This is what a stupid, fat racist redneck looks like

"I only wear the pointy white hood to hide my pointy white head."

In the spirit of bringing their community into the 21st century, what with its motor cars and flying machines and the Book of Faces that Grandma is so addicted to, a bunch of kids at the Wilcox County (GA) High School have organized their schools first  integrated prom.

Yes, you read that right: Up until this year, the school had never held an integrated prom and instead, two separate proms were held, one for white students, another for everybody else. Kids at the school, apparently much more intelligent, sophisticated and in tune with the rest of the world than the rest of the adults in that shithole backwater, decided it was time to be like, you know, modern and finally hold an integrated prom.

"We're embarrassed, it's embarrassing," exclaimed Stephanie Sinnot, Mareshia Rucker, Quanesha Wallace, and Keela Bloodworth.

The group has been friends since the 4th grade and they say they do everything together, except prom night.

"We are all friends," said Stephanie. "That's just kind of not right that we can't go to prom together."

Stephanie and Keela are white and Mareshia and Quanesha are black. They're seniors at Wilcox County High School, a school that has never held an integrated prom during its existence.

"There's a white prom and there's an integrated prom," said Keela.

The rule is strictly enforced, any race other than Caucasian wouldn't dare to attend the white prom.

"They would probably have the police come out there and escort them off the premises," said Keela.

That was the case just last year as a biracial student was turned away by police. It's been that way for as long as anyone can remember and it doesn't stop at prom. Homecoming is also segregated. Normally, there would be a court for each race, but for the first time the school decided to elect only one homecoming court, Quanesha won. But there were still two separate dances.

Closing another chapter in this life

UPS delivery guy rang the doorbell a few minutes ago, wished me a good day and sped off in his brown van. Looking at the parcel on the doorstep, I knew what the package contained: the check and final paperwork from the sale of my house in Pagosa Springs.

I won't go much into it here and there's scant reason to celebrate the check since every penny contained therein is going to paying bills -- mostly the expense of getting the rest of our things out of the house before the new owners move in. All I can say is that it is a bittersweet moment and it calls for some reflection.

The Pagosa Springs chapter of my life is nearly closed, freeing me to better navigate this chapter in Phoenix (the house in Colorado was costing us nearly $600 a month so it's somewhat liberating to not have that financial burden).

I think I'll have more to say, tomorrow. For now, I think it's time to get this check to the bank, plan tonight's dinner, perhaps open the cheap bottle of bubbly that has been chilling in the beer refrigerator out in the garage. Breath a sigh of relief and, most likely, shed a small tear.

We don't like this. No, we don't like this one bit.

I'm not pleased by this news at all:

Here's a tip for fans of the famously bold flavor of California wine: drink up now.

If a recent study predicting the effects of climate change on the global wine industry is correct, the area suitable for wine production in California could shrink by as much as 70 percent by 2050 due to global warming.

I don't know what will result (other than outrageously high prices for wine) but I'm predicting a whole new line of "Frankenwines" -- wines made from hybrid varietals bred from a mixture of traditional grapes and those that are hardier in dryer, hotter climates.

I'm not looking forward to the days of a $50 bottle of swill.

Slouching towards Beth Le Hamm

Oy vey. In the midst of catching up and explaining myself, the brood took a back seat to all the mea culpas and bullshit excuses that I laid out there, words that no one really gave a nose hair to hear.

So, although I'll keep this brief and sweet (emphasis on the latter), I'll provide some background on where the kiddos are in this point of our lives...

Lilly is now 14, and while I'm tempted to say that she's "all of 14," that would be disingenuous and a disservice to the sweet young woman she has become. When I last committed Patriside (with any alacrity), she was a four or five years younger, still holding fast to her stuffed-animals-as-surrogate-babies and continuing to march along her (hopefully) long mortal coil, not shuffling, to the rhythm of a different drummer. Although that drummer now has a name (Kenny Ortiz of the Flobots), she remains as sweet and loving as she always has been. Sure, we have our oppositional moments (especially when it comes to math and, to her credit, that has less to do with her as it does with an incredibly inadequate public education system, by and large in the Archuleta School District) but there's a lot worse I could be dealing with  her (all I need to do is look at what I was when I was her age).

Marni just turned 12 and continues to be my Piscean mystery. Born with the anomalous Type-A gene (she didn't get it from her mother or me), she was recently voted her school's "Student of the Month" due to her pursuit of perfect grades and her nascent identity. Active in Art Club, the Sally Ride Science Club for Girls and (as a sax player) Band (all of which have brought her plaudits and awards), she is also the Queen Bee of her school's nerd/geek crowd that, as far as I can tell (being Clueless Dad), is big into Death the Kid (whatever that is), Italia, and other forms of Anime. For her 12th birthday last weekend, she got a Death the Kid cake (easy enough  to create with a spray can), Italia pins and a Hatsuni Miku t-shirt (all from Hot Topix, natch, didn't realize that schtuff was so big amongst the tweens, really) and a copy of Haruki Murakami's novel "1Q84" (which she reports, "There are some parts that are really strange, you know, not really child appropriate," which I did not know... it was highly recommended as a teen novel!). The one Murakami novel I read (Kafka on the Shore), I adored and yes, not teen appropriate... anyway, she is no longer the Disney Princess she was when I last wrote about her.

Reboot 2.1: More parenting, less politics and meta?

The hardest post to write for a blog is the post that explains why a writer has not been posting at all while attempting to restart the entire process. That's the dilemma I'm facing at this very moment.

The destitute state this place has taken on over the past few months was brought home over the weekend when my old friend, fellow blogger, dedicated foodie and lifelong crush of mine Anne Coleman (author of the excellent Cooking With Anne blog) left a comment, amazed that we were still blogging as well as our respective longevity. Needless to say, I was embarrassed by the fact that, in the past several months, almost nothing had been posted here. 

After moving to Arizona, with the intention of starting a freelance writing career, I started this blog as a means of drawing attention to my writing, thinking that this blog would take off in the way my previous parenting blog had done (back during the heyday of blogging). After contacting a few of my "old" blogging friends and alerting them to my new digs, I posted like crazy, certain that my resurgence was merely a matter of a pieces and that I'd soon be witnessing mad traffic.

And so it goes

RE the last post, I attempted to get on track with a once-a-day habit that would get me back on track with this THING, this old-school blogging bullshit that still seems to linger like a lunger that, once spat, hangs from the chin and blots the blouse.

There is no real reason why I can't provide some content on a daily basis except:
Family obligations
Job (the jay-oh-bee, not the guy from the OT)
Self-immolation
Self-esteem
Self-hatred
Self-centeredness

Other than that... just plain, fucking lazy.

Reboot 2.0

What can I say?

Apparently, it seems as though I've had nothing to say over the past couple of months and allowed this place to go fallow, overgrown with weeds, unproductive. Pools of filthy water puddling up here, breeding mosquitoes and all forms of vermin, filled with shadows and nightmares, scum floating on top and reeking of dead dogs.

There are no words to express how off track I went, my pinball life hitting TILT with depressing regularity, another quarter pushed into the slot in a futile attempt to hit the numbers or, at the very least, score a match for a free game. Selling myself short, stuck as I am in this suburban sluice of conspicuous consumption, surrounded by automatons serving the plastic Jesus (no annual fee and a fixed APR) who tossed out the Golden Rule and invited the money changers back into the temple, I placed undue importance on a job that was well beneath my talents and abilities, I lost sight of my goals and ambitions while serving those wretched robots that I'd despised. Unpaid bills had that affect on me.

No more? We'll see...

The lost weekend

Moved a few tons of Christmas trees over the weekend (I'm not exaggerating) but, interestingly enough, my mind is more tired than my body. And, my body is benefiting from the job at Costco. I feel 20 again!

Found this cool video over at Pharyngula... morbid but very interesting.

The big push begins...

Been busy the past week or so, not just with the jay-oh-bee but also, collecting material for a book project I'm working on. My book, not someone else's. I'll stay tight-lipped about it at this point but I need to make a point about my writing and how it's devolved over the past few years. See, after years of being confined by the constraints of journalism, I've found my prose to have lost some of the sparkle it used to have. Whereas I used to compose with elan and sparkle, my words now fall flatter than a racist joke at an Obama meet up (not that I've ever tried that). Looking back on my writing from years back, I was impressed by how well so much of what I was trying to say ended up being expressed. If I could find my way back to that point at this moment, I'd start heading down that road. While a majority of what I wrote back in the day was rather banal, it was no less boring than much of what I wrote for the newspaper. The difference was, my pre-newspaper writing was much more entertaining. Furthermore, I did not seek to entertain or elucidate but merely to put my thoughts out there for the few readers who found my posts worth the time. So, I'm taking a big bite at the apple and doing so while I'm trying to unlearn the bad habits of my newspaper days. Wish me luck.

Oh, yeah, I suck

In my defense, it's been two things added to my usual domestic madness that has led to the dearth of posts here... First and foremost has been the jay-oh-bee, a holiday-temp cashier's assistant position at the local Costco. It's low-wage and I'm definitely at the bottom of the food chain but I have to admit, if I was offered a permanent position, I'd jump at the chance. I get a decent workout (constant movement, speed walking, heavy lifting) and it still gives me time to write. Considering that the freelance gig makes it difficult to make the bills -- too many shit jobs for almost no pay -- working at Costco has forced me to work on bigger things. Which brings me to the second distraction: I'm finally working on a book. I'm not going to go into detail at this point but I think I have a real shot at getting published with this latest idea. Although I've had outlines for several novels floating around in my head for some time, I felt they were too ambitious for a first-time writer. This book will, I think (with fingers crossed), open doors for me. At this point, I've been going through old posts at my Daddy Blog to gather some material for this writing project. Its been a revelation. There are several things I've learned from my trip into the past (and I'll write about those in a later post), primary has been the importance of regular (DAILY) posts on a blog. You see where this is going. OK, just 45 minutes before I need to get ready for the jay-oh-bee. Back to the real writing.