.”
“Yes, I’ve just found out my older brother is gay.”

The next day, the same guy came into the bar and asked for the same drinks. When the bartender asked what the problem was today the answer came back, “I’ve just found out that my younger brother is gay too!”

On the third day, the guy came into the bar and ordered another six double vodkas. The bartender said, “Jesus! Doesn’t anybody in your family like women?”

The man downed the first drink and shook his head, “Yeah, my wife!”

… We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for breaking news…

I know that many of you visiting here also read this blog: Mobius Flip. It seems that Flip is going to be on on a business trip and then on vacation for the next few weeks. Last night, jokingly, I commented at his blog and said that I should be his guest blogger. This morning, I get an email from Flip and he thinks it’s a great idea. So, for a little while, I’ll be handling the guest blogging duties over there. Come on by Flip’s porch when you get through here at mine. I think my posts might be a bit different over there. I certainly have some big shoes to fill.

Most peculiar mama, whoa!

Why my ass is sore is a story so strange, I couldn’t have made it up.

Friday morning, I woke up with an unsightly little red pimple on the right side of my face. Didn’t think much about it (although the last month or so I’ve had a few and I usually don’t get them very often) went to work Friday, piddled around at the house Friday evening and went to bed.

Saturday morning, as I’m waking up, I notice that I can barely open my right eye. I walk into the bathroom to check out the mirror and see what this B.S. is all about. What I see is that the right side of my face is doing its best Elephant Man impersonation. Everything on that side of my face is seriously swollen. My right eye is nothing but a slit.

I wake Justin up. “Baby, look at this.” He looks at my face and says, “Ooo. You need to go to the doctor.” At just about this time, the phone rings, it’s Mom. We talk for a minute and she says “Are you okay? You sound funny.” So I tell her about the swelling on my face. Of course Mom says, “you probably need to see a doctor.”

Two votes for a doctor’s appointment. I guess Mom told my step-dad. He calls in just a couple of minutes.
“Brad, I think you should go to the ER.”
“Really? Go to the ER for a pimple?”
“Yeah, go ahead and go. You’ve got insurance.”
One vote for the emergency room.

My friend Linda is an ER nurse, (One should at least make the acquaintance of a nurse. This is a handy person to have in your life.) so I walk down to her house to let her check it out. I tell her what my step-dad said. After examining my disfigurement, she decides to call the hospital and see how busy they are. It seems they’re not just wall to wall people. So, we hop in the truck and go out there.

When I see the nurse practitioner, she’s more concerned than anyone so far. She starts speaking of the risk of getting an infection behind my eye. That thought had not occurred to me. Ms. Nurse Practitioner decides that the best course of action is antibiotics. Lots of ‘em. She prescribes a shot and two prescriptions of different kinds of antibiotics.

This shot looked more like something that you would give to a farm yard animal, maybe not a horse, but a young cow, or at least a large pig. It was full of this thick, yellow stuff. Guess where they administer this shot? Yep. Right in the ‘ol ass.

As of this morning, the swelling in my face has subsided considerably. (My ass is still sore, though.)

Then I was thinking, I rarely go to the doctor. Justin and Linda, same thing. Yet here in the past two weeks each one of us has seen some sort of health care practitioner for some procedure or something. I guess sometimes this sort of thing really does happen in threes.

So you see, truth really can be stranger than fiction. I would have never believed I would have been in the ER for a pimple, for chrissakes!

Photo courtesy of Flickr, by Puchimadam

Peter the Roman

In elementary school, I attended a catholic school for a while. The traditions are what I still remember: Latin mass, stations of the cross, candles, traditional clerical garb, etc. A part of me still finds the religion fascinating.

I recently read a book: “The Third Secret”, by Steve Berry. This book is a kind of Vatican thriller. Its fictional account of corruption and secrets within the conclave of cardinals, to me was riveting.

One of the most interesting parts of the book deals with the prophecy of St. Malachy. In a Nostradamus-esque sort of way he is believed to have written the list of popes until the end of time. If you’d like to see the list, click here, and scroll down. This site also explains about the name given to the popes by Malachy and their meaning.

According to the list, we have one more pope to be elected before the end of time. He will be known as Petrus Romanus or “Peter the Roman”. Throughout papal history, there has been only one pope named Peter. That was the person generally acknowledged as the first pope, the disciple of Jesus.

I don’t nescessarily subscribe to any particular end of the earth or doomsday theories. I think it will be a surprise to most everyone should it happen and no amount of prophecy can change that. But, sometimes this stuff is just interesting. You know, kind of like watching a horror flick. Prophecies can be a mild form of entertainment.

But, then again, who’s to say that St. Malachy’s list isn’t accurate? I suppose only time will tell.

Photo by Erin Silversmith

Yard queer

It’s raining here today, so I’m thinking about grass. (Not that kind of grass, mind you. I gave that stuff up years ago. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with it, I just got to the point where it really wasn’t doing anything for me but making me paranoid.) I’m thinking about my lawn because the rain is much needed to make the grass thicker.

When I was a teenager, there was a guy that lived down the street that was always working in his yard, believe me when I tell you that it was immaculate. Every blade of grass was perfect, not a single weed and mowed to perfection. This guy was married and had kids, but in our neighborhood we called him “The Yard Queer”. Why did we call him that? Hell, I don’t know. It was funny to us at the time.

In the last 4 or 5 years, I’ve really gotten into the yard looking just so. I’ve done tons of work to it, spraying, fertilizing and the like. I’ve spent countless hours and a small fortune to get a yard full of zoysia. It was plugged many years ago in the late 70’s, but just remained a patchwork. After years of proper care, I’ve finally connected all of the patches and the lawn is now solid zoysia. Once your yard is full of this stuff, it becomes really easy to care for. All I do is fertilize a few times a year and spray Drexar (kills all types of grasses and weeds except for: bermuda and zoysia) maybe once or twice in the spring. This Drexar is fabulous stuff. I used it on Linda’s yard (my neighbor and friend) last year, and by August she had a nice bed of bermuda. It’s already greening up and looking lush this year. (Although it sounds like it, I’m not getting paid for product placement. Drexar is really just that good.)

So, anyway, it seems that I have become a yard queer. How else could you describe me? Gay guy making sure each blade of grass looks perfect. The yard is mowed to perfection. Nary a weed.

I wonder what 16 year old Brad would think about his 32 year old, adult self becoming a yard queer? I don’t think he’d believe it. Not for one damned minute.

It’s so strange how you can think back and not really understand the paths you have taken to become the person that you are today.

WD 40 makes the world a better place.

At my office, on the back porch, a pair of robins have built a nest on the large light fixture near the back door. This is where I step outside many times during the day to have a quick smoke.

The robins are taking turns sitting on the eggs that they laid in the nest. I noticed late last week that when I opened this back door, the squeaky noises it made were scaring the sitting bird off the eggs. The robin would then go out into the yard, hopping around, looking at me fiercely until I was through and went back inside at which time they would return to the nest.

As an appeasement to the angry little robins, last Thursday, I pulled out the WD 40 from my truck and squirted it on the hinges of the squeaky door. Since then, the robins and myself are getting along so much more peaceably. I slowly open the now silent door and walk outside. Occasionally, they’ll still fly from the nest, but most of the time the sitting bird will stay there, just watching me closely.

I’m thinking that sometime next week, if everything goes well, there will be a few more robin babies in the world.

Photo courtesy of flickr, by Taking it One Day at a Time

Just a quick p.s.: My late, beloved uncle always called WD 40 “dubya damn”. As in: “Son, would you hand me the dubya damn?”

Perhaps that is another one that someone can use when they google “southern expressions”.

Just do it.

I’m assuming that most, if not all of the folks that read my blog are registered to vote and exercise that right faithfully. You seem like a pretty smart group to me.

But today, April 18, is National Blog Voter Registration Day, a day to remind everyone that is not registered to do so now. In many states, it takes a little while for your registration to become effective. If you would like to participate in the mid-term elections, time is wasting.

These are a few of my fond voting memories:

My parents always exercised their right to vote, and thought it was important to instill into my brother and I a sense of obligation to this right and privilege. So many times, as children, we were allowed to accompany them into the voting booth.

In 1984, I accompanied Mom to the polls in which she was undecided over the Senate election in Tennessee. Even then I was acutely aware of politics. We stood in the booth and I convinced her to vote for a handsome young man whose father had served as Senator from Tennessee as well. That man was Al Gore, Jr.

In 1988, during the presidential elections of that year, I watched my step-dad try to decide between Bush the elder and Dukakis. He still hadn’t made up his mind at the time. After contemplating a few minutes, he finally voted for a write-in candidate. Who was this write-in candidate you might ask? I watched him write the name “Snoopy”. I guess given the two choices, “Snoopy” was just as good as any.

In 1992, I was first eligible to vote. I did some work at the Clinton-Gore HQ here in Memphis and on election day, I worked a poll station. You know, Ross Perot was an idiot, but you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Were it not for him, Bill Clinton would have NEVER been elected president. Anyway, that just seemed like a magical night, watching the Clintons and Gores dance on the stage after they had made their acceptance speech. To me, it semed like a presidency that had no limits and boundless creativity.

Sorry folks, you know me, I just had to tell a few stories. That’s what I do.

I’ve been registered to vote since I was eighteen, and I have never missed an opportunity to cast my ballot. Although I realize voting is a privilege, I also consider it my duty. For those that are afraid that they will get called for jury duty simply because they register to vote, you’re right, odds are you will. I had to serve a few years ago. But, that too is a responsibility that should not be shirked. It is a duty that is for the greater common good of society.

In short, register to vote and exercise the right. I am a yellow-dog Democrat, myself. But, my political beliefs don’t really matter. I don’t care who you vote for as long as you exercise your right as a citizen. It is vital for this democracy (republic, whatever) that people let their voice be heard.

If you don’t know the requirements for your state, or just don’t know where to get started, click on Hypoxic’s blog here. Simply scroll to your state name and read the requirements, then click on your state to learn how to register.

Once again, I presume that all of you vote. If you know someone that isn’t registered, encourage them today to become a vital member of our society.

Photo coutesy of flickr, by daddytype-16