What’s in Your Heart

One thing I find utterly baffling in the whole Walt Baker thing is the amount of people who want to sit around and argue about what’s in Baker’s heart. Like we can’t know that what he did was racist, because we don’t know what’s in his heart.

On the one hand, I get that this is a way that religious language leaks into secular culture without us realizing it. If you can sin by lusting in your heart, even if you never act on it, even if you never even tell anyone, I guess the opposite can be true–that you can act any old way you want, and as long as your heart is pure, no harm no foul.

I don’t understand this, I’m not sure it’s theologically sound, but I see where it comes from.

But it can’t just be religion framing our thinking.

I was thinking maybe it’s just as simple as “I, too, want to be able to do dumbass shit and know that my buddies will step up and smooth things over for me, so I’d better do it for others.”

But the more I think about it, the more I think that this is probably not the case, at least, not all the time.

Because it sounds too much like the “But he loves me” wife-beater defense.

You know, where a person’s outward behavior is atrocious but a person manages to convince herself that there’s some secret inner goodness that can be brought out either by affirmation of that goodness, proper behavior, or just loving said abuser enough.

Which, of course, puts me in the mind of all of the college-rape stuff that came out over the weekend.

And then I realized, I think, what’s going on. Folks have been groomed to provide cover for assholes, to believe that any one of us, at any moment, could be doing something completely ordinary we didn’t mean anything shitty by and someone, somewhere will pounce and declare us racist or sexist or whatever.

And, yeah, that could happen. It does happen. Not very often, but it does.

But then, usually, a decent person says, “Oh my god, I had no idea that doing x was a problem for y reason. Wow. I am sorry.” And then they don’t do it any more.

Or they get weirdly defensive and insist that they didn’t mean anything by it and everybody gets angry and there’s a huge fight, but eventually, once tempers have cooled, they see people’s point.

But the thing is, much like the dude who just doesn’t get that you need to make sure your partner is willing, but who can eventually hear it and get it and grow up and move on, this is a very small minority.

The asshole abusers need us to believe that those groups of awkward mistake-makers are largely the norm and that the asshole abusers are the slim minority in order for the asshole abusers to move around freely being abusive assholes. They shape our beliefs in order to provide themselves cover so that they can have access to victims.

And this is the same, no matter what your political persuasion.

This thing I want to say is a tricky point to make because I believe that play hostility between friends is fine. I engage in it, people I love do it. So, if you have friends you know very, very well, you might be able to joke about a public figure they like being a monkey (either because of stupidity or race or whatever) and they might joke with you in return. I might have a friend or two who could call me “bitch” and still be my friend afterward, but that number is vanishingly small.

Calling President Bush a monkey is mean. Calling Michelle Obama a monkey is mean. Before it is anything else, it is mean. It’s a hostile act. There may be some people with whom you can joke with hostility.

But that number is very, very small.

Most people recognize hostility for what it is. Regardless of what is in your heart.

And that Baker would send this email to this batch of friends, at the very least, indicated that he seriously misjudged with whom he could be hostile in a joking manner.

I called up my dad the other day and read the joke to him to see if maybe it wasn’t some old racist thing that had just had two new folks swapped in to fit current events. And after, I read it to him, he was mad, “Why would you make me listen to that racist crap?” he asked.

And that’s the other piece about the Baker story. If these are his friends, why would he make them read that racist crap?

Some folks have speculated that it’s because he thought they would agree with it. But I think it’s clear from what even Baker said that he expected that he was sending this email to folks some of whom feel positively towards Ms. Obama. He expected they’d be a little put out because he was being hostile towards them (but in a joking manner), but it seems that, in the end, he thought they’d just take it.

That’s a fucked up dynamic.

Ha, you know, it reminds me of Super Troopers, where everyone’s pulling pranks but Farva can’t figure out where the line between funny and scary is. In the end, he’s a bad guy. Even if you can understand how he got there.

There’s a Dog Treat on My Dining Room Floor

People, I repeat: there’s a dog treat on my dining room floor.

Something was very wrong with Mrs. Wigglebottom yesterday. Her gut was making all kinds of terrible noises and she was very, very tentative on the stairs during the millions of times we took her out to see if she was going to, oh, you know, poop all over.

But bless her heart, nothing came of it. Even when I went to bed, she went to her cushion there in the corner and soon was snoring and I could hear the gurgling of her stomach over her snoring and over my CPAP machine.

But, obviously, before we went to bed, I gave her a treat, which she failed to even attempt to catch (and it struck her right in the forehead, at which point she gave me this befuddled look like “I feel like shit and now you’re throwing things at my head?”) but she took it and wandered off.

And apparently hid it where she thought I wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t eaten it.

And my mom just called to tell me that my dad’s surgery went fine and that he’s sleeping soundly, snoring away, and that they’re just waiting now for the anesthetic to wear off, but that all his vitals are fine.

People, my dad told me he was having a minor eye procedure today, just a little outpatient thing, no need for either of us to come up and be there for it. Would I expect him to come down if I was having a wart removed?

Well, hell yes, he would come down here, even if I tried to stop him, if my wart removal were serious enough to call for enough anesthetic that they monitored your vitals and waited for you to wake up.

I feel a little like the magnitude of this nonsense was severely downplayed.

So, I’m glad he seems to be doing fine, but hot damn. I am pissed at them.

I really, really hate and find more and more offensive this whole “Oh, don’t tell Betsy, she’ll just worry” crap. Damn straight I’ll worry, but I find that very preferable to “Find out the true magnitude of shit after the fact.” I mean, when they don’t tell me stuff, it makes me feel like I have to be there for every damn thing, because I have now way of judging which is important and which is not without seeing it for myself.

And fuck them. They’re my parents. I have a right to worry about them when scary things are happening, to keep them in my thoughts, even if I can’t be there, and it’s bullshit to keep me from being able to do that. It’s not better for me. It fucking sucks.

Grrr.

Kids, don’t pull this shit on your kids when you grow up.

Edited to add: This morning, when she got up, she checked to see if it was still there and, when it was, waited until I was in the kitchen, and quickly ate it before we went outside. And then, when she came in, she was all “Ooo, don’t I get a treat for going out and pooping and being such a good girl?” As if I didn’t know she had just had a treat! Still, it was cute, so I gave her another one.

Haslam Tells It Like It Is

There’s this idea that you can’t win in politics if you tell the truth when the truth sucks. This is probably true, but it makes things difficult when the sucking truth is one we all need to face.

So, I was heartened to read over at Kleinheider’s that Haslam was willing to say this out loud.

Unemployment in the state is about 10.7 percent. Under-employment is probably about the same. The state is lagging in K-12 education, and 28,000 kids a year drop out of school. If a student drops out, Haslam explained, there is a 60 percent chance the student will end up incarcerated, a 66 percent chance the student will be on TennCare and likely to make very little in wages in life.

Of course, he and the healthcare professionals he was talking to then sat around and pissed and moaned about how poor people were ruining healthcare for everyone, so, you know, it’s one step forward, one step back.

I would just like to point out that there is going to be fraud in any system. The point is to minimize it as much as possible without fucking something else up.

Let me put it this way. If I pay an extra $10 a year because there are people who have TennCare who go to the emergency room for every little thing, yeah, that’s aggravating. But you know what’s more aggravating? When they get kicked off TennCare, and now have to go to the emergency room for every little thing, because that’s their only means of getting healthcare, and my doctor’s bills go up $100 a year to cover their inability to pay.

Does it somehow suck less to pay more for these folks to get some healthcare because at least it’s not my tax money? Doesn’t really seem like it to me.

So, This Stinks

I went out to the garage this morning to find my back tire flat and the front one on the way to joining it.  The Butcher put enough air in the back one so that I could get to the tire place where they informed me that I needed new tires, which, coincidentally, was what the Butcher said as he was filling the back one up.

So, I had to leave my car there. And the Butcher came and got me and drove me to work. And I sat in his back seat, the sun on my face and the cool breeze was so nice and I told him a little about how scared I was about him being unemployed again and how tired I am of feeling like we can’t get ahead on the credit card because we’re always putting stuff on it, telling ourselves that this is an emergency. Because, of course, there’s always an emergency.

Like tires.

But damn, I’m glad we could pay cash for the computer.

Anyway, just talking it out with the Butcher helped. We both have a tendency to kind of keep the stuff that’s worrying us from each other, but then we never know that our worry is shared. So, that’s kind of stupid.

It was nice, but then, when I was getting out of the car, I totally hinked my hip and had to lay there in the back seat until it didn’t hurt.

And the Butcher said, “Just try to make it through today in one piece.”

And we both laughed.

Lock II Park

People, that’s all I want to write about. It’s all I want to think about. I was having kind of a grouchy morning yesterday and then we went out there and it was like… I don’t even know. The river and the straight layers of rocks on the bluff and the big old trees and the feeling of the house, like someone had loved it and moved on and just left it waiting to be full again.

It’s creepy, but not in a scary way. It’s creepy because it’s empty. But when you’re near the house, you just know it’s a house used to being a home.

I don’t know how stuff like this happens, exactly, and I know Metro Parks has about zero dollars for anything, but that’s why we can’t just rely on the city to fix some of this stuff, you know?

People have to become invested in it and agitate for things.

I just very strongly feel that a city is a city in both space and time. You’re never going to meet all the people that live in your city now, but you can see the ways that shape and change the city. It is the same for your neighbors in earlier times.  And finding ways to know and incorporate the ways they lived in the city is an invaluable part of being a city.

What if “Carroll” isn’t a Last Name But a Place?

As you may or may not recall, my great-grandma, Ina Mae gave her kids names that have provided me with awesome clues into that part of my family tree. My grandpa, Hildreth Heistand Phillips has family last names as his two given names. His sister, Viola Lucia, is named after a grandmother, Lucia Viola. And his brother was Carroll DeWitt Phillips.  I found DeWitts.  But try as I might, I have not found any “Carroll”s.

Okay, well, I knew Nathaniel Heistand, Ina Mae’s grandpa, was married to Nancy Weaver. Nathaniel was from Ohio down north of Cincinnati, but he didn’t marry Nancy Weaver until after 1850. Which means that Nancy Weaver very well may appear in the 1850 census, living with her parents.

So, the trick is to find her.

I found three Nancy Weavers in Ohio, none of them living near enough to Nathaniel for it to make sense how they met.

But one of the Nancys lives in Carroll County.  And while, yes, it’s far away from Nathaniel, but, who did I find on the same census page? Mahlon Heston.

What if “Heston” is just Heistand with an accent?

Lock Two Park Makes Me Wish I Was a Better Photographer

The Silsbees

Again, just pasting here what I posted for family members at Facebook so that I don’t lose it, should Facebook go somewhere.

———-

As promised, I found out more about the Silsbee side of the family. This would be Avis’s mom’s mom’s people. Sadie’s mom was Mary Silsbee. Her dad was Anson Silsbee. He and his dad, James, helped settle a town in New York and then came to Michigan. James’s dad was Enos and Enos’s dad was also Enos. Enos Sr. was a Revolutionary War veteran. Enos Sr.’s dad was Jonathan and Jonathan’s dad was also Jonathan. Jonathan Sr.’s dad was Henry who settled in Salem, Massachusetts in 1638 (he came from England).

History tells us just a little bit about Henry Silsbee. He came to America as someone’s “man,” which may mean he was a servant. But by 1666, he was able to buy a house and in 1692, he became a deacon at his church. He also imported a pear tree in 1640, which lived until 1877, when Salem put Boardman street over it. But, supposedly, before they did, they took a picture of the tree to commemorate its awesomeness.

Here in Tennessee, there’s a saying–”You plant pears for your grandkids,” because pears take so long mature and they live forever.

Ghost Town

Did some gardening and went to Adams, home of the Bell Witch. It’s what’s happening in the part of town that’s not a tourist draw that is scary, though.

If I Had Money, I’d Be Blowing It On this

I learned about this from Newscoma. Don’t even get me started on its awesomeness.

Hiding in Plain Sight

There’s a lot of good discussion floating around the blogosphere right now about college-age rapists. I don’t have anything additional interesting to add. I’m still kind of processing it. I’ll admit, my idea of the “typical” college rapist has been the guy who has too much to drink and doesn’t take into consideration the willingness (or even ability of) the woman he’s with to consent.

So, I have been thinking that the strategy is to make these men understand the importance of considering the other person you’re with and her wants and needs. I’ve been willing to believe that most acquaintance rapes are based on just a profound not-getting-it on the part of the perpetrator. I have been willing to concede the basic set up–two people get drunk, things go too far, a horrible mistake is made–while insisting that the responsibility for the “mistake” fall on the person having sense with a non-consenting partner.

But I have been wrong. What this study shows, in part, is that rapists count on the fact that most people think of acquaintance rape as a drunken mistake kind of made  by two people–sure, he should have made more of an effort to make sure she was into it, but shouldn’t she have not been so drunk?–to shield them from detection while they operate, repeatedly. Nine out of ten rapes on college campuses are committed by repeat offenders.

Holy shit.

Another part of their strategy for evading detection is to make it seem like all guys share their beliefs or would do what they do, if only they had the chance.  They count on “boys will be boys” to, again, shield them from detection. (Which means that “no means no” campaigns are, in fact, effective, though not for the reasons they seem. They may not give rapists pause, but they educate the people who would otherwise provide rapists social cover.)

I guess I should have known this but it’s blown my mind.

They work the system. Deliberately. And they count on their charm and social mores to a.) shield them from detection as serial rapists and b.) to funnel more victims to them.

Again. Holy shit.

And that’s why I love TigTog’s post. Even if you follow no other links in this post, please follow this one.  Because now that we know that these are not just semi-innocent fuck-ups on the part of clueless or clumsy men, but that appearing clueless or clumsy or whathaveyou is just their way of camouflaging themselves among actual clueless or clumsy men who would, nevertheless, NEVER rape someone, there are some strategies for dealing with them.

1. Stop giving them social cover.

2. Protect others from them.

Brilliant. I love it.

I also want to think some more about the fact that this type of rape seems to be very closely linked with forms of abuse–that these guys go on (or are already) to be physically abusive or sexually abusive to loved ones and family members.

But, on the surface, it makes sense. They groom their victims, in a way, and they for sure have figured out how to socially isolate their victims; often everyone does think it’s all the woman’s fault or she’s brought it on herself.

These guys are not just serial rapists; they are serial abusers, it seems. But it’s harder to recognize because they don’t have a small number of ongoing victims. They have a large number of brief victims. But the MO otherwise is very similar.

Interesting.

But I Don’t Even Want to Have a Douchebag of the Day on Saturday!

Damn it.

Douchebag of the Day Award

This was going to Walt Baker, the CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, who sent his close friends an email joke the punchline of which is that Michelle Obama is actually Tarzan’s monkey, and then defended himself by saying, “It’s not a political statement.” As Trace Sharp says, “Alright Baker, we will call it what it is and that is racist. Either way, the bottom line is by him even defending it is as baffling and not very good business for the state.”

It raises a lot of questions–does Baker not know that black people go on vacation and might like to come to Tennessee to see some stuff? Does he not care that likening a black woman to a monkey is not going to make black people feel predisposed to spending money in ways that will benefit Baker? Does he really not get that it’s racist? And, if he doesn’t, how nice must that be to be able to live your whole life and rise to considerable power in your community without having to learn any history?

But just when you think there cannot be any bigger a douchebag in this state today than Walt Baker, along comes Preacher Jonathan Hatcher whose Conner Heights Baptist Church over in Pigeon Forge is distributing literature that claims that the Pope is an anti-Christ and that all Catholics are going to Hell. When made aware of local priest, Father Jay Flaherty’s concerns that this kind of material could instigate anti-Catholic violence, Hatcher replied, “This is an isolated event where just one believer had an obligation to share with a Catholic friend, in a difference of what we believe.”

An obligation?! An obligation to distribute literature designed to make Catholics in your community hated and feared?

“Jesus commands me to instigate violence against you while at the same time renouncing violence.”

Nice loophole you’ve managed to create for yourself to relieve yourself of any moral responsibility, Mr. Hatcher. I’m sure that loophole will be very comforting to you if you end up getting someone hurt.

And it is because of the very real possibility of violence instigated by the widespread distribution of this nonsense that I have to give Hatcher the top spot as Douchebag of the Day. You’re lucky, Baker. Any other day and it’d be you.

Moving On

I’m going to just say that I’m a little bummed to learn that John Hiatt moved on some dead folks from his land. If they’re there and they’re not hurting anyone and they’re not stuck, why can’t they stay?

On the other hand, I’m delighted to learn that CMT.com has a tag called “ghosts.” We can only hope they have more occasion to use it.

What If the Numbers are Wrong?

I have done my fair share of alarm-raising over the infant mortality rate in this state and I, too, have spouted the “You’d be better off being born in bosnia than Memphis” line. So, I am kind of at a loss about what to do with this story.

“The bottom line: Is infant mortality a problem in Memphis? Yes. Is it probably any different than in any other metro area? No,” said Williams, who also taught at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center and spent three years on the Health Department’s Child Fatality Review Team.

Well. Um. Shit.

So… does that mean that infant mortality rates in the rural counties are similarly inflated? Do we have a problem that needs to be fixed or do we have an almost unfathomable problem that you can barely wrap your head around?

Here’s what the issues seems to be. Say that your first year of life is a racetrack. What Williams is saying is that “infant mortality” is normally defined as kids who get out of the starting gate, but, for whatever reason, don’t make the whole loop. And that kids who made it to the track (in other words, they were born alive) but never made it out of the starting gate (dying soon after birth, because they never were going to be viable) are normally not counted as part of “infant mortality” because they’re counted as miscarriages.

Now, I’m not a mother, but I imagine this distinction, for a mother, sucks. If you give birth to a live child, even if that child died minutes or hours later, even if that baby had no chance of living, who cares that it didn’t make it out of the gate? It was still an infant and it still died. That sounds like infant mortality.

But science isn’t designed to give a shit about feelings and, if Dr. Williams is right, and the reasons infants can’t get out of the gate are very different from the reasons that infants can get out of the gate but don’t make it to their first birthdays, it might actually be important, from a policy point of view, to acknowledge a distinction between the two types of infant mortality and treat the root causes of both, in an effort to reduce instances of both.

But here’s the other thing. Even if it sucks for families who have lost non-viable kids, if the standard across the nation is to NOT count those as instances of infant mortality, even if we’d like to change the standard, we need to count infant mortality the same way everyone else does or else there’s no use in comparing and we can’t actually get a picture of how bad our situation is.

I’ve lived in Tennessee a long while now and one trait Tennesseans have is to assume a posture of “Yeah, things suck and why we do things might not make sense to you, but fuck you” and then heels are dug in. This is a fine and distinctive quality, don’t get me wrong.

But what if things don’t suck? I mean, what if the infant mortality rate in Memphis, tragic as it is, is pretty average for a city its size? What if the infant mortality rates in these rural counties aren’t that unusual? What if, in one instance, instead of struggling up from the bottom of the pack, we’re squarely in the middle, just working to improve?

And what if there are a lot of families in other parts of the country who are grieving lost infants and those infants aren’t being counted? Could it be that our method of accounting for dead babies is more humane than what’s being done in other places?

I mean, what if we’ve discovered that other places are cooking their numbers to look better than us?

Could we even recognize that? I don’t know. Maybe this question doesn’t make sense in writing, even though what I’m trying to get at in my head is clear, but I wonder if we’re so used to a position of recalcitrance and hostility, if we even know, as a state, how to stand up and be a graceful leader.

I don’t know.

And I have to say, it kind of shakes me to realize that I am so accustomed to “Tennessee sucks” and “Memphis, especially, sucks” stories (even though I love Tennessee and Memphis a lot), that I never questioned whether those numbers were problematic. They told a story I was prepared to believe and so I did.

It never occurred to me that other places might be using different numbers.

I don’t know. I’m going to try to figure out who I can ask about how other places measure infant mortality.

“Glorious, Glorious”

I was going to hold off and just review the whole new The Joiners album closer to its release date, but I started crying and laughing on my way home from work, listening to their song, “Glorious, Glorious” and I burst in the back door and I said to the Butcher, “Listen to this,” and I put it through the big speakers and he said, “Oh yeah, I like this song. I’ve heard it on Lightning 100. Todd Snider, right? No, wait…”

“No, wait, right? You haven’t heard it.”

And he brushed his teeth in time to the music and the dog and I danced around the living room and I thought, shoot, this is as good as anything else in my iPod and better than much of it.

And, it manages to be the kind of song you hurry home to dance around the house to while also being a song about coming to Nashville and being a singer, and, by this point in history, it should be said that making a good song about coming to Nashville and being a singer is doubly hard because it’s so cliched. I mean, it’s not off-limits to paint a picture of a guy standing next to his wife/daughter, looking all solemn and Iowan, but, if you’re going to do it, you’d better nail it.

I think The Joiners nail it.

And, my god, there’s such nice stuff going on through the song. It starts out with family-style harmonies, it’s got a nice churchy piano, a rockin’ electric guitar, an organ at the end, an acoustic guitar… and that’s just what I can hear on this crappy computer. It’s like they put every musical experience a regular person might have put her hands on in real life and been inspired by into a room just to see where it might lead.

And then, there’s even the 70s/80s style a cappella break towards the end, where everyone in the whole joint can sing along.

If you don’t listen to the words, it is the most rambunctious, joyous song about everything that is good about Nashville.

If you do listen to the words, well, it’s a really happy song about some very, very tough times–”if you like what you hear, buy me something to eat.”

And there are some really great lyrical moments, for example “so softly landing/ a kiss on my face. / She liked the feeling. / I loved the taste.” The dude Joiner has this really lovely delivery on those words, like each word just needs to be cracked open a little bit so it can fill up with sound, and just before it spills over, he slips onto the next word. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it’s like there’s this tension “We’re having so much fun singing this syllable that we don’t want it to end, but we also can’t wait to get to the next syllable, because it will be just as delightful.”

In a just world, you’d hear this song on the radio. You’d hear it start and you’d roll down your windows and you’d turn the radio way up and you’d sing along and, when it ended, you’d wish you could hear it again, one more time, right away.

Bits and Pieces

–Liz has a good story about a documentary about Bells Bend.

–I saw this the other day and thought, “someone should take a picture.” Well, just call me psychic blogger! Someday that’s going to be an exit from 40 onto Briley, but right now, it looks like a beautiful piece of public art that you drive under. An inconvenient piece of art, but a piece of art.

–You just knew this was coming. Yes, I’m sure posting people’s pictures around their neighborhoods will be a great deterrent. And, whoa boy, I can’t wait for the first time some kid is misidentified as a gang member by the city and ends up getting killed over it. That would be great fun.

Fuck it. Being afraid is not the answer. It should be deeply insulting to any Nashville that anyone in our community has to be afraid of these guys. And it is even more deeply insulting to suggest that the solution is for more of us to be even more afraid. And by all of us being afraid, frankly, it belittles the legitimate fear some folks have, and makes it harder to assess the danger and deal with it.

Buck up, Nashville.

–I don’t know how many of you saw this, but I thought it was pretty funny. UNTIL the guy who sent it to me was brave enough to admit that he wasn’t really sure how this stuff worked. He shouldn’t feel bad. After all, David Fowler still wants to force doctors who provide abortions to tell you they’re giving you an ultrasound because he doesn’t know about vaginal ultrasounds. And, well, it’s women’s history month and rather than me spending the month kicking people who say “herstory” in the shins, I thought it might be nice to do some straight up girly-parts educating, even get Rachel involved (surprise, Rachel!), because, while I rock the willingness to talk frankly about this stuff, she rocks the actual medical knowledge.

Don’t be embarrassed, people. I was way into my mid-20s before I learned that an uncircumcised penis basically had a little turtleneck of flesh and not some kind of little flap over the urethral opening.

We all have stupid ass ideas.

So, if you have questions, feel free to ask. If you need to do it anonymously, feel free to do so in the comments.

Another Park Post

This time, the Professor came with me. The Butcher has asked that, in the future, I refrain from taunting powerful gangs, but I said, “I would tease anyone else.” and he said, “but anyone else isn’t bound to be armed.”

And I waited.

And I waited.

And then he said, “Okay, but still. Don’t tease gangs.”

Exador Has Some Concerns, Which I Will Work to Aleviate

The only Irish thing I’d do on St. Patrick’s Day is back with his wife, so don’t you worry your pretty little head over it. I’ll be behaving.

Let Me Tell You a Story

Okay, I wrote this story and I was trying to decide if it worked, so I thought I’d read it out loud, but that wasn’t exactly working. So, I recorded it to listen to it. And I think it’s just right. I was worried the ending sucked, but hearing it, I think it’s just right.

I took video, because I don’t have a set-up to just take audio, but there’s nothing to see, but about six and a half minutes of my boobs. And not in a fun way. So, it’s better, I think, if you just shut your eyes and let me read to you.

It’s called “Bone.”

One Last Thing on Hardaway

He says, “The second part of that is that it’s none of your business.”

He’ll stick his nose into the business of every couple with children in the State of Tennessee, but some things are not our business? Hardaway, you’re just one of us. No one died and left you king. If you don’t want legislators poking around in your personal life, maybe you should take a lesson from that.

Metro Water: Hell Yeah!

Okay, I called them yesterday at, what, 3:30? Who was in my yard this morning at 8:30?

Metro Motherfucking Water.

I about wanted to hug them, but… well… you know, they were down in the sewer system.

Anyway, they didn’t find any leaks, so I’m back to TDOT to report that.

And I am very happy with my prompt customer service.

The Gun Shoot

A bunch of legislators took the afternoon off to go shoot guns down in Tullahoma. I have some thoughts.

1. You couldn’t have scheduled this for a day when committees aren’t meeting and bills aren’t being advanced?

2. Equality day on the Hill was so scary and you guys are such delicate flowers that you had to have an excuse to get out of town?

I mean, I’m sorry, but, when you’re a liberal, you have to hear, from the time you’re little, how being a liberal basically makes you a pussy, with all that entails. But this bunch has to sneak away to keep from having to talk to gay people? And we’re the wimps?

3. Shouldn’t these people have brimmed hats on?

4. How soon can we see which ones of these fuckers dare request their per diem for this nonsense?

Go shoot guns on your own time. If you’re supposed to be conducting the State’s business, go conduct the State’s business. Everybody who’s campaigning against these bozos should get their hands on this footage and shoot a commercial where challenger is standing there with a huge gun, proper safety equipment in plain sight.

Challenger says something like, “I like to work hard and play hard. But believe me, when you expect me to be in Nashville trying to fix this state, you won’t find footage of me on the news playing hooky down in Tullahoma. I’ll be on the Hill when I’m supposed to be [shows clip of this nonsense] unlike my opponant.” and then challenger puts on the safety equipment and fires off many shots. Fade to black.

Thank You, Representative Shaw

“We don’t just make laws for one person.”–Representative Shaw, today.

1. I’m glad someone will say it.

2. I hope Representative Shaw will feel empowered to wander around and remind other legislators of this fact. It is broadly applicable.

I raise a toast to Representative Shaw. A Diet Dr Pepper toast, but for me, that’s as valuable as the finest wine.

Minorly Embarrassing

Well, the gaping hole in my front yard could be caused by a problem with the Sanitary Sewer that runs through there, so I had to call Metro Water and get them to come out and take a look at it. I told the man on the phone where I lived. He said, “Where is that?”

“Just south of Lloyd.”

“I’ve been seeing that!” he said, in surprise. I was a little surprised, too. I mean, Nashville is a big city. What are the chances of you calling a major utility and getting someone who lives near enough to you that he has noticed the hole growing in your front yard?

But he had been watching it grow and so I had no problem getting him to schedule someone to come out and look at it.

It was a little embarrassing, too, though, to know that my gaping front yard hole was so noticeable.