Atomictumor

I’m turning into my mother.

Well, without the boobies, I guess (and there go the internet filters).

No, I hate prefabricated holidays.  Halloween, to me as a youngster, was a great time to go out and cause mischief.  And the mischief we did cause.

Lemme tell you a story.

Halloween, 1992-3ish:

Me and me mates were out at their house in East Brainard, and bored, on halloween, so we got the idea that we were going to go try and get some candy by singing christmas carols (yeah, I know, edgy).  We were all punk rockers, with the hair, and the safety pins, and torn T shirts with slogans like “Be Warned: The Nature of Your Oppression is the Aesthetic of Our Anger!” (which I still don’t really understand, but it looked cool) all over them, so we really didn’t NEED to wear a halloween costume.  We were ready to roll.

And roll we did, son.  We headed right over to the apartments, and sung bad christmas carols, and some people were amused.  Some people weren’t.  Kids were scared.

Well, we got sick of that REALLY quick.  Isn’t it funny how an idea that seems really great sitting around with your friends turns really sour once implemented?  So, we turned to that old standby when we’re bored, petty vandalism.

I mean, really petty.  See, there was this one guy in the neighborhood who was one of those lawn nazis.  He yelled at the little kids if they edged his yard to avoid walking around the block to get home.  He watched like a hawk the hired foreigners who did the lawn, while standing on the back porch.  He was an ass.

Let me stop here, and tell you about the car we used.  My friend (who I won’t name, just in case he’s trying to recover from knowing me in the past) had a POS Tercel, but the car tended to accumulate the oddest things.  Once, we got pulled over for erratic driving in Downtown Chattanooga, the officer walked up to the car, and this is what he saw scattered about the floorboards:

1 large bag confectioners sugar in ziploc bag
2 baseball bats, aluminum
1 mini chainsaw
1 air pistol
3 high power mortar style fireworks
1 pair nunchaku
1 knife, butterfly style
5 plastic dart guns
1 lifesized plastic baby Jesus doll (it was hard to find)
1 roll garden bags, black
1 short handled shovel
3 cans of mace
assorted wrappers, drink containers, empty cigarette boxes.
So he shines his flashlight around the debris, in the faces of the 4 hoodlums in the car, back around the debris, and waves us along.  Didn’t even get a ticket.
Good think he didn’t look in the trunk…

So anyway, the Tercel was home of all sorts of stuff, and on this particular day, for what reason I’ll never know, it had 4 of those large garbage bags full of leaves.

Now, the lawn nazi’s house was next to a parking lot which was attached to a Subway.  I didn’t care a lot of Subway then, but beggars won’t be choosers, so we stopped by there to get some dinner.

The guy behind the counter was a jerk.  I don’t remember what the circumstances were, but I concluded that the problem could be solved with explosives.  So, we left Subway, walked out to the car, and I grabbed a handful of M-80s that the car provided me with.

We had a precision plan.  I was going to light the M-80s on the back door of Subway (it sounded like a good idea at the time), while Jon, the car’s owners little brother, was going to drop the leaves in the yard of the Nazi.  Yes, this will show the world.

This is one of those moments that stretch 5 or 6 seconds into 10 minutes or so…

The plan went wrong.  I lit the fuses too late, he tossed the leaves too early, the fuse was too short, and BANG went the M-80s.

Walking back to the car, there was another BANG, which was the owner of the jewelry store kicking the door open with the biggest shotgun I’ve ever seen pointing in my direction.  Somehow, in my hindsight, I’m able to see both the shop owner, and the faces of my colleagues in the car, and their mouths look as round and big as the hole at the end of that freaking shotgun.

I leap into the car as it peeled out of the parking lot (and out of shotgun range).  I don’t think the shopkeeper ever got off a shot, and I doubt that he would, but it still made for an interesting halloween.

Now, I’ve gone completely backwards and forgotten what the hell any of this has to do with my mother.  I don’t think she ever got a shotgun pulled on her.

Furthermore, I don’t think she’s heard that story…

I’m somewhat blissfully isolated from a lot of the BS that goes into a major (or midterm) election, simply because I don’t watch a lot of TV.  What I watch is often downloaded from Al Gore’s Internets, or on a DVD.  I’m simple that way.

By sticking to a regimen like this, I don’t have the opportunity to be blindsided by 5 campaign ads in a row.  I’m totally cool with this, because I 100% believe that these ads, like all ads, shoot for the lowest common denominator, and I can’t help but feel that our collective intelligence is being insulted because of this.  Yes, we’ve all heard the racism charges of the Democrats against the Republicans because of putting some little white chick on the TV, and I didn’t understand the problem until somebody pointed out to me that Harold Ford Jr is supposed to be
a) black, and
b) a democrat

Now, I’m normally one that can pick out a black man from a crowd of people.  Its like an internal gay-dar, but for black people.  I’d call it black-dar, but that sounds like some lame Buck Rogers villian.  I have to admit, I was a little blindsided, because the my observations told me that, while not the whitest guy in town, he isn’t very black.  I mean, I figured maybe a great grandparent might have been something other than white.  I mean, the guy sure seems white.

Whats the point, AT?  Well, thats what I wanted to know.  What was racist about this ad, democrats?  I mean, damnnation, I tend to agree philosophically with you guys more than the red team, but it looks like you’re just grasping at straws.  So a little airhead white girl is all about the HF.J, I don’t see where the racism comes in at all.  In fact, I’d be willing to see a complaint or two about sexism, or good taste, or something, but damn.

I digress.  While I’m talking to the democrats out there, lets examine point B, and the whole reason I’m going off here.

Last night, I saw a Fordy ad in answer to some of the Corker ads (who really wants to introduce me to his wife, for some reason… I’m thinking swinger) where Ford tells me that everybody’s just got him wrong, because he’s all about the war in Iraq, and all about putting the hammer down on gay marriage.

Which made me do a spit take…

The democratic candidate for office is telling me he’s pro war, and anti gay rights?  Really?  And then its all up in my grill because he’s super church guy?  Huh?  What?

The democrat?  What?  Can I have a witness?

Soooooo, it looks like no matter who wins, the people I disagree with are smiling.  I don’t understand how this is representation.  Furthermore, I don’t really see much of a difference between the two candidates anymore, other than that Ford appears to want to tell anything whatsoever to get elected, and Corker, well, he’s a rich Chattanoogan.  That says it all right there.

Anyway, I started writing this thing to tell you how to steal an election, and how easy it would be to do so in the new supersecure super futuristic voting machines, but then I got distracted with the horrible state of affairs on TV right now.

Sigh.

C’mon GAC,
Stop doing your homework, girl
Lets go have some fun

Lets go start a race
With some dumb assed teenager
With a real fast car

Or drink tons of joe
And get twitchy and wired
Play video games

Or go to the woods
And then play hide and go seek
Or maybe freeze tag

Manic depression
Is fun when theres things to do
And you’re just manic

OK, this is going to be ugly, brutal truth.  I am being completely honest about something that bothers me.  This may be shocking, this may sound cruel, but since I’m talking to my computer, its OK.  If you people happen along and read this tripe, well, what you do with it is not up to me.

I hate having cats.

To go further, I sincerely, and strongly, wish that I had never ventured into owning the things.  I’ve never liked animals much, and never intended to own one.  Yes, those of you capable of using our search function may well point out “AT, keeping those things was totally your idea”.

Well, sod off.

Yah, it was my idea, and I really, really tried to make it work.  I enjoyed having them around for the first week or so, as they were exploring the house, and watching their personalities and interactions with each other, much like a Mutual of Omaha thing. When they started jumping around scratching my stuff (our bodies included), knocking shit off the tables, and being rowdy, I chalked it up to them being kittens, and figured that when they got fixed they’d grow out of it.

When they started obliterating my furniture, and befouling my kitchen table, I sucked it up and tried to contain the gradually growing urge to kick them out.

But when I got back from the anniversary to find my favorite records on the floor (along with much of the living room looking like a post-party trash), that was it.  GAC had been starting to feel the same way I did, and we decided to get rid of the cats.

MastaG flipped out.  He sobbed himself to sleep.  He and Pigpen don’t mind having the cats around, and probably enjoy them more than I notice, but less than they think they do (the great child conundrum).  As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get rid of them.  We talked each other down to keeping one cat, to keeping two, to keeping all three (again).

Now, I know I sound petty, and superficial, but this thing goes down really deep with me.  I think having the cats around is at the root of my little funk recently, because I just DON’T LIKE being in my own house around them.  Its hard to be around them without thoughts of little kitty massacres dancing through my head.

I think part of it is a territorial thing.  I’ll be doing laundry, or washing dishes, or the kind of work where your mind wanders, and I’ll see something moving out of the corner of my eye.  For that split second, I go into the same mode I go in if there’s a fly, or a mouse, or something like that in the house= KILL.  But then I remember that these things are living here now, and by our actions have as much right to the place as I do (gulp).

I figure they can sense this animosity from me, because they scatter when I walk their way.  This irritates me more.  Now, instead of just disliking them because they’re little and hairy and destructive and smell bad, I dislike them because they’re weaselly and cowardly.  For some reason, this bothers some other simple monkey part of my brain that I don’t understand, but nonetheless am imparting upon you.
Furthermore,  I feel like I’m often on the hook for cleaning up after the things.  I don’t understand how, from a Darwinian point of view, I am scooping their poo.  They must find it as odd as I do, because they gather around me while I’m kneeled over their litter box sifting filth, just watching, waiting for me to be done so they can head on in and drop a fresh duke that I’ll be scooping.  GAC is often too busy doing her thing to do it, and MastaG evidently can’t be arsed to do it unless I tell him specifically to do so, and its less effort for me to do it than to track him down and knuckle him into the job.

So, here we are.  I’ve admitted that I have a problem, and I’m not sure how much longer I can put up with it.  I’d love the idea of having them, because they make my kids happy, so I wouldn’t mind being a martyr, but the problem is I’m afraid I’m going to snap one of these days and eat them.

No, seriously, I can’t stand not liking being in my house.  I’ve been constantly stressed lately.  Maybe the cats aren’t the reason, but I’m going on 3 months of pretty much just straight up hating them, and I’m sure that that would have an impact on anybodies psychological state.

But what do I do???  I don’t wish the little bastards harm, just because I don’t like seeing things in pain (I’ve told GAC that I don’t want them dead, I just want them not to be alive around me anymore, but she thought I was joking), and because I don’t want to hurt my kids by knowing that their Popopolese (which is still the best name in the world) was too inconvenient to their father to live.

I mean, if that’s not selfish and petty, than what is

So, help me out.  If you’re first thought is “suck it up and quit whining”, tho, bugger off.  I’d be happy to redirect all this anger at somebody else, but theres no reason to.

We went over to the Grove Center Halloween Festival this morning where the kids got to trick or treat and parade around their costumes.

The eldest won third place for her age group in the costume contest.

She was dressed up as a mailbox.
Last year Spotz won third place for his tugboat costume. We’ve got third place wrapped up at the Grove Center, so don’t even think about usurping the reign of The Cemestos Garden.

The Grove Center must have been a happening place back in its day. I wonder if it could be revitalized? I was talking with some folks the other day about how Oak Ridge was planned to have residential areas within walking distance of commerce centers. You can still see these commerce centers when you drive around town. We’ve even walked past some of them.