we're moving. it's long since decided. now, if only we could afford to move.

we have a savings account set up specifically for this purpose, but it looks like we're going to have to dip into it just to get out of town. getting all the bills payed off for the last time, renting a truck (and then gas), actually ahving a place to stay that isn't my grandmother's second floor of her condo (though that is sounding more and more like a possibility if my uncle isn't living there yet), these things all cost money. we're hoping to buy a house in tennessee, but at the moment we'll need to turn jack over as collateral.

in terms of buying a house, we couldn't pick a better time with the housing market in the gutter, but if we can't even get enough scratch together for a heavily discounted house, we're going to remain renters, something I had sincerely hoped to avoid.

but on the plus side, i'm going to be published on feathertale again. i guess they must not be that discriminating.

i told the bosses wednesday (administrative professionals day; they didn't catch the irony) about the impending move. they are being really cool about it, perhaps too cool. like, maybe they were feeling it was about time for this to be at an end as well. whatever the case, it's done. the last tie/out is now cut. the move is official.

i ran into an old high school friend on the interbot the other day, and started thinking about how many people i went to high school with are still/back in knox vegas. in a way, it's conforting, but also strange to be going back. i'll likely run into lots of people i knew, given time. considering i may be getting into sales, that's lots of people i'll be seeing every day.

can't straighten out my head right now. perhaps more over the weekend.

tomorrow is the day i give my two months notice. i'm giving them that much time so they can hire someone and i can do some of the training of said new hire. i am also doing it because the brashness of my younger days is behind me. i walked out of two jobs, sticking around to tell off the owner at one of them, and gave less than two weeks notice at others.

jack (and siouxs!) give me a new perspective on such things. though i would love to look back on my life and be able to say proudly that i did everything on my own terms, i have learned that the suppression of self is frequently the way to go. i smile and don't curse my bosses to high heaven because they are the best option i have for a recommendation at a new job. i like the busuness i am in a lot, just not particularly with this company, therefore, i must keep them happy to best utilize the contacts that are available. thankfully, their import company now has distribution in tennessee, so maybe i can make that transition. whatever the case (forgive my rambling), it is because of the need to keep a roof over jack and siouxs!'s heads that i swallow my pride and laugh at horrible jokes.

our big every other year tasting was this past weekend, and dear god, how much would i like to be working for a winery instead of a distributor... such level headed people on the whole, and they all drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of pot. they also drink a lot of wine, but i could probably make that work too. i may not be able to tell you about the nuances, but i know good from bad from great and usually that's enough to cover a winemaker's ego.

gthedamned, aka gthedada would like to wish jackthedamned, sweetest one-year-old in the country, a happy first birthday. since he's not too good with the calendar yet, we're taking him to the ballgame saturday and having a big bbq/party on sunday. twenty or thirty adults, as many as ten kids, all in my apartment and backyard. oh, and we're feeding them all as well. there will be a tip jar, and possibly straight up solicitations as the evening wears on.

***************************************************

last night, a thought occurred to me. our prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is bullshit. first of all, all punishment is cruel and unusual. that's why it's punishment. if it was pleasant and normal, it wouldn't be any deterrent at all. however, as it stands, it isn't deterrent enough. i think we need to crank up the levels of cruel and unusual on our punishments. armed robbery? first, you get shot. in the arm. it's your responsibility to get to the hospital. after you get out, everytime you walk into a rob-able establishment, you get it in the stomach with a sack of quarters. after a few years of this, few people would be tempted to return to a life of crime. corporate fraud? government garnishment of wages ensuring you live at minimum wage for the rest of your life. second, they stick a live weasel up your ass. second offense, it's a badger. third, a wolverine (sticking with the mustelid family, naturally).

gthedamned has been farily quiet lately, and for that, i apologize. i am covering the office by myself this week, so you may or may not see more posts than usual between now and friday.

the whole thedamned family took our thrice a year mandatory trip to tennessee last week, more for business than visiting. details about the move needed to be moved forward, houses needed to be looked at, interviews needed to be conducted, the passive tense needed to be used. siouxs! had a great interview, and feels confident that she will be offered a job; the question now is mostly where she will teach in knox vegas, next year. yours truly did not actually interview anywhere, but since i won't be signing a contract for the coming schoolyear, it isn't as urgent that i have a several month long head start. i did determine that, in addition to local distributors and other jobs in the booze biz, i will be sending my resume to both the bijou and the tennessee theater, just to get a little closer to the world i supposedly went to school to study.

we also had a lot of discussions about what our lives will actually be like after a move to my homeland. will we be able to deal with the stress of seeing my family all the time? will they be able to handle the fact that we/i don't go to church anymore, or that jack isn't baptized? how can we best deal with the racism that is not more prevalent, just more open? in st louis, relatively few people assume that because we're white, we're racists. in tennessee, my aunt doesn't consider the n word to be racist because "there's white ones too, so i'm not saying anything bad about black people."

what it's going to come down to is that we'll see my family a lot for the first few months, and my mom a lot whenever it isn't tax season. after that, once a week will be as much as we see anyone, much like it is here. we'll make some new friends (as i only have perhaps four in knoxville these days), become reacquainted with some old ones, and siouxs! will spend a lot of time on the phone to st louis.

i'm looking forward to the move, but i'm also scared to death. does that make sense? we're buying a house, so that's a time commitment that lasts longer than an apartment lease. i don't yet have any great job leads. jack may well start his schooling in a place that doesn't value education as much as we do. we may have another baby with a tennessee ssn.

relocating sounds almost antiseptic. uprooting gives a better idea of how this feels. even if we're going to a great place, it's still like being a live tree on a flatbed truck.

the move is now less than four months away. i am less than two months away from giving notice at work. in three days, we are going to tn for a "visit," scouting houses, jobs, etc. the whole thing seems unreal sometimes (now being one of them). i need to get working on my resume before we head down, i should probably talk to a mortgage company today about pre-approval, and god knows what else i've let go this long. at least siouxs! has a job interview. i want to look into jobs that would allow me to use my better qualities and the things i enjoy... writing, design, and such, but since i don't have a degree in said subjects, i really have to sell myself to make this work. i really don't want to work in the liquor store my mom is suggesting, though it would give me time to do other things i guess.

sorry i've been neglecting you, oh my few readers. it's been hard to deliver the anti conservative screed when you can go home every night to this face. happy blogging.

the same genius who said in the state of the union address that he wants to balance the budget is now talking about increasing spending and making the tax cuts permanent. how is this possible, you might ask? well, first of all, it isn't, second of all, it involves slashing healthcare (and thus creating a great hot button topic for the demokkkrats to ride to victory in '08... thanks, dubya), and third of all, it isn't.

ok, first. the treasury secretary has put the challenge out to the demokkkrats: balance the budget without raising taxes. that's like saying mix paints to make orange, but you can't use red. the only feasible solution to balance the budget at this point is to raise taxes, but it need not be across the board. the wealthiest two percent of our country control twenty percent of the wealth. that's a lot to get at.

second of all, it's easy to cut the shit out of healthcare programs that you are never going to have to use. if dubya resigned in disgrace and lost all his government provided insurance, he could afford to personally pay for any and every bit of medical treatment for the rest of his life.

thirdly, it won't really be balanced even if they do say "fuck the poor" as usual. every year, we have a budget, then an "emergency spending bill" that doesn't count. it consists of a lot of pet projects, like, i don't know, the war in iraq. this is billions of dollars that don't get counted against the budget for the year, so if by some miracle, we had a surplus instead of a deficit, it could still be eaten up by "emergency spending." (since the war has been going on for years, how much of an emergency can it really be? it's not like it came as a surprise.)

trickle-down doesn't fucking work.

every flake of fucking snow isn't newsworthy.
sincerely,
the residents of st louis



last night, st louis was blanketed by a soft white coat, dulling sound and insulating the ground. two inches of snow. to hear the news people last night, we were going to have to tunnel our way to the grocery store to fight our fellow citizens for milk and bread (*). apparently, 25 years ago yesterday, st louis was hit with the blizzard of '82. what the local news people don't seem to realize is that that was in fact twenty-fucking-five fucking years ago. who the hell cares what the weather was like 25 years ago? what will it be like tomorrow? i don't have to go to work 25 years ago.

(*) why milk and bread? when i hear it's going to snow a lot, i try to get to the store for beer, whiskey, and tomato paste. god knows we don't want to run out.

how can i resist the state of the union address from a lame duck president? well, since we don't have cable, it would have been fairly difficult to do without just turning off the tv, or turning to (god bless them for their mindless pap) the cw. however, we did watch the speech, and surprisingly never wanted to throw anything at the screen. in fact, this was the first state of the union that we have made it all the way through since the election was stolen in 2000. the reason we didn't get so mad was that he didn't really say anything. he made a lot of statements that anyone could agree with, but didn't tie them to the usual qualifiers that end up sounding like "and if you don't think we need to search for domestic oil inside the skulls of endangered species, then you're with the terrorists."

last night, bush sounded like what he is: a man with no real convictions other than self preservation. last night, it also seemed like the factiousness that has gripped the demokkkrats for years my be contaigious, as the republikkkans were hardly the unified front they have been for six years now.

jim webb. hell yeah. give him two senate terms, then run him for president. i'll campaign.

yet another reason to discount ethanol as a viable alternative to fossil fuels: tortilla price gouging. i listened to this story on npr this morning, and the worst part is that wal-mart, mexico's largest private employer, is using this crisis to drive smaller operations out of business by continuing to sell cheap tortillas.

i have decided to write a cookbook. any gthedamned readers who have eaten my cooking who would like to remind me of something i made at one point, please do so, via the comments section. this is going to be one good fucking cookbook. i'm also looking for a title, so suggestions are welcomed (siouxs! assures me that i shouldn't swear in the title, though in the book text is ok).

days like this are a brain killer. there's no one here but me and the warehouse manager, and nothing in particular to do. i have a few bits of busywork that might keep me interested for a few minutes, but i need to save those things for a time that isn't friday afternoon.

i suppose i could continue searching house listings in tn, but after a while, they all start to look the same.

if the boss were actually here, he might cut me loose early, but since he's out and about, that isn't likely.

it's times like this that made drugs a lot more appealing.

let me paint you a picture of what it's like to be a new parent on new year's eve.

i started drinking beer with dinner (coffee stout to go with coffee stout beef stew, which is absurdly good). we had friends over for dinner (howler monkey and whorcus) who left at seven or so. put baby to bed. continue beer drinking , though we switched to highlife for the sake of economy, and because it is the champagne of beers. roughly ten-thirty, siouxs! goes to bed. i tuck her in and stumble back downstairs to continue drinking and watching kung fu hustle. add several glasses of water to drinking queue. at eleven fifty-eight, i switched to network tv, but couldn't find any celebrity spokespeople, so went upstairs to give siouxs! a kiss for the new year. stumbled back downstairs, grabbed another beer and another water, stumble upstairs to read in bed.

happy new year, everyone, and by everyone, i mean both of you.

i haven't had a hit on either blog in three days, so there's little point in posting, but here goes.

gerald ford died of grief for james brown. since these things always happen in threes, tomorrow, someone nationally recognizable has to die. it wil also be someone with a very basic word for a last name. tomorrow, anne rice dies choking on a velvet ruffle.

it is wonderful to me that james brown's death is garnering as much attention as ford's. i mean, it should. ford wasn't president for even a full term, while james brown has been the godfather of soul for forty years. there are no term limits for that position; it is a lifetime appointment.

listen to some bootsy collins today. he was, ironically enough, bass player for both james brown and gerald ford.

it's going to be ok, tomi rae. don't let them vultures fight you off. you were the one sleeping with a 70 plus year old dude and occasionally getting the shit slapped out of you. you go get what you're due. you're tomi rae brown, whatever the lawyers say.

i watched the gameshow identity last night (with heroes over until next year, and the fact that i need to buy some new books, or at least go to the library, i'm watching more tv than i'd like. i still probably watch less than the average american. maybe 50% less.). penn jilette is a whore (not because of this show, he just is).

while watching, siouxs! made an interesting observation. all of the primetime gameshows these days are going vertical with their displays of people. deal or no deal (the non-game gameshow), 1 vs 100, and now, identity all feature a stack of humanity. i can only imagine that our corporate overlords (specifically the ones at general electric) are using their squawking peacock to further devalue the (non-wealthy and caucasion) individual. true, there are individual contestants, but they seem like caricatures that could be easily invented by our collective prejudices, and therefore serve as symbols of our unconscious rather than real people.

ok, that's quite a rant. i'd better take my meds.

i'd like to point out that my baseball blog is now far surpassing this one in terms of hits this month. siouxs! also had a good observation about this.

"more people care about baseball than [care about] what you think."

how true. even i care more about baseball than i care about what i think.

according to statcounter, my two blogs are in a dead heat for visitors in december. until today, i have posted on neither in december. i haven't been posting as regularly as i might otherwise due to the busy season at work and the fact that our computer at home is in jack's room, so no computer use after seven or so. note to self: when we move, the computer gets its own room.

i'm getting pretty excited about moving. i don't know how long we'll be able to stay in tennessee, but i need to have a change of scenery. st louis has been a good second home, and will always be familiar, but i miss home home. i want to reconnect with my family and some friends. i know things will be different than they are when we visit, but i long for the hills on the horizon. i can't wait to be able to go to the mountains when i want to again. i want to see jack's face when he sees a herd of whitetail in cades cove.

i'm scared to leave st louis, but i can't stay here forever. this will be a good change (seven-plus months and counting).

thank you, oh wise and fearless leader, for showing us the light. all of the violence in iraq is someone else's fault. thanks be to our almighty christian god that it isn't our fault, even though we did force iraq into a state of anarchy and chaos that would make any society come apart.

someone else's fault. the most beautiful three words in the world to a politician. someone else's fault means a chance at (re)election. and the best part is that it's bipartisan! double points if the people you're pinning the blame on are brown.

the economy, that's someone else's fault too, right? they say it usually takes a few years for changes in economic policy to make a significant change in the economy itself, so the current problems are the fault of those jokers from last term. you remember those guys, they're the ones who tied up hundreds of billions of dollars in a war based on false pretenses, and then funded it by cutting the taxes of the wealthy at a much higher rate than the middle class so that the poor and middle class could keep sending their sons and daughters to die needlessly and expensively.

fuck bush, just for old times sake.

one thing of interest: on the way out of knox vegas this past weekend, i saw a billboard for a place called the pleasure palace or somesuch nonsense with pleasure in there. at the bottom they listed attractions

toys * lingerie * adult novelties * fireworks

it says something about a region's culture when the smell of gunpowder can be a turn-on.

more updates as soon as i feel like it.

tomorrow is my favorite holliday behind halloween, so i thought i would mention a few things worth being thankful for (though to whom, i don't know, as i'm at best an agnostic, but whatever)

jack and siouxs! make my every day better. no matter how bad a day at work is, i get to come home and be happy right away when i see those two smiling at me, and every morning, i get to see them first so my day can start right.

the rest of my family, of course, who love us enough to be thrilled that we're coming home for thanksgiving.

i still have a few really good friends who i can always count on (and you know who you are)

despite the tightened belts that go along with siouxs! going to part time and the extra expense of a baby, we're still doing better than back when we first got together.

both cars are running well (knock on wood)

the republikkkans lost a lot of ground

the cardinals won a world series

i've been published twice in the last year

no one close to me has died this year

there's lots more than that, but that'll do for now. we're driving overnight in an effort to keep jack asleep for the trip, as he still isn't too fond of long car trips. here's hoping for an uneventful drive and a good morning once we get there and try to grab a few hours sleep before what will undoubtably be a thanksgiving feast (my grandmother is still cooking for people who won't be there for one reason or another, and even when there were a lot more of us, there were always piles of leftovers).

enjoy your holiday, and be thankful for what you otherwise take for granted.

oh yeah, and friday is buy nothing day. please celebrate and remind the corporations that we are people, not consumers

despite what might be the obvious conclusion based on this picture, i promise that we have never given this child alcohol or drugs. all i can say is that it runs in the family. my mother seems to have an uncanny ability to appear inebriated in pictures where she is no such thing (not that she doesn't drink, but i can count on my fingers the number of times i've seen her drunk, and as far as you know, i only have two fingers). i suppose there is the possibility that she's just a remarkably good drunk who indulges a lot more than it would otherwise seem, but since the same trait has appeared in her grandson, i'm guessing it's just genetic dumb luck. in jack's case, i know for a fact that he can't reach the liquor, and i wouldn't give him any for fear that he is blessed/cursed with my high tolerance, and he'd drink me out of house and home once he acquired a taste for the stuff. again, if such things are genetic, i don't think it will take too long after the first exposure.