Friday, March 27, 2009

a certificate of achievement

...sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes
you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with
yourself.


i am already starting to cry.

one of the joys of being a father is getting to go to events where my children are recognized for the good job they're doing in school.

today no. 1 got an award for most improved. this is wonderful. but as wonderful as it is, it is not the reason i am crying.

i got to sit next to my boys while the kindergarteners and 1st graders got their various awards. as the awards were being handed out for no. 2's class, he clapped and cheered the loudest, saying "yay!" and calling each recipient by name.

no. 2 is going to be repeating kindergarten.

this didn't really come as a shock to any of us. i mean, he could barely sing the abc song when he started this year, and most of the kids could recognize letters and match them to the appropriate sound.

between awards, no. 2 kept asking when he was going to get his.

buddy, i am giving it to you right now:

when no. 2 was born, he was a double handful for me. that isn't a euphemism. that is the god's honest truth. i could cup my two hands together, and he could rest easy there, with only his legs and arms hanging over like someone riding an inner tube down a river.

his heart stopped daily.

at one point, he was dead for a full minute. not moving, not breathing, flatlining dead.

when we finally got to take him home, he had so many doctors and therapists and issues that those days and weeks and months were nothing but a hazy blur of appointments.

over time, no. 2 went surmounting hurdles, meeting goals, losing appointments and therapists.

but we're not out of the woods yet.

that is to say, i wasn't expecting him to get any awards today. because the teachers don't realize what no. 2 has had to battle just to be in their class, engaged, an active part of the goings on.

but i know. and mommy knows. and grammy knows. and nana and boppa know. people know.

and so here is no. 2's certificate of achievement:

for battling back through the methadone and the brink of death to hang with us for many more years.

for having healed quickly from twice as many surgeries as daddy has had.

for growing and flourishing despite not being able to eat by mouth.

for not giving up when the physical and speech therapies got hard.

for being the only other one in the family that will change the lyrics to a song to "smellypants boogernose" and then laugh like crazy with me.

for getting tall despite a lack of growth hormone in your body.

for walking, talking, getting potty trained, learning to write, getting your own self dressed.

for being the one that gives me random hugs out of the blue, and patting me on the back when we sit together.

for having started the school year barely able to sing the abc's and recognize but a handful of letters, and now being able to sound out simple words and write them as well as your name.

for smiling.

for laughing.

for cheering and clapping when others in your class got awards and not getting upset or jealous that you didn't get anything.

for all this, i present to you:

a lifetime achievement medal.

which i am sure is only the beginning of a lifetime of achievements yet to come.

oh fuck, my beloved non-existants. that was maybe long overdue. both the recognition and the cry, but now i must wash my face cause i am a wreck.

and no. 2, i love you, and am proud of you, buddy.

darth sardonic

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Monday, March 23, 2009

get bent

in the time between the scratch of the flint against the steel and the crackle of the first drag of acrid smoke, the weatherman announces there is a 70 percent chance it will rain punches.

like salmon, fighting the current to fuck then die, we clog highways and byways.

a team of experts has spent months working in a lab to create chaos. destruction is for sale, and if you can't afford it, your doctor can prescribe you pills so you no longer care.

which costs more, books or bombs?

we once needed clothing, a roof over our head, and the crops to grow. we now need cars and phones and laptops; a pill to keep us awake, another pill to put us to sleep, and a third pill to deaden the hard edges in between.

do our fits of melancholy coincide with the death of someone that touched our lives but with whom we have lost contact?

a man picks a fight at a bar so the other patron will hit him, and he can again feel human contact.

god is watching us, but only when "american idol" is a repeat.

darth sardonic

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Friday, March 20, 2009

You'll protest your Complicity

today i gave back.

i didn't really know what i was signing up for when i told my wife "sure." unload some boxes. move things. community service.

after breakfast, we went to the place where my wife and i, and some of her coworkers were to meet to do our volunteer community service.

the war veteran's museum.

from there, we went to the military reserve building, to unload food, clothing, sleeping bags, toiletries, and coats so that the 200 or so homeless veterans that operation stand down is expecting to show up tomorrow will be able to take them when they leave.

we were five of probably 100 to 150 volunteers. people from the community. active duty folks representing all branches of the armed forces. retired military. veterans, proudly wearing their pow/mia hats, their "vietnam vet" tshirts, limping as they walked from organizing tshirts to the table of socks.

i served. yeah, my service was mostly selfish. i needed a job. i needed money for college.

part of my job was to sit in a comfy office chair, behind a large desk, and tell elderly gentlemen who had been shot at, wounded possibly, serving their country that while i appreciated, beyond my ability to convey, what they had done for their country, and for me; that their country no longer gave a shit about them. not in so many words, of course. i liked my job. i wanted to hang onto it. but that is what it boiled down to, o my beloved non-existant readers. as a country, we no longer give a shit.

but i give a shit.

i love my country. of course, it is fucked up. i know. maybe all too well, actually. but i still love it. it is my country. it is my home. it isn't any better than anyone else's country, and i would proudly stand respectfully as another country's national anthem is played. but this is my country. it's my country because those men and women who will walk into the armory tomorrow and wait for a hand out went to foriegn soil. because they, and the people before them, believed in this country. believed in what it stands for.

and now they find themselves in need of new underwear. new socks. warm sleeping bags. a poncho to keep the rain off. someone who still gives a shit.

and, o beloved non-existants, my faithful few who still swing around, i am proud to say, with tears in my eyes:

i give a shit.

and:

thank you.

darth sardonic

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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

running late and hitting all the red lights

today at the doctor's office, the easy listening station played green day's "i walk alone." i am getting old. i feel disconnected from the things that are important to me. awash.

i want more coffee, more sleep, more money, more time. i want answers, and i want them now.

the time to stop global warming, the time to take action, the time to reverse the effects was 50 years ago. i hate to be the one to tell us, but we're fucked. on the flip side, how do we know this isn't the natural order of things? centuries ago, the earth went through a massive ice age. prior to that, the climate was more tropical in areas that are now more temperate. noah wylie battles to save the polar bears. did anyone battle to save the mastodon? diplodicus? the saber toothed tiger? fuck the polar bear, they can't handle the heat, it wasn't mean to be.

and maybe that will be curtains for us as well. maybe that is as it should be. we've been doing a bang-up job of fucking shit up on this little marble on the massive game of onesies for several millenia, and maybe our time is past.

i hate being the bastard dad. i fucking hate having my hand forced. i deplore that despicable, cold-hearted cocksucker motherfucker that is brought to the surface when the nice dad, the easy-going fella, gets sick of being walked all over. i would drown that cunt in alcohol, bury him under a mountain of legos; but the truth is, sometimes i need him. pass me another gin n tonic...?

twenty-something fucking years later, and the truth is; the arguments, the questions, the concerns, the battles: they're all the same. some recurring cycle. a skipping record. a cd player set to random repeat. is there no running from it? no escaping it? do these concerns ever resolve? or is it like clothing styles? wait long enough, everyone will have forgotten, and we will spring them anew on the general public like we had some magical original idea.

this too shall pass.

darth sardonic

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Friday, March 13, 2009

jabberjaw

my oldest can keep up an ongoing litany of imaginary adventures, seemingly without pause for breath.

mostly, i filter it, like a spongelike material removing debris from water. gleening the basic idea of the narrative from captured snatches and snippets.

today, i was in the rare mood to tackle the story full-on, with the occasional insightful question to try and make sense of the inner workings of no. 1's mind.

apparently, his full name is no. 1 jedi sardonic (well, i mean, it's not, any more than my name is really darth shiteyouup sardonic, but within the scope of this blog, for all intents and purposes, he tells me that his name is the same except his middle name is jedi, and is included in the proper usage of his full name) and he is not our kid.

his father was president of the planet mon jupiter for 12 days before he died. i didn't quite get who or what killed his father, but apparently there was a bit of skullduggery going on.

mon jupiter (quite like, shockingly like actually, in truth, almost exactly like a certain other famous planet including one single famous and youthful survivor) was doomed to implode.

so my son (for he really is my son. he looks like me. his expression when he has been caught doing something he ought not is identical to my own. i watched him come out of my wife, and rarely has he been out of my sight since, at least sufficient for the kind of massive swap we would be talking about here) informs me that his mother put him on a space capsule, and launched him out of there before mon jupiter became fragments of shattered imagination.

he likes me and my wife alright, but sure misses mon jupiter and his family there.

i wonder, would it be possible to launch him back?

darth sardonic

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

homework

f. Gross Margin (cell B13)=Year 1 Sgod my sunburn is fucking itching me!oods or =B11-B12
g. Copy cell B13 to the range C13:I13.
h. Year 1 Advertijaysus this shit is dull as fuck0 + 13%*Year 1 Sales or =500+13%*B11
i. Copy cell B15 to the range C15:I15.
j. Maintenance (row 16): Year 1=1,905,0good fucking christ! what does all this shit have to do with fucking autocad again? man, this is mindnumbingly dull! and why is it that the people i wish would bother me while i do my homework don't, and the people i wish would fuck off keep talking to me?!?ear 8=3,560,000.
k. Year 1 Rent (cell Bfuck this, i need more coffee!0,000
l. Year 2 Rent (cell C17)=Year 1 Rent+(10%*Ythey seriously fucking have a formula for each fucking year's rent?!!?1+10%)
m. Copy cell C17 to the range D17:I17.
n. Year 1 Salaries (cell B18)=22.25%*Yeashit! please god, kill me now, i beg of you. please?%*B11
o. Copy cell B19 to the range C18:I18.
p. Rip constricting clothes from body. Paint face. Create loincloth from printed spreadsheets. Ritualistically burn Microcomputer Applications book using 151, lighter fluid, and favorite Zippo. Dash into streets screaming maniacally and beating self about head with hands.
q. Copy to range Alpha:Omega.

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Monday, March 09, 2009

yet another rant

ok, i once said that usually when someone says, "i love so-and-so to death..." it is usually followed with why they would love to kick them in the face.

i love j and b (a couple of my neighbors) to death, but:

this weekend my wife came back from a trip to vegas for a "girl's lost weekend" (lol) that was 4 or 5 days long, during which time i was taking care of the kids by myself, and going to school, had possibly the biggest load of homework i have had since starting back to higher learning, and a gigantic pile of laundry that served only to piss me off.

my wife and i have our routine. she knows when she is gone, the house is gonna get messy. she also knows that it will be spotlessly clean by the time she walks through our front door. that is our deal. that is our agreement. she cleans house much less than i do.

so on wednesday, the sink was full of dishes. honestly. full. like you had to move them out of the way to fill a glass of water. at least half those dishes had been in there before my wife left.

j n b's son watched the kids when i went to class, and apparently one or the other of them brought him dinner and saw the messy kitchen, and dirty floor.

now, thursday, i loaded the dishwasher. so the sink was empty again. of course, they didn't fucking stop by on thursday, did they? they didn't check on me at all as a matter of fucking fact at any time except when i was actually not home.

oh no! no: hey just checking to see how you were managing and did you need anything?

but one fucking sink full of fucking dishes and j is spreading the word to everyone on the cove how i have let things fall to shit this week. b. e. (other neighbor) just laughs when he tells me, cause when he wasn't working, he was usually on the wii while the housework piled up.

and, saturday night, the night my wife comes back, b, who is holding her 12th large glass of vodka with some juice added to color, has to swing into my house to make sure i have cleaned and then to give me some kinda convoluted lecture/pat on the back that involved saying things such as "your wife doesn't need any more stress..." (what, from all the fucking partying in vegas?!!? god forbid she come back from drinking too much and blowing all our spare cash at the tables to a fucking messy house!) and "i know you are going to school, and i am really proud of you, but..." (but fucking what?!!? not only should i work full time, coordinate the kids' appointments, go to school half time, and do homework, but i should also have the fucking house fucking spotless at any given moment for my fucking neighbors' inspections?!!?)

you know what? we all have our flaws. b.e. can be rude as fuck when he is drinking (which is alot). j drinks beer every night as well, and when he gets his drink on, he has a habit of getting physical with his teenage son, sometimes in a way that crosses over from play or discipline and into abuse (in my opinion, and only in my opinion). his wife, b, as i alluded to previously, drinks every weekend away, to such a point that we don't even bother them on a sunday until well after one because she and j are probably sleeping off a monfuckingstrosity of a hangover.

and these motherfuckers are gonna lecture me on a sinkful of dishes, some popcorn and legos scattered across the floor, and a pile of clean but needing to be folded laundry on my couch?

you know what? i don't run around telling these fuckers how to live their lives. i never say maybe you should drink less. maybe you shouldn't hit p so much. maybe you should mind your own fucking business. i never run to anyone else (except maybe my wife) and share any of my concerns for these, my friends, because it is none of my goddamn business in the first fucking place. and because i am far from perfect, i feel ill-equipped to advise others on how to live their lives.

so i stood there, fuming a bit, sipping my whiskey sour a little faster than normal to not go off or argue during the drunken, rambling lecture.

but you know what else, o beloved non-existant readers? while these people are my friends, this is one case where, to maintain our friendship, i need to say, (even if only within the scope of this blog, which none of them read) fuck you. fuck your dumb fucking drunken asses. mind your own goddamn business and let me and my wife handle our affairs, since you seem to be having a hard time handling the shit at your own fucking house, and overall i have things well in hand at my pad, thank you the fuck very much. now piss the fuck off!

thanks for letting me get that off my chest in a forum where it causes no damage to me or anyone else involved.

darth sardonic

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Sunday, March 08, 2009

Lie with me I said and lying's what she always did and always will.

life is funny. strange in the way that it leaves you bereft for weeks, devoid of energy, tired, unmotivated, uninspired.

then, at a turn, at the drop of a hat (odd expression), life is full of things to keep you occupied, in the way you want to be occupied, and you are back on the upper swing of this rollercoaster yet again.

school is going well. work is not. however, the lack of work has been timed almost perfectly to an overabundance of studying and homework in such a way that i still stay gainfully employed in something productive.

the pile of laundry is all but gone. (it never is, o beloved stalwart non-existant readers, completely gone. but it is no longer the dragon to my (rather goofy and klutzy) st. george!)

i still want to get a t-shirt made that says "shitty bass player" so when people in the audience say, "this band is really cool, but what the hell is up with the bassi--oh, well. there ya have it."

one of my neighbors used to play the drums. his friend used to play the guitar. last night, we jammed in my garage. it was, o beloved non-existant readers, lacking desperately in that spark, that magical thing that i have with s the guitarist, and s the drummer. and that is as it should be, in my opinion. cause it is rare as fist-sized diamonds to encounter two lads that one can get along with so well, and simultaneously make one's ridiculous, misguided poundings sound like the stuff of dreams. these other two fellas; an enjoyable diversion. the sort of thing i need to keep me sharp and dialed in, advancing in my miniscule abilities rather than stagnating like mosquito-infested swamps.

i predict a new rash of friends requests on facebook. i could be wrong, but my betting money is on a few more adds. one of my old classmates found me today, and in her group of friends are a number of my graduating class.

and, o beloved non-existant readers, i predict an improvement in the quality and regularity of my posts.

darth sardonic

my wife is telling friends of ours a story from her trip to vegas. she is engaging and funny, and we are laughing and she is doing accents and she is so cute.

i know i haven't mentioned it here in awhile, but gads i love her. love her, in love with her, lust her, am infatuated with her, whorship the ground the she walks on. just wanted to remind us all.

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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

I pulled off your wings...

Then I laughed

i should be cleaning house, and folding laundry right now.

well, actually, i should be working, earning a paycheck, but since that isn't gonna happen this week, my alternative is to straighten out my abode.

i should be pouring out page after page of my new manuscript like a man possessed, but alas. i'm just not feeling it right now. this might be a big indication as to why it took me ten years to complete The Unfinished Work. apparently, it is gonna take another ten fucking years for the godforsaken publishers to get it done. i kinda wish they would just email me and say, "we cannae publish this tripe, what t'e fuck's wrong wit' yeh?"

at least then i would know.

i probably shouldn't be such a fucking whiner. and i don't really mean this to be whiney, but no doubt it is sounding like that.

i just kinda feel blah.

n it's not that i haven't thought of clever things to blog about, o ye beloved and long-suffering non-existant readers, who have, no doubt, moved on to greener pastures where decent writers regularly spin tales of sun and heroism and beautiful lust and clever characters who ever do the noble thing, but every time i want to sit down to capture these clever bits and perceptions, some other thing looms, daunting, hanging over my shoulder like a spectre of a mountainous(and i have changed and retyped that word about 5 times because the spelling just looks horribly wrong to me. looked it up in the dictionary and it does, in fact, have both a u and an i. huh. interesting) pile of unfolded, and yet clean, laundry that threatens to engulf me.

in the past, my writer's blocks have been like short stabs. a day or two of not being inspired and/or not having the energy to capture the thoughts. this time round, it appears they have been happening in rapid succession, mini-strokes that threaten to build into a massive explosion that will, once and for all, rob me completely of any talent i might've been harboring like a stowaway.

life, in and of itself, is good. things are well. as i might've alluded previously, amid the economic slump, we find ourselves with more expendable funds than we have ever had, and are (wisely, we like to think) using them (mostly) to pay off bills in a timely fashion.

nos. 1 and 2 are well, and progress in leaps in bounds, though i have to say, no. 2 has taken to watching the indiana jones movies in french or spanish and then attempting, (rather poorly, i might add) to mimic them: walking up to me while i wrestle with autocad homework, and saying, "gallump badump gump." to which i am forced to reply: "que joda de bromiado me haces, che!" and he fires back with "dododo magoodoo." after which, i tell him, "your english is still desperately lacking, let's take it one language at a time, yeah?"

my fucking italics button is bollocking me bad this entire post, which is, as you can imagine, frustrating the sweet bejesus out of me.

hence, i am just gonna wrap this little shitball of a post up right here rather than drag it out painfully to some bitter and disappointing end.

more soon, i hope. and in a happier vein.

darth sardonic

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