Got This

Took 1/2 day today. Drove to carMax and unloaded the albatross that is (or was) my Sangria-red 2003 Ford Fuckus, lovingly (or hatefully) dubbed the Bar Car. I'd say it served me well but I refuse to lie to the internet. I'll leave that to pro sports and political bloggers.

They're so much cooler than me as it is, I'll just let them have the lies as well.

I got the exact amount of money Kim, Alex and I need for our trip to the West Coast later this spring so it all worked out perfectly.

Drove to Lockport and picked up my dad's Grand Prix. Alex was totally blown away, as we all were by this generous gift. The folks even insisted on paying the title and registration transfer stuff. I fought my mom though when it came to picking up a celebratory pizza. I insisted on buying it and she said, "Eddie! This is our treat." To which I responded, "Ma, I got this. Don't worry. You got the car, I'll get the pizza."

Ready to Explode Underwear

I don't know if this is the end of L.Smith and the fucking Tampa Two in Chicago. Win, lose or whatever, it should be the end of this coaching crew. The Bears will probably not unload Jerry A., although he is a big part of what went wrong...

But even though I want to see sweeping changes on the Bears...I see no reason to hope the Vikings embarrass them. I want the Bears to win and don't care about the opinions of those who say the Bears would be better served by a loss in the long run.

It is later and the Bears won in OT. I enjoyed it. Sports is an escape from a world full of guys with ready-to-explode underwear.

I've got a crazy week coming up and I want to be ready.

Fat chance of that happening.

Noliet

Did not make it back to Joliet on Sat for more Christmas related activities. Technically it wasn't even Joliet that I didn't make it back to...

What?

I should try to make it back to a writing class at some point in time.

Kim's folks stayed an extra day. The weather was tough out here. Kim made more of the pasta and we enjoyed it.

Alex and I are spending a ton of time together, building his presents. We also cleared off the workbench and let him use my old erector set.

NOT THAT YOU SICK BASTARDS!

Sunday night was just fantastic. Hours spent playing in the workshop with the boy and when we weren't building we played video games. I bitch about Christmas but, in spite of being snowed in, the little family had a fun weekend.

What Happened to

...this week? It's Saturday already and I'm taking a break from doing bills.

Bill's what?

Saw Billy Garver out twice in under a week's time. Amazing. Good to see that little cute pants. He was at the taste of Old Dog (Pizza Villa last Saturday) and at the Townie Christmas Party on Wed the 23rd.

Thanks and much love to Brian for inviting me back yet again. I will play that gig as long as they will have me. The set...

To Live is to Fly (just two versus from the great mr. TVZ)
Barb City Confidential (instrumental thing)
Virginia
Stop Breaking Down
One for the Walkers
Harvest Here
Francesca
Here
Leave it All
Glad to Know
To Bea or Be
part of the Annex has Been Drinking (with some other stuff)
Why They Buried Celine
Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You

Christmas Eve, spent with my parents in Lockport. Drove back and the Chicago NPR played the whole Phil Spector Christmas Album. The awesomeness of that always kicks the tiny, green ass of the Grinch in me.

2nd year in a row we stayed in DeKalb for Christmas Day. Newman at 10:15 and then we hosted family at our place. Kim made her Grandpa's spaghetti recipe. I made Manhattans before all made the Brandy Alexanders. The dedicated partygoers were full of the Christmas spirit.

And by full of the Christmas spirit, I mean fucked up.

Full Frontispiece

Busy weekend. Alex and I were supposed to go to the movies on Friday. That got moved around because mom's plans got cancelled. The good news was, we still had Family Movie Night.

Spent time when I could following the status of the "test votes" in the Senate. Lots of things kept me from following as closely as I could.

Monday, as soon as I got home from work, Alex and I did some of our Christmas shopping and went to see Avatar.

The film? It's one of those things where, if you're going to make a three hour movie and put that much effort into it, why not have a well-constructed story instead of rushing throuh to the action scenes at the end? I could've watched a whole film of guy (Jake) learning to be one of the tree people. I believed that part and even found it interesting.

We won't even mention how incomplete and slip-shoddy the allegory was.

These are small complaints cuz I love taking the boy to knuckleheaded action flicks. I wish this one could've been better, but what the hey.

Work continues on Kish, or Where History Goes to Die, ajusted Pt. 1. It's got a great frontispiece.

NOT THAT YOU SICK BASTARDS!

Full frontispiece.

Newton's Something Law of Mouth Motion

The holidays remind me why I like the stupid blog and why I feel more comfortable communicating through any means other than sitting on a couch and talking. It is not the people around me. They are good people. Family, friends...but during the holidays so much more time is spent talking that I know I am going to say something stupid, insensitive or just plain mean.

I don't know, maybe I am all three of these things. I hope I'm not just plain mean. I hope it is just that my mouth, once it begins moving remains in motion until another force stops it.

A punch in the face might be the most suitable force some days.

Had a good time at the Old Dog's thing last night.

NOT THAT YOU SICK BASTARDS!

Pizza, beer, video games and Billa brought some killa rye whiskey. Delicious. ChrisB learned that he should never do a good deed in my presence...especially one that involves bringing food to the elderly.

The boy told me on the way home, "I love hanging out with your friends."

Then proceeded to explain to me the whole "Mam's boy" reference he made at the end of the party. Stupid carney strong man game. He's always reminding me of that shit.

Back to my initial thought, I am putting myself on notice that I have started out enjoying the first few family/friend get-togethers this holiday season. I need to either carry on and appreciate what I have or stop bitching about it. Starting....

now.

Rime of the Asshole Mariner

The cubs are rid of Milton Bradley and have acquired a pitcher who they will one day, long to be rid of. Actually, that might not be true. Carlos Silva had a few good years with MN before he received a ridiculous, over-bloated contract, became over-bloated himself and then fucked up his arm.

A stint in the inferior National League (especially the woeful NL Central) might be just what the doctor ordered for a pitcher who has spent a good portion of the last two years on the DL. Who wouldn't want to pitch against the Pirates, Reds and even the Brew crew when they are on one of their solo homer or nothing runs of pathetic plate appearances? The boy and I once saw Ted Lily pitch a no-no against the Brewers, in Milwaukee and after watching the game later on On Demand, it seemed that Lily only had so-so (not no-no) stuff that day.

Hendry finally did something to fix the mess he made of the cubs in 2009. Now they just need to ride out the end of the Lou and Hendry era and get some real baseball people in there.

More later

Running to Daylight

...or is it just running to more running. I know it's the same for everyone. I know everyone runs like crazy this time of year. But I am me. I don't like things I don't want. I'm a selfish prick. When I find myself running in circles, I have to bitch about it, if only to myself.

Bitching to no one helps fight the boredom of running without purpose.

Mount St. Sprinkles

Drove to Taco Bell on lunch yesterday. The bar car stalled in the parking lot. The dash lights came on, the radio worked, but when I turned the ignition it went "click click click."

Thinking quickly I called my friend Kristie at City Auto. Hey, when you're me you have a garage on speed dial and that is how it is. The only question she asked, "When you turn the ignition, did you say it was one click or a bunch of clicks."

When I told her that it was a rapid succession of clicks she said, "It's your battery."

I asked, "But the radio is working and the dash is all lit up?"

Kristie: "What indicators are lighting up on the dash ed?"

Me: "The engine light and a picture of a square with two bolts on top of it."

Kristie: "Does that second indicator look like a car battery?"

Me: "Yeah. Oh..."

Kristie: "If the battery is bad, those lights can still go on."

Me: "I get it."

She told me to shut off the car, wait a few minutes, pop the hood and check out the contacts to see if they were frozen.

Mine were froze up and cruddy. I cleaned the contacts with the brush on my car scraper. Sure enough the car started right up and I made it back to work, only six minutes late from lunch.

Not bad

SOX pick up Juan Pierre, more importantly Kenny only gave up minor league pitching (which the SOX can spare) and he got the Dodgers to eat a good portion of the salary owed to the left-fielder from France.

Not bad

No practice tonight but added a bunch of stuff to the Annex at LnL. Need to call some folks to help me finish. Closing in tho...

Not too bad

The best part of the day was seeing Alex still up when I got back from Elgin. He and his mother were making Christmas cookies. I hate Christmas cookies because they dominate our house during this time of the year and it is nearly impossible to make any real food. But seeing Alex and his mom working together, and just to see Alex after this long day was great.

They made oreos, dipped in chocolate, covered in sprinkles. The boy poured a mountain of sprinkles on one saying, "This is for my teacher. She loves cookies with sprinkles."

It looked less like a cookie and more like Mount Saint Sprinkles...but I wasn't telling him that.

Not bad

And the Angels Sing

Dad is 71. Kim had mucho work and is fighting something, germ-wise so only Alex and I went out to Lockport. We brought a coin book and a musette CD for the birthday boy and had a nice time. Talked silver dollars, geography (Alex bought himself a version of Risk for the laptop and is starting to know some of the major countries).

The boy and I drove out to the OF and picked up the ornaments he made with Grandpa Al in the woodshop last week. They did a beautiful job on these woodcut snowflakes. It was Alex's first time using the drill press. He loves using that gear.

Drove from the South Side back to DK Rock City through some mild freezing rain (if such a thing is possible). The boy and I didn't mind. College of DuPage Radio was doing a tribute to Johnny Mercer and we enjoyed listening to a hitmaker from a world that has been all but forgotten. I'm not afraid to say I love the stuff he did, especially with Hoagy Carmichael (sp? jeanz? Nelson Riddle? anybody?). I'm proud as hell to say that being in the middle of a "scene" where everyone was either trying to be the next Jesus Lizard or some funk/ska joint...me and my friends wrote To Bea or Be.

But mostly I was so happy to share the songs with my kid. He seems to like the old timey stuff and we both bounced along with hit after hit. Great music, even if it is pop music connects us. It is something familiar. It makes us think there are some things that might just be universal. It might not go too far to say that such music brings us closer to the divine or at least brings us closer to each other. The last song of the Johnny Mercer tribute came on as our journey was almost at an end. The Peace Rd exit was in sight when we heard this

Full Court One on One

Night Owl program and winter concert were canceled so Kim and Alex were home early tonight. Alex came home, reviewed his spelling, did his decodable reader and some math problems. He brought Michael over and then the two of them called Pam on Kim's phone. Obviously I only heard Alex's part...

"Can you come over?"

~

"Math homework? How many problems?"

~

"Yeah, I don't like those. Come over when you're done. My dad is making a pizza. We'll eat and then play Nerf guns."

Sweet Mamacita!!!! That doesn't sound like a date does it?!??!? I'm not ready for this.

The kids ate pizza but then Alex and I had to drive Pam home on our way to hoops practice.

Practice was canceled. Alex and I didn't figure it out until we after we arrived at the gym. That's ok. We had the gym to ourselves and ran ourselves ragged playing full court one-on-one. I think the boy is trying to kill me.

I probably deserve it.

Spelling Dec 8

unhappy

recall

disappear

unload

mistake

misspell

dislike

replace

mislead

disagree

rewrite

unroll


Got an e-mail from Larry telling me I can rechedule Wed's editing extravaganza if the weather is nasty. His exact words were, "Don't do anything stupid ed."

Great, now I'm going to have to be stupid around the house instead of the recording studio. I can take Alex to basketball practice which is definitely a good thing. But I really wanted to try and finish the Annex Has Been Drinking to see if there is a record or if need to go hat in hand to the boys and ask them if we can do one more track.

That would be very bad. Devin is moving. Chris and Joe have other things and I think they all want to either do bigDrag stuff or do their own things.

For me, as soon as Kish is in the can, I can move on with other suff that I want to do at Larry' and with the bigDrag guys.

More on this crap later.

Alex and his friends played in the snow after work. Then we had a quick meal and went to Mass. Kim thanked Fr. Deltoro for discussing the stigmata with her relgious ed class. He is an amazing man and we are lucky to have him at Newman.

Spuds

First game of the season for Alex and Finn's park district basketball squadron...the DeKalb Spuds..er, Spurs. He spent the night @ Finn's on Friday and the family was reunited at the Haish gym just before game time on Saturday morning.

I think I know why Dennis wanted to switch the boys over from the Y league to the park district. No knock on the Y, but there are significantly fewer teams in this league, less crowding at the games and better facilities thru the P District. Should be a fun season.

Drove to my folks' after the game. Kim and my mom went shopping. They had fun. Dad, Alex, Cookie and I watched westerns and we had fun. Dropped off Kim and Alex on the South Side. He's doing a woodcutting project with Poppi. I headed back to DK to work on my own project.

These novels won't unpublish themselves

Waitaminute...yes they will

How to Arm Oneself Against Bad Arguments

I'm not sure if the course of action suggested by our Commander in Chief is the right one in Astan. But allow me to identify some of the bad arguments being tossed out there.

While most R's support the troop increase they do not like the deadline for withdrawal. Let's be honest, no red-blooded American likes withdrawing at a certain point. If O is serious about withdrawing no ifsandsorbutts after so many months, that's bad and the R's have good reason to take him to task.

But I think the bigger risk here is setting this date, knowing that he may have to keep troops in longer and consider shifting them around, depending on Taliban numbers, and regional needs...and I think it is possible this president (depending on the circumstances) might even consider a troop increase.

I completely understand why some cultural conservatives think this president does not understand them or respect their values. But just because he doesn't understand that component of American life to the satisfaction of some, he can still have a sense of duty and what is to be done for the sake of American security here and abroad. I think this administration has shown more careful deliberation and serious thought re: A-stan and America's long term security needs than the last bunch in the White House.

The arguments coming from certain D's, academics and the anti-war crowd both encourage me and rile me up at the same time. I am encouraged because I think it is important for serious men to not worry about the agendas of their supporters once they become president. I think that it is better for the country as a whole when a president keeps their supporters at arm's length once they take their place as the nation's chief executive.

But what riles me up are these anti-war dogmatists who think the effort in A-Stan is symbolic and misses the point of engaging terrorism at the global level.

What makes the arguments against the president from the anti-war dogmatists, especially among the academics....what makes their arguments so bad is how thoughtful they think their defective position is.

It is something like 'Does the president really think he can defeat The Base (or is it the Bass) by winning in Afghanistan? This is merely symbolic. AlQ can simply move to Somalia, The Philippines, Minnesota...anywhere it wants. The best course of action is to end the war and pump resources into international policing'

It is more than symbolism re: keeping the terrorists from regaining a solid grasp on A-Stan. A-Stan offers America's enemies greater opportunities to organize and enrich themselves than Somalia, the Philippines and Minnesota. Consider the possibility of revue from unfettered drug trafficking and the ease of moving resources from other parts of the Middle East through A-Stan. If you are someone who thinks that Somalia or the Philippines offer the terrorists the same opportunities as the poppy trade and the proximity to the warlords/druglords of E. A-Stan you ought to consider that...especially in Somalia (and other parts of Africa), terror groups have to contend with several other criminal and military factions all with very different agendas and alliances. Maybe the Philippines offer some chances to make drug money, but the base is much farther away from the largest portion of their financial base and that is a disadvantage.

And with respect to Minnesota, they have their baseball team playing outside and their football team playing inside so they have no fucking clue.

I am not foolish enough to think that a war on terror is ended forever with victory in Afghanistan, but their is more at stake there than certain critics would have us believe.

More later...maybe

Tiger Gotten By the Tail

It's not that I'm too good to talk about the Tiger Woods scandal...

...frankly the details being put forth aren't bad or naughty enough to interest me.

I don't care if some extra-marital shit occured a month after his kid was born...I don't care about text messages, phone records or secret meetings.

He had an affair. Fine. I don't give a naked-mole rat's ass how said affair was conducted or arranged. What a bunch of ho-hum flotsum. I wanna know what they did. Did she fondle his golf bag on the course? Does Tiger putt from the rough or wear read when he does it on Sundays? Did he make her get a "Swoosh" tattoo or get busy in a Buick?

So until the poporattzo and sports radio (which is becoming more TMZ all the time) give me those details they can take their coffee-fucking-clutch story and shove it up their 19th hole!

Sideways!

And if we are at a dinner party and you see someone engaging in speculation about such stuff, anticipate me making the following response: "I enjoy pornography. I was watching some pornography produced in a former East Bloc country the other day and..."

And watch the cacklers scurry

How Sober Are These Days

?

President Obama has finally lost all the magic of Candidate Obama's speeches. I think that is a good thing. Tuesday's speech was serious and without an appeal to a grand vision. Did it successfully remind Americans of what has to be done in Afghanistan? In a way I am the wrong person to ask because I have always believed that that was the war we must fight and find a way to win or at least render that portion of the Earth unable to offer succor to terror training camps.

If we see so much as a terror-Gymkata on the outskirts of..say, Kandahar we need to bomb the ever-loving shit out of said terror-Gymkata.

I wasn't listening to be convinced that continuing the war in Afghanistan is right thing for American security. Right or wrong, I have always been of that mindset. Right or wrong, I have opposed the war in Iraq for some of the same reasons the President talked about on Tuesday.

I listened to hear if the President was really telling those brave cadets and the rest of us American people-folk what we are going to do - what it will require - and what if anything we need to brace ourselves for...

I'm not sure I got that on Tuesday. But I heard a serious man speak of a deadly and costly problem. I believe he may be willing to sacrifice his legacy and some of the programs/agendas of his closest supporters (things that don't mean shit to me, but probably things that mean, or meant a lot to Candidate Obama).

There's a nice turn near the end of the speech. We get the Lincoln reference, which is standard fare for speeches of this type, but then the President tells us he remembers and now yearns for the unity the nation felt in the days following the attacks on New York and Washington. This is a fine thing. This may be the thing most difficult to recover among a people in the process of ravaging themselves with their own shrill voices. In a way, it is a sad statement on these times that the new American dream might be of a society in which people stop screaming at each other long enough to listen to something else. Ok, I had a thread there and have clearly lost it. Must be my good ole modern American attention span.

Maybe I'll reflect more on this later...

On the lighter side, when Obama said the wars in A-stan and Iraq have already cost one trillion dollars, Alex asked, "Dad, is a trillion a real number?"

I responded, "These days boy...I don't know."