[Free Davezilla]

Fellow moron Tim has a new blog, which I am announcing here. Probably thousands of you will go visit him now. We’ll say so, anyway. See, wisely, he has no counter and no comment system, so he’ll never know.

Will you, Tim?

I remember starting out at blogspot. Finally installing a counter: in the beginning, all my hits were from me checking the site. Messing with different comment systems. Blogger outages.

Nothing against blogger. Blogger is wonderful.

Blogging eats your mind, Tim. Get out while you can!

Alpha got tired of shampoo bottles rolling around the bottom of her shower and bought this chrome wire rack and I eventually mounted it for her. I dreaded doing it, because it required me to drill four holes into ceramic tiles: if you press too hard, the tile will shatter. On the other hand, I enjoyed the job when I finally got around to doing it, because it enabled me to display competence at doing guy stuff. The rack is up and it looks good. When people come to visit and see it, they tell my wife, “nice rack, Alpha!”

I’m not a fastidious worker. I’m pretty good at eyeballing stuff, and with this job I just held up the rack fairly level and centered, without measuring anything or using a level, marked where the holes go and drilled. As a nod to professionalism, I squirted a little silicone sealant into the holes (so water wouldn’t leak into the walls) before inserting the plastic thingamajigs that anchor the screws.

Gamma was standing over in the corner watching, holding her ears while I drilled, etc. The sealant tube was a little plugged, it had been opened weeks before for a different job and had hardened in the nozzle. I poked around at it with a straightened paperclip, then pumped away, and pumped and pumped. A lot of pressure built up, because when it finally squirted out it did a total Peter North all over the tile wall, which I quickly wiped up. Gamma was watching this like this is the way you do it, man.

I eventually finished and cleaned up the mess.

What makes a man a man, after all, besides a dick? I mean, not all of us are into your average guy things. I like to cook. I did needlepoint as a kid. I’m in charge of sewing jobs at home. Although I avoid tinkering with electricity or plumbing, other household jobs make me feel redeemed as a male, since I have such low interest in other typically guy things like automobiles or spectator sports. My little sister was the jock in the family (she just finished a triathlon last week, and on the way home saw her soccer team was a man short, so played the last half-hour with them) and I think she is a great comfort to our father (he proudly told me about seeing her on television recently, in the stands, snatching a foul ball from a big guy). I got picked about second- or third-to-last for most sports as a kid.

I’ve always liked hardware stores and other similar gear, like the camping-related gear at REI in Seattle. In fact, anything vaguely equipment-related is cool; I got a kick out of visiting the fetish shops in Camden with D, Ann, Jessica and Brendan, not that I’d ever use any of that stuff.

While I like equipment, though, I’m not crazy about techological gadgets. I’ve written about trying to pick out a TV/DVD player and giving up in frustration. My car radio is currently set to a single station (my father-in-law was messing with it while we were on vacation) and I can’t figure out how to reset it. (It’s the Blaupunkt with all the confusing buttons on the front). While I don’t mind going into a barber shop or talking with old fogies in a junk shop, I feel as uncomfortable in sports bars as I do in a biker bar or would in a cop bar.

As usual, I’m not 100% sure what I’m getting at, beyond that mounting Alpha’s rack made me feel like a man.

Stiff competition for the Shoe Project.

[Thanks to Joerizilla]

Asian Bastard is back.

It is common here for small soccer clubs to raise money by putting on a “Sportfest” consisting of carnival rides and a beer tent, where lame Alpine-Shite music is played and barbecued chickens and sausages are served, with much wine and beer.

One such Sportfest was thrown last weekend in a nearby town and we went Sunday morning, which is a good time to go because the skinheads and other drunks don’t really get going until the evening, so you have time to sit there eating and drinking amongst mostly retired people, drunk before lunch, while small children beg their parents to let them go on more rides.

This time, though, it was just depressing. The whole thing just looked washed-out and sad. There were fewer rides, only one of which Gamma could go on – this carousel with a variety of vehicles – horsies, honeybees, tanks, motorcycles, a covered wagon, sort of a Transformer type guy. Just one trailer selling crappish food (these cones of foam, not icecream, dipped in chocolate, and garlicky elephant ears, and pre-packaged cotton candy) and one more trailer selling crappish belts and t-shirts. One bumper car ride. A couple screamy rides.

Being early, the place was nearly empty. I kept thinking, “Sauron’s realm is spreading.”

Inside the tent, some band from somewhere in the Alps was playing crap music so loud conversation, if you are a little hard of hearing as I am, became totally impossible (although, with my social skills, only I noticed). At tables everywhere, people were shouting at each other. Children were shouting, “just two euro for the rides, dad!” Dads were shouting, “Ask your mother.” Mothers were shouting, “is this supposed to be a chicken? It’s not even a Cornish game hen. This is pigeon.”

The chickens were scandalously small this year. They were like, when I was a kid we raised chickens and they were big, man. My chickens would’ve kicked these chickens’ asses. Small, and dried out. I kept thinking, when I wasn’t thinking about Sauron, about Bolivian mountain mummies. I bet they found chicken like this stored with them in their little clay pots.

Small and dry. Okay if you like skin, because that’s about all there was. The bratwurst weren’t much better. It all looked as if it had been cooked a long time before, and kept warm too close to the fire.

Bratwurst jerky, now in 12 flavors! Including vanilla Gatorade!

So we ate, went on a few rides and left soon, agreeing it was our last visit.

It was sad, a chapter closing. 21 years ago, a young slack hippie named Miguel helped out behind the bar there, carting kegs of beer around on busy nights. A lithe blonde waitress named Alpha, wearing a blue Austrian dirndl dress, carried huge trays of beer around and traveled to Greece on the tips she earned. I once won a fruit basket there, for being the furthest-traveled visitor. My father-in-law and I once shook the hand of drunk weightlifter there, who went on to get drunker, violent, and ultimately shot to death by police.

Anyway. We’ll go somewhere else for chicken from now on.

Gamma got a haircut last week. She used to have long hair, way down her back. It started going a little feral while we were in the United States visiting the family. A combination, I think, of the slimy well water at my folks house and the salt water, sand and wind of our visit to the Oregon coast.

She started getting these tangles. And she apparently has plenty of nerve-endings in her scalp, because she really yelled when we tried to brush her hair. We tried holding on between the roots and where we were brushing, and conditioners, etc.

She eventually had this Feral Boy from Mad Max look going. Big mats of tangled hair in back, underneath. It was a choice of going for dreadlocks, or a trim. So they ran her in to the hair place and cut it off.

The hair stylist gave them the usual, “if I find any bruises I’m calling CPS”-look.

We’re all far happier with the page-boy cut. Everyone tells Gamma she looks so much older with the new style, which of course pleases her. She even seems to be making an effort to act older – getting dressed by herself more readily, going to bed easier at night, picking up after herself after being told only ten times, not fifty.

And she no longer squeals when we brush it. It’s great.