Saturday, February 06, 2016

growing up in lubbock: on the way to gymnastics, my daughter announced that she loved buddy holly. ok i said, hard to disagree with that. but then she asks me: daddy, god, jesus and buddy holly, they're in your soul, right? well, hard to argue with that too. i smiled and didn't show her my smile. i agreed.

lots of other things in your soul too. now that my mom has died, i'm trying to separate out a little, if she was the trunk, the center, the heart of my motivation, of so many motivations, for so long, then does that explain why i'm a little cut-off-at-the-knees in the motivation department. it set me back. i'm glad to be back in texas, as i'd been in new mexico almost a month, so when my wife wanted to head out to new mexico for the weekend i figured i'd let her go out there alone which is what she really wanted, and not bring four kids and two more dogs out there after her. but now, a badly overflowing toilet and kitchen garbage disaster later, i wish she'd come back. spring in west texas is dry, windy, dusty, that's what gets in your soul. this year, an unusually wet, and cold, year, is unusual. but nothing is unusual to the dogs, or the kids, who go on being themselves and letting you clean up the mess.

i'm a grumpy dad when the chips are down, and they tend to leave me alone since, if they do, i generally don't bother them. i come after them when i need to and sometimes we go out and have fun. but usually they learn to do their own thing, entertain themselves, give me a little peace and quiet, then i can spend the day cleaning up overflowed toilets and kitchen garbage.

saturday morning, make an extra cup of coffee, then another. look at the news. the sun comes in and then changes its angle, gradually, all day, while people go on with their lives. the super bowl is big here. people are shopping, waiting, talking about it, taking sides, whatever. three o'clock tomorrow, or whenever, this town will be deader than any town in the history of towns. big piles of cars will be parked in front of various houses as everyone picks their favorite big screen to sit in front of for four to five hours, with lots of snacks, and plenty of alcohol, and generally maybe some kind of barbecue or dinner. it's big. this is what one does. the neighbors did it. they were surprised that we really had organized nothing. they invited us over in embarrassment perhaps. how can you have nowhere to go on sunday? my son has become friends with their son, and now he's all like, panthers, broncos, you name it. he'll probably go over there and partake, of the tv, the barbecue. They're nice people, i love them. i may have to just do the same, get a little scene by a television, make sure everyone's taken care of, watch the darn thing. it's got the best commercials in the history of commercials.

things happen, and i really have no clue what's going on, although, through facebook, i get some glimpse. if there's an earthquake in taiwan, as there was, i have several friends over there, and they check in and i know they're ok. i read about the debates. i read about how they've concluded that trump's followers are all narrow-minded, bigoted, small-minded white pride working-class morons which ought to just drive a couple thousand of them over to the cruz camp right away. but i suppose the cruz camp is all self-righteous, pious, hypocritical bastards too. meanwhile hillary is totally sold out to goldman sachs, and is the candidate of wall street, the liars, the sell-outs and the faux-democrats. sanders however is unrealistic, dogmatic, uncompromising, and a genuine threat to the status quo. so there's no way out. you'd think maybe rubio would get out of it. no, but wait until the spotlight gets on him, he'll be just as bad. it seems like everyone's got their negative spin on everything, nobody can hardly move a muscle.

somebody made a movie of tech students who, basically, didn't know who the vice president was. didn't know who won the civil war. didn't know the basics of u.s. government or history. they did know, however, who brad pitt was married to, both times, and they were up on certain other pop culture ideas. somehow i thought, this is an old idea. isn't this true of all young people? then i thought, is tech really better or worse than anyone else? these are our students. some of them could have been walking directly out of my wife's class (mine are international; the movie didn't target them)...ah yes, but it is what it is. but as the rabbi says, who isn't what he is?

that's life. i'm along for the ride.

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