tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328076572024-03-07T02:03:24.640-06:00The HolmesYour source for the Holmes perspectiveAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.comBlogger694125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-68957615158320720282012-11-14T16:51:00.001-06:002012-11-14T16:51:19.356-06:00It seems utterly fucking ridiculous.......that it's taken *goes back and checks the archives* <a href="http://the-holmes.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-im-writing-book.html" target="_blank">over two years</a> to get to the point that I could tweet this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7DQGx4MFGzMQDIIGDpiIgbXHR_04udVCuJWnQBS2h4BG9j17mfS8MErw5_SsMqdYDmiWg8DvibR4N0sH4NKIHajM2Rv3BRGSKO4c62b3lmlANc3KcX-GZvobHa3_exTE2EtFx/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-11-14+at+4.31.46+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7DQGx4MFGzMQDIIGDpiIgbXHR_04udVCuJWnQBS2h4BG9j17mfS8MErw5_SsMqdYDmiWg8DvibR4N0sH4NKIHajM2Rv3BRGSKO4c62b3lmlANc3KcX-GZvobHa3_exTE2EtFx/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-11-14+at+4.31.46+PM.png" /></a></div>
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And that's just the first draft. I got tons left to do 'fore I can call this muhfugga Done widda big D. It's like I just crossed the Texas-New Mexico state line on a road trip to California. Or Japan. Of course, part of the reason it took so long is that at least a year of that was me learning the lesson of committing to the project. Maybe other people can dabble at writing something of novel length and get it done, but I am not one of those people. I can put that at the top of the great big list of lessons learned.<br />
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I was walking out to my car after work one day last week, thinking about this scene I'd been working on earlier that day, just these two people out in the woods having a quiet conversation, when suddenly, BOOM, those two people in the dark became a whole other way of seeing this story I've been trying to get together. It was there all along, I just had to stick with it long enough to get to where I could see it. My head totally exploded, it was disgusting.<br />
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So yeah, tons left to do. This is me, looking forward to the next milestone.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-85744936970962137332012-11-03T20:22:00.001-05:002012-11-03T20:24:30.442-05:00Free of Training Wheel TyrannyOver the summer, my eldest figured out how to ride his bike without training wheels. He'd tried a few times before and not quite made it, but on this one particular day, he must have awoken with an extra bit of stubbornness in his blood. He refused to give up until he got himself up on two wheels. I had little to do with it other than standing back and watching and offering some encouragement. Any and all offers of actual physical help were rebuffed.<br />
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"Fuck this training wheel shit," he would've mumbled to himself, had he had his father's vocabulary at the time.<br />
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To celebrate the event, he wanted me to make a .gif of him on his bike, similar to <a href="http://the-holmes.blogspot.com/2011/10/far-then-near-then-far.html" target="_blank">the one I made of his brother running up and down a railroad track</a>. Except he didn't know the term .gif, so he called it the thing where I take the camera and take pictures like ga-jing ga-jing ga-jing ga-jing ga-jing....or however you spell the sound of a camera snapping.<br />
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So finally, months later, I finally got around to it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDCBis3phfgZr0_LgmHUOMOBjfi5ODwBC8Xn7v68M_Ta9jiuJgmEnliFncCUQWOU4A55JcoJNQqbDwSKciOXUKg8ITpSFcdS8-DpdgGkNEbkKsDn-o7SYr1JPW1unqi_hPhyphenhyphenX/s1600/hamster-on-a-bike.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDCBis3phfgZr0_LgmHUOMOBjfi5ODwBC8Xn7v68M_Ta9jiuJgmEnliFncCUQWOU4A55JcoJNQqbDwSKciOXUKg8ITpSFcdS8-DpdgGkNEbkKsDn-o7SYr1JPW1unqi_hPhyphenhyphenX/s640/hamster-on-a-bike.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-9602995682003964652012-09-09T09:20:00.000-05:002012-09-09T09:20:21.518-05:00Things To Remember<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">That morning when I was cooking bacon and I heard little footsteps racing to the kitchen followed by Simon yelling "I smell bacon!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">My kids' cute little voices. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The way Simon asks to listen to "Jam" and he means "Millionaire" by Queens Of The Stone Age. Also, the day I introduced them to "Iron Man" and how Simon demanded to hear it a dozen times throughout the day. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The time Henry was all pissed off about doing his science homework until he started measuring things on the scale and got all into it. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The way Simon used to ask "What's his naaaaame?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">How the boys like to wrap themselves around my legs and make me walk them around the house. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">How the boys like to wrap themselves around one of my arms and let me lift them up. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The way I'm able to make them both fall over laughing by pretending to be a dumb monster who's just stumbled across a lightsaber. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">That Simon likes to sleep in a tent in his room. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Henry putting his arm around Simon and saying "we're little brothers!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The time Simon shouted "I'm a princess!" and meant it. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Listening to Henry would rap along with "Egg Man" on the way to school during his kindergarten year. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Taking a walk with Simon and the treasures he found - a stick and a feather. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Taking the boys out of bed to go to the bathroom and the way they'll talk in their sleep. Or fart. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The way Henry asks to go to the donut store for breakfast by just saying in a deep voice "DOOOONNNUUUUUT."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Hearing Simon downstairs, singing to himself while he plays.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The way Henry ducks down in front of me, then leapfrogs up into my arms.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The time Henry went jogging with me, smiling the whole way, and how he said "I didn't think I could run that far" when we made it back to the house. </span></span><br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-40126375967158362392012-07-14T19:22:00.000-05:002012-07-14T19:22:23.943-05:00The Ewings Came In The Mail<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">For whatever reason, the people at the American Association of Retired Persons seem to think that my wife’s uncle, who passed away about four years ago, lives at our house. I know this because they send us their magazine every month and it’s got his name on it, right there above the address. Sometimes I flip through to see what the old folks are getting themselves into these days. Mostly, it just ends up in the recycling.</span></div>
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But the cover of this latest issue caught my eye.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoB_6kik95xL-FyCLg8_vsXtCzFbWpYL0VM04ln_MRKv3icOCxvcNaEKRvguzaas-mbOfFkvgB8LSB7-zOz1gqBWv0EsG4JCHBKH0cHSu5kr3RlpkuRaxUdy50_R5DAJcpY33/s1600/Photo+on+2012-07-14+at+19.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoB_6kik95xL-FyCLg8_vsXtCzFbWpYL0VM04ln_MRKv3icOCxvcNaEKRvguzaas-mbOfFkvgB8LSB7-zOz1gqBWv0EsG4JCHBKH0cHSu5kr3RlpkuRaxUdy50_R5DAJcpY33/s400/Photo+on+2012-07-14+at+19.04.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Yep, those are the people from <i>Dallas</i> smiling out at you from the page of this blog. Sue Ellen, J.R., and Bobby Ewing of the Southfork Ewings, they of the intrigues and the infidelities and the oil-soaked family drama. I guess they have real names, but who needs a real name when you're a Ewing? Apparently they’re doing a remake of the show, or to put it more accurately, a <a href="http://www.dallastnt.com/series/dallas/" target="_blank">continuation that picks up decades after the old one left off</a>, and it includes some of the original characters such as these three, as well as their children, now all grown up and being as shitty toward each other as their parents were back in the 70s and 80s. When I first heard about it, I was actually kind of surprised these actors were all still alive, but there they are. Hell, Sue Ellen’s even looking kinda good. Wuzzup, old lady?</span><br />
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My mom was the one who first told me about the new show, which is fitting since she was a huge fan of the original show back in the day. It was quite rare for her to miss an episode. In fact, one of her primary motivations for buying a VCR was so that she could record it anytime she wasn’t going to be able to catch it at airtime. She worked a lot, and when she wasn’t working, she was often running me to this or that activity, so this wasn’t uncommon. She pored over the instructions for how to set the timer to start and stop recording at the right time. If I was home, it was my job to make sure her shows found their way onto tape. I don’t remember if it was <i>Dallas</i>, <i>Knots Landing</i>, or <i>Falcon Crest</i>, but I once forgot to record one of her shows, and you can bet your ass I heard about it. Looking back, I can’t really blame her for getting mad. You work your ass off all day, you come home and all you want to do is kick back with your show, but your lazy kid couldn’t even be bothered to press a goddamn button? What the hell, young Holmes? Get with the program.<br />
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So that magazine up there’s been sitting on our coffee table for about the past week, and every time I walk past it, I get this weird twinge of nostalgia. At one point, I even caught myself devoting an entire thought to hoping the show does well. An entire thought! That caught me by surprise. I have absolutely no intention of watching the show, and the original was never really my thing - no talking cars, no Mr. T, no mystery-solving stuntmen - yet here I was hoping that it does well. Normally, I wouldn’t give this kind of thing a second thought, or if I did, I’d cheer for it to fail because I’m wired like that. But in this case, childhood memories overrode that and dosed me with the warm and fuzzies for a show I hardly ever actually sat down to watch.<br />
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But I guarantee I’ll be able to hum this theme song until the day I die.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Md2YoqPlEtU" width="420"></iframe></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-18162246777514213972012-06-24T20:43:00.000-05:002012-06-24T20:43:05.207-05:00Making ComicsThe main point of this post is just to have an excuse to put up the gif down below, but first I'm gonna write a bunch of words to explain it.<br />
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My primary creative obsession the past few weeks has been creating a series of comics for my friends in <a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com//" target="_blank">Loaded Gun Theory</a> to help them promote their new show. Basically, they just gave me a copy of the script and let me pick out any snippets of it that I thought would work as a stand-alone teaser in comic form. Wanna check 'em out? Here's some links:<br />
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<a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com/content/chat-over-chess#/0" target="_blank">A Chat Over Chess</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com/content/taut-line" target="_blank">A Taut Line</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com/content/tea-martha" target="_blank">Tea With Martha</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com/content/creator" target="_blank">The Creator</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">The process for these things started off with me creating a loose storyboard to figure out what pictures I was going to need. I can't draw for shit, so all the pictures in </span><a href="http://the-holmes.blogspot.com/search/label/comic" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">my comics</a><span style="background-color: white;"> start with photos. Since I was working with a script and actors in this case, I basically just put the actors in a spot and had them run through their lines while I snapped pictures of them from different angles. In some cases, I ended up getting kind of snap happy and ended up with assloads of pictures from a given scene, which when put together look something like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuJjXVFWAcYfNyXspD3-5Ct27NLfkXVan2mO5T9vlFO8yV11D9-Ot-C-7hrB4Nled2_264FxU2eQgBIQ3Do7m2vyKBnjqUVEIwPl5DetOhcZ1bFzNFA6e_Coz-IB5J7WmBfQIf/s1600/tiernan-loses-his-shit.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuJjXVFWAcYfNyXspD3-5Ct27NLfkXVan2mO5T9vlFO8yV11D9-Ot-C-7hrB4Nled2_264FxU2eQgBIQ3Do7m2vyKBnjqUVEIwPl5DetOhcZ1bFzNFA6e_Coz-IB5J7WmBfQIf/s640/tiernan-loses-his-shit.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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All that just to get this tense little exchange:<br />
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Those two dudes are my friends Bill and Ian in the roles of Geoffrey and Tiernan. My favorite pic from that whole session, which you can see tucked into the gif up there if you look closely, is this one:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfx_o00pTMMyZjBiG3sugFZXbSfoLRMZ4S06NCUdm1w0K6KdrtuXWpMZY4Sf0yeolejOdAiLGixx2ifJBVRLR1u9A6XA6zbWwoMPD1zUO_qKpUDix73PTRxYnk6WMcMvwG5Ti/s1600/bill+says+what.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfx_o00pTMMyZjBiG3sugFZXbSfoLRMZ4S06NCUdm1w0K6KdrtuXWpMZY4Sf0yeolejOdAiLGixx2ifJBVRLR1u9A6XA6zbWwoMPD1zUO_qKpUDix73PTRxYnk6WMcMvwG5Ti/s640/bill+says+what.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Almost as if he's breaking character, looking over at the director, and saying:</div>
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Simply glorious. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-87795277837012714152012-06-03T12:15:00.000-05:002012-06-03T12:15:00.404-05:00Post-Apocalyptic ChessMy friendosauruses in <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1503267655">Loaded Gun Theory wrote a new play, </a><i><a href="http://www.loadedguntheory.com//" target="_blank">Our Apocalyptic Dream</a>, </i>which is going up in just a couple of weeks. They asked me to take a few scenes and comicify them as I am wont to do. This is the first one, featuring my friends Bill and Ian, having a friendly chat over chess.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPgDSZjbK7fqUUwoD6TpMe6MLYQM86O-2H-eTfRYtquhyphenhyphenitxw5RjcRMDSnLcLVfF1y5FEGX5qCtfCBoZlzsoj3hMKdWORenox63zGjUO7XJu2oJ_lZyaq0F4TGjO8Xr_847SQ/s1600/A+Chat+Over+Chess+Page_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPgDSZjbK7fqUUwoD6TpMe6MLYQM86O-2H-eTfRYtquhyphenhyphenitxw5RjcRMDSnLcLVfF1y5FEGX5qCtfCBoZlzsoj3hMKdWORenox63zGjUO7XJu2oJ_lZyaq0F4TGjO8Xr_847SQ/s640/A+Chat+Over+Chess+Page_1.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-59068171524137005782012-05-24T22:24:00.002-05:002012-05-24T22:24:55.464-05:00This Time I Hit A Cow<i>My friend <a href="http://danielverastiqui.com/" target="_blank">Daniel</a> put up a story on Facebook the other day about how he almost drove his car into a cow. I left a comment saying that I actually did hit a cow once, to which Daniel responded asking for me to clarify just what I meant by that statement. I responded with the whole story, exactly how it went down, and afterwards realized that it was actually a pretty good little tale that I thought would be worth sharing. So here it is:</i><br />
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It was night time and I was driving down the long narrow two-lane road that leads into the neighborhood where I grew up on the outskirts of Houston. It's a semi-rural semi-urban area with a bit of industrial thrown in for good measure. You can find livestock, heavy-machinery manufacturing, a trailer park, and houses all within a few square miles. There are no street lights on this stretch of road, so it's just you and your headlights and whatever assistance the night sky might have to offer. Way up ahead of me, I saw the tail lights of another vehicle swerve, brake, but then continue. It made me think I should give my brakes a tap. I'm glad I did because a second later, a cow stepped right up out of the ditch on the side of the road and walked right out in front of me. I slammed on my brakes. I would have swerved, but the ditches on either side of this road are quite deep, the kind you don't get out of without a tow truck. My tires were still screeching when I broadsided the beef, though I dont' think I was going too fast at that point. It was enough to knock the cow over, but it got right back up again and continued on across the road without so much as a moo. My truck's hood had a nice dent in it. So if anyone ever asks you, "Why did the cow cross the road?" you can look them in the eye and say, "To fuck with a man's truck."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-61450657826275073682012-05-04T18:17:00.000-05:002012-05-04T18:29:07.319-05:00Trying To Change The World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmOVz8_tgMzMzos50WAjdwBwpnIU6s9R6RwPgrYKhD9hKngvH_LrpPb8cQqP8p-cWiOM866KCyAb6CfBGxNwifn5xsEWJO9CS2Kcl7nHgbpfrtgYZLlinsQhRaeo6ljRrJV4c/s1600/mca.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmOVz8_tgMzMzos50WAjdwBwpnIU6s9R6RwPgrYKhD9hKngvH_LrpPb8cQqP8p-cWiOM866KCyAb6CfBGxNwifn5xsEWJO9CS2Kcl7nHgbpfrtgYZLlinsQhRaeo6ljRrJV4c/s400/mca.jpg" width="262" /></a></div>
Adam Yauch aka MCA died today. He was 47 years old. I was sitting in Starbuck's when I read the news. It was all I could do to keep from crying in front of the whole damn shop. I loved the Beastie Boys as a kid and still love them as an adult, and not just nostalgically. They just kept on making great music. And "Egg Man" is one of my eldests's favorite songs.<br />
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There's that saying about the unexamined life being not worth living. I'd have to say that anybody who goes from<br />
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<i>Roses are red, sky is blue,</i><br />
<i>I got my barrel attcha neck so what the fuck you gonna do?</i><br />
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to<br />
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<i>Well on the tough guy style I'm not too keen,</i><br />
<i>To try to change the world, I'm'a plot and scheme</i><br />
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inside the span of their lifetime was doing some pretty powerful self-examination. And the fact that he did it in a public setting in a genre of music that's, rightly or not, not often known for evolving towards kindness, is incredibly admirable. Rap, music, art, hell, the world could use more of that.<br />
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Rest in peace, MCA. And thanks for everything.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-47061405440835650452012-04-30T20:53:00.000-05:002012-04-30T20:54:23.933-05:00Because Noone Cheered Him UpSo I don't mean to turn this blog into "Yo, Peep My Kid's Artwork" dot com or anything - though that would undoubtedly make for a pretty good blog with tons of submissions - but this one really caught my attention.<br />
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Apparently, it's hanging outside the library at his school. One of our friends texted it to my wife, who then texted it to me, who then placed it here, surrounded by text. I love texting. </div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-83617304151163958662012-04-22T12:40:00.000-05:002012-04-22T12:40:24.545-05:00Penny The Androgynous Robot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWQkuoo1wQPGkySzOA9uJvEXF0zqGg94e3-dMvLenuAZ5OGCuhEx3TPyqSvQZNou7l644nm1Nr2Xdfzl9Hu7BpTJhkwFgYdW_dKDof9mDiLp_xo77lsPezG9V6F8Jf77Jaoeby/s1600/Penny+the+Robot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWQkuoo1wQPGkySzOA9uJvEXF0zqGg94e3-dMvLenuAZ5OGCuhEx3TPyqSvQZNou7l644nm1Nr2Xdfzl9Hu7BpTJhkwFgYdW_dKDof9mDiLp_xo77lsPezG9V6F8Jf77Jaoeby/s640/Penny+the+Robot.jpg" width="436" /></a></div>
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I found this sitting on the kitchen table one day when I came home from work. It's startled me how much I've been enjoying the art that my kids make, but this one in particular grabbed my attention. I asked the artist, my 6-year-old, if I could have it.</div>
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"Sure." I thought I detected a twinge of excitement in his answer, though it was heavily diluted with nonchalance. </div>
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"What's its name?" I asked him. He didn't have a name for it. I told him that as the artist, he had to give it a name. </div>
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"Well you could name it since I gave it to you," he said. </div>
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"How about Sergio?" I suggested. He didn't like that. That got the disapproving look and the shake of the head. </div>
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"Okay, how about....Goldie? Since his head is gold."</div>
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He looked at the picture for a moment as if considering it again for the first time since signing his name to it and setting it aside. "Penny, since his body is colored like a penny." It was not a suggestion. It was a christening. Penny was its name and its name was Penny. I liked it and I told him so. </div>
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"So does that mean he's a girl, since Penny is a girl's name? Oh, or since he's a robot, maybe he's not a boy or a girl. Maybe he's androgynous." And then I asked a 6-year-old if he knows what androgynous means, halfway expecting him to tell me that yes he did. But he didn't. I told him it was kind of like being both a boy and a girl or neither at all. <i>Wait, is that right? </i>I thought to myself.<i> Is that the word I'm looking for? </i></div>
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As I type this, Penny hangs on the wall to my right. She has a great view of the clutter that is my desk. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-86975199461818675792012-03-16T20:51:00.000-05:002012-03-16T20:52:45.761-05:00Things I Won't Be Able To Do Forever, Episode 2387The smaller kid rides on my back as I run through the yard. My oldest kid is hot on our tail. I can still outrun him, but he's gaining on me a little every day, plus I've got this shrieking leprechaun on my back. He chases me around the yard a few times and almost catches me, but I manage to make it back to the deck AKA base where I plunk down on my ass, sucking wind.<br />
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Then they switch.<br />
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The youngest is not as fast as his older brother, but now I'm carrying the larger of the two kids on my back, and the extra pounds don't go unnoticed. Our yard slopes, and on the way back up I notice a burning sensation in my calves. <i>Really? </i>I think. <i>I'm working that hard?</i><br />
I make it back to base, still untagged. My eldest hops down and I sit with a heavy thud. Inhale, exhale....<br />
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And then they switch.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-22732157466968517312012-03-08T22:09:00.000-06:002012-03-08T22:09:51.272-06:00What I Hear In My Head Every Time I Look At This Picture<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUZa92JR6lgJaadvnAEB5uue5uOhyphenhyphenWuIKD6Cv3097eWzfmcj3pB_0JeI7MmnJ9RGeJGXja0OOrMOERP4HlLf7apWE7TREJjJ2UFXZtDRm0xcq90GmL3aXWsh4Nuk3l5im8-KU/s1600/guard+your+tongue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUZa92JR6lgJaadvnAEB5uue5uOhyphenhyphenWuIKD6Cv3097eWzfmcj3pB_0JeI7MmnJ9RGeJGXja0OOrMOERP4HlLf7apWE7TREJjJ2UFXZtDRm0xcq90GmL3aXWsh4Nuk3l5im8-KU/s640/guard+your+tongue.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We took los boyos to the Sherwood Forest Faire a while back...kind of a Renaissance Fair kind of thing. All I'm saying is, if you ever have the chance to enroll your kids in sword-fighting classes taught by a guy named Oskar Hasselhoff, by all means, sign them up. </td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-63391211932245388572012-02-18T15:35:00.000-06:002012-02-18T15:35:05.865-06:00Writing Music<div>
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.8218642615247518"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">INT. - A STARBUCK’S IN A POSH PART OF TOWN</span></b></div>
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.8218642615247518"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The joint’s packed with fancy folks. Lots of laptops, lots of bluetooths, lots of plastic surgery. The orders being placed and filled by the chipper baristas behind the counter are marvels of idiosyncratic expression. the music playing over the P.A. is in no danger of harming anyone. Sitting by the window with his tall coffee (“Room for cream?” “Yes, please.”) is The Holmes, typing away at his laptop, his head connected to the device via a pair of headphones. He types, stops, reads, considers, types, etc. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside the window by which The Holmes is camped out, we see a large truck, a Ford F-1-Asshole or whatever, shiny and black. It hops the curb into the parking lot, roars across the asphalt, and knocks a taillight out of a Lexus before screeching to a halt outside the coffee shop’s entrance. The driver jumps down and yells something unintelligible as he stomps around to the passenger side. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Holmes is typing faster now, his body trembling with energy. People continue to walk in and out, the baristas continue their attempts to outdo one another with their displays of extreme courtesy. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside, the driver yanks the passenger door of the truck open. There is a struggle before the driver yanks his passenger out of the truck, another dude. They stumble and fall down in the parking lot in a heap, each trying to land blows on the other. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh, a Norah Jones/Barbra Streisand duet album! How nice, especially when paired with a t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">riple venti sugar free, non-fat, no foam, extra caramel, with whip caramel macchiato. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside, the two dudes are still battling it out. They’re stumbling like they’re drunk, but their blows aren’t missing. One knocks the other to the ground and kicks him in the ribs, the one being kicked manages to catch hold of the other’s leg and knock him off balance to take the advantage. It’s quite a show, but despite his proximity to the window, The Holmes only has eyes for his monitor. He’s pounding on the keyboard now, rocking back and forth in a possessed rhythym. He’s catching a few looks. He pounds his coffee </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">con gusto!</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and returns to his wordsmithing. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside, one dude has the other pinned. He punches him again and again, knocking the back of his head into the concrete. Lovers of fine caffeinated fare step around them as they traipse in and out of the franchise. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Holmes is head-banging and typing while Coldplay kicks the treble over the P.A.</span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dude who is pinned under the other one drives the heel of his free hand up into the bottom of his opponent’s jaw, clamping his teeth together and slicing off the end of his tongue. He screams and stumbles backwards, almost colliding with a mother and her children on their way in for Mommy’s afternoon treat. He slaps his hand over his mouth and blood flows out from between his knuckles. His opponent jumps off the ground and comes after him, punches him once, punches him again, then again. They grapple, fighting not with technique but with drunken fury. One shoves the other hard so that he slams into the window where The Holmes is sitting. The Holmes doesn’t notice, just types frantically as he bangs his head, eyes staring widely at something only he seems to be able to see. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the fighters charges the other and together they fly through the window, shattering the glass into thousands of pieces. They slam into The Holmes mid-headbang and knock him to the floor as they fly through a display of travel mugs like a wedding cake on a rainy day. His headphones stay on his head as he falls, the cord pulls free of the jack, and the store is immediately filled with the glorious sound of heavy metal, drowning out the feeble P.A.’s attempts at entertainment. The two fighters, covered in cuts and bruises and smears of blood, both rise to their feet and continue their battling, but before they get very far, one of them slams into a woman fresh from pilates class, causing her to spill her </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">venti, non-fat, no foam, no water, 6 pump, extra hot, chai tea latte</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. With a curse, she shoves him hard into his friend, and together they fall across a table of what appears to be business associates, all of whom get pissed off and dump the table over. </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a matter of seconds, the entire Starbuck’s descends into moshpit anarchy. As the scene goes dark, The Holmes can be heard laughing. </span></span><div>
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<span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/f3LLX9ThXjI" width="560"></iframe></span></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-13736241836514216742012-02-12T09:03:00.002-06:002012-02-12T09:04:06.575-06:00My kid left a note for the Tooth Fairy......and this is what it said:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuhYgqrn9dsjQpWJes_UcMNdjXTUI9RX6_iAhi7t1IwbdXjvwoFCSdu33GpQEFsK1jdCwBcYr6WWNKDqiwSbkBEcMAOjhqtPq9D21S7wF0qjrJiM8tVO-5DmyDb2yeolEAqP1/s1600/note+for+the+tooth+fairy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuhYgqrn9dsjQpWJes_UcMNdjXTUI9RX6_iAhi7t1IwbdXjvwoFCSdu33GpQEFsK1jdCwBcYr6WWNKDqiwSbkBEcMAOjhqtPq9D21S7wF0qjrJiM8tVO-5DmyDb2yeolEAqP1/s640/note+for+the+tooth+fairy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spelling translation: "I want to keep my tooth." Not sure what he intends to do with it, but then again, what does the Tooth Fairy do with them? Kind of a gross occupation if you ask me.</td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-29827239679017728942012-01-25T17:56:00.000-06:002012-01-25T17:56:59.067-06:00Public Transit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH0PA1rpRem66JkVZqruopehkw-Ci3cHp3MGMlPUh6z7upIvAo8pANMT5UtQDfp5qWMNEM3yM1B9gtwydHxo6BtUibwAj929ozmVH6MqI367r4Exv7rf9PRT5sqO4cN3K82szq/s1600/Fucking+Kryptonite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH0PA1rpRem66JkVZqruopehkw-Ci3cHp3MGMlPUh6z7upIvAo8pANMT5UtQDfp5qWMNEM3yM1B9gtwydHxo6BtUibwAj929ozmVH6MqI367r4Exv7rf9PRT5sqO4cN3K82szq/s640/Fucking+Kryptonite.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
This is about as deep as it gets around here until I finish the first draft of my book. Which, ya know, I'm okay with. We have so many Legos floating around this place.<br />
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Also, I almost misspelled "Kryptonite." My wife caught the typo for me. "Some nerd you are!" she declared. Some nerd indeed.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-56624386087776038672012-01-12T22:09:00.000-06:002012-01-12T22:09:42.312-06:00I Like Most Pixar Films, But There Is One Glaring Exception<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioybJuElGBY8I3f_eR_xDvVewglyFD3FYwyOltTulBaRW9fn0Nev_f7OIoUq4aNafKkdZFcRQSUK8tv62H71WXrJ_fV8OnqM1BIQq4C2nYkiDXmeJs_ZBE7t-CKW2o4q0IU2PC/s1600/Give+In+To+Your+Hate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="638" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioybJuElGBY8I3f_eR_xDvVewglyFD3FYwyOltTulBaRW9fn0Nev_f7OIoUq4aNafKkdZFcRQSUK8tv62H71WXrJ_fV8OnqM1BIQq4C2nYkiDXmeJs_ZBE7t-CKW2o4q0IU2PC/s640/Give+In+To+Your+Hate.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-40667673444152842302012-01-10T20:35:00.000-06:002012-01-10T20:35:10.348-06:00This Is What Happens When The Boys Get Star Wars Toys For Christmas And I Get Star Trek Figures For My Birthday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cBsQh7HaNaryIbKm7WPCnmj7kibjKbAo5fKCZMiclB3i-5mVzKkLQRZuXYZKxQiSAay_Vn-qxGm31hUFJGXlEGzeoOrjXwykSXo1wCsRMBAYntgQs7mV1rZYY0Vz-g2jLqPG/s1600/A+font+called+Borg+9+seemed+appropriate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cBsQh7HaNaryIbKm7WPCnmj7kibjKbAo5fKCZMiclB3i-5mVzKkLQRZuXYZKxQiSAay_Vn-qxGm31hUFJGXlEGzeoOrjXwykSXo1wCsRMBAYntgQs7mV1rZYY0Vz-g2jLqPG/s640/A+font+called+Borg+9+seemed+appropriate.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-10422367325682852352012-01-08T17:00:00.000-06:002012-01-08T17:00:15.129-06:00The Stage Is Littered With Fragments of Shattered Expectations<br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.5245197010226548"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a whole set of expectations that accompany you, as an audience member, when you step into a theater. You’ll keep quiet during the performance. You won’t attempt to engage the actors in conversation unless they ask you to. You will not ask the people on stage if it’s over yet. And though plenty may come to mind, you most certainly won’t offer suggestions as to how the performance might be improved - at least not in the moment. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are pretty reasonable expectations, so much so that you might not even think about them most of the time. Except, that is, when you get handed a permission slip to ignore them. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://the-holmes.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-years-day-ipa.html" target="_blank">The Ash and I were brewing beer on New Year’s Day, along with the generous assistance from our friends Bill and Brandon.</a> The boys were thoroughly uninterested in what we were doing, having taken the measure of it and determined that it stood to benefit them in no way at all. And then their friend, Neighbor Kid, came over, and the three of them went off and got lost in Little Boy Imagination Land, a place which, if I remember correct, is populated by dragons, tanks, and mermaids with snakes for hair and flamethrowers in their boobs. Among others. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So there we are, four adults standing outside around the brew pot, each of us with a brew in our hand. One of us was probably stirring. Neighbor Kid sticks his head out the back door and tells us that we need to come in and see their play. I misunderstand for a second, think I’m hearing him tell us we need to come in and watch them play, which, what? Why do we want to...? OH, play noun, not verb. Though, now that I mention it, there are plenty of philosophical discussions to be had regarding the relationship between play the noun and play the verb, what amount of the verb goes into the noun, what the noun actually is. I’ve watched them happen, read the treatises. Or was it a manifesto? Right now, as I type this, as you read this, someone somewhere is declaring, "it's a <i>play</i>, not a <i>show</i>!" It’s sort of like “Stairway to Heaven” - it’s never not happening somewhere. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We adults file into the house and into the living room where Neighbor Kid and our boys are waiting, their excitement to reveal their creation to us causing their skin to bristle with energy and their hair to stand on end. Neighbor Kid, because he is the oldest, gives the signal, and the play begins. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It starts with my oldest rolling a bowling ball and knocking over a row of pins. Then a remote control truck races onstage and knocks him over, then zips around the playing area. My youngest bounces in on a horse and attacks the truck. People are falling over. Dialogue is minimal. It’s all very performance art. And through it all, we in the audience are speaking, not only to one another in unhushed tones, but also to the three players. We’re asking aloud what it is that we are seeing. We're cracking wise. We’re offering our learned assessments. We’re pleading with them to stop bashing the truck into the piano. At one point, someone asks, “Okay, is that it?” Can you imagine? But the kids seem not to mind our jibber-jabber one bit. Though they would have been perfectly entitled to do so, not a single one of them turns to us and snarls “Respect the fourth wall!” </span></span></b><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">We applaud them from a standing position and they bow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Children. Expectations. Explosions. </span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-27743070168796876582012-01-04T21:07:00.000-06:002012-01-04T21:07:19.305-06:00New Year's Day IPA<br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.14764746720902622"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I spent New Year’s Day brewing beer. </span></span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFvO1T6wQdN7dz6knzGBfdKhE1c2rp1lZw9Ut83KAzwZXVY9ldTVmYOh3kpFtjJIqkKWAkIikR959cCf7h3juuqO9eOZ3ywzhldpQUC_1JrpIP3MpCSNPXK8x4vADHTE-yc24/s1600/Brewing+Equipment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFvO1T6wQdN7dz6knzGBfdKhE1c2rp1lZw9Ut83KAzwZXVY9ldTVmYOh3kpFtjJIqkKWAkIikR959cCf7h3juuqO9eOZ3ywzhldpQUC_1JrpIP3MpCSNPXK8x4vADHTE-yc24/s400/Brewing+Equipment.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The equipment</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hadn’t planned to spend New Year’s Day brewing beer. It all came about when a long-standing wish of mine met up with an early birthday present from my Mom, a generous gift certificate to the Austin Homebrew Supply store. Wifearrific and I ran down there, picked out our equipment and the ingredients for our first batch, then came home and were all “OKAY! WHEN ARE WE DOING THIS THING?!” To which the calendar responded, “Uh, well, looks like you’re free on New Year’s Day, assuming you’re not too hungover.” </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amazingly enough, some of our brewing friends (that’s right, I’m lucky enough to have brewing friend</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s</span><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - plural) agreed to spend their New Year’s Day brewing beer with us. I thought for sure the requisite hangover would have everyone down for the count, but such was not the case. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifC3OngR6mW6LGSt2kiXknTpANMjFElnVqhNtUpIvzzIyvEwDjfpQo953qahVTVwjnUV3caPqI_yBGgvfFBZ8o_D44Z4mIWgffH44Y2QR1q7FYwOal3UPJEvXKdLmsdamjrv3s/s1600/They%2527re+probably+talking+about+beer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifC3OngR6mW6LGSt2kiXknTpANMjFElnVqhNtUpIvzzIyvEwDjfpQo953qahVTVwjnUV3caPqI_yBGgvfFBZ8o_D44Z4mIWgffH44Y2QR1q7FYwOal3UPJEvXKdLmsdamjrv3s/s400/They%2527re+probably+talking+about+beer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not hungover, as far as I can tell</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which is great, because frankly, the process involves a lot of standing around, waiting on things to happen, waiting on the timer to tell you it’s time to do the next step. And what a better way to stand around waiting on stuff than with your friends, all of whom brought beer along with them, because really? You’re going to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">drink beer while you brew? Pshaw. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At one point, the kids called us inside the house to show us a play they’d created and had been rehearsing. I doubt that happens at most breweries. That's a whole 'nother rabbit hole I'll have to jump down later.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs7n7-rnpj5AcEZzXnVMCaesvkTAQB4MiENwBhac-qHGbAHO3NGrx7q8aWEbi_nPvx3Sa8F7z3c67HRelrK9Fv_I3745QT4oZEwqZ7LMjaEeBbUIWvX8WE7Jz3g10SGKs9ji9U/s1600/Smells+like+IPA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs7n7-rnpj5AcEZzXnVMCaesvkTAQB4MiENwBhac-qHGbAHO3NGrx7q8aWEbi_nPvx3Sa8F7z3c67HRelrK9Fv_I3745QT4oZEwqZ7LMjaEeBbUIWvX8WE7Jz3g10SGKs9ji9U/s400/Smells+like+IPA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After an afternoon of rich smells and thick concoctions, we closed up the whole works and shoved it into the pantry where it’ll ferment for the next couple of weeks or so, after which, it gets to age in its bottles for a while, and only then do we get to find out if we did it right...or right enough anyway. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbdobyWWpkPgTPUwZCyzPqN5zbCW6kuwKiVKi2Y7LVHWe0xNbwPwsbfq9xvpm5lwfR7Ho9d7v3K4sFBP5SZilT41R4EgB6C0knbiGTFVtuFR7wx8DOr8E2CdBLrGoQf-NTGYs/s1600/And+now+it+just+sits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbdobyWWpkPgTPUwZCyzPqN5zbCW6kuwKiVKi2Y7LVHWe0xNbwPwsbfq9xvpm5lwfR7Ho9d7v3K4sFBP5SZilT41R4EgB6C0knbiGTFVtuFR7wx8DOr8E2CdBLrGoQf-NTGYs/s400/And+now+it+just+sits.jpg" width="313" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And now it just sits, in the closet, next to the dogfood</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s odd, you know? Doing all this work to create the perfect environment just to let nature take its course, then sitting back and taking a mostly passive role, like some sort of non-interventionist God that just pokes his head in every now and then, “Everything going okay in here?” then pops back out. Sure, there’s more work to come, but our part in the actual making of the liquid is all but done. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was talking to one of my oldest friends about our plans to brew on New Year’s Day, and he said it sounded like the start of a great tradition, an idea that I liked right away. I like traditions. Or no, scratch that. I actually kind of hate traditions, but that’s because when I think “tradition,” I think of some tired old ritual whose inconvenience has come to vastly outweigh its purpose, whose original meaning is long forgotten, and that only gets repeated because that’s the way it’s been done since before anybody can remember. No, I don’t need that. I like traditions I can be part of. And as is the case here, I like traditions that I can be in on at the start. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mark your calendars now, because January 1, 2013 will be the second annual New Year’s Day Holmes-brew. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_-eSOOUDX2CrRtReri1ZZW5LTYhu53V4PYNh5VBnmUeEFbUaoele_z4m-HbODnfTAnoToBbhlUsRUflhU2Fnapi8ukhbmOZ3gEx-68QpLBdQewUYGTsRWhVil-0QK6mAFYk8/s1600/Ashley+drinks+beer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_-eSOOUDX2CrRtReri1ZZW5LTYhu53V4PYNh5VBnmUeEFbUaoele_z4m-HbODnfTAnoToBbhlUsRUflhU2Fnapi8ukhbmOZ3gEx-68QpLBdQewUYGTsRWhVil-0QK6mAFYk8/s400/Ashley+drinks+beer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wifearrific with beerarriffic</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-40003024999068308402011-12-06T21:59:00.001-06:002011-12-06T22:05:12.101-06:00The Water Must Flow<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDs5VVDWjTp2s3xbTqZATrkff_wzbbRHW0bAtP28W9fESFelUiGq6yNlfC-iLu6RsWmZcdTuRW7PQDgv7FEf9GTtF2LFzignvbwL223z0dibby0ubPuFQkU7c28JRbruJdfmz/s1600/broken+toilet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDs5VVDWjTp2s3xbTqZATrkff_wzbbRHW0bAtP28W9fESFelUiGq6yNlfC-iLu6RsWmZcdTuRW7PQDgv7FEf9GTtF2LFzignvbwL223z0dibby0ubPuFQkU7c28JRbruJdfmz/s200/broken+toilet.jpg" width="165" /></a></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6648633920121938" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So there we are. Last weekend. My wife’s birthday bash at our house. We’re all full of food, full of drink, full of the joy of each other’s company. Were you to walk through this gathering, you’d hear snippets of witty conversation and astute observations about any number of topics. But then somewhere in there, you’d hear something else. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Uh, dude, our sump pump’s making a fucked up sound.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, it’s true. Right at the tail end of my wife’s birthday party, our house belched up the best gift of all: no more indoor plumbing. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The long and the short of it is that it’s fixed now and we can once again allow water to flow out through its various exits, along with all the wonderful things that water sweeps away with it, only a small amount of which backed itself up into one of our bathrooms. Really, it could have been </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so much worse</span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The plumber that came to our rescue labored outside for several cold drizzly hours, and when he was done, I thought to myself, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">never again will I take our waste-water system for granted. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then I thought, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wait, of course I will. I take stuff like that for granted all the time. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sure, in that moment, and now as I’m sitting here thinking about it, I’m quite aware of all the mechanisms in place that allow us to send water and its baggage on its merry way. And then last night, when somebody smashed their car into a utility pole and knocked out the electricity in our hood, I was very aware of it, too (that’s right, we lost water </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">power in one weekend. It was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Little House On the Prairie</span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> up in here). But gratitude for everyday conveniences is a fleeting thing, am I right? We only think about them when we’re forced to do without them. And I know I’m not the only one here. I’ve seen your Facebook statuses. I’ve read your tweets. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Truth is, though, I tend not to be as grateful of a person as I’d like to be. I’m aware, in a theoretical sense, of the power of gratitude to increase one’s happiness, but I’m not often so great at making the leap into actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being grateful</span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. At least not on a regular basis. I have a shitty way of focusing on the things I don’t have instead of the things I do, even though I try to instill gratitude in my kids all the time. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be grateful, dammit! </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honestly, on the list of things about myself that I wish I could just change with a snap of my fingers, this is probably in the top 3, right up there with the ability to draw and having a sixth finger on each hand. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe it’s the issue of it being a thing of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a certain way, as opposed to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">doing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something. Perhaps the doing leads to the being. Do the gratitude, be the gratitude, or some such snippet of wisdom.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how’s this for some doing? A look back over this past weekend’s adventures with my gratitude goggles on. I present to you a list of things I’m thankful for, in spite of the shit. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span><ul>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That we only had to do without indoor plumbing for about a day and a half. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That my in-laws live just a few minutes away and let us use their facilities.</span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That the sump pump broke near the end of the party rather than the start, because dude? We went through some beer.</span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking of beer, I’m very grateful that my friends all have such good taste in the stuff. Nobody shows up with piss. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That I’m married to this wonderful woman and was able to celebrate her birthday with her:</span></span></li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJUOedaMM81FhMTUEQe5nNpFqCly9fmJCIJtc_BZPRMhanbVIK91WRnzHTro6tDbxAUTgigTHXFmnKpx-3-Rsih4gRf_O4t_DoY2CJpaFUssbbW6qY4b_CqC2EszbWQTxCZhY/s1600/The+Ash.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJUOedaMM81FhMTUEQe5nNpFqCly9fmJCIJtc_BZPRMhanbVIK91WRnzHTro6tDbxAUTgigTHXFmnKpx-3-Rsih4gRf_O4t_DoY2CJpaFUssbbW6qY4b_CqC2EszbWQTxCZhY/s320/The+Ash.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So cute</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That so many of my friends are such fantastic cooks. Seriously, when we do a potluck, we eat well. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That getting our plumbing fixed cost us far less than we were fearing, because bullets: we were sweating them. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That it’s still possible to write even if you can’t flush the toilet in the other room, as evidenced by the fact that I still got in lots of writing. Yeah, that novel? Still writing it. Maybe one day I’ll even finish it. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">That we all remained civil, even cheerful through the whole thing. </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">That the plumbing outage and the power outage did not occur simultaneously. </span></li>
</ul>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I might be back to not thinking about the portal opened by the little handle on the toilet as soon as tomorrow, but for this moment at least, I’m pretty stoked that the damn thing works. </span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-27879571715817622492011-12-05T11:54:00.001-06:002011-12-05T12:02:33.411-06:00And Speaking of Ninjas...<i>The following story originally appeared on <a href="http://badgersofuncertainfortune.net/" target="_blank">The Badgers of Uncertain Fortune</a> where some friends and I endeavored to all write one short story a week. It was one of my favorites to emerge from my fingertips during that exercise. The writing prompt that started this one was "My Imaginary Friend." </i><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">YOSHONGA</span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.859748117858544" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Lie back on your mat and close your eyes.” </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The instructor’s voice lilts across the room and the class gladly obeys. It has been an exhausting hour of stretching, posing, balancing, inverting. A bead of sweat races down my brow, but like everything else that vies for my attention during these rare moments of stillness, I do my best to ignore it. The instructor walks between us, talking us through the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">savasana, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">guiding our awareness from one end of our bodies to the other and out to its farthest reaches, urging us to release any tension that we encounter along the way. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A tile in the ceiling above me slides away and a shadow appears in the opening, the blackness punctuated only by a pair of eyes. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ninja</span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The shadow looks down at the prone forms on the floor beneath it, at the instructor with her back turned, looking out the window. “Relax your toes, relax the space between your toes…” It then looks straight down at me, lying still on my mat with my eyes closed, trying - without trying to try - to be aware of as little as possible. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shadow drops out of the ceiling. Falling faster than gravity, he pulls a saber from a sheath strapped to his back and pivots so that the point of the blade is aimed at my throat. The sunlight streaming through the window strikes the sword, only to be absorbed by the ninja magic that imbues the metal. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barely the length of a baby cobra fang lies between the tip of the blade and the flesh of my throat when an arm clad in silks of green, pink, and yellow reaches down out of the hole through which the ninja just emerged and grasps the shadow warrior by the ankle, halting his descent. As he is pulled back into the ceiling, the ninja looks up into the blackness between the third and fourth floors and sees the face of his undoing. A whisper escapes his lips, the first word he has uttered since beheading his former master and entering the service of the shadow. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yoshonga. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then he is gone. No sound reaches my ears, nor those of my classmates. Our eyes see only the insides of our eyelids. The instructor thinks that perhaps she hears an insect flying through the room, but ignores it. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Slowly bring awareness back.”</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The instructor’s voice reaches me as if from the other side of a dream and I wonder, as I always do, if I have fallen asleep. I wiggle my fingers, wiggle my toes. I open my eyes and think nothing of the unremarkable ceiling above me. </span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-25708175443410161902011-12-01T20:33:00.001-06:002011-12-01T21:05:21.063-06:00Good Day To You, Sir!Here's how we in the Holmes household feel about the end of Movember's impact upon my face:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AuBvXIdjgh0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Subtle, no?<br />
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Both of those lightsaberish instruments you see me using there came absolutely free from the nice people at Philips Norelco, but rest assured that the opinions you see below are mine. I call them nice folks because they donated an extra $15,000 to our team, effectively doubling our team's Movember contribution, and all they asked was that we use their stuff and put it on video. Why, that's just downright friendly.<br />
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The Vacuum Stubble and Beard Trimmer rules if for no other reason than it vacuums all the hair up as you slice it off of your face. NO MORE CLEANING UP STUBBLE OUT OF THE SINK! You can't imagine how happy this makes me. As for the SensoTouch 3D, I like the fact that it looks like a hydra, but doesn't yank the hair out of your face. Electric razor technology has clearly advanced since last I used one, many moons ago.<br />
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Okay Movember, that was fun. Now, on to writing about things other than facial hair.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-966981233184809402011-11-21T20:30:00.001-06:002011-11-21T20:53:09.208-06:00Watch For The Stache SignalSo, Holmes...how's <a href="http://mobro.co/theholmes" target="_blank">Movember</a> going?<br />
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Glad you asked, friend. Tell you the truth, between the new glasses I got a while back and my latest facial hair configuration, I'm feeling a bit Detective Gordon these days.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTxmuhMXxFbR4LK0FQQG0AE4ga7qcsmW3iASqznEBF-6iWbwqJC7CI0rYNBSQJsVZ58o0D2QjbtzDQjIBTeeXJ9UDhZVq7igK5r4xPhqUzXsDj8d90feEiDLKn4TL2LhV4kRz1/s1600/Detectives.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTxmuhMXxFbR4LK0FQQG0AE4ga7qcsmW3iASqznEBF-6iWbwqJC7CI0rYNBSQJsVZ58o0D2QjbtzDQjIBTeeXJ9UDhZVq7igK5r4xPhqUzXsDj8d90feEiDLKn4TL2LhV4kRz1/s400/Detectives.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Thanks to everyone who's tossed some 'stache cash our way. If you'd still like to contribute to the cause, <a href="http://mobro.co/theholmes" target="_blank">just swing on over and clicky-clicky-typey-typey. Because cancer fucking sucks.</a> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwsliEOSAmEN5OxTmg3-uQGiZxtQxG8kcc8AXkPOyWriO3tAa75GrGJQeX4swhyphenhyphensAKjPhlJm3ih_SBnSmiH36VyRpe6mVEQZ4H0knq2Rl63B1bYd5_CTzfFDtbyqSX4JzJitl/s1600/Handsome+Batman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwsliEOSAmEN5OxTmg3-uQGiZxtQxG8kcc8AXkPOyWriO3tAa75GrGJQeX4swhyphenhyphensAKjPhlJm3ih_SBnSmiH36VyRpe6mVEQZ4H0knq2Rl63B1bYd5_CTzfFDtbyqSX4JzJitl/s400/Handsome+Batman.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-60015128632138987042011-11-16T20:41:00.001-06:002011-11-16T20:55:16.359-06:00My Name Isn't, But Could Be, Earl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1cBncofWhcDQm-numoZRyEuR1CC4s7TcpE76jj4Vy10tOYm-8oI-zfZ_IonjsFiQF15CrJU_WpJ-d-yZoGWLzZ-epz6PneBI81dGuFt-S_uzdNyfScJSkN5wxelVTWz3pF1P/s1600/my+name+is+earl2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1cBncofWhcDQm-numoZRyEuR1CC4s7TcpE76jj4Vy10tOYm-8oI-zfZ_IonjsFiQF15CrJU_WpJ-d-yZoGWLzZ-epz6PneBI81dGuFt-S_uzdNyfScJSkN5wxelVTWz3pF1P/s400/my+name+is+earl2.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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Now lookie here, y'all. I ain't claimin' to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know a good cause when I see one. And a bunch of fellows growin' out their mustaches in the name of fightin' cancer? Well now if that don't beat all, then I don't know what. So if you would please, take a few minutes and <a href="http://mobro.co/theholmes" target="_blank">clicky-click your computer on over to the Movember internet page</a> and drop a few dollars in the jar, why that'd be mighty kind of you.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNdqh_GK9kGm8BF6_1Ys9kBDFjNnxHU-y770Mhh4pAPDANJKywVO3_3IGDvhkBbJH3pHrH9VLQrz-1rfWWR52h0cJwnxziUcqA8iOrqSo4tb6vXeuq8Q-mJrluutMDRcl16b3Z/s1600/my+name+is+earl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNdqh_GK9kGm8BF6_1Ys9kBDFjNnxHU-y770Mhh4pAPDANJKywVO3_3IGDvhkBbJH3pHrH9VLQrz-1rfWWR52h0cJwnxziUcqA8iOrqSo4tb6vXeuq8Q-mJrluutMDRcl16b3Z/s400/my+name+is+earl.jpg" width="307" /></a></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Thanks y'all!</span></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807657.post-77286391901566817652011-11-12T16:04:00.001-06:002011-11-12T16:12:10.864-06:00KeysI can barely convey to you with words how well these two simple phone-snapped pictures capture the wonderful differences between my two boys. So I'll hush and let the pictures talk.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06381359915367648550noreply@blogger.com2