For days I’ve been trying to figure out my ranting self in a coherent way about this particular little protest over the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. We ran into the San Francisco version down by the way, while riding our bikes in view of Alcatraz.

As I learned in my employment world, the one where I got the opportunity to actually go to Uganda, actually having attention paid to real issues across the world is important. You know, shit just doesn’t get fixed if no one’s talking about it or noticing. So, for the first couple of minutes, I was not unhappy to see the protest. But then we stuck around a few more minutes.

Within a few minutes, I heard chants about “freeing Uganda” and a row of boys with no shirts and painted letters on their bare chests shuffled themselves into a crooked line of exactly that message — “FREE UGANDA.” Right around then, my disenchantment and usual cynicism entered my consciousness. Not to minimize what the horrible, useless, crazy destruction led by Josephy Kony, in the name of God and the Bible no less, but Uganda IS, in fact, free. A huge chunk of the country goes about their regular, daily lives unaffected by what is happening in the north, while Kony crosses back and forth over the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I will always have trouble getting behind protests that begin with a loose understanding of the underlying facts.

Then, as we stood on the sidewalk leaning on our bikes, a young guy came up to us and asked if we knew anything about what they were doing at the protest and the issues in Uganda. I’m not sure if he was happy in his protesting zeal to have me answer, “well, I was actually in Uganda last year, and I met some mothers of children who had been abducted.” He looked shocked by what I reported they had said happened in the camps, the abuse and violence kids were meant to endure to indoctrinate them into the army. He admitted with a shrug, that he didn’t actually no much about the details other than it was really bad and we really had to help.

I should have shown him the photos I took of the kids’ pictures depicting their ordeals.

My impression from listening and watching was that none of the people there seemed to realize that there’s no war kind of war. Kony is Uganda’s David Koresh, with all of the crazy, an army of guerrillas, a remote, hard to reach border and a the canopy of the rain forest to protect him, and no Janet Reno to burn him to the ground. It’s not warfare, it’s militia crazy with kids as the disposable cannon fodder.

It wasn’t until I read the pamphlet on the “The Rescue” and the “Invisible Children” project that I rolled into full-on rant by the end of the day.

I appreciate political theater but “abduction” in air quotes with a cute plan to have participants simulate what it’s like to be kidnapped and wait to be rescued is too precious. It trivializes bloody violence in a way that I’m afraid the U.S. absolutely rocks. Why study the actual situation and understand the details and get the names of the players, when you can just throw a hefty chunk of rhetoric at the problem? It’s much much easier to keep it loose and dramatic.

Not to mention the completely pussified pamphlet I was handed where participants in the overnight pajama party, where they would feel how the children who were abducted felt, were assured special volunteers in blue T-shirts would be there to help if they got overwhelmed by the experience. Because yeah, sleeping on the ground at night is scary and totally comparable to a 10 year old with an AK-47 being forced to kill his parents or rape his school mate.

The briefest of brief paragraphs gave slight background. In calling for solidarity with Uganda and its government, you’d think maybe they could actually throw in some stuff about that government. Maybe something about President Museveni and what he has said (he favors hunting him down, but the locals believe in a forgiveness ceremony). Or the fact that there are reports that the U.S.-backing of ragtag Congolese and South Sudanese soldiers against him last December not only failed, but pushed him over the border into the Congo where he’s been hunkered down and pissed off and killing like the madman he is? Where’s all that?

Their ultimate call for U.S. involvement is just too stupidly shallow to consider. If their assessment of what should be done, all triggered by U.S.-government actions and more aid resulting from celebrity-backed attention, were a freshman paper on foreign relations, it would earn an “F” for having no basic understanding of how this stuff works.

I felt cruel explaining to the fresh-scrubbed college boy who engaged me that more, better aid wasn’t really relevant in a country that gets piles of dollars already. It’s a tad, shall we say, way, way, way the fuck more complex to have effective aid and strategic foreign policy. (Cruel because I fully believe he was there at the protest to be among friends and maybe get a chance to show some aid and comfort to a sensitive, female, fellow combatant later that same evening.

I think this blog posting and the collection of information at the end grabs and channels some of my anger. We in the U.S. are protesting years too late without any root understanding. Jesus, sometimes it’s no wonder to me that the rest of the world hates us. We’re like the kid in class who tries real hard but ain’t never going to understand hard stuff, like algebra, and dodge ball is more fun anyway.

Technorati Tags: Lord’s Resistance Army, San_Francisco, protest, Uganda

Our backyard is the forest primeval, sans the murmuring pines and the hemlock. Earlier in the day, it was actually worse than these pictures. These pictures were maybe an hour into destruction.

By dinner time, we had all but tried napalm and agent orange to get some jungle control. Beyond weeding and weed-whacking (our side yard was literally about tit-high with weeds and barely passable), M. sprayed poison into our patio cracks, while I succeeded in re-planting some herbs and veggies from the local plant shop and cleared around all our trees and fertilized the roots of the fruit. The apple tree is sprouting green on top and the lemons haven’t stopped coming. Now they’ll feast and become superfruit.

I’m embarrassed to say while whacking weeds I discovered four ornamental plants and a rather large decorative rock buried under thriving greenery of the weed sort.

Someday I expect one of two possibilities. Either I make a kick-ass salad from the tomatoes, peppers and lettuce M. wanted us to plant, because herbs weren’t sufficiently tangible after dining on freshly made pesto. Or, I clear away a forgotten experiment of green dead things. It’s about 50-50 given my unnatural knack to be unable to nurture life. I’m taking the happiness of weeds on our land as a sign that things could grow.

By the weed count alone I threw rosemary and chamomile into the herb mix. Maybe if all else dies, these hardy little buggers will make it.

Technorati Tags: California, garden, herbs, gardening, food, lemons, Pacifica, photos

Sometimes, all you can ask for is a life without casualty. To that end, I did not kill tonight. Nobody got slayed, and I didn’t really bomb.

I guess lives were spared. Quiet lives. The kind of lives that just want to grab a bite and sit quietly in a cafe with a laptop and a beer or coffee and not listen to the sadness that is open mike living.

I can’t remember the last time I went to a comedy open mike. It’s a peculiar kind of ritual. I think the hallmark and shared atmosphere of a real show up get up “show” (show in quotes, because ain’t no one watching or being particularly entertained) is an oblivious bustle of people just not giving a shit about you. It was a familiar sensation.

The best part of the night was cheese fries and a Pabst Blue Ribbon and congratulating myself for deferring lying on the couch for a couple of hours. The second best was realizing that the place up there in the big city of San Francisco was about 15-20 minutes to my door on one of the more pleasant stretches of highway. I glided home through a fog bank and out to our little house with Patti Smith reminding me of comedy shows past.

The last best part was my comedy set. And by last best I mean worst. Ah well. I was going to videotape for posterity but messed up my little camera and the battery was dead. Just as well.

I think almost everyone who has tried stand up has faced a room where no one reacts to almost anything anyone says into the microphone. And, I think almost everyone fantasizes that their words will be the ones that turn the room around and listening will happen. As though, one jest and in mid-puff the espresso machine will halt, a collective breathe will sigh, heads will turn and after a micro-nano-second of silence, laughter or applause.

It’s a fantasy.

Once, at one of the agonizingly silent open mikes in Cambridge, actually the one I had the most fun at, because it really let me not care and talk to the room, I did see a veteran grab the attention of the five people who were not comics and just looking for Chinese food and fruity drinks. No one gasped, but everyone did listen for a sweet couple of comic minutes. It was a life changing experience, because the vet (and seriously he was a vet: movie and TV credits, celebrity friends, stories from NYC, LA and his hometown) showed it can be done.

Most of my fantasies have the allure of being possible. Damn fucking unlikely, in my case, though. Tonight was no exception to that law of probability.

Instead tonight I had a shallower victory. When I first got up, I stated my goal was only to get the guy reading the newspaper directly in front of the mike and/or the guy typing on his laptop right behind him to look up. The laptop guy smiled, looked up and may even have softly chuckled at one point. Not a triumph, but I probably won’t whip out a razor blade tonight and rethink my life choices.

On a positive note, soul-drenching open mikes in SF are different than in Boston just because the venues kind of have no corollaries.

The absolute worst open mike in Boston was in a basement bar adjacent to a shitty Chinese restaurant below a hooker-popular hotel near Fenway Park. The regulars at the bar were the height (or depth) of sad and forgotten men who probably walked there having lost licenses to multiple DUIs decades ago. The bartender regularly heckled. The host, unable to see the distinction between cribbing from a joke book and writing original material, was reputed to be a Chelsea pimp and/or dealer and/or more or less connected to the syndicated businesses your mom warned you about.

The only show I almost cried after was at that venue; I definitely drove home alone blasting the radio and struggling for composure. You can make a fair number of Boston comics cringe or groan by mentioning the words “Chops Lounge.”

This venue tonight is a well-established cafe for not at all near ready for paying gig shows for both music and comedy. It’s a cafe with a variety of coffee and tea drinks, beer and wine and salads and sandwiches and shit like a hummus plate. It’s fame is that it is also a fully functioning coin-op laundromat. You can grab a bite or hang out with your fellow scruffy variously hirsute San Franciscans and have a PBR whilst getting your tighty whities whiter than white. And, on top of that, you can simultaneously ignore a comedian.

With so much going on in one place, I don’t really mind that no one paid attention to me. It was kind of cozy to realize that the host was able to fold two loads in the course of the night. I’m glad it wasn’t a total waste for him.

Technorati Tags: California, Brainwash, comedy, San_Francisco

After rising at a leisurely paste and having a little breakfast action, we spent the rest of the day at the beach. A slew of other people joined us.

In these few pictures, you get the sense that in area by the SF Bay, this sure ain’t LA. No silicone and lots of chubby folks just like me.

Not to mention thousands of activities, because the one thing a beach in Northern California isn’t is conducive to comfortable paddling. It’s fucking cold. To fight the elements, M. tried out the wet suit he rented in order to run, bike and swim his way through a triathlon right at the beginning of May.

As for me, I hung on the beach all hippie like juggling and enjoying the sun. A couple of wandering minstrels came by and minstreled it up in spontaneous, possibly inebriated style. Here’s me, them and a rousing but rough rendition of “La Bamba.”
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Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, beach, California, photos

I feel simultaneously cutting edge and completely blase “been there done that.”

A couple of weeks after Michelle dug up the South Lawn at the Whitehouse, and the same day Maureen Dowd wrote about Northern California’s food snobbery and its grand doyen, we ourselves went to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse. We went to the cafe rather than the formal restaurant, mostly because M. is an a la carte kind of guy rather than price-fixe. Hell, when I met him and he was knee-deep in Linux versus Windows versus Mac OS discussions and open-source evangelism, his mantra was “choice.” (Of course, a mantra I shared, but for feminist reasons rather than technological.)

The funny, not quite disappointing thing, about last night’s dinner was it was a long time coming and later than our honestly come by food smugness had already begun to crystallize. I tease M. that when we met his “car” was a 12-speed bike and his budget was fried rice and chicken wings. In fact, he was so friendly with a restaurant down the street from my house that oftentimes the wings were thrown in gratis along with a spare pint of Toscanini’s ice cream, another business neighbor.

Now, his car is sporty and his budget is more aged, superior cut steak than hamburger.

But, back in the olden days of our relationship, when I first came out to visit him here in California on vacation, he showed me where he first came to the U.S. in and around Berkeley. He stayed at a resident’s hotel around University and about five blocks from where Alice Waters founded her movement. As he pointed out where he stayed and ate and wandered, he told me that he would take me to Chez Panisse. For what is essentially our six-year anniversary (we’re a bit vague on the actual date, although Tax Day figures in as a convenient demarcation), he made good on the promise.

It was a great meal. We shared a salad with smoked pork, and I had an Indian-influence vegetable stew. I ordered the dish with the most vegetables in a “when in Rome” kind of decision. And, damn, I don’t actually eat that many vegetables, much, much preferring fruit and carbohydrates, but it was tasty. I would probably eat more if I knew how the fuck to cook like that.

The sad part about this dinner delayed was it was far from the priciest dinner we’d had in these parts at this point. I think that honor may go to the Brazilian barbecue place in San Francisco. The brutal irony of that meal was that I used to live in a heavily Brazilian/Portuguese neighborhood in Cambridge, and the local barbecue buffet was a great, affordable night out of maximum meat eating.

It was also arguably not the freshest meal we’ve ever had. Alice Waters succeeded in making a food movement take hold here. There are literally dozens of restaurants now run by folks who passed through her kitchens and went on to do their own things. And, climate and farming such as it is around here, it just ain’t a struggle to find quality ingredients. It’s a world where I picked a dozen organic lemons in my pajamas just today.

Ultimately, it seems pretty fated that I ended up here appreciating good food (and wine). I grew up in marketing revolution of the 60s and 70s that promoted “convenience” and vitamin-enriched boxes of processed foodstuffs. We regularly ate cartoony cereals and fluorescent orange cheese from Velveeta (actually less expensive, store-brand) to mac and cheese. Pat stretched the meat with Hamburger Helper and boxed taco kits from Ortega.

Knowing full well she would never be the mom to bake the whole of my elementary class cupcakes or cookies, Pat did teach me to bake. The more I learned the more I realized that “bread” in a plastic sleeve (suitable for encasing your foot inside your snowboots) and proudly advertising uniformity and no air holes is not the same as a fresh, hot loaf, where I myself watched the yeast take hold.

There were also convenience foods with which Pat held no truck. Her scalloped potatoes were real butter, milk or cream and honest-to-god potatoes. It was rarer than rare for her to grab a box of desiccated russets even if she never realized that Minute Rice was unnecessary. (Seriously, it takes 10 minutes to cook Minute Rice. My rice cooker takes about 18 minutes. And the beauty of those extra 8 minutes, I’m doing other things and the cooker doesn’t need any help from me.)

Now that my appreciation for good food is gaining its stride, we have to continue arguing which part of our lawn gets dug up for vegetables.

I’m advocating getting political and digging up the front lawn.

“Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community” (Heather Coburn Flores)

Technorati Tags: Alice_Waters, California, economy, family, food

One thing that happened when I first stepped on stage and tried stand-up comedy, I met a lot of interesting and great people. I’ve had the fortune of watching many talented people work and develop and do some interesting shit. I’ve also met a lot of flaming douchebags, users, psychotics, ne’er-do-wells and assholes to be sure, but I have certainly made friends.

(Speaking of friends, a belated shout out to Dorothy Dwyer on the anniversary of her birth, which is now considered Tea Bag Day. I hope she wasn’t teabagged. In her honor, I watched a large chunk of Mona Lisa Smile hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But, then M. walked in and flipped the channel. Curses.)

I digress.

Before ‘blogs and early on in my acquaintance with the struggling world of people who liked jokes, one regular haunt was Monday night at the Lizard Lounge, where Kim and Josh hosted a weird little night of sketch, essentially spoken word stuff and stand-up comedy. First, I bit my nails in the back of the room and watched. Later I performed regularly, even winning the coveted free gift certificate for the restaurant above for the best 3 minutes of new material, or whatever the contest was. Eventually, I became part of a fine opportunity to grow as a performer, but rather not destined for greatness sketch group, and performed every week. It was directed by Kim who hosted the show alone and in various iterations after Josh moved on to mostly be with his family.

One of the others who became part of this regular, Monday-night ritual was a Chinese immigrant and Rice University trained scientist, Xiao Huang. Spelled for the American audience with no ear for the “X” or “H,” he is Joe Wong. I think he started the endless rounds of open mikes after taking an Adult Ed class taught by Tim McIntire about a year after I started.

He’s one of those unassuming guys who you just don’t associate with a solid wit, irony and sarcasm on face value. He knew how to put words together, though, amazing to me who only knows this one language, as he tells jokes in a non-native language with a thick accent. I have made people laugh in Asia, but fortunately all of M.’s cousins and some of his aunts speak English. I tend to have to use broad premises, pantomime and ridiculousness (mostly making fun of M.) to entertain in another country.

Joe Wong does it with words.

Tonight he debuted on the national television doing his thing on Late Night with David Letterman. For a nice little backstory on how he got there, I’d recommend Nick Zaino’s blog. Nick’s another nice guy I met along the way.

The world got a lift this week with Susan Boyle’s surprise of a powerful voice on British TV. For me, that same lift was watching a friend on television years after I saw him perform at one of his very first shows. Or maybe I just have a thing for Asian dudes.

Technorati Tags: Chinese, comedy, Dot_Dwyer, friends, Joe_Wong, Letterman

I couldn’t let the day go buy without acknowledging that April 15 was “Tea Party” day. Honestly, I don’t fucking understand one bit of the allegedly grassroots protests “spontaneously” rocking out around the country to start a revolution. I gather people are unhappy and government spending is bad.

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal, and all I could think was “bullshit.” I ain’t a conspiracy theory kind of gal, but come, the fuck, on. Can it really be a huge leap to figure Rupert’s newspaper is writing the tribute to humble Americans organizing all by themselves and getting their activist freak on, at the same fucking time Fox News has spent a lot of time on the airwaves pimping the shit out of the rallies. Wouldn’t the opposite of grassroots activism be a celebrity from the television hosting your show?

Here are the things I really don’t understand about the Tea Party protests: why now, why tea and who the fuck are these people?

The why now question is prompted by the “outrage about government out of control,” as Sean, the colossal douche, Hannity, notes. Where the hell were these throngs of angry citizens when George W. Bush had fucked the country over to trillions of debt and a crazy ass, expensive war? Government didn’t spin out of control in the last few months, this shit’s been building. Why not protest in 2004, when it was already clear what Bush was about, and/or why the fuck did he win a second term?

I don’t get the 2009 ire. Hell, TARP was Bush’s baby that Obama inherited. I’ll just pretend that it’s unlikely it’s sore loserdom or the kind of racism that posters like this
one seem to love. dsc02711.jpg (Credit to wonkette.com)

The why tea question is a twofer. Firstly, I don’t think folks understand metaphor or history too well. In the original tea party, as in the Boston Tea Party, future Americans had their panties in a bunch, because the British monarchy was forcing it’s own (monopolistic) agenda on the colonies and heavily taxed tea was a symbol for the colonists on how they were getting hosed. The Brits owned the tea that got trashed rather than purchased and taxed and drunk by the colonists, who were pissed by not having a say in the whole deal.

How does any of that relate to the fact relate to Americans who did (or could have) voted for a president and legislative bodies, you know the kind of representative government our that got our forefathers all hot and bothered? And, if you’re looking for the revolutionary act of throwing something out that represents your discontent with the tyrants in government, I think you’d have to loot a bank or light a Buick on fire to get the metaphor right. After all, they’re the ones getting the bailout bucks, funded by us taxpayers.

My other problem with the tea action applies to any and all protesters, activists, collective action. Ask the fuck around before embracing an embarrassing double entendre like “teabagging” for your posters and slogans. Holy fucking shit what a bunch of maroons. If your buddies giggle like sophomores lighting farts over your poster, you may lack gravitas.

(Credit to Shorts and Pants)

Finally, I don’t know who these people are. The “silent majority” phrase seems warped here, since there were a record number of voters and last I checked Obama did win. All of the pictures seem a whiter shade of pale, and where I live we got different shades of honest to god voting Americans.

And, they are angry Americans. Why are they so angry? Who stole their rights, and free speech and all that, given that they are freely and lawfully assembling, and there aren’t any gulags springing up in my ‘hood (yet)?

Before you get all angry and shit and feeling all ripped off, shouldn’t you have tried to prevent it by organizing BEFORE a major election. It was like in the news for a long while that we were electing a new guy.

Americans amaze me.

Finally, judging by the beer guts and shitty teeth and flushed, red faces in the crowd, they’d probably really get something out of universal healthcare. A couple of taxes could go a long way when your fat ass needs the triple bypass; you can’t get that kind of operation cheap at your local WalMart.

Technorati Tags: politics, tea_party, tea, right wing

We’ve settled into a 1970s suburbia type deal. But not the radical ’70s with wife-swapping, key parties and bales of sweet bud getting smoked up to the chords of “Norwegian Wood.” Nope, more of the white-washed (as in all-caucasion, or in our case half-caucasion) sunshine of the Brady Bunch or maybe late “My Three Sons,” when the boys got sideburns.

In today’s episode I rode my bike around to yard sales and came back with four wheels to recover my treasure.

By the way, a spring Saturday with my bike as perfect transportation is the most retro, regressive I ever feel. Rolling by perfect little lawns, cruising from cul de sac to strip mall on two wheels is how I spent a hefty chunk of childhood to young adulthood. My bike took me to the now lost in vapors now nameless boy encounter, the older boy who got my phone number and knew my name, but I didn’t recognize. The one who stole a kiss that was met with a clenched jaw of surprise and non-acquiesence. My bike took me to the colonial era graveyard, where older kids from near my neighborhood hung out, and I smoked both my first cigarette and joint.

My bike blazed me home in time for dinner, furious pedaling, to avoid the wrath of Pat when adventures like those above were afoot.

In M.’s imagination, influenced by American TV and the American dream of a white picket fence in the suburbs, our bikes are sissy-barred and banana-seated Schwinn Stingrays, just like Bobby Brady’s. (Only, M. didn’t really watch the Brady Bunch, and in the actual 70s, my child inside a full-grown body was too gargantuan for one. I got a pink, ladies Huffy 3-speed instead.)

Making our 1970s fantasy life in our 1950s house in our beach town that time forget in some ways, we need the right kind of furnishing. For the patio, some kickass (as the owners of the yard sale described their offerings in their craigslist.org ad), no doubt knock-off chrome mesh chairs. I’m digging the Eames-esque Eiffel base. And, better yet, at $10 for all four, the weather can rain and burn down, and I ain’t weeping. All weather, all modern.

For my happiest of move-in to our new home Craig’s List score of October, the fully working and loving it Singer sewing machine desk, I still needed an appropriate chair. Slapping another $5 down over the $10 for the chrome chair, I got this little baby from the same woman. The seat was actually vinyl with a gash in it. Within about 15 minutes, I stretched some fabric over the vinyl and sent some staples flying through my gun and onto rocking like-newness.

The extra joy of that checkered flag is I recycled another souvenir shirt. When M. and I went to the, I think now defunct, San Jose Grand Prix, I bought myself a vaguely slutty winning flag tank top worthy of a car chick enjoying a Coors Light in the grandstand. Now I’ll be sitting on it.

Tomorrow, it’s onto a coastal brunch, no doubt surrounded by families in their Christ-has-risen finest. Dear Lord, please hear my plea, seat us away from the children. Oh Lord, the children.

All week, I’ve been humming a little Patti Smith to myself. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”

If he died for yours, I wish you a joyous holiday tomorrow. If you are a heathen like me, I also with you a joyous day, just less dramatic-like, what without any resurrecting.

Technorati Tags: California, modern, Easter, suburbs

Early in the day, M. was folding laundry to Deep Purple. I was edging and weeding the lawn to early Elvis Costello, the Stones and Patti Smith. Our respective teenage years come full circle.

The 1970s in our very California, very beach-y, very suburban coastal community, rocking out in our 1950s ranch. It was the television repeats and American exports we each were raised on with customized soundtracks. Without the pot and the key parties. Darn the luck.

We continued the vibe, and vibe it was being near a California beach and all, by taking a late afternoon stroll along the Pacific Ocean. Toes in the sand while surfers waited and a gaggle of teenage girls peer-pressured each other into what apparently was “motherfucking cold” water up to their waists. From there it was an easy stroll to a local place for fried chicken and lemonade (M.) and a burger and a beer (me). (That description might have folks on the East Coast imagining some kind of nice, sandy dive like Kelly’s Roast Beef or the Clam Shack. Here in Northern California, where there are more foodies per capita than oxygen molecules, there are no such places. It’s a blessing and a curse.)

We capped the day with a fresh pitcher of lemonade from our backyard harvest and a screening of John Carpenter’s “The Fog.” The original, 1979, the last year in our ’70s tribute, and the tribute, if murderous haunting is a tribute, to Northern California coastal living and incomparable fog.

Technorati Tags: California, classics, 1970s, fog

April is the month I’m swearing to myself I’ll be jumping back into open mike hell. Well, maybe I might not be the demon seed, but no doubt there will be others practicing “comedy” who will be as funny as a hot poke in the eye with a flaming stick.

I have been writing in my head, obviously not here. And, not on that quaint old-fashioned stuff the old folks call paper.

I found thinking while raking, weeding and mowing helped. Actually, as I listened to the loud, disaffected noise of my youth, I was able to rewrite entire sagas in my head. Only this time they don’t quite involve leaving the hell of my high school existence or weeping at my misunderstood sole and alienation from my quote-unquote loved ones. It was more of a whistle while you work kind of a thing.

Jesus, how frighteningly bovine and contented I have become. But I was weeding like a motherfucker.

Here’s one thing I was thinking could work it’s way into onstage story-telling humor. Some how, with some writing or thinking or something.

Here I am, actually we are, playing house just like a grownup, so inevitably we’re standing side-by-side at the Depot, the Home Depot. What we were needing was a fresh supply of spooled plastic to stick into the joy that is our Black and Decker Grass Hog 700. Wait it might be the Grass Hog 400. I may have opted for the smaller cheaper Hog.

As I flipped through the packages, remembering which Hog was in fact the Hog we had, M. hectored me at my shoulder — “Why didn’t you write it down? You don’t know what we need, do you?” (Nota bene: I did know, but I started to doubt when every package they had didn’t fit our model.)

Right about the second it was going to get ugly, a fine-looking middle-class, suburban couple strolled up the aisle with their charming little tot dragging by the wrist and shrieking, howling like the demons unleashed from a particularly ugly lake of brimstone, crying at the top of her know-doubt healthy lungs. They walked right up to the display of various Grass Hogs and Grass Hog supplies, and they, too, started to overturn the same boxes I was, in search of their needed spool.

I could see in the corner of my eye just the wrong synapse fire in M.’s gray matter. He rips the display Grass Hog that I had said was our model off its display hook and marched down the aisle shouting that he’d “get the right one.” About 30 nanoseconds later he reappeared with a woman in an orange bib, who brought him right to the shelf I was searching. Unhelpfully she explained that’s where to find the replacement spools and that’s all there was.

M. was then mute. We got the hell out of Home Depot Dodge. In the parking lot the inevitable outburst descended. M. raised voice and clearly elevated blood pressure announced, “I don’t care what you say, we are not having any children.”

What, um, huh? Seriously, what children? You mean the ones I never asked after? The ones who don’t have and I’m not itching for their existence, those non-living, non-conceptualized, unconceived of or just unconceived, those children?

Oh, OK.

I think I reacted the only way possible, I burst into laughter.

The minute I saw that couple and their spawn approach, I just knew my day would change. And, that is why, we don’t have any children. Well that, and so for 9 times out of 10, I can shop at the Depot without a whole lot of screaming and tears.

Technorati Tags: customer_service, homeowning, Home Depot, relationships