The deep-red lettuce growing in my garden.

My Deck

The people who owned this house before me neglected it.  The deck (pictured at left) is coated in a thick film of mold, mildew and other crap.  It is taking me forever to clean it all off using a pressure washer.  I have to clean it off so I can reseal the damn thing.  If I don’t we’ll lose the deck to rot.  I never knew how much of a flaming pain-in-the-ass it was being a homeowner before I became one.  The gutters are falling off and need to be resealed.  The siding is growing mildew.  The lawns are mostly weeds and crabgrass.  The sidewalks and patios are subsiding allowing water to pool next to the foundation.  The windows are all crap and the whole thing is poorly insulated. The roof is also in need of replacement.

Must be an East Coast Thing

In the past six months I have had the misfortune of seeing two different grown men in the toilet pissing with their pants and underwear down around their ankles. The only other place I have ever seen anything like it was the character Butters in Southpark.

Is this typical on the east coast? Is it a behavior that is limited to Washington DC? Or is it that my coworkers are a rarified sample of the nerdiest of the nerds? Any one who has been inside a mens' public toilet will know they don't make us certify in marksmanship, but if your skill is so poor you feel the need to take off both your pants and your underwear to take a piss at least go into one of the stalls and close the damn door!

Weiner’s wiener

Politics as a career appeals to individuals of a particular character.  We know this and yet we continue to act shocked and chagrined when they behave (or misbehave) in the way Anthony Weiner did.   At this point we should hold politicians as guilty until proven innocent when it comes to sexual misdeeds.  It doesn’t matter if they are caught tapping coded messages soliciting gay sex in an airport mensroom or sending inappropriate text messages to young pages or tweeting pictures of the cocks to strangers.  They all do it, some are just better at not getting caught than others.  Stop acting surprised people!  They ALL do it!

The fact that this story and others like it are top of the news headlines is fucking disgraceful. The so called news media is fixated on the sexual misdeeds of these politicians. Our country is suffering from a huge unemployment problem.  We have banks foreclosing on houses they don’t even hold a mortgage on. Republican governors around the country are trying to destroy the merger social safety nets we have managed to put in place at the worst possible time. We are being lied to about the national debt and we are still involved in two wars openly and at least one on the sly!  These are just the domestic issues being pushed from the spotlight by Weiner’s wiener.  Japan is still having massive troubles from the aftermath of the tsunami.  People in Haiti are still living in tents and dying of cholera! Anybody hear anything about the continued systematic rape taking place in the Congo?  It’s disgusting what these news media fools choose to cover and choose to ignore. 

Rusty

I’m finding it difficult to find my voice.  It’s been so long since I wrote anything of the nature of a blog or an essay.  I’m Rusty at the composition which is inhibiting what I write.  I am also feeling pangs of doubt and misgivings about the content of what I put here.  Since I last maintained a blog I have graduated and gotten a job so I’m concerned that what I write here may in some way get me burnt at work.  This is having a chilling effect on what I write.  Since my last blog I have also gained a wife and a daughter.  It is a very real possibility my wife might read this at some point which is also making me think twice about what I put down in writing.  I am very annoyed with myself for allowing these concerns to dampen my expression of my thoughts.

Autoeroticism was a balls-to-the-wall no holds barred stream of conscious and profanity.  It was glorious both to behold and to create.  I want that back but I’m grown old and timid.  I need to tap that vein of pure rage and disdain for all concerns again.  I need to get my head on straight!  I’m not old enough to be pining for my younger days damnit!

Publish Post

Cognitive dissonance

I am a liberal.  I believe society should provide a minimum standard of living to all people.  I believe we should not engage in wars of aggression against other peoples or nations.  I believe the government needs to be barred from interfering in the lives of citizens.  I think any legislation that is intended to make the job of law enforcement officials “easier” is wrong.  I believe unfettered capitalism is as destructive an ideology as any our species has ever developed.  I believe in a secular society with a strong prohibition against the meddling of theocrats in the policies enacted by our government.  This last includes the references to “God” on our currency and the asinine pledge of allegiance.  I believe we need to have a strong public education system that is the envy of the world.  I am as libby-lib as they come and I am not ashamed of it in the least.  For some reason this is disconcerting for some of the people I work with.  They think I should cover my mouth and whisper quietly into my shirt front when I admit to being a liberal.
 

What really bothers me about these people I am referring to is the fact that their conservative ideas don’t fit them.  They are all younger people in their early and mid-twenties.  They are all university educated. And they are all crazy neo-conservatives.   At least that’s what they appear to be.  But their ideas are very clearly not the product of thought and self-reflection.  Their ideas appear to belong to someone else; they appear is if they were placed in to their heads.  I suspect it is similar to how religious ideas are passed from person to person.  It is most startling when they discuss the government using the neo-con bullshit talking points.  They all want smaller government and to cut the federal budget…and they all WORK FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!  Hello?  Cognitive dissonance people?

Manifesto of sorts

It came to my attention a few years ago that the World Wide Web is the largest collection of insipidness that the human race has ever seen. Of course, I wanted to get in on the fun and add my crap to the pile. I designed a website to be as simple as possible, no bells, no whistles, no fucking ads. The material posted there was a type of diary/log/journal/rant in the form of a list. Please pick the appropriate term from the proceeding list that you feel best reflects my gender/sexual- orientation/culture.  I would post entries several times a week ideally, or as time allowed. The entries were things I wrote, photos I took, things I drew, and things I found interesting.

If I lasted to the end of the year I would archive the old list and start over at zero. Why would anybody care to read my ramblings or look at my endeavors in the realm of visual art? Hell, I had no clue. How I chose to waste my time was and is entirely up to me. Conversely, how you piss away your life is solely for you to decide. I called my website/blog Autoeroticism because it was a one-sided activity. 

I lost the thread of the website in 2004 and never managed to pick it back up.  I spent some time on the Live Journal site under the user name Chainrule but I lost that thread too. I find I have a need to write my thoughts down and lately I’ve been using physical paper notebooks to catch those thoughts.  I find this limiting in that I am unable to include photographs or video in physical notebooks.

As stated above in the mission description cribbed from my Autoeroticism website I plan to recreate my old blog here.  I will post my thoughts, my photographs, and possibly my videos.  I chose not to call this blog “Autoeroticism” because it has a comments feature which gives it more of a potential for interaction between me and anybody reading it.