Madonna and Not Drinking

As I approach the two year anniversary of the last time I had an alcoholic beverage - I mark the date as December 9, 2006, although I’m not entirely sure of the absolute accuracy of that - I find myself listening to Madonna’s “Hung Up.” There’s no doubt that Madonna is batshit crazy, but still, I have a very difficult time separating myself from some of her songs. Like “Hung Up.”

Specifically, I remember listening to this song a lot on the first day of the first time that I tried to quit drinking, long before the December 9th 2006 anniversary. I was the designated driver that night, and spent my evening driving around really drunk people. I had put this song on a CD and listened to it while trying to get people to various locations before they threw up all over my car. (Mission Accomplished.) The song evokes that particularly memory, of that particular evening. It always will. It’s a decent song.

My daughter is learning to play the piano, and her interaction with that instrument may form the way in which she connects to music. I never played anything, and I still boggle at her ability to play songs from memory. So I connect songs to events. The Red Hot Chili Peppers “Soul To Squeeze” to my first junior high school dance. Edie Brickell’s “What I Am” to bizarre emotional state during my junior year in high school. And Madonna’s “Hung Up” to one my earliest revelations that my drinking was getting completely out of control. There are more of course, which I think I’ve documented elsewhere. The interaction of music and memory is beyond fascinating to me.

Right now, I’m listening to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” a sad lament for their fallen lead-singer. The song is one of the all-time greats; the pleading in the lyrics with an essentially comatose man - “Did they get you to trade/your heroes for ghosts?” - cannot be highly praised enough. I don’t connect this song to anything. It’s just beautiful.

Incidentally, one of this blog’s occasional readers is battling the bottle. My thoughts are with him. It isn’t an easy thing to quit.

Technorati Tags: Alcohol, Memories, Music

The Template

So I really, really like this particular theme…except for all of the damned underlining. I went through the site’s style.css file looking for obvious ways to eliminate it, and none sprung forth. If any of you have any level of expertise at getting rid of the underlining of everything but the links embedded within posts, I’ll happily give you access. Otherwise, I’m slowly going to fight my way toward making this theme work for me. I especially like the simplicity of it.

Site Changes

Vegan Stewart is no doubt relieved: I figured out how to upgrade my software mostly without him, and am thus likely to only rarely consult with him. Considering that he’s been responsible for my websites for maybe five years, this has got to be a load off his mind.

Obviously, I just changed the site’s template, but I’ll be working on it further. This might not last. Expect very slow, plodding changes. Very slow.

Website Roundup

-I loved doing What A Bad Idea. I had even been invited to allow my podcasts to be broadcast on a friend’s internet radio station. So predictably, Switchpod my hosting service revealed that I am over my free limit and now have to pay. But a cursory examination of their fees reveals I’m too broke to even think about hosting more podcasts. Until I can figure out another solution, they’re suspended. Hooray broke-assedness.

-Also, I just realized, I think, that I’m using a version of Wordpress that is 18 versions old, and I have no idea how to fix it. I have no idea how to do anything website related, actually. At this point, I don’t even know where the site’s code is, other than nebulously out in the ether somewhere. So…yeah.

More Ramps, Less Clinton

-Strange but true: you can get homework done early. So far, I’ve now turned in three assignments for my classes early. This is truly a bizarre feeling. It’s like I’m being genuinely productive or something. And only 15 years after I should have started acting like this.

-Ate a huge MustGo dinner tonight from my fridge, right before Clay Erinn called, offering me ramps and potatoes. Who am I to turn down such a delicacy? You can see them photographed above. The recipe was as follows: potatoes fried in one pan, with chopped ramps, bacon, and eggs cooking in another pan. Combine in a single bowl, add hot sauce, and consume. Needless to say, I was awfully full, but ramps are damned delicious.

“If you have the means, I highly recommend that you try them. They’re choice.” Thanks Ferris Bueller.

-Congratulations Hillary Clinton. She won Pennsylvania while simultaneously reminding anybody who was actually paying attention what an awful person she is. Way to go! What with her attempts to run a campaign that looks like it has been managed by Karl Rove, she clearly represents nothing more than the empty pursuit of power and the desire to do whatever she can to get it. Even if that includes costing the Democrats the election in the fall.

Incidentally, I saw where Clinton overwhelmingly won PA’s women. My instinct is to stomp around my house cursing anybody who voted for Clinton just because she happens to be female; that would be wrong of me, so instead, I’ll assume that every vote cast for Clinton was done by people who had thoroughly evaluated her positions on the issues and found themselves in more agreement with her than Obama. Because, really, voting for a candidate just because they’re female is so ridiculously stupid that it isn’t worth discussing…for anymore than at least one more sentence, which is this: I’m not supporting Obama because he’s a man, but rather, because he’s a good candidate who has a chance to win nationally, which is what Clinton supporters should be evaluating, instead of concerning themselves with the fact that she has a vagina.

Needless to say, if somebody supports her because they agree with her political positions, fine. If the support is there only because she’s a female, then that’s as dumb as any man’s decision to support Reagan over Mondale simply because he was running with Geraldine Ferraro. Bigotry doesn’t depend upon the bigot’s demographics.

Yes, I’m aware that we can’t change how people vote. But dammit, we can get awfully angry about it, can’t we? Also, that was more than one more sentence…

-At some point, this website is going to change its look. Part of that will include me no longer posting a photograph with every single post. Sometimes, I just want to write something. Of course, none of you are regular readers, because my regular readers don’t exist. Still, I thought you should know.

Obama, Graduate School, and Omar

-Obama wins again, taking Wisconsin handily. All of Clinton’s strengths evaporated, and now she really does seem to be on shaky ground. Before voting ended, I spoke with Angelic Clare, who warned that Clinton might win Wisconsin and play the role of the comeback kid. But it wasn’t to be. Surely she’s getting damaged beyond a point of return, isn’t she? Every desperate thing her and her supporters are trying isn’t sticking, and meanwhile, they look all the worse for it. Again: this can’t continue forever.

Meanwhile, McCain’s doing everything in his power to make himself unappealing. Courtesy Ambinder:

“I will fight every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent and empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed philosophy that trusts in government more than the people.”

That’s McCain, campaigning against Obama. His message is clear: don’t have hope. Don’t believe in bigger and better things. There are numerous reasons to ignore McCain’s pontificating, specifically the absurdity of a man who used the federal government to “fix” elections warning against using the government, instead of people, to fix problems. But deeper, does McCain really think this is going to work?

Negativity, not about his opponent so much, but about the idea of hope, of change, of improvement? He can’t possibly believe that people are anxious for his own, apparent, nihilistic worldview. It’s absurdity to suggest any chance that it actually ends working.

Or, as others said, he sounds “old.” That’s not good.

-Meanwhile, graduate school grinds on. I hate it. There’s no point masking it anymore. I don’t fit in, my questions are generally worthless, and my willingness to even remotely fake a belief in what I’m being taught is vanishing by the day. Numbers don’t explain people, or at least, the numbers we have right now. We’re so much more complex than attempts to reduce our existence to 1s and 0s. Every theory reads like Swiss cheese - full of holes and not particularly tasty. I’m 27, and completely without any sort of direction in my life. The direction that I thought I’d like to take seems like a far off idea, beyond my ability to achieve. So now what? I don’t take pictures. I don’t write stories. I don’t do political science. I don’t do anything.

-Spoiler Warning - RIP: Omar. The show couldn’t have done a better job with the character.

An Art Show! And New Hampshire…

-First things first - an art show I put together is going up in three weeks. The flyer is above. It will feature local and semi-local artists exploring the topic of love, although not necessarily in that Hallmarkian light. Think of the other things that go along with love - constant frustration, sadness, anger, lunacy - and figure that at least some of those will be included.

Be there! February 1, 8-11pm, Wild Zero Studios, 229 Pleasant Street, Morgantown, West Virginia.

-Sadly, we need to briefly discuss Barrack Obama’s loss in New Hampshire yesterday which would have been, until about a week ago, considered an enormous victory. Here was Hillary Clinton, the establishment’s candidate, who should have been romping and stomping through New Hampshire. Obama wasn’t an afterthought, but it was looking like he’d come in second place. Then he won Iowa, and people starting wondering if he could win New Hampshire. His polling numbers were great, the exit polling looked good…and then Hillary Clinton won the damned thing.

Which means that Democrats, faced with a choice between the old-guard representing everything that is wrong with the party and the fresh face who promised hope…still managed to go in the wrong direction. Again. How in the fuck can a political party be so god-damned stupid? How in the fuck can a party that has lost, and lost, and lost, and lost, continue to look at presidential candidates and pick the one least electable?

There is no way that I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m not holding my nose for a third consecutive election and endorsing a candidate that I have no particular interest in. If the Democrats are so fucking stupid as to push Clinton through as a presidential candidate, then that’ll be one less vote their candidate is getting. This is a strategy that is stupid beyond words; frankly, it deserves to lose in the big election.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal for Barrack Obama. South Carolina favors him, and potentially Nevada. And a run on Super Tuesday isn’t impossible, because he’s an appealing candidate to all kinds of people, not just the sort of Democrat loyalists who don’t know their heads from their asses. Here’s hoping for a great run from Obama, who predictably sounded better in defeat than Clinton did in victory.

Incidentally, I want everybody who is claiming that Hillary is being opposed because she’s a woman to stop - she’s being opposed because she’s a terrible candidate. Her gender has absolutely nothing to do with it. Or at least, it didn’t, until the media starting killing her for allegedly crying. Way to fuck that one up media punditry. As soon as it came down to something as small as a candidate crying, Hillary went from being a loathsome candidate who came to a state like West Virginia and demanded $1,000 from anybody wanting to be in the same room with her (true story!) and turned her into a victim. All the media had to do was let Hillary pull the rug out from under herself - in their rush to do it for her, they accomplished the exact opposite result, and now we’re stuck with the very real possibility that we’ll be enduring her throughout a prolonged presidential campaign.

Schools Bans Facial Hair

A young man in Texas decided to let his wispy mustache grow - his school pulled him out of class and told him to shave it. Are there more important issues in the world? Of course.

Facial hair is a passion of mine. I hate, hate, being clean-shaven, and so I have done it up with huge sideburns, beards, goatees, and anything else that I could get away with. That a school district would claim dominion over a child’s maintenance of his own body, thus preventing the growth of facial hair, is absurd. Previously, I’ve angrily decried rules against t-shirts. This is arguably worse, because instead of school telling a student what clothes he can put on her body, it is telling him what to do to his own body. Schools simply do not enjoy this dominion. A child’s face is his own, and as soon as a school claims the right to shave the kid, surely it will also enjoy the authority to cut his hair, the power to trim his nails, and the strength to do any number of other things.

Besides the intrusion into the lives of these young men - seriously, does a school enjoy the right to tell children what they can and cannot do on their own time? - there is a social issue here about facial hair. My friend Stewart rightly argues that facial hair grows naturally. It is unnatural that it be shaved. We already live in a society in which facial hair is viewed as being something problematic. Now we have schools requiring that young men remove any facial hair that grows immediately, despite the fact that the human condition grows facial hair. Thousands of children (this has apparently been a school policy forever) are growing up believing that facial hair is bad, and not exploring its possibilities during the point in their lives when they’re most likely to decide if they’ll be lifelong growers or lifelong shavers. This is nightmarish.

We don’t need a society of people that look the same. We don’t need a society of people that act the same. And we certainly don’t need yet another policy in which children are treated as pieces of property by schools districts anxious to churn out a graduating class that all looks the same. If individual freedom matters at all, then this is a policy that must be immediately abandoned. To do anything else is unnatural.

A Year Without Booze

It dawned on me the other day that I’ve gone a year without booze. I quit (again) last December, after a Christmas party. I had been sober for six months before falling off the proverbial wagon for three months, although I didn’t fall too terribly hard. Still, by December it was clear that I needed to quit again. So I did. And I haven’t had a drink since.

This is supposed to represent a triumph of the human spirit I suppose, over the madness of alcohol. It can just as easily be viewed as a failure of my own ability to control my desires. I tend toward an attitude of all or nothing: I have lots of tattoos, eat the hottest foods, grow my beard for months on end. This mindset works for some things but not so much for booze.

Watching travel cooking shows is the worst. I really like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, a fantastic show about food and drink. Tonight he was in Charleston, South Carolina and was drinking mint juleps. I neither like mint, nor hard alcohol and yet seeing it be consumed in a garden party made me want a mint julep. What in the hell is that?

Social settings can also be terribly difficult; I started drinking Cokes again because I couldn’t drink beers, and I drink Cokes like I did beers. That’s problematic. My weight is up. Quitting Coke is harder than beer, because it’s my crutch. How lame. (Yes, I’ve heard of Diet Coke, water, etc. It doesn’t appeal in the same way.)

Still, a year without a drink is a relative accomplishment I suppose.

Briefly, on Pain

I take a certain amount of pride in my ability to withstand pain. Two recent events have caused me to question this. The first was my trip to Pittsburgh’s Meeting of the Marked, a tattooing convention in which I was originally scheduled to sit for a grueling six hour session. I only ended up sitting for three. I did not feel good, although I did end up with the above lobster. (Sorry for the photo quality. Shooting my leg isn’t easy.) Eric wasn’t feeling well, and I wasn’t sitting well, and so I’m glad we ended it when we did.

The second example is more embarrassing. We have a fireplace at Sanctuary, my home. I went to the backyard to get some firewood - instead of using our pre-chopped stash, I grabbed a huge limb that had died and fallen out of a tree. I broke it up by stomping on it, jumping on it. This worked for most of the limb because the tree was dead, and thus posed no real threat. However, there were thicker sections; those I leaned against a stair and then jumped on. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

One of the pieces didn’t break when I jumped on it, rolling backwards instead, which left me grasping at air as I landed with the entirety of my weight on my left knee. Now, I can barely walk and I’m having a hard time driving. How embarrassing. The lesson, of course, is don’t break your own firewood without an axe. Or something.

-Sidenote: I’ve decided that graduate school isn’t challenging enough. So starting Thursday, I’m doing this. I’ll be posting my 2000 words per day here on the site. No photographs for a month, I fear. However, if you want to follow the creation of this “novel,” feel free.