Bower of Bliss

I'm not sure why, but I get a lot of Spanish visitors to my blog, or at least they are coming here from Spanish Web sites. I find that odd. But nevertheless . . .

Gracias por visitar mi pagina de internet. Espero que difrutes tu estadia.

I hope I got that right. :o)

Sarah Maclachlan's new video. Warms the cockles.

Moo

I ate buffalo last night.

It was delicious.

My mother just gave me my baby book, which is surprisingly devoid of very much information after the first few months, with only sporadic entries for things here and there. For example, she felt the need to record the fact that my favorite food when I was 2 was bread, and at the age of 3, I referred to myself as and answered to the name of Loverboy. Well, some things never change.

Buried in the box underneath the baby book was a pile of things she saved from when I was baby. There were cards, and the birth announcement, and a few things from when my brother was born which must have gotten mixed in. There were military medical records (I was born on an Air Force base) and little slips of paper in my mom's handwriting listing things she needed to ask the doctor about me (who knew she was worried about the direction my toes were turning!) But this is probably the earliest extant evidence of my mother being the unbelievable pack rat that is today, because in with all of this paper history were four or five handwritten receipts from a ladies apparel store, listing the maternity girdles and bras and bra pads and other leakage-absorbing undergarments that she purchased while pregnant with me. I can understand saving this for posterity, but why Why WHY give this to your adult son?

Yesterday was my birthday. I don't normally mind getting a little older because on most days I don't feel my age. On most days I don't feel like I ever made it our of my teens. I had my "Jesus" year a few years ago -- I was determined to make 33 a year of good things happening. Not because I believe in Jesus or anything but because it just felt symbolic, and 33 is an auspicious number in mythologies outside of Christianity. And it's never a bad time to decide that good things must start happening for you at any age. But this year I turned 35, effectively moving me from the 18-34, male, demographic into the 35-54, male, demographic. This is not a group that I feel a whole lot of association to. I'm too old to rave and too young for the early bird special.

Polar Opposites

I teach two different classes on Saturday and Sunday mornings this semester. Lit on Saturday, Comp on Sunday. This past weekend I had the first class for each course, and the classes could not be more different. Saturday's class was big and boisterous and lively and talkative and enthusiastic. Sunday's class was small and quiet and, well, apathetic -- at least from where I was standing. I pulled out all my usual teacher first-day tricks (keep 'em laughing, scare them just a little, but make them feel safe and comfortable) and my Sunday class just wouldn't throw me a bone. It was like pulling teeth to get them to pronounce their last names correctly for me. I hope it's more a matter of them being scared and apprehensive than them being already bored and forever complacent. Maybe it's the class being on a Sunday. I've been doing Saturday classes for 4 semesters now, the same class, and it is always full and always amazing. In fact, people enroll in my class because other students tell them to (which probably explains the inordinate amount of Eaaster European students I always have from Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia and Lithuania). But do Sundays just feel differently to everyone? The minute I woke up Sunday morning I regretted accepting weekend classes on both days (officially, I will not have a whole day off from all jobs until Thanksgiving). I hope that I can stir these folks up into a writing frenzy every Sunday. If yesterday was any indication, keeping them from falling asleep may by my biggest challenge.

The 10-year ban on assult weapons expires today, and the collective wisdom of our government didn't feel the need to extend the ban or even revisit the issue. No, the ban just runs out today, as if it never existed. Despite the fact that I hate guns and just the whole idea of guns, I'm not out to take away anyone's gun, especially the police, but in what possible scenario, other than wanting to wipe out a supermarket population or go into combat with the police, does a person need an automatic assault rifle? The NRA is really getting out of control with their lobbying to keep our nation so gun-riddled and scared. The Second Amendment guaranteed the right of a citizen to arm himself in case there was a need to form a militia and fight invaders (i.e., the British who, at the time, were feared for just this reason), not the right to stockpile weapons that could kill people at rapid rates. I'll never understand the gun culture, I guess. My brother owns guns because he hunts, or at least that is a way of justifying why he owns guns, and as much as I try to understand his life and why he does the things he does and not judge him for what he enjoys, I just don't see the pleasure in killing things. I'm not so naive that I don't know how that chicken got from the farm to my dinner plate, but I am quite sure that if I had to kill my dinner every night, I would go back to being vegetarian pretty damn quickly. I also know people who claim to have guns in their house, and I understand the desire to feel safe and to protect yours and your family, but what are we protecting ourselves from, other guns?

I don't know. I'm just babbling now. This bothers me. It bothers me that I live under a president who is cutting the budgets of the institutions that protect us, allowing more and more dangerous guns into society, and generally making more and more enemies in the world every day.

The glory of war.

There are some very interesting search terms that people are googling and following to my site. Two of my favorites so far are "porn bliss" and "rnc blogging fisting," and there have been any number of people finding my site based on my Pat Benatar post. This makes me want to plant odd phrases on my site just to see if people are googling them. Things like "hirsute midget chipmunk feeder" and "bulbous explosive udder dance party."

I've got The Crud (otherwise known as a head cold). Does this explain the sparse blogging? No, but it should explain any nonsense I write over the next few days. Between the watermelon-head feeling of being sick, and all the generic sudafed I am pumped up on so that I can breathe, I feel like all the molecules in my body are trying to go in a million opposite directions.

Welcome, Bally's, to my list of boycotted entities. For not allowing gay and lesbian families to benefit from your family discount; for all that you do to further discrimination and polarize my country; I honor you with my boycott.

Who the hell is Rerun? I don't even remember this character. This just so totally supports my feelings lately of being a bit player in someone else's comedy of errors.


You are Rerun!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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The newest member of my blog roll: Head Rush. Visit it often and bask in the warmth of her pulsing neurons. Have you poked your medula oblongata today?

What happened to the summer? My fall classes are about to start swirling around me, and I feel like I had no summer at all. Autumn is my favorite time of year (aside from having to rake leaves, and we have one monster of a leaf-dropper in our front yard) but for some reason I always feel like the summer is the time to get things done that I didn't do during the rest of the year. I don't know why I feel that way -- it's not like I have more free time in the summer, not when I am teaching summer classes. But change of season means new beginnings, so I must start thinking about what I can change for this season. My summer change was the goatee, which was not a crowd-pleaser and invariably became an itch magnet.