And did I mention the booze?

I accomplished maybe about 60% of the socializing I set out to do over the holiday social season.
I Did:
None of the lunches.
A ll of the dinners.
4 out of 7 of the parties.
2 shows
1 spontaneous go out for a drink.
And what I realize is that, especially if you add in one of the last parties I went to before “the season”, I just don’t really fit in anywhere.

I almost fit with the philosophy students circle except the part where they are mostly 25 years younger than me and pretty dang boozy.

I almost fit in with the folks I know from high school and related crews except for the part where I say things and then get the really, really strange looks. I had realized this before, about 15 years ago, when I was at a cocktail party with that general group of folks. The conversation was about murderers and serial killers, so I bit and started talking about all the murderers and murderees that I’ve known. And they all moved away from me on the couch there. No really, it was just like Alice’s restaurant. I should have immediately claimed to have been arrested for creating a nuisance. But they do have really classy booze.

There’s another group I have occasionally tried to hang around. They all live in places like Whitmore Lake, Howell, Fowlerville, Grass Lake and Belleville. There’s a lot of hairdressers and grownup “bomb dudes”. A lot , a lot, a lot of booze. A lot of conversations about kids and sports and bars and work and concerts and their shared history which I’m not a part of and lawn care and hair products. That one is so not working for me that I had already decided a few weeks ago that I am definitely just not going around that one anymore.

There is an adjunct, related group to that one, which is a slightly closer fit in the sense that it is the musical and entertainment business oriented people derived from the former group. There the boozy mess club has found it’s permanent headquarters. And it smells pretty bad. I can only do quickie fly-bys.

There is my very local, very fabulous, gay men scene. That one is a just a little obvious. I am not a gay man. If I am, then I’m one in a woman's body, which doesn’t get you very far points wise. I do ok in that scene, except that I’m broke, not very fabulous, I don’t care about fashion and therefore don’t have nice clothes to do things in, and I suspect my days of serious hagging are pretty much behind me. And again I don’t dig the bar part, as well as that the shredding really gets to me. If I am going to talk about you, and I definitely am, it’s to analyze, analyze, analyze. That’s just what I do. But I don’t want to savage someone just to get the high score.

There are some singleton folk like DramaMama, Danilo, Psyche, Nigel and Floyd’sMom etc. etc. All fine folk I’m sure but I rarely see some of them and anyway I don’t “hang in their scenes”. I know them and them alone, it’s very likely that I would not be a good match with the rest of their peeps.

As for family, well, I can’t even go there from here.

Oh I am a beast

Well I did me some papering and if I don’t get my coveted A it will mean that I have gone insane w/out realizing and made no sense a’tall for 14 pages. Last night I was so very happily relieved and today I am bitch ugly and want to drink and fight.
So, if you run into me somewhere tonight, (because I now want no part of socializing and that just seems like a really good reason to force myself) and I seem a little buzzed, it’s probably best to just swallow any pride and be conciliatory to me. I have a bad habit of being a REALLY happy drunk until without warning I become extraordinarily vicious. Lon Chaney eat your heart out.

PS No moralizing required, as when these things happen I always hurt myself somehow, and usually pretty badly. It’s like perfect karma in a bottle.

Skate/No Skate

Here’s the thing. I am an Ann Arbor living, home owning, property tax paying, (solitary, street) skater. I am not behind the current A2 Skate park initiative. The primary reason is GET A FREAKING CLUE SKATE DOLTS. They are having to close facilities like LIBRARIES around here because there is no frickin’ money. Do I think existing libraries (not to mention services like The United Way) are more important than potential skate parks? Why yes, yes I do. Wake up from yer white boy beds of privilege. If you can personally afford it then by all means, continue to build yer boys own. Put down the pipe and smell the coffee, we can’t afford it at this time.

As well as:
Then you will be able to fully indulge your control freak cravings; banning, denying and disclaiming upon those you deem not cool enough, to yer hearts content. Past behaviors makes that appear to be the actual most important focus of yer boys club anyway. Well, that and the Boozy Mess Club activity roster.

By all means, keep putting together good shows, there’s no argument there. But what is going to happen to all these alleged fundraising monies, should they exist, once this idea has been tabled until the recession is over? BTW where can we find the accountings publicly posted?

From lowest to highest denominator

Or why I really am kind of a snoot.
I totally need cheezeburgers in my life. Even when (as been happening more often lately) I am not so very interested in the meat eating rituals, a charcoal grilled cheezeburger or Blimpy or Kosmo burger will totally do it for me.
Also there is a dish served at many super yupscale, French/Italian, restaurants pairing some superlative cut of beef, like tenderloin, with gorgonzola. Yummy. Something about the stinkiness of bleu with blood red meat is just fine.

Which brings us to nachos. Nachos, too, are swell. I have long maintained that this is the reason for cattle mutilations, crop circles and alien visitation in general. Meat, corn, cheeze = Nachos. We’ve got em and the universe wants them. I think Daniel Pinkwater would back me up on this. The question of the meat on the nachos is one of quality though. Many, many, times they must remain a lacto-ovo vegetarian production as at 98% of restaurants, I just won’t touch their meat.

But other than these extremes, the idea of putting cheeze on meat is just weird. (See the commercial for Campbell's cheesy chicken and rice casserole.) Almost barbaric. It’s sort of like the idea of drinking kumiss. Which I suppose is technically not that different from drinking Bailey’s. But these new, flavoured, Bailey’s, such as Chocolate mint and caramel, are purely cretinous. And a chocolatini is not a fuggin’ martini you silly calf.

PS I believe this post wins the prize for the most words ever I had to teach my spellcheck.

I changed my mind...

I do have something cheery to say, and that is, that I’m so proud and excited for my three friends, Karl LaFong, F. Rhetoric, and Cheddar, some of whom were really down in the pit swimmin’ with the darkest of angels when they decided to get into the prickly embrace of sobriety. Between the three of them they have over six years in. As expected they all turned out to be bright, sincere, sweet, sensitive people. And a couple of them, hilariously irascible.

So this is how it’s just gonna be...

So tired, the store job kicks my ass. When I first started it kicked my ass also. Then I started getting stronger and stronger. I got some decent shoes. I started getting some muscles and stamina. I did better and better as the years went by. Then I had a couple surgeries the first of of which went kinda wrong, the next of which went really wrong. The horribly expensive shoes wore out. Now if I do a four hour shift I have to sleep 3 hours.

On Mondays, cuz I’m a homework slacker, I get off work then play drums until I’m really, really tired and usually quite frustrated. Then go to drum class. Then I can crash for awhile. While I tell myself its for just a quick, rejuvenating nap it invariably turns into a long stupefying nap, then I spend the rest of the day being a schlub.

This last month adds to the stultifying mix, extreme tension in my home life. The result is the house is dirty, the energy levels are all fucked up, and it doesn’t seem worth it to get up and do a damn thing. However something has to change the energy, I can no longer sit and stew. (I am so good at stewing, I meant what I said about grudge holding.)

So while I didn’t go about solving the problem the super high road way, I also didn’t take the lowliest low road. I, at least, addressed an individual face to face for the 15 seconds requisite and decided to skip the “preserve the friendship” part. I got some support for that approach from a few people who said if I didn’t want the friendship to just go ahead and remove the pain source.
Done.
Its not like I had zero interest in the friendship, but when alcoholism is the factor, what’s the point?
This is something like the 10th friendship of some significance that has terminated in the last 10 years or so, where I trace the real source of the problem to addiction. Not mine, someone else's. If we went back farther in time, the numbers would grow exponentially.

It’s just getting so very old. But when there is little or no return for your energy, so little actual dialogue, just boozy, stale monologues repeated over and over while someone breathes alcohol in your face what's left anyway? It won’t change until it changes and that's nothing you can control at all, so rather be done.

This whole giving your whole life to a THING is freaking me out. You just hand over everything you are, could be and will do, to an inanimate object. What the hell is that? I’m not saying I haven’t had my skirmishes with such slavery, but I seem to have a finely tuned sense of personal freedom. When a stupid thing starts requiring my very core self and values, I turn and run. I don’t care how much fun it’s promising. I don’t care if its a substance or a job or a relationship.

The other part that's bugging me, is the age of these people. I can see how in your twenties you haven’t figured it out yet, but the people involved are in their thirties, forties and fifties. One of them had already done over 20 years in prison as payment and just took another twenty to pay for just a couple months of getting high. Yet it’s his primary relationship and he’ll apparently never, ever, put anyone or anything ahead of it. It, an inanimate object, a thing.

I can’t think of a goofy, cheery, twist to end this on, everything about this is so annoying. I suppose the the best I can do is mention that at least I’m mostly over the furious and into the sad.