"There is no gene for the human spirit..."

Wow. So it would seem that some members of Congress are Gattaca fans. Or, more to the point, aren't... Recent legislation is actually pretty foresighted of them...

My Dumbass Nephew

So, I heard from Mom the other day. Most everything is fine. She says that if I don't call her more often, she's going to move to G'ville, build a 2nd story on my house, and live there. The inside joke is that I once remarked that I was so glad that I didn't live downstairs from her, the way she clomps around... (She's had trouble with her ankle for a while, and has a bad back to boot - she tends to clomp...)

"Tom's Aunt" is coming to visit her for 2 weeks. Now, there's a reason why my mother calls her "Tom's Aunt" (Tom is my brother) instead of "my sister" or even simply "Verna". She's nuts. Not special white coat with extra long sleeves nuts, but more along the lines of "ohmygawd I don't know this woman" nuts. She lives in Waco, TX, right across the lake from the Davidian Compound. Her comment on that was "We sawr it burnin' and like ta wished we had some marshmellers." (Yes, she has a very, very heavy Texas accent.) Yikes. And she's staying for 2 whole weeks. It'll be a miracle if they don't kill each other.

And the bad news... It seems that my chats with Mom always contain some bad news. My nephew and I have never really gotten along. My mom claims it is because I resent him as he took away my "Sissy", who pretty much raised me (and the rest of the crew). I'm really not sure about all that Freudian stuff. I owe it to the fact that Ben is an asshole. Always has been, even as a child. This kid has the remarkable ability to piss you off in a heartbeat. He seems to always automatically know just what buttons to push to get you irritated, and pushes them with glee. And it is not just me. This is how he interacts with everyone.

Worse yet, he thinks he is eight feet tall, and bulletproof. He thinks he is a lot "badder" than he is. He is on the smallish side. He is only about 5'6" and weighs about a buck-fifty. Okay, maybe that isn't tiny, but he is nowhere near the brutish size of most of my family....

I've been warning him for years on end that he was going to get his ass handed to him one day. Someone wasn't going to take his particular brand of abuse, and would beat the hell out of him. Why it took this long, I'll never know....

He was in a bar, running his mouth, and insulted the wrong guy. They "took it outside", and this guy proceeded to whup the living tar out of Ben. Beat him senseless. (i.e. knocked him out) As he was unconcious, and his ear was bleeding, they "Trauma-Hawk"ed him to the hospital. (Trauma-Hawk is the heli-ambulance in the area.) All said and done, he is okay. He just had a broken ear drum. Still a bit serious, but nothing life threatening.

I'm just wondering if he has learned his lesson, or is 30 years of being a complete jerk just too much of an obstacle to overcome? Personally, I hope that he changes his ways, as he is my nephew and, while I loathe him at times, I still love him. Worse comes to worst, maybe he'll realize that he isn't so tough...

Geek-Fest

The C-Note, the Friendly Tavern and the Lok-Nar

As you all well know, things have been a bit... tepid at the bar. Well, that all changed last night with a $100 tip!! Okay, not really... A girl ordered a couple of drinks, and tipped a couple of dollars, which was fine. But on the customer copy of the c.c. receipt, she wrote $100 for the tip. A joke, I suppose, for her friends, or whatever. It didn't matter, as I'd already rung her ticket through, including the $2 tip. My co-worker found the receipt and freaked. She was very excited, to say the least (especially since we split the tips between the two of us). I noticed right away that it was the duplicate copy, and saw the name and knew I'd already cashed her out. I figured out the joke right away, but decided to let it carry on for a while. "G" kept showing it to everyone, and remarking that this girl wanted "into your pants, bad!" I finally broke the news to her, yet she was still trying to figure out how to make it true. The girl did, in fact, sign the copy, so we'd have a legitimate argument for it, but I don't work that way, and don't feel like paying back the bill later down the road when she complains.... It was a nice thought, though.

The bar manager found a great cartoon in the latest issue of Playboy, and hung it up over the bar. It shows two businessmen walking past a pub. The one is saying to the other, "It used to be called the Friendly Tavern..." The name on the window is the "Fuck You Bar". This is quite funny, as that is precisely the attitude a lot of the bar employees (not just ours) are getting lately. No one is making any money, and with limited customers, you want to get the best ones in. The lousy ones you just don't care about. "A glass of water? Fuck you!" It fits. Very apropos....

"K", the manager, recently downloaded "Heavy Metal" and transferred it to video tape, and has been playing it nightly, after the bar closes. He and I are the only employees old enough to remember the original release, and he's been gleefully sharing it with all the 'kids'. He's been trying to get me to stay and watch it with the 'gang', but I just don't have it in me. It really is a great movie, for what it is, or, more to the point, was, but I would rather get that extra hour and a half of sleep... Maybe some night. Sometime. Sure....

Cappin' my ass, and reverse racism....

The bar has been pretty dismal, of late. The Fire Marshal’s edict that “no bar shalt go o’er occupancy” has really killed business. I’ve whined about it already, but bring it up again to point out that we now have a lot of “free time” on our hands while working. We sit around with out hands in our pockets, chatting with each other. There’s an old business philosophy that goes something along the lines of “time enough to lean, time enough to clean”, but to hell with that. Not for a whopping $3.15 an hour. For that, they buy my presence, and that’s about it. Anyway….., the point here is that we’re sitting around a lot, so we get to spot trouble even faster than before…

Last Friday, we’re standing there, and “Spikey Mikey” (this is actually not a made up blog name to protect the stupid) is railing on about his latest love, when I see potential trouble. A customer is drunk, starting to get rowdy, and trying to start a fight. I come around the bar to “straighten him out” and he whirls on me and tells me that he’s gonna pull out his “9” on me. For those not in the know, that would be street talk for a 9 millimeter pistol, the most common caliber on the market today. I am not terribly concerned, as, generally, those who brag the most about something are the least likely to come through. A hulking gorilla twice your size comes at you, you don’t “talk” about having a gun, you pull it out. In other words, you can usually tell when they are full of shit, and this kid was oozing it…. So I step in closer, get up in his face and get to use a favorite line from a favorite movie. “Go ahead! Skin that smokewagon!” Apparently, I was the only one in the bar that night that had seen “Tombstone”…. Nobody got it. Oh, well, *I* was amused! He made a move like he was reaching into his waistband at his back, and I simply continued the motion and arm-locked him. (I also notice that he was NOT carrying, as per my suspicion.) I hauled him to and through the front door, using his skull to open it for me. It was about this time that the door-guy woke up. The ‘tard tried to come back in and the bouncer rejected him. He stood at the door and made various threats, and said he was going to sue. He then started threatening the bouncer with his “9”, saying he would come back tomorrow night and shoot him. The idiot finally left, after about 5 minutes of idle threats. The bouncer told some wandering police officers about it, and they seemed singularly unconcerned. So much for police protection, but then again, we weren’t terribly concerned ourselves… This kid is apparently some judge’s son, and has been kicked out of almost every bar in Gainesville. Well, buddy, add another to your list of places you are not welcome.

On Sunday, Sheeps and I were having dinner at a local Chinese buffet. This is one of our favorites – not too expensive, and the food is decent. The waiter,. “Sam”, remembers us and our drink order. Kind of nice, yes? Well, there were three girls of “African American” decent eating there. (I find this a silly term, as I probably have as much tie to Africa as they do – at least I’ve been there….) Two of them ran out of the restaurant and jumped into their car and drove off. The third girl stayed behind. I don’t know why she didn’t try to run too…. The staff were complaining to her, in their limited English, about her friends. They were actually fairly calm, but were insistent that they would phone the police. She was screaming at them at the top of her lungs, railing that she wasn’t with them, and that she was being mistreated. The manager rung up someone else’s ticket while she was there, and she started screaming how he was over-charging her and trying to rip HER off! She was making quite a scene. Apparently she’d called her friends and they came back and paid, claiming that they’d just run out to get some money to pay. They were all screaming at the staff, and the first girl refused to pay, in the end. They all left, jumping into the same car (so much for not knowing them…), and speeding off so that the staff couldn’t get their license plate number. If you’re so innocent, what would you have to worry about? Hmmm….?

Now, I am generally not a prejudiced man. I’ll be honest and admit that my family is, to an extent, racist. I can’t really put too much blame on them for it, as they were raised in an era when that was the norm. It was all around them, and it was the way things were. They’ve gotten better over the years, but it still comes out.

Well, these young girls (I refuse to use the term ladies) sort of brought out a bit of racist in me. I hated them for what they did. I hated them for acting the way they did, and especially, I hated them for trying to turn the situation around and make themselves look like the victims. More than anything, I hated them for making Americans look like assholes. Both Sheeps and I apologized several times to Sam. We didn’t want him thinking that all Americans were such jerks. Oh, well, I suppose that we sort of are assholes, compared to the rest of the world, but we certainly didn’t need any help pointing that out!

Maxwell's Silver Hammer....

went bang bang on my head. It would seem that I gave myself a minor concussion last Friday eve. Sheeps had come up for the weekend, and was helping me make the bed. (Yes, I actually wash the sheets every now and then!) While bending over to tuck the elasticized fitted sheet over the corner, I slammed my head into one of the shelves over my bed. Hard. I "whited" out, and fell, luckily onto the bed. Sheeps wanted me to call in sick to work, but it is next to impossible to call in and get a replacement 15 minutes before your shift on a Friday. It turned out that they were short-handed as it was... Being woozy, I had Sheeps drive me in, and just worked through the massive headache. The headache that has managed to hang on tenaciously, but it is getting better.

The bar has been weird. The Fire Marshall has been checking over us the last couple of months. All the bars in the area, actually. They’re making sure that no one exceeds their maximum occupancy limits. Which really bites. I can understand the safety aspect of it, trying to keep the crowds down in case of emergency, but they’re really hurting the incomes of these bars, not to mention the drastically reduced tips of the bartenders… We stand around, most of the night, with our hands in our pockets, doing nothing. It is hurting the bar owners, and it is hurting the employees. 120 people in my bar is next to nothing. It hurts worse when you have cheapskates who don’t tip taking up room that a tipping customer could occupy, but we’ve got to hold the crowds outside, with a “one in, one out” policy. It really sucks. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

I am pretty sure it is one of Bernie Mac’s little schemes. Bernie Machen comes from Utah and is a “Super Mormon, don’t drink it’s a sin and you’ll burn in hell” kind of University President. He is actively trying to get all the bars around the university to shut down. What he isn’t thinking about, and doesn’t want to hear, is that the students are going to party any way. They’ll still go to bars and get hammered. Only thing is, they’ll have to drive to the bars, as there won’t be any within walking distance. That’s gonna put a whole bunch of drunk drivers on the road. Folks who would normally just leave and stagger the couple of blocks home. Now, they’re going to be getting behind the wheel to get home.

I’m almost glad I’m getting out of the business soon. I will be quitting the bartending soon for several reasons. Sheeps is moving up, and that’ll help with the bills, so I won’t need to bust my butt to get everything paid. The tips have just sucked lately, and more so because of the limited occupancy. And more than anything else, I’m just getting too old for this shit. I’m tired of working ‘til 4 in the morning. I’m tired of dealing with the crap of people half my age. I’m just plain tired. I think it’s getting time to go. Yeah, I’ll miss it. Probably a lot. But I think I’ll enjoy my extra time more. Hey?

It's been a while...

Yeah, I've been a slacker. I've been remiss. I've posted nothing of any content, and little of no content, in a long time. Part of the "problem" is that my computer up and bit the big one. Pushing daisies. It's dead, Jim. I have no access to the ether from home, and no time at work. Another part is that I really just haven't felt like it. I haven't been inspired to write down my life's events. This comes, in part, from a shaky start to the year.

In January, I had friends die. One every week, as a matter of fact. It was truly scary. One had lost her job and couldn't afford her medication for diabetes. She ended up bleeding out internally. For heavens sake, don't let this happen again! I don't have much at all, but I will surely see that folks are taken care of!

Then Loki died. We were expecting it, sort of, but it was not easy to bear. She faced her cancer with such bravery, freely talking about it. She was truly a character; one whom I will miss sorely.

I returned to work from Loki's funeral to an email from an unknown source. It was from an old co-worker/friend's brother. I had a bad feeling, and was muttering, "no, no, no, no, no, no..." as I read. Erica had been sorely abused as a child, and had developed multiple personalities to help her deal with all of the stresses of her life. One of the weaker personalities could not stand the strain any more, and she took her life. She was young and bright and vibrant and a thousand other adjectives of positive demeanor. And that light has been prematurely snuffed. There is great injustice in this world. I rely upon the thought that she has finally found peace.

Then the rigors of Hoggetowne came up. It is a large medieval fair here in G'ville, for those who do not know, and is a huge demo opportunity for us in the local SCA. We bring in quite a few new members every year from the fair. It is also our annual fundraiser, bringing in the funds to allow us to operate in the manner to which we have become accustomed. We can afford to meet in a nice area. We can buy new stuff that we need. We can hold events without worrying about starting capital. All of this from Hoggetowne. It really is a lot of work to pull off, and it is tiring. It's awesome, but draining. Oh, yeah, and painful, too. In a severe act of stupidity, I managed to break my arm at the fair. No, not fighting. Just talking about fighting.... I was telling a NSTIW story, gestured emphatically, and hit an armored fighter. I'm really glad she WAS armored, 'cause I'd have killed her... This is one I won't live down for a while.

Then we had a nutcase in the Barony. I won't mention names here, nor details, but needless to say, it was a bit of a nightmare.

Then there was the Equine demo in Tampa. Sheeps had to be there, so naturally I did too. Typically, I worked the Friday eve before, and drove to Tampa. I got out late, so did not arrive until after 6am. Sheeps let me sleep a whole 2 hours before we had to boogie out to the fairgrounds. It was an interesting demo. One of Tampa's mounted police even tried his hand, during a practice session. Then, about half an hour before the actual demo, I found out that they expected me to emcee the thing... I know nothing about SCA equestrian activities, but I managed to wing it. I think it was a fairly good demo, me not withstanding...

Then came Gulf Wars. Couldn't fight, with the broken wing, and all, so I dove into service and worked the whole thing. I worked Troll, retained for Their Majesties, marshalled, water-beared, and even heralded the Champions Tourney. Sheeps got the war crud, and spent most of the war sick in bed. The one bright point came Saturday afternoon. The queen had been pressuring me her entire reign, and hinted she wanted to be involved... As She walked into the royal cabin, I showed her the ring I picked up, and she immediately took it to Sheeps, and proposed for me. Different, I must admit, but got the job done.

Yes, Sheeps and I are getting hitched. We will be holding the ceremony at TMT. Several questions have arose, so let me see if I can answer them. Yes, it is an "SCA Wedding", but it is a real wedding, as well. It will be Saturday evening at TMT. The theme is 13th century, but "best attempt at pre-17th century" will work. No, we are not registered, nor shall we be. Gifts are not required, but if you do so desire, we would welcome gift cards to (in order of preference): Lowes, Home Depot, Target. We have two households worth of stuff that we are combining, so housewares are right out. We're remodeling my old house, so the cards will definitely come in handy. Yes, she is moving to G'ville. When? She works at a school, and will be working through graduation, so it will be the weekend of Art/Sci. We'll definitely need a hand, so if you're around that Sunday.....

Other than that, I don't have much. Sheeps gave me the crud she caught from the war, so I have been fighting that off. I don't blame her, as I already knew I'd catch it any way.... Everyone seems to have it.....

Oh, well. Enough updating, for now. I'll try to do better. Really. I'll Try. Try. No promises, though....