Who Says The Dry Spot Doesn’t Celebrate the Holidays?

Why, today is National Meth Awareness Day!

Go kiss your favorite Tornado Bait relative.

But not on the mouth.

Blech. I’d post the picture here, but I’d rather make it voluntary. It’s your fault if you click here.

NaBloMoPo-ver, Thank God

That’s right, it’s finally November 30, and unless some sadistic bastard adds another day to November (I’m looking at you, Julius Caesar…), National Blog Posting Month is mercifully over.

And it’s about damn time. I made it, but the ole Dry Spot has truly run dry. My brain is a rocky place where ideas can find no purchase. But I had to finish, because I’m something of a completist.

I won’t stop reading a book once I start it unless I lose it, no matter how bad it is. I’m the guy that renews it three times at the library and then xeroxes the last four chapters at work or checks it out as a book on tape because he’s run out of renewals.

When I was a pre-teen, my mother gave me a Hardy Boys book. Curses! It was something like #37 of the series, “The Mystery of the Homoerotic Gym Coach” or somethinorother. Once I read that one, the obsessive/compulsive in me had to read them all even though I realized after about four or five that they were all the same damn story. Luckily, Franklin W. Dixon was already dead, so I figured I could get ahead of him. Then I found out that “Franklin W. Dixon” was actually a pen name for an entire syndicate of writers who were pumping out drivel like the proverbial million monkeys working on a million typewriters. Crap.

VCRs and TiVo have compounded the problem of my completism. Once I get hooked on a show, I must watch every episode even after I have stopped liking it. “Jumping the shark” does not drive me away. For some unknown reason, I felt compelled to tape every episode of “Seinfeld” and “Northern Exposure” when they were still in first runs. Probably because I was usually so baked when they were on, I thought I might want to rewind and find out what I was laughing so hard at. But I never watched any of the old tapes or even labeled which season or episodes where on the boxes of videotapes which still fill my basement. Had I known about the advent of TV on DVD, I could have saved myself a lot of grief and just paid a lot of money for the box sets which I wouldn’t watch. Oh yeah, I did that too. (See “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Sex in the City,” “CSI” etc. taking up room on our shelves waiting for me or RUABelle to remove the plastic wrap.)

TiVo understands me, though. It knows that I’ve never missed an episode of “The Real World,” “Road Rules” or any of the various incarnations of “The Real World/Road Rules Competition/Inferno/Gauntlet/Duel,” so it saves them for me. Many a night I hear a loud sigh emanating from RUABelle as she falls asleep listening to “This is the true story of seven stragers, picked to live in a house…”

The one good thing about this cold I’ve been battling is that it has let me catch up on my TiVo while I lay in bed, weak as a puppy. At my peak, I was up to 18 hours of “Mythbusters” clogging up the hard drive of my DVR. Now that I’m back to working full time, I’ve at least caught up to October. I figure I’m one sinus infection away from clearing the queue.

Here’s hoping…

Skeletor Does Not Need Lipitor

Is anyone else creeped out by Robert Jarvik doing those Lipitor ads?

I’m not sure I want medical advice from somebody who looks like Spalding Gray after they fished him out of the East River.

Hey, I Recognize This Cold…

It’s the one that has already laid low half the folks I know. You know, the one with the sore throat that feels like you’re swallowing rusty razor blades that have been dipped in acid.

I’m gonna stay home today and try to lessen the duaration and severity of this thing with rest, Halls and Zicam. Any other advice?

Cyber Babble

Today’s Tennessean includes what must be their umpteenth “Parent’s Guide to NetLingo and CyberSpeak” in an attempt to educate (panic) parents about what their children are thumbtyping into their cell phones. Not only is this redundant and outdated, it’s not even informative as the only actual acronyms which they listed were:

LOL Laugh out loud
LOLA Laugh out loud again
BRB Be right back
TTYL Talk to you later
POS Parents over shoulder
TDTM Talk dirty to me
IWSN I want sex now

Illuminating work. I’m tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again. I know that internet safety is an important issue for parents, but I think BusyMom’s primer is a lot more valuable than this crap.

And also, it’s not just tweenagers and perverts texting each other anymore. What about the rest of us more erudite chatters? I offer for your edification, The Nashville Bloggers Guide to Cyberspeak.

KYRAR Kerry, your ribs are ready
GGAG Gunnar’s got a gun
BLM Brittney linked me!
TSJMFOU The Scene just made fun of us
BWMGCA Butcher wrecked my goddamn car again
SGAR Sista’s got a recipe!
C/S/MHAFUN CeeElCee/Smiley/McCeemey has an f’d up name
WJDYM Which Jag do you mean?
WRDYM Which Rex do you mean?
DMWDN Don’t mess with Dork Nation
OSN Or Sarcastro neither
EAU Edna’s acting up
PWSRTLOTDATBEAACTROVTIITOAMHAUB Perhaps we should raise the level of this debate above the base emotional argument and consider the ramifications of viewing the issue in terms of a more holistic and universal basis.
YSLNB You spell like Nemesis Boy
KSB Kat scratches back
BMAK BusyMom’s at Krystal’s

Another Random Photo

Don’t even look at this. It’s just here because I want to use it as my profile photo and I’m not html-savvy enough to add it any other way. Carry on.

Mountain Pix

I promised a few folks I’d post some pictures of another or my favorite Sewanee gravesites. So here ya’ go:

We live in the Garnertown area of the mountaintop. Yup, it’s named after the famous moonshiner.

One more photo for you:

Two observations-First of all, Nellie the Nervous Pudelhund has obviously come a long way since she used to want to bite me and crap and pee all over me whenever I tried to pick her up. Secondly, I grow my beard out every Thanksgiving to see how much grayer it has gotten since last year. The answer is a lot.

I Sing the Body Eclectic

Both Wonderdawg and Sista Smiff offered some interesting, if random, insights into themselves by playing along with this little meme from A Voice of Hope.

So I figured I’d give it a try.

Here’s how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool and no disclaimers allowed.

Opening Credits: Sugar Pie – The Subdudes

Waking Up: Forro de Minha Terra – Duda Da Passira

First Day At School: Wild Cat Blues – Clarence Williams’ Blue Five

Falling In Love: Monkey Let the Dogs Out – Allison Krauss and Union Station

Fight Song: Next Time You See Her – Eric Clapton

Breaking Up: Rolling Stone – Muddy Waters

Prom: Symphony #2 (1st movement) – Beethoven

Mental Breakdown: Pay Bo Diddley – The Snakes

Driving: Slow and Easy (A.K.A. Lawless Mike) – Dave Brubeck

Flashback: Jackie Tequila – Skank

Getting Back Together: Having a Blast – Green Day

Wedding: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – Tower of Power

Birth of Child: Anselma – Los Lobos

Final Battle: Don’t Stand So Close to Me – The Police

Death Scene: You Make Me Feel So Young – Frank Sinatra

Funeral Song: The Condom Song – Unconscious Pilot

End Credits: Scuttle Buttin’ – Stevie Ray Vaghan and Double Trouble

Interpretation is up to you. I’ll be glad to answer any questions about my strange-ass music collection in the comments.

Bah, Humbug.

RUABelle had no interest in my “Black Friday Door Buster Special” at 5:00 am.

Then as soon as I turned on the TV, I heard “Christmas is right around the corner!” With apologies to Mrs. Jag, I may head for the other corner.

Oh, I Thought She Said “Wired”

The fabulous Sista Smiff has admitted that she might have some “eccentricities and called me out to share my weirdness. So here are 6 weird things about CeeElCee.

1. I have freakishly long toes and can tie a shoelace and make a paper airplane with my feet. My second toe is as long as my pinkie. We’re talking baby hands here, people. Sorry to gross you out. These “talents” did come in handy back when I was a summer camp counselor at the Cumberland Museum and the projector would break down. Sitting in front of a pile of kiddies hopped up on Hawaiian Punch and calming them down by doing toe tricks is a surreal memory, even today twenty some odd years later.

2. When I watch a dvd, I always watch the special features before the movie. This includes the trailer of the movie I’m about to spend two hours watching. Yes, it does drive RUABelle batty.

3. I have taught hundreds of people how to juggle and how to rappel. Not at the same time. I have a proprietary method to teach even the most spastic folks how to juggle three tennis balls. Ask me about it sometime.

4. I can play three songs on the banjo strictly by finger memory. I took lessons for a couple of months when I was in high school. Once I learned how to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” I had achieved what I wanted out of the instrument so I quit going. I can still pick up a banjo and play “Foggy Mountain”, “Cripple Creek” and “Bile That Cabbage Down” but I have no idea what I’m doing when I play it. I tend to just stare off into space, slack-jawed and on the verge of drooling like some sort of “Rocking Horse Winner” while my fingers play the rolls and execute the hammer-ons and pull-offs. Call me a savant. Or and idiot.

5. I was in Jim Varney’s first movie, “Doctor Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam.” This was pre-Ernest. It was very bad, but it is available on dvd. I’m the guy in the science fair scene wearing the maroon faux-Members Only jacket who gets a table full of tires dumped on him the robot science project that has run amok. No, I didn’t get paid extra for the stunt work. I am in the credits though, and I did get to go to the gala opening at the Belle Meade Theatre.

6. When I sing along with a song, I like to sing harmony parts instead of the melody. And not even the traditional harmonies. F’d up harmonies. This makes me good to have along for a small acoustic gig, but horrible at karaoke. I used to play the tuba, so I sing the bass line to the “Start Spangled Banner.” The rest of my musically formative years were spent listening to bluegrass, so that leads to other pretty messed-up harmonies as well. You should hear my high lonesome version of Creed. Be very afraid.

So there, now you know six more weird things about me.

How about you, Sara , Sara , FishWreck , Jag , Knuck and Kosmo? Tag, you’re it.

Abusing the System

Let’s try something. No, I promise it’ll be fun. It’s sort of like the bat signal.

Hey Kathy T. at NiT, please make my site meter spike.

Now don’t you feel cheap and tawdry for falling for that and clicking over here.

Sorry, I promise I’ll have something more NaBloPoMo-worthy before the end of the day.

p.s. Man, I’ll look pretty silly if Kathy doesn’t link to this. Nah, she likes a good joke.

They’ve Earned My Repeat Business

Last night I ordered a cd of house/trance/funk music** from a friend of mine who was a DJ in Miami from a company called CDBABY.COM. Today I received the following delightful email:

“Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure
it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Wednesday, November 22nd.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as ‘Customer of the Year’. We’re all
exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby”

Color me impressed. Now that’s what I call customer service! I’ll be using CDBABY.COM again the next time I’m shopping for an independently-produced house/trance/funk cd. Okay, well maybe that won’t happen again, but I would if it did.

** There’s something weird for ya’, Sista.

A Slightly More Constructive Day

Well, I actually accomplished something today. Since I woke up this morning, I’ve managed to:

1.) Hike around my property and check out the north forty. (Okay, the north four…)
2.) Drive in to Winchester to the Tractor Supply to buy materials to build a pistol range tomorrow.
3.) Do a little a on the way. Yeah, I’m a nerd. You already knew that.
4.) Build a new composting pen for the tons of leaves I plan to move around this winter.
5.) Actually rake up some of those leaves so that at least they’ll stop holding all the moisture on my dry-rotting porches.
6.) Hike the old Goat Track railroad trail around Sewanee.
7.) Take my garbage and recycling to the Convenience Center.
8.) Make it back to the cabin in time to pop open a nice cold beer and share it with you, Gentle Reader.

Now there’s nothing left to do but wait for RUABelle to bring Nervous Nellie the pudelhund and our buddy Mistersippi up for the rest of the week. I’m guessing traffic out of Nashville may be a bit gnarly, so I’m not holding my breath. I have provisions to last at least a few days. Longer if I’m willing to eat the suspect frozen burritos and potted meat food product we’ve had since we bought the place.

Tomorrow is power tool day, so if you don’t hear from me it means I probably cut off my typing hand. Send help.

You Can Shove “The Notebook” Right Up Your…

Late last month, my buddy NewsComa, whose opinion I always respect, pointed me to the drama going on at Atomic Tumor. As most of you know, AT is a young man who shared with the bloggosphere the ultimately painful experience of losing his lovely young wife and mother of their two children to some sort of raging infection. When I first started lurking, her condition was serious but not dire. As I checked back in daily, then hourly her prognosis became bleaker and AT’s emotions became rawer and even more personal.

I was rapt at the depth of emotions and also the attention to mundane details of day to day life that this brave young man was sharing with anyone who had the ability to open a browser and type in a url. This worried me. I tend to get too empathetic in a bad way. Hell, I got uptight following along with the trauma of BusyMom’s sick laptop, much less the ripping apart of a young family. I actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking that I felt some cosmic headslap that the end had come for GAC. I didn’t even know these people. How could I be so affected by the plight of total strangers? It gave me a sort of skeevy, stalkeresque feeling about myself.

But in the end, I think that AT chronicled this tragic month for himself because it was the thing he knew how to do best. I don’t think he cared if we watched. He wanted to share his Barbara Jamie with the world and to have a way to work through his emotions. Early in the ordeal I thought that when and if his wife did ever wake up, she would have a record of the depth of love and emotions that her husband felt for her that is unlike anything I have ever shared with anyone.

I believe this account is a love story for the ages. I don’t feel skeevy anymore. I feel lucky to have read it. Good luck, AT. Take care of yourself and your family.

I Was Hopeful When I Saw This Headline

Foreigner killed after Iraq hijack

Turns out they weren’t talking about the band. Too bad.

I’ve always wondered why Stevie Ray Vaughan had to be on that helicopter that crashed while Men at Work lives on to tour in perpetuity.

So sad.

The Road to Hell…

Today is the first day of my five day vacation at our Sewanee cabin. RUABelle won’t be up until Tuesday night after she sends the little kindermonsters home for Thanksgiving break. I fully intended to get up really early this morning, pack the truck and get to Sewanee in time to rake leaves, cut up some downed trees and split some aged wood.

Unfortunately, I slept a little late, the cats were difficult to round up (it really is like herding cats) and it’s been snowing off and on all day. So here’s what I’ve gotten accomplished:

1.) Unpacked
2.) Went to a Chinese buffet for lunch
3.) Played guitar for two hours on the couch
4.) Watched Oprah

I needed this.

Okay, Okay…I Can Take a Hint!

Is it bad when you can’t find your newspaper three days in a row because you need to rake so many leaves out of your yard?

But don’t worry, I “raked” it with the lawnmower and found all three editions.

ed.-Apologies to NewsComa.

Commerce-Small and Large Scale

RUABelle and I took advantage of a weekend in town without a Titans game to run some errands on Saturday morning. The most pleasant was a trip to Jeffraham Prestonian’s manor on the river to pick up a few items I purchased at his West Gnashvegas Swap Spot. I hesitate to tell ya’ll about it in case I want to buy some more stuff from him later, but I know he could use the money and Curly the extra-cool cat needs the scratch too. (pun intended) Plus, I got a free copy of Curly’s Christmas dvd so I owe them the shout out.

Nellie the Nervous Pudelhund has enjoyed watching the dvd of Curly’s adventures around JP’s apartment. We left it on the kitchen tv while we puttered around the house and actually found it and Jeffraham’s original soundtrack to be quite soothing. Our cats were a little more more suspicious though.

After leaving Casa Prestonian, we went to the opening weekend of the new Costco in West Nashville. I have never been to a place outside of the Magic Kingdom which more efficiently separates you from your money. The lay-out of the store was easy to figure out, the staff was very courteous, the check-out personnel were extremely efficient and the parking lot was easy to navigate. In other words, it’s the anti-Sam’s Club. The experience has already convinced us to let our Sam’s membership lapse whenever it comes up for renewal again.

But here’s a hint…don’t go without a list. Ouch! No really, we needed that gallon of sundried tomatoes and the prelit topiary Xmas tree.

The Dry Spot Index

With apologies to the Harper’s Index.

Number of posts to The Dry Spot to date: 301
Days between 1st post and #100: 106
Days between #101 and #200: 90
Days between #201 and #300: 74
References to the lovely RUABelle without giving away her real name: 92
References to Jim, er, The Nashville Knucklehead without giving away his real name: 33
Trips to the Mothership since it opened: 22
MTA bus trips since I said I’d try to ride it once a week: 44
Posts which refer to or revolve around my bowels: 7
References to my false positive syphilis test: 8
Highest rank of the Dry Spot when searching Google for “kahlua and breast milk”: 2
Magicians which hijacked my site: 2
Mentions of the word “shit”: 11
Mentions of the word “fuck”: 7
Trip reports or travelogues: 23
Fights picked with the IRS: 3
Attempts at political commentary: 5
Readers who give a crap about my political views: 0

I’m Worthless and Weak

First of all, let me acknowledge that this is my 300th post, and I
fully intended to have something momentous to say.

And I wanted to let you all know how nice it was to meet Curly the cat, and his roommate Jeffraham Prestonian when we did our commerce today.

Then I was going to give you all my review of the first trip to the new Costco in West Nashville.

But unfortunately RUABelle and I spent all day at the Sportsman’s Grille drinking beer and watching football games. And now we’re headed to the DogDoc’s for fajitas and the late games.

So this is all I got for now. If it wasn’t for this Post per Day Month promise, I’d just blow it off until I had something more.

You deserve better, Dry Spot readers.

I promise to make it up to you next week while I’m not working.

Stay tuned and hold me to it!