Does the Circle Hold

Hey folks,

I am in the process of switching the hosting site I use, so please be patient. I am still writing away when I can, tagging it with a decent time and date, and will post it as soon as everything is kosher and will be available as I need it. Until then, sift back and see what you may have missed.

Until next time,

Your Bob

I don’t know where this is from, or who said it, but it was in a junk email I received the other day… For once those things have a purpose.

“The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.”

“A round of Jeager bombs, if you please,” I order from the bartender.
“Wooo. You need to be careful with those, son,” an older man in his forties warns. “That shit is an upper and a downer. It’ll mess up your heart big time.”
“Yeah, well, I’m young, I think I can handle it for now, so it’s all good. But thanks for the concern.”

The next week he says the same thing. I politely reply, “So you’ve said, but we usually mix it up with other things so it evens out. We don’t over do it TOO much.”

The NEXT fucking week the guy says the same thing.
“Listen man, not to be rude, but I’m in the Army. I run about ten miles a week to prepare for a timed test every three to six months. You wanna see whose heart is at risk? Let’s go run a couple miles right now and see who needs the ambulance.”

It was a dick thing to do, and I feel like an asshole about it, but for the love of Bob.

You know what I mean? If not, meet me at the bar.

I’m up for testing this theory. Ya gotta have goals!

Stages of Drunkenness
0 - Stone cold sober. Brain as sharp as an army bayonet.

1 - Still sober. Pleasure senses activated. Feeling of well-being.

2 - Lager warming up head. Pretzels are ordered. Barmaid complimented on choice of blouse.

3 - Crossword in newspaper is filled in. After a while blanks are filled with random letters and numbers.

4 - Barmaid complimented on choice of bra. Partially visible when bending to get packets of crisps. Try to instigate conversation about bras. Order half a dozen packets of pretzels one by one.

5 - Have brilliant discussion with guy on the next bar stool. Devise foolproof scheme for wining lottery, sort out Denver Broncos defense problems.

6 - Feel like a Demi-God. Map out rest of life on cocktail napkin. Realize that everybody loves you. Call parents and tell them you love them. Call girlfriend to tell her you love her and she still has an amazing ass.

7 - Send drinks over to woman sitting at table with boyfriend. No reaction. Scribble out message of love on five cocktail napkins and Frisbee them to her across the room. Boyfriend asks you outside. You buy him a Slim Panatela.

8 - Some slurring. Offer to buy drinks for everyone in room. Lots of people say yes. Go round the bar hugging them one by one. Fall over. Get up.

9 - Head-ache kicks in. Michelob tastes off. Send it back. Next bottle comes back tasting same. Say, “That’s much better”. Fight nausea by trying to play old Space Invaders game for ten minutes before seeing out of order sign.

10 - Some doubling of vision. Stand on table shouting abuse at all four bartenders. Talked down by bartender’s wives, who you offer to give a baby to. Fall over. Get up. Fall over. Impale head on corner of table. Fail to notice oozing head wound.

11 - Speech no longer possible. Eventually manage to find door. Sit and take stock. Realize you are sitting in pub cellar, having taken a wrong turning. Vomit. Pass out.

12 - Put in cab by somebody. Give home address. Taken home. Can’t get key in door. Realize you’ve given address of your local gym. Generally pleased at way evening has gone. Pass out again.

Yes, yes. Who would have thought I’d make it this far? Woo hoo! Half way to retirement… Well, this is the last year I try to match the years I’ve been on this spinning rock with ounces of alcohol. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it all down this year. What fun is a birthday if you remember it, right?

As it has been for the past five, for the sake of travel, it’s split:
Wednesday: Lake County - you all know where
Friday: Just over the border
Sunday: With my army buddies and cityfolk friends just southwest of the city.
(Why do I ALWAYS have drill the weekend of my bday? I mean, for real!?)

Because Wednesdays have gotten more expensive than they should be, I’m going to use that as a preparation for the goal setting on Friday. After the Memorial Day party, I’m a bit strapped, so I hope my credit cards can handle it. We’re all too old for gifts, unless they’re gag gifts like a Fuck Ewe or something, but I’m all for shots and good company. If you wanna make a donation, you are more than free to do so.

It should be a good time, my last hoorah here for certain before I’m gone for a couple. Who can beat an excuse to drink excessively and watch me make an ass out of myself? Well, an even bigger ass than normal. We’ll see how this turns out.

Happy Memorial Day, eh? Power either corrupts or sickens. At least she stayed true to form.

Cindy Sheehan

“I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of ‘right or left’, but ‘right and wrong,’” the diary says.

Sheehan said she had sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement “that often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”

But she said the most devastating conclusion she had reached “was that Casey did indeed die for nothing … killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think”.

“Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives,” she wrote. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.”

“I am going to take whatever I have left and go home,” Sheehan wrote.

“Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?”

Who’s sleeping around? Scientists can tell
Friendly folks, seemingly cold fish have the most sex partners, study says
By Melinda Wenner

People who are socially dominant and either very friendly or very antagonistic tend to be more sexually promiscuous, according to a new study.

Friendly, warm people may enjoy sharing their warmth with others by sleeping with them, whereas antagonistic people may sleep around to avoid having a monogamous relationship. And having a dominant personality makes it easier to approach potential partners.

Past studies have suggested that people who are dominant tend to have more sexual partners than people who are submissive, but there has been little research into whether a person’s level of interpersonal warmth — the way in which they interact with others — affects their sexual actions.

So Patrick Markey, a psychologist at Villanova University, and his wife Charlotte Markey, a psychologist at Rutgers University, asked 210 adults to take a test to measure their interpersonal characteristics. They also asked the subjects to indicate with how many people they had engaged in certain sexual activities.

When they compared the subjects’ responses, they were able to confirm that dominance is a key trait of people who have a lot of sexual partners. They also found that people who are either extremely warm or extremely cold toward others tend to be promiscuous — and that people who are just moderately warm have the fewest sexual partners.

Antagonistic people might prefer to have multiple sex partners in order to avoid being in a monogamous relationship, out of fear of being poorly treated or being later rejected by a committed partner, the authors noted in their study, which is to be published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Patrick Markey says it’s particularly interesting that warm people tend to be promiscuous, because in some ways, it conflicts with the moral thinking that promiscuity is bad.

While sleeping with multiple partners certainly carries with it certain health risks, “it could be that someone’s not doing it to achieve the most pleasure. Someone actually might be doing it as an expression of their warmth to other people,” he told LiveScience. “A warm person might hug lots of people; a warm person might kiss lots of people. Well, maybe a warm person might sleep with lots of people.”

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18922113/?GT1=9951

When I said it’d be nice to have a son, a boy, for a change of pace, man, I didn’t know the half of it.

Not only does he flirt like fucking crazy, hitting on his aunt’s friends, uncle’s fiancé, and such, but:

We stopped letting the kids take baths together when one evening we hear this screeching:
“Mooooooom! Come quick! Something’s wrong with Dylan!”
We bolt into the bathroom and he’s sitting there playing with himself.
“There’s something wrong with his pee pee! It’s swollen but he won’t leave it alone.”

The other day he was being changed on his Nama’s lap. She stood him up to wrap the diaper around in the right places, and, true to form, he plays with himself.
“Dylan! What are you doing!”, she shouts thru her laughter.
“Pee pee! Pee pee, Nama?”, he asks as he starts thrusting his hips towards her face, hard as a rock.
“NO! Nama does not want your pee pee in her face and you don’t either.”

When he can’t play with it he plays with his outtie belly button, lying on his back, lifting his shirt halfway, and rubbing his palm over his belly, caressing his belly button.

At school, he bottom sharks any girl wearing a skirt. At first it was just to women, where he would peek underneath and crawl below it like tucking himself away in a tee pee. Now, the girls in his class run away as he is literally chasing skirts, lifting them up over their head, and tickling them.

At our BBQ, Gambler grabs Cicada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicadaand and shows it to him. Girlfriend takes off like a bandit into the house and slams the door, concerned to even see it thru the window. Our son shakes his head with glee, bopping back and forth trying to touch it. Once in his hand Gambler has to protect it, as Dylan is squeezing it in his little hand as he tries to maneuver it around to get a better look. Even as the insect crawled up his arm to his shoulder he was all smiles, and once it dropped to the floor he reached down to grab it before it flew away, his laughter echoing behind it.

Too and he’s too strong and fast for his own good. All the day car people have been telling me he can beat up, catch up to, and out run the three year olds in his class, and he has figured out how to open the refrigerator door. Once anyone catches him, he reaches in for something and hands it to them, as if to say, “What? I was just getting this for you,” just as he does with my remote, keys, camera, etc. Little stinker.

Now if I can just get him to stop being so fascinated with my pee pee and balls I’d be really happy.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had “covertly” funded a project with the U.S. automakers for the past five years, whereby the automakers were installing black-box voice recorders in 4-wheel drive pickup trucks and SUV’s in an effort to determine in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last fifteen seconds before the crash.

They were surprised to find in 48 of the 50 states the recorded last words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were, “Oh Shit !”

Only Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were different, where 89.3 percent of the final words were: “Hold my beer, I’m gonna try somethin’.”

I’m so ready to leave. Maybe it would not be worth sticking around for the wedding.

My mom and dad and sisters gang up on my wish to have a Memorial Day BBQ in the same spirit of bonding and celebration of my sister’s high school graduation and family get-togethers, of which in preparation of I must clean containers left to rot and mildew since then, but towards me it’s a pain in the ass. I’m the one expected to do everything because it was my idea and planning, and they didn’t trust my timing, even though it worked out perfectly. They tell me late in the afternoon (after I already called to make sure it was okay not to come down til the night of) that if I wanted to have it I had to come down and prepare the night before, just as I am walking out the door to do what I planned to fill the time. Fuck it. Why do I even care, let alone care to bother? … It all worked out in the end, but family sucks sometimes. The squeaky wheel gets oiled first, and the ones that run the smoothest are taken advantage of by expecting to not only continue to run well, but also carry the slack of the more resistant ones.

My mom bitches at me for years for having my things in her home, so I buy a storage locker as I continue to live there. My brother moves out and buys his own home, and leaves three-quarters of the room we shared full of his shit. As soon as my sister graduates her first year of college, my mom gets this idea to move my other sister into our bigger old room. The urgency of her random decision is pressed upon us, despite the failure of so many pipe dreams in the past, and I am told to get all my crap out because it’s about time I did. As I plan to do so, I am berated for having a storage unit. I should trash the furniture she carted all over God’s green earth for a quarter of a century so one of us could save a few bucks on college furniture, and give all my clothes and electronics to some African charity so I can stop wasting my money on a storage unit. Meanwhile, the house is still a disaster area filled with her papers after I was told it was miraculously clean, and continues to try to “clean” by going thru the papers one by one, as though using a scalpel for an amputation. And people wonder why I am so scattered brained and easily frustrated.

My youngest sister is trying to be my second mom and raise my kids despite being only thirteen. This ongoing banter of bitterness about her dog that has been so untrained that in a 5000 square foot house is allowed ONLY in the 3 by 8 mudroom and taken out for two long walks as though a prisoner on exercise detail, exclaiming her love for a beast and a nephew that’s too allergic to be in the house so long as it’s there, but won’t rid of this imprisoned dog after Girlfriend’s parents gave up a cat they had for twelve years when faced with the same choice. She rattles off all this advice and guidance on children even though she thinks if you wipe the floors the allergy issue will go away, to which my mom has the audacity to tell me I should listen to her because she has been around a lot of kids. I haven’t? I haven’t dated three teachers, have a surrogate mother-in-law who assesses childcare providers, and taken university level courses on the subject myself? Plus, as the joke goes: everyone is a great parent until they have kids. Hypocrite. I’m not allowed to put my two cents into my mother’s raising of us, but she can let my thirteen year old sibling raise mine?

Girlfriend discovers my blog and actually reads it this time, offended and appalled for exactly the reasons I said she would be and therefore didn’t want to disclose it. We have a rough night, but have learned thru the process of eliminating friends not to let it affect our time out and those around us. She’s not as extroverted and lively as she normally is, and I’m frightened to ask if she’s okay for fear of jumpstarting the argument or killing her mood even more. But, fortunately she stuck around and seemed to enjoy everything despite me.

My brother arrives late, but still early enough to help, and spend the “downtime” waiting for money or assistance watching Sports Center instead of cleaning out his room as requested by my mother. By the time he gets around to it he is avoiding all our guests and friends and still doesn’t get it all out as he was supposed to because he felt he had to leave early to beat the city traffic back to his condo.

Jello was supposed to come in, which is the reason why I wanted to throw the BBQ in the first place, so we can just chill out in one place and gather as friends to see everyone, but apparently didn’t realize it was Memorial Day, the second biggest travel day of the year behind Thanksgiving, and might risk not making it back to work on time. Since picking up or canceling air travel plans is as easy for him as it is for us to flag down a cab and just decide to get the next one, he said he’d come some other time. This is the fourth time he has “tried to come another time.” Normally I wouldn’t care, but he has been telling my girls for weeks he’ll assuage their begging questions and be here. God I hate to disappoint them.

Although I was told they would tell me the answer at the BBQ, my brother and his fiancé dodge their promise to quickly talk to me about “their song” and having a videographer at their wedding. They are totally against the idea of having a videographer, even though I would pick up the tab. I want to have a back up plan in case I can’t be there, and in some way be able to SEE it. They feel pictures should be enough, but that doesn’t SHOW me the event, just moments of it. I want to see the stifled tears, hear the words people speak in trembling voices, laugh at the hilarious drunken attempts at dancing, and the like, that only video can truly capture. I understand it’s their wedding, but can’t they understand if I can’t be there I’d wanna see more than the shaky schizophrenic clips from the guests’ video cards? They’re even giving me crap for asking their favorite songs as individuals and as a couple to play in the background of a nice photo recap…

Everyone says they want to come out, then complain about it being too far, too late, or too complicated. When they hear some of the stories they want to see the pictures, and then complain about not coming out.

But the largest driving factor is the drAma… The most recent, compelling, and overbearing being the bar explosion Friday night:
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Yankee Doodle Daddy
One man’s plan for raising patriotic kids.
By Hugh O’Neill, Best Life

Holidays like Memorial Day and the 4th of July are good times to talk about parenthood and patriotism, or more specifically, to share my sure-fire secrets for raising great Americans. Yeah, I know, I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a father. But can’t we just accentuate the positive for now? There is one thing I’ve done spectacularly right. I’ve given my kids the United States of America, which is, my countrymen, no small gift.

Talking to kids about patriotism is tricky, especially if you’re a white man who has had every opportunity our republic affords. If you’ve had some grace shed on thee, it’s easy to sound like a guy who’s mistaken his own good fortune for a society as generous as the one we’d planned.

But I’ve figured out how to make the kids love their country. The O’Neill Plan for Raising Patriots proceeds from the following mission statement: to find a deep patriotism, a belief in our country that both accepts our blunders and still savors the durable importance of the enterprise. The O’Neill Plan seeks a compromise between the red meat of “My country right or wrong” and the tofu of “We’re just another nation-state run by plutocrats.” Neither makes sense. It’s as foolish to support our country no matter what, as it is to believe there is nothing singular about us.

The O’Neill Plan proceeds from two rules. First, save the bad stuff — the genocide which gave us birth, the slavery that helped us grow — until middle school. There’s plenty of time for looking into dark corners then. And second, sell the stage, not the show. If you try to explain particular events not only will the kids lose consciousness (”Hey, kids, the Viet Cong were either a proto-populist anti-colonialist liberation army or ? …”) but, more important, sometimes the plain facts don’t always endorse our team.

So, instead, just give them a sense of our geography, of all the space out there where they might do something, anything, everything. Kids need a sense of possibility as much as they need mother’s milk, and the sea-to-shining-seaness of this country is a huge empowering promise.
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I was at the bar tonight and saw one of the most awesome T-shirts:

A picture of a simple empty pipe glass.

Below it reads:
One hours or minimum wage. Gone.

Small world.

TheMan, DojoADDict, Girlfriend, and I run into this guy at a bar thirty miles away from Olympia, the bar we normally drink at. In the middle of our “hey fancy seeing you here” chat, he says, “That’s not a bad place man, but every time I am there I feel like they are trying to sell me. ‘ABC: Always Be Closing.’”

I laugh my ass off. So true.

Four Things Never to Tell Your Lover

Whether it’s your third date or you’ve been married for 30 years, there are some things you should never tell your partner. Why? It’s hurtful!

Sometimes you can best show your love by keeping your mouth shut. There are four specific times when it’s best to not say what you’re thinking. In other words, bite your tongue!

Writing in her ‘Love Bytes’ column for iVillage, Tracey Cox offers these four relationship no-nos:

1. Reminiscing about an ex during a special moment
You’re cuddled up watching the fire slowly burn out while the snowflakes fall gently from the sky. You turn to him in the glowing firelight and say, “This reminds me of the time Bryan and I were skiing in Colorado.” As Cox warns, “Come on — he knows you’ve been around the block, spare him the addresses.”

2. Betraying each other’s secrets
There is one sacred rule about pillow talk: It is never ever to be repeated, to anyone. This is especially true when one of you divulges anything derogatory about friends or colleagues or makes those intimate, highly embarrassing childhood confessions. So when you meet her boss, don’t say, “Jen is right. You really do look like that woman on ‘Ugly Betty.’”

3. Criticizing when your honey is trying his or her best
So he doesn’t fold the laundry just so. And she doesn’t do the yard work with the same meticulous attention to detail as you. Get over it. When your partner is truly trying his or her best to do a job, especially if it’s an opportunity to help out in a new way that gives you a break, don’t criticize.

4. Constantly apologizing
Women especially tend to apologize — a lot. Some might even say it’s too much. “Women seem to have far too many polite genes. He knocks a cup of coffee out of your hands, and you’re the one who apologizes,” Cox quips.

Rocky Balboa, kind of a crappy movie, but some decent quotes

Rocky: Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!

Martin: You got everything money can buy, except what it can’t. It’s Pride. Pride is what got your ass out here, and losing is what brought ya back. But people like you, they need to be tested. They need a challenge.
Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon: But you know that ain’t never gunna happen, there ain’t anybody out there Martin.
Martin: Theres always somebody out there. Always. And when that time comes and you find something standing if front of you, something that ain’t running and ain’t backin up and is hittin on you and your too damn tired to breathe. You find that situation on you, that good, cuz thats baptizim under fire! Oh you get thru that and you find the only kind of respect that matters in this world, Self respect. The only kind of respect that matters is self-respect

Marie: The last thing to age on somebody is their heart

Rocky Balboa: My son’s coming over tonight, so I’m going to have something special made for him.
Paulie: Italian food made by a bunch of Mexicans doesn’t sound so special to me, Rock.

Marie: Do you have a reservation?
Paulie: Do I look like a freakin’ Indian?

Paulie: You’re a bum.
Rocky Balboa: Coming from a human hamper that’s a compliment.