"Parent's Day?"

You know, I say that we get rid of Mother's and Father's Day from the American lexicon.

You wanna know why? It's disingenuous and obligitory.

It's like "St. Patrick's Day"... it isn't a genuine cultural reflection of respect, but a way of paying lip-service to people that should automatically get respect if they put in a true and honest effort in your life.

My Father is one of those people for me. I learned a lot from him, often without even thinking about it.... but really, isn't that the best kind of instruction one can receive?

The best teachers often educate you without your knowledge... and Father's are the masters of that art form. Most Fathers have a respect for their kids that often defies the understanding of their children, hence why they are blunt in their advice and counsel. A Father doesn't deal in hypotheticals, they deal in fact... facts that they have learned the hard way, and impart on their children in the hopes that they will not fall prey to as they mature.

Here's a perfect example: In the summer of '87, I was visiting my Dad in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and an episode of "China Lake" came on, where the girls out-smarted the guys by tricking them into thinking that they were trading shots of Tequilla, when in reality, the girls were taking shots of mineral water. The scene cuts to the next morning, and the guys are all suffering from massive hang-overs, and the girls admit to their deception... just to show who's the smartest.

I turned to my Dad, while sitting on one of the two antique Barbershop chairs in his living room, and I asked him, "Dad, why would someone do that?" He turned to me and said, "Son, some people need a crutch..."

I have dozens of memories like that, of my Dad laying it all out like I was a man, when I was just a kid; sowing seeds that would develop into plants of wisdom later in life... in other words, he did a great job.

I didn't get to spend that much time with my Father growing up, as his obligations to his country as a Marine had to take precedence in his life, and had since long before I was born. My Father is an honorable man, who believes in the military tenets of Honor, Fidelity and Duty. Such a set of values isn't as vaunted as it once was, but to me, it was always important to know that my Father served something greater then himself, and did so, despite the personal hardships that it visited upon him, for two decades.

Who else would so readily make such a sacrifice? And, who else gets just one, measly day to be honored than a Father? A crappy tie and a card isn't enough, and it never will be... so I write this as my personal Father's Day card.

I know you're reading this, Dad. I know who reads my Blog, and although we may not agree on many thing political, I still Love You, and I look forward to seeing you when me and Jen drive cross-country from Ohio to California.

Give Carol a hug for me, and enjoy a Mountain Dew on me... congratulations, you put half in on a man.

I Love You, and have a great weekend.


Todd

"Look, It's Another Weird Drawing!"

Seriously, is this not a weird drawing or what? I need to lay off the Meth and Absinthe... damn green faerie, she won't leave me alone!

Later!

"Everybody Needs A Pillow..."

I’ve been having my weekly conversations with another guy that works on base for a year-and-a-half, Eryc, and I’ve come to a conclusion regarding our friendship: Eryc is my pillow.
Here’s what I mean: A "Pillow" is a person or thing that you use as a sounding board of ideas, complaints and aspirations, and how frustrating it is or will be to achieve or rectify those challenges.

If I’m having a good day, I’ll go over and talk to Eryc. If I’m having a bad day, I’ll go over and talk to Eryc. If I’m feeling lethargic and confused, I’ll go and talk to Eryc.

We all need an "Eryc"-type of person in our lives, and in my case, I have several. My Mom and Step-Dad are pillows for my frustration towards political stuff, my Sister is a pillow for personal stuff, my friends Aaron, Geoff and Chuck are pillows for religious debate and the role of Males in today’s world and Eryc is pretty much a pillow for everything. I call him my official "Consigliore" of all things "Todd".

I’m kind of a loner most of the time, but from time to time it’s good to have a person to talk to, whether it’s a Therapist, Priest or friend. Most of the things that I write, my parents, Aaron or Eryc hear about first. Why is that? Well, by talking to them about all the things that I’m thinking about, I get it out in the open and allow the idea to take shape the way it’s supposed to, and then trim the fat off it as I’m writing it down.

Essentially, my "Pillows" are my own personal way of self-editorializing before I commit what I think into words. Because, if I’m going to write something down, what I have to say needs to be clear. I have a problem when it comes to that, as I’m a stream-of-consciousness thinker and speaker, wherein when I speak, my thoughts relate things to other things, and that can sometimes be confusing to people that don’t already know me and my weird mannerisms.

As far as I know, my friends and parents think that when I speak, I’m funny, because I tend to throw ridiculous crap in with serious topics. I don’t do it intentionally, it’s just the way I think. I’ve found that being funny on purpose is the hackiest thing I could do, hence, why I don’t really write jokes on this Blog… I write what I think. If it turns out funny, great, but if it doesn’t? Who cares?

We all need pillows, and I think that my "Pillows" are what help me sleep at night, as my mind is always more active then I can help. Without my pillows in my life, I’d be the guy on the corner of a busy city screaming at people for not wearing their aluminum foil hats to protect their brains from the thought-sucking machines of the Illuminati, the Pope and the CIA.

When it all comes down to it, we’re all just three bad things away from becoming that guy, folks… so tell your personal "Pillows" how much you appreciate them and give ‘em a hug, as you’re probably their "Pillow", too…

"Left... Face!"

There has been a lot of complaining about how the Democrats caved in to the President’s demands in regards to the 120 Billion dollar Bill for Iraq, with the addendum that they’ll re-visit Iraq as an actual problem in September of this year.

Well, I’d like to say that I’m not shocked. Not at all. Most of us have known that the Dems have moved so far to the right that we might as well call them “The Off-Ramp Party”, and that they lost their spines years ago.

Here’s the thing: They have the majority, true… but only by one percent. In order to get Bills to pass to the extent that it surpasses the veto power of the President, they need to get the Republicans to vote with them… and we all know that that’s as likely to happen as Dennis Miller telling a joke that doesn’t make three obscure references to Victorian Literary figures.

Most of my friends are Republicans or Libertarians (which I like to call, “Liberals that like guns”, or, “Liberals that jerk off to the 2nd Amendment”), and even they were surprised that the Dems voted for that pork-laden Bill for the money-pit that is Iraq, and when I say “surprised”, I mean surprised in that “Hey, what the fuck?!”-kind of way.

I think that most people would agree that Iraq was the biggest, and stupidest mistake that the Bush regime could have made. Ostensibly, it would be viewed as a ballsy move, in that kind of way that the nerd walks up to the bully and punches him; but in the end, we all know that the bully at one point is going to beat the shit out of you, and the fight will be broken up by the school’s security team.

So now we are at the point in the war that we see the bully and the nerd with ice-packs on their eyes, sitting on a wooden bench outside of the principal’s office, with pissed-off looks on their faces.

So, I guess if I’m going to continue to beat the metaphorical dead horse, I’d say that America needs a principal. Badly. And since the President doesn’t like to listen to anybody other then Jesus and Karl Rove, we need to hire someone to knee-cap him. There was a phrase that I used to hear a lot as a kid that went, “You know what kid? I’m gonna take you down a peg or two.” And I think that someone needs to drag this insolent, spoiled brat of a President out on the front lawn of the White House and beat his ass in front of the cameras while shouting, “So, who’s got the veto power now, you little piece of shit?!”

I’m sorry, I guess I just went a little “Red-State” there for a minute…

Here’s the problem with Iraq: We can’t win there.

That’s it. Period. We need to admit that if it were actually a war to begin with, and not merely a regime change, invasion and occupation, it’d be over by now. I know that there are a lot of people out there that don’t like the idea of admitting defeat, but at times it makes more sense then the “Goin’ out with guns blazin’!!!” approach that the Bush Administration has subscribed to. This isn’t the Old West, folks… and there are no Cowboys with six-guns there. Only Camelboys with AK-47’s and a boner for killing infidels… and we’re the infidels.

Did the Dems fuck up on the Bill? Yes… obviously. But the big problem isn’t the Democrats, it’s the President’s posse of retards, half-wits and fuck-ups that won’t admit to badly screwing up the War in Iraq that are to be blamed here. They are the ones that go on TV and say it’s all going swimmingly over there everyday, not the Democrats.

If the Democrats are to try to stop the War, they can’t continue to do it half-assed like they have. The stump-speeches that they did last year now need to be followed through into action. We Americans are sick of this double-talking bullshit that they’ve been pulling, and if they want to keep their seats in the House and Senate two years from now, they need to do their fucking jobs, or we’re gonna shit-can ‘em.

Just ask Santorum how it feels to lose to a new guy… he has plenty of free time on his hands.

"Moving!"

I recently moved out of my apartment, and I can easily say that I’ve never had a more irritatingly tedious period in my life.

I took my time moving things over to my parent’s garage over a time-frame of about three weeks or so, and I thought that I was making pretty good progress… until I realized that I’d moved the equivalent of a drop in the bucket.

Last weekend, I spent all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday moving my stuff (with Aaron helping me move the really heavy stuff for a couple of hours on Saturday). I finally finished moving all my stuff at 1 AM on Monday morning. Now here’s the messed up part of that: I started moving my stuff at 9AM the previous morning.

That’s 16 hours of back-breaking labor all because I’m lazy.

Because really, I could have moved most of that stuff before last weekend, but I just had to have my microwave. And my computer. And my coffee machine that I’ve never used… because I hate coffee.

I guess what I’m saying is that procrastination is like slowly walking off a cliff… if you really wanted to do it, you’d get it over with quick.

Also, I found out that I needed to get three more long boxes for my comic book collection. I was completely unaware of the fact that my comic collection had doubled in the nearly five years that I lived there… huh.

At around 5 PM on Sunday, I found myself yelling at my apartment for having too much stuff still left in it.

By 7 PM, I’d repeatedly kicked my car for not having enough room to hold all the junk that I’d amassed since I moved there.

As 10:30 rolled around, I wondered if I would get arrested for burning all my crap out on the balcony.

At one point I thought, “Screw packing this shit in a box, I’m going to the corner store to get Lawn and Leaf Trash bags! Why do I own all these tools?! I don’t even know what this tool is for! And why the hell do I have so many dead pens?! Who keeps crap like this?!”

I wish that I were joking about the trash bags, but I’ve got 10 of them in my parent’s garage… if you guys want, I can take some pictures to prove it.

Of course, the highlight for me was when I told Aaron, “Fuck it, let’s just slide the Fridge down the fuckin’ stairs!” There was a nice scoring that happened at the concrete base of the stairs.

We did the same to my Entertainment Center and my sectional recliners, too…

Aaron decided to posit the idea (which I seriously considered) “Hey, can we just throw this crap off of the balcony?” The only reason I said no to that idea was because of the carport that my balcony overlooked… other then that, I would’ve gladly heaved that junk over the edge.

I guess what I’m saying here is that you should always put aside the time to do stuff that you hate, so you can get it out of the way before it becomes a problem… now, if I could get myself to take my own advice, I’d be golden.

Sorry about the shortage of posts, guys… but I haven’t had the internet for a while, which is why I haven’t posted anything lately.