Fellow Geeks: I Present The Greatest Song Ever

If you are a web designer or coder, you’ll love this.  It’s my new favorite song.

 And, listen to his advice.  It’s good.

Why We Don’t Get Invited To West Meade Parties

Our “China Cabinet”

And this is the fancy stuff.

It’s like Foxworthy says about a redneck’s tee shirt drawer.  By looking at our plastic cups, you can see where we go to eat, where we went to school, which football team we watch, who we work with, and where we’ve been on vacation for the last 16 years. 

Celebrities

I’ve seen it four gazillion times lately:  Britney Spears is the poster child for the downfall of modern American society.  There are serious things going on in the world, but the news is reporting the latest exploits of various celebutards like Lohan, Hilton and Spears.  We are most certainly going to hell in a handbasket.  Back in the day, we took national and world affairs SERIOUSLY, and did not obsess over celebrities.

 Really?

Well, our uncles and aunts ushered in the age of Aquarius.  They didn’t obsess over celebrities.  Ummm…

Keep readng, I’m not done yet!

It Had To Happen

Stuff White People Like is now going to be a book.

BTW, for those of you who read the site, go over each entry, then tell me: who is whiter, Mack or me?  The absolute whitest person (by SWPL standards) I read is Claudia, all the way down to the love for produce co-ops.  The least would be Ivy, who is definitely a WINO.

Seriously once you figure out who the guy is talking about (Braisted), it’s VERY funny.

Nostalgia #287

It is the spring of 1980.  I am 15 years old.  It is a Friday night, but I am on no date.  I am working, performing my duties as dishwasher at The Barn Dinner Theater (now known as Chaffin’s Barn).  The small transistor radio is blasting the AOR station of the time (I think it was KDF).  The Pink Floyd song “Young Lust” is on.

They pay me $3.35 and hour, and believe me, I earn every penny. I’ve worked my way up from restroom cleaner, I don’t know it, but soon I’ll become a busboy, and eventually work my way up to assistant chef.  But on this night, I’m a dishwashing madman.  My older co-workers must think I’m nuts, but I’m having the time of my life.  I am very good at this job.

 The leftover food must be scraped into the 50-gallon slop can for a local farmer to pick up the next day.  It’s easiest just to use your hands.

I am a sophomore at Bellevue High School.  I’m not popular, but I’m tolerated because I am the younger brother of one of the school’s basketball stars.  I’m already a little strange, but with puberty finally kicking in, I’m getting stranger by the minute.

Bellevue is one of those schools designed in the 60’s and 70’s that has an “open” floorplan.  There are sections, but very few rooms set to themselves.  There are many rooms that are really just cubicles.  I have a crush on my English teacher; she is young and bohemian.  She would have easily been a hippie just a few years prior.  She had discovered I write poetry and encouraged me to enter some of my dark, depressing stuff into some contests.  I had no idea how important this would be later in life.

I take typing.  Yes, typing.  I can type about 65 words per minute on the super-fast IBM Selectrics they have in typing class.  I am also learning basic piano techniques in music class.  They have this setup where about a single unit has about 10 keyboards arranged on its perimeter.  The teacher could listen to any of us individually through headphones.  I think it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.  I also take Latin, and Bible as literature.

But none of that matters – the all-encompassing story at the school is that it’s closing down.  A court order said so; desegregation they said.  There had been a huge fight that winter; parents and students alike made a huge scene, trying to keep the inevitable from happening.  Now, it is starting to set in: those of us who are underclassmen will be going somewhere else next year.

The pots and pans must be washed in the sink.  After the rinse, they must be dipped in the sanitizing solution.

The world outside is nuts, but I don’t notice much about it.  There’s an election going on; Ted Kennedy is giving Jimmy Carter fits.  I’ve already made up my mind that I like Ronald Reagan.  The miracle on ice had happened in February, but, although we were glad we kicked the Russians’ butts, nobody in Nashville understood the first thing about hockey.  There is talk of boycotting the summer Olympics over the whole Afghanistan mess.

And of course, Americans are still being held hostage in Iran.  Everything else in the world revolves around that.  Gas prices have actually topped $2 a gallon!

“We need more plates!”  During busy times, it’s best to line up several trays of dishes while the machine goes through it’s 3-minute cycle.  Every third load, do a tray of silverware.

I am saving my money for a car when I turn 16.  My aunt says she’ll sell me her 1967 Olds Cutlass Supreme for $700.  

I know I’ll need a car, but what I’m really saving up for is  one of those TRS-80’s they have at Radio Shack.  If I save up enough, I can even get a 5 1/4 floppy drive for it!

I am on the edge of…something. 

As the night wore on, I would strip down to my ”A” Style T-Shirt. I would load a tray into the dishwashing machine, and pull the lever down that lowered the door.  I’d check the levels of the chemicals.  I’d sing and dance to the radio as I feverishly washed and washed and washed.  I never got tired.  I’d keep going till the steam filled the room so much that you couldn’t tell where it ended, and the sweat on my body began. 

It wasn’t much of a domain, but it was mine.

Kiss My Grits

When I was growing up, on those wonderful “big breakfast Sundays”, we’d have bacon and sausage and white gravy, and eggs over-medium, and my mom’s world famous biscuits.  The biscuits where there for three reasons:

1. They were incredible on their own.

2. They were necessary for sopping up the yolks of the eggs.

3.  “Dessert” was a biscuit topped with gravy.

 Did I tell you we had three teenage boys at one time?

Anyway, another thing we had on big breakfast Sundays was grits.  Mom would give us our individual servings, then each of us would proceed to sprinkle sugar over it.

I didn’t know this was weird for around here till I grew up.  Most Nashvillians, it would seem, go for the pat of butter with salt & pepper treatment for grits.  But, try as I may to fit in, I cannot have grits without sugar.

How did a family growing up in Nashville develop such a regionally uncharacteristic food habit?  I think it’s due to the fact that my grandparents were from other states (Alabama and Missouri).  I THINK sugar on grits is an Alabama thing, but I’m not sure.

Perhaps some enterprising food anthropologist can do some research on grits preparation and how it varies in the different sub-regions of the south.

So, how do you like to have your grits?

What’s New

I don’t want to talk about Obama and Wright anymore.*  I just don’t.  I’m letting it go for now – November is a long way away, it’ll keep.  I refuse to go through all this angst, strain friendships, and give bomb-throwing partisans reasons to fire away,over something that I can’t do anything about right now anyway.  So, I’m done with it, for now.  Y’all do what you’re going to do.

 In other news, my children are turning my world upside down. 

 My son decided to follow in my daughter’s footsteps, and got in trouble at school for bullying ad fighting.  Y’all must think I’m the worst parent ever.  Anyway, after getting his story, his friends’ stories, the stories of two different teachers and one principal, I have come to the conclusion that Zaphod gave into peer pressure.  He is very vulnerable to it – he has always been overly concerned with “what his friends think”.  Doesn’t excuse what he did, but it does explain it somewhat.

He’s also way behind in taking accelerated math quizzes, which comprise most of his grade in math.  The kids are expected to take them on their own, and they are judged on how many skills they master.  Because he hasn’t been taking the tests, the best he can do is a “C”for this six weeks.  Neither of my kids have ever gotten below a “B”.  I can hear you laughing now, but it’s not the grade that upsets us, it’s the lack of effort.

My kids also have begged me NOT to take them to Disney World next year.  This breaks my heart.  They would rather go to California.  They want to pan for gold, then maybe go to Disneyland.  Gold country is in northern California, right?  I keep telling them, California is a huge state – you can’t see the northern part AND the southern part in one trip.  Maybe they have some kind of gold panning in southern California.

One thing I know for sure: we have to do SOMETHING Disney next year.  I have a Disney Visa, and my points I’ve built up over the years expire in 2009.  Maybe I’ll find a way to sneak away with Lintilla to Epcot. 

Trillian wants her own bathroom now.  No big surprise, really.  She’s been trying to steer us to remodel, and we keep telling her we can’t afford it. 

This post from Aunt B really, really brought home to me the awesome responsibility I have.  And I don’t mean to my daughter, I already feel the full weight of that.  At my “other gig”, I do entertainment and celebrity reporting.  I won’t talk about how large my readership is, let’s just say it’s beyond my wildest dreams.  (Amazingly, I’m still the slacker in my channel).  Most of my readers are young women, from about 15-25.  Let’s just say there are a LOT of them.

I can’t sit and complain about how the media portrays beauty, I am the media.  I am required to post red carpet photos and the like.  The photos I choose to display, the comments I make about those photos, and my commentary all have an impact.  The show I write about is probably the only body-positive show on television today, so at least I have a head start.

I can only hope and pray that I have the wisdom to always do the right things for these girls and women.

*Those of you who only read me here might ask, “When did you talk about Barack Obama?”  I haven’t here, but I’ve been all over the comments at other folks’ blogs.

This Makes Me Smile

I know that what we’re looking at is a rich man who was given a chance to do something almost all of us only dream about because he has money and connections.  Nevertheless, watching this at bat by Billy Crystal just sends shivers down my spine:

 That he represented his generation well should be respected.  Heck, he looked better than Michael Jordan did.  Did I ever tell you that I was at the game at Greer when he came to town?

Anyway, if God ever came to me with an offer to exchange a major league at bat for a year of my life – I’d have to think seriously about it.  Happy birthday Billy!

Iowa On My Mind

This week at my kids’ school, they’re conducting the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills(ITBS).  By the way, every time I see that acronym, I want to say “Itsy Bitsy”.

Anyway, this is a BIG deal at the school, to the educators, the parents, AND the students.  For the school, they get a quantifiable measurement of their work to put in the school brochure.  Parents get the joy of saying that their kid tests in the 99th percentile and is at a “n-grade level” (n usually being 4 or 5 grades above their actual grade level).  Students get a whole week of everyone treating them like they are little princes and princesses. (No homework!  Make sure to eat 2 good meals and have a snack!  Get plenty of sleep!  Parents, make sure little johnny has no distractions at home!)

It’s actually been pretty nice this week, and I’ll miss going back to the grind next week (till spring break the following week, of course).  In a few months, I’ll be posting my kids’ astronomical scores – if they continue along the path they’ve followed in the Iowa’s so far, my 4th and 5th graders are both about ready to graduate high school (skills-wise).  I’m not bragging, because I take very little credit for it.  I only take credit for their good looks

Trillian is still very especially talented in math.  Off the charts talented.  I’m so happy that getting a new teacher has eliminated those “I hate math even though I’m great at it” sentiments.  Interestingly, when you ask her what she wants to do when she grows up, none of the paths is tied to advanced mathematics at all (design or architecture, zoology or veterinary medicine, chef). 

It is amazing that we do not share any DNA, but are just alike.  Both of us have high aptitudes in logical skills, yet prefer endeavors that are artistic or “caring”. (Although you might consider zoology “scientific”, you’d have to understand my daughter to understand her motivations.) 

My son has an extreme aptitude in language, yet is gearing himself toward some kind of science.  No accounting for taste, I guess.  Personally, I think he’d be a great lawyer or politician.  That boy can never lose an argument – and the funny thing is, he’s outsmarting me and winning more and more of them lately.

Of course, 6 years is a long time, and even then, many people have no idea what they’d like to do with their lives when they get to college.  All I can do is celebrate them for who they are, and ensure that they understand that no road is closed to them, no matter which path they choose to take.

Porcelain Anniversary

Warning, this is a TMI post.

This week marks 12 years I have been working at my company.  In this era, that’s a long, long time.  How long?

Let me put it this way.  It just so happens that the floor of the building I work on has one men’s room.  And, that men’s room has one urinal.

I drink a LOT of coffee, so I’d say I average about 5 trips per day to that urinal.  Many days it’s more, on a few days, it’s less.  Also, for the first 4 years of my employment here, I worked 12 hour shifts, alternating 3 or 4 days per week.  But, I figure, over the course of 12 years, 5 per day is probably right.

Being a geek, I couldn’t help but run the numbers.  Using a baseline of 30 seconds per pee, that’s 2.5 minutes per day in front of the urinal.

That’s 12.5 minutes per week.

Times 52 is 650 minutes, or 10.83 hours per year.  Take away vacation, holiday  and sick time time, (apprx 2 weeks), and we’re looking at 625 minutes, or 10.42 hours per year in front of that urinal.

Times 12 years means I have spent 125.04 productive, or unproductive depending on your point of view, hours greeting the same urinal.

That’s 5.21 days of my life spent peeing in the exact same place, doing the exact same thing.

I feel like I should buy the thing a drink or something – but I’m sure it’s thinking I’ve given it quite enough already.