It comes with an ottoperson (sexist-free language observed here).
Monday, December 28, 2009
Take This Chair
It comes with an ottoperson (sexist-free language observed here).
It's not over and I'm not done
December 28, 2009
Now that there's a break between semesters, it's time to get back to the Tour. Since I last posted things I want to divest myself of in August, divestiture has overrun my little life in the manner of unintended consequences. I have been unwillingly divested of several things in the past few months, just proving we don't always have all that much control over those things we say we don't want to have control over us. This period of inadvertent divestiture changed things.
But, before we get to that, my new group, the ALL MALE SINGERS (and Michael) performed four magnificent gigs at the end of the semester, making everyone whose paths or stars or ships they crossed a little more merry and bright. They popped into classes unannounced and regaled the learners with chorales. They sang Drink, Drink, Drink from The Student Prince, and the Beach Boys Little Saint Nick. Kendall softened up the crowds in her jingle bell collar. They are developing a cult following, and are coming back in the spring with Rawhide, Stout-Hearted Men, and Ragtime Cowboy Joe. Manly song suggestions are welcome.
You may remember the butter churn. Jim wanted it, and gamely made a bid for it. I was hoping Toni J would fight him for it, but all that happened was that Jim didn't really "get" the idea of my divestiture, and legitimately made an over-the-top plea for the churn. I was embarrassed for him by his lack of irony. Toni J could have saved the day by putting up a hissy fight for it that would have made his pallid plea blanche to lividity, but she said not a word.
Not many months after that, I commented on one of Jim's platitudes on Facebutt, calling it a platitude, and he took offense and unfriended me. I had not had the experience of being unfriended before. When I went to the link to apologize, I got, alongside his profile picture, the page that says in that non-native English-speaker Facebutt parlez vous, "Jim only shares their information with certain people." It was like smashing face first into a brick wall. I couldn't talk to it. I couldn't beg it for forgiveness. Couldn't try to explain. There was nothing to interpret but that poorly worded Facebutt-generated rejection. And the profile picture. Since I couldn't communicate, I gave his profile pic a good look, and for the first time I saw an unforgiving, unyielding, santimonious, judgmental man with a churchish patriarchal beard. Being unfriended is unkinder than any kind of rejection I had experienced as an adult. You can't be unfriended any more. Now, you remove a connection to someone. FAR more innocuous. That change happened shortly after Jim unfriended me. I didn't have a connection removed. I was unfriended. Divested, against my will, of a friend of more than 40 years. Looking at his profile picture I realized I was through with him, anyway. I was sorry I offended him by calling one of his homilies a platitude. But, that's what it was. Jim's a preacher. He more or less trades in God's forgiveness, hawking it with tripe that, if not taken for gospel, must demean his authority. So, forty years of friendship down the toilet . . . And I guess the butter churn is back on the block.
I was also divested of my one bathroom in my one-bathroom house. Pretty much everyone in my immediate or Facebutt orbit already knows that. I hired a Bettendorf contractor, who turned out to be a crack-smokin' superannuated hoodlum, with the original twist of knocking on doors in older neighborhoods and selling remodelling to unsuspecting old ladies who put to much trust in seeing is believing. If crack had devastated middle class white suburbs instead of inner urban black ghettos, Gregory Schmidt augers what would have happened. We wouldn't be able to get through the doors of the Hy Vee without being conned, robbed, and clobbered. Here's a link to a story about him in the Quad City Times in 2005 Gregory Schmidt--Dream Builder, Shortly before Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, it was this: Police Looking For Victims of Swindle. Two years after that, he hit me. The guys who were in jail with him in 2007 remember him as a big time white-boy (of 40) addict with a big habit, and big white thug friends, and a toady wife in the executive pay range at John Deere. Mostly they knew he was going to skate, and skate he did. The jailhouse rumor mill had it that his wife sent him $300 a week for commissary. They didn't reckon out why she didn't post his bond, though. He was given 5 years of probation for theft and forgery in excess of $50,000. He's wanted for another $50,000 in theft in Illinois, was convicted of a $5,500 theft in May in Henry County, and victims keep piling up. After receiving his 2007 sentence, he resumed his second career path--thievery and fraud. He pursued this course assiduously, racking up ever more complaints and charges, until this "dream builder" found a "dream judge," who refused to revoke his probation in October of this year, saying that "people like him" don't belong in prison--begging the question, if not him, then who? He received instead 90 days in jail, which would just about be over except that he's waiting there to either plea or go to court on my case. Nobody's posting his $5000 bond. And, oh. Lest I forget--he's one of our proud St. Ambrose alum. We gave him a scholarship. He graduated, ten years later than he should have, with something less than a 2 GPA.
Worst of all, he reproduced. He has three kids.
From August to December I've been taking a shower in the basement in what my brother called a hell-hole, and shitting anywhere but home as much as possible. I begged my brother to come and help me, which he did in December, and I'm on my way to having a real bathroom.
For those reasons, and, oh, yeah, because school was in full swing, I've been unable to post all the things I want to get rid of for a few months.
But the tour is coming! The trip is coming! Summer is coming! I have nothing better to do! Over the next few weeks, while we're on break, I'll put up much more of what I want to get rid of!
In other Divestiture news, Jessica gets my old lawnmower. She will find it a good alternative to pilates. I don't have a photo of it, and it's too cold to go out to the garage to take one. I never had time to winterize my brand new Lexus of a lawnmower before winter struck. I'm sure that will be a ridiculous obstacle come spring. Jenn C didn't ask for, but gets, the moderne coffee pot (pictured to the right) for her soirees in her moderne tree house.
Stay tuned. The best may yet come.
Now that there's a break between semesters, it's time to get back to the Tour. Since I last posted things I want to divest myself of in August, divestiture has overrun my little life in the manner of unintended consequences. I have been unwillingly divested of several things in the past few months, just proving we don't always have all that much control over those things we say we don't want to have control over us. This period of inadvertent divestiture changed things.
You may remember the butter churn. Jim wanted it, and gamely made a bid for it. I was hoping Toni J would fight him for it, but all that happened was that Jim didn't really "get" the idea of my divestiture, and legitimately made an over-the-top plea for the churn. I was embarrassed for him by his lack of irony. Toni J could have saved the day by putting up a hissy fight for it that would have made his pallid plea blanche to lividity, but she said not a word.
Not many months after that, I commented on one of Jim's platitudes on Facebutt, calling it a platitude, and he took offense and unfriended me. I had not had the experience of being unfriended before. When I went to the link to apologize, I got, alongside his profile picture, the page that says in that non-native English-speaker Facebutt parlez vous, "Jim only shares their information with certain people." It was like smashing face first into a brick wall. I couldn't talk to it. I couldn't beg it for forgiveness. Couldn't try to explain. There was nothing to interpret but that poorly worded Facebutt-generated rejection. And the profile picture. Since I couldn't communicate, I gave his profile pic a good look, and for the first time I saw an unforgiving, unyielding, santimonious, judgmental man with a churchish patriarchal beard. Being unfriended is unkinder than any kind of rejection I had experienced as an adult. You can't be unfriended any more. Now, you remove a connection to someone. FAR more innocuous. That change happened shortly after Jim unfriended me. I didn't have a connection removed. I was unfriended. Divested, against my will, of a friend of more than 40 years. Looking at his profile picture I realized I was through with him, anyway. I was sorry I offended him by calling one of his homilies a platitude. But, that's what it was. Jim's a preacher. He more or less trades in God's forgiveness, hawking it with tripe that, if not taken for gospel, must demean his authority. So, forty years of friendship down the toilet . . . And I guess the butter churn is back on the block.
I was also divested of my one bathroom in my one-bathroom house. Pretty much everyone in my immediate or Facebutt orbit already knows that. I hired a Bettendorf contractor, who turned out to be a crack-smokin' superannuated hoodlum, with the original twist of knocking on doors in older neighborhoods and selling remodelling to unsuspecting old ladies who put to much trust in seeing is believing. If crack had devastated middle class white suburbs instead of inner urban black ghettos, Gregory Schmidt augers what would have happened. We wouldn't be able to get through the doors of the Hy Vee without being conned, robbed, and clobbered. Here's a link to a story about him in the Quad City Times in 2005 Gregory Schmidt--Dream Builder, Shortly before Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, it was this: Police Looking For Victims of Swindle. Two years after that, he hit me. The guys who were in jail with him in 2007 remember him as a big time white-boy (of 40) addict with a big habit, and big white thug friends, and a toady wife in the executive pay range at John Deere. Mostly they knew he was going to skate, and skate he did. The jailhouse rumor mill had it that his wife sent him $300 a week for commissary. They didn't reckon out why she didn't post his bond, though. He was given 5 years of probation for theft and forgery in excess of $50,000. He's wanted for another $50,000 in theft in Illinois, was convicted of a $5,500 theft in May in Henry County, and victims keep piling up. After receiving his 2007 sentence, he resumed his second career path--thievery and fraud. He pursued this course assiduously, racking up ever more complaints and charges, until this "dream builder" found a "dream judge," who refused to revoke his probation in October of this year, saying that "people like him" don't belong in prison--begging the question, if not him, then who? He received instead 90 days in jail, which would just about be over except that he's waiting there to either plea or go to court on my case. Nobody's posting his $5000 bond. And, oh. Lest I forget--he's one of our proud St. Ambrose alum. We gave him a scholarship. He graduated, ten years later than he should have, with something less than a 2 GPA.
Worst of all, he reproduced. He has three kids.
From August to December I've been taking a shower in the basement in what my brother called a hell-hole, and shitting anywhere but home as much as possible. I begged my brother to come and help me, which he did in December, and I'm on my way to having a real bathroom.
For those reasons, and, oh, yeah, because school was in full swing, I've been unable to post all the things I want to get rid of for a few months.
But the tour is coming! The trip is coming! Summer is coming! I have nothing better to do! Over the next few weeks, while we're on break, I'll put up much more of what I want to get rid of!
Stay tuned. The best may yet come.
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