An Open Letter to the Skeevy Dude at the Gas Station

Dear Skeevy Dude,

If you start in on some sob story about how you’ve made your way clear from Springfield and you just need some gas money to get home and I tell you, “Yeah, back off.  I mean it.” and you get in your car and drive away while I’m still sitting in my car making sure you’re not going to try any ridiculous bullshit, it makes your story seem even more like like a giant lying lie than it did.

Come near me again and I will kick you in the balls as hard as I can.

Not your friend,

Aunt B.

I Hate My Bra

In a perfect world, I would have a person on either side of me, reaching over and gently holding my boobs up in a way that makes my shirts look nice and keeps me from getting all swampy beneath them.

But I do not have such helpers.

I have this bra.  Which is a fine bra in that it holds my boobs up and fits reasonably well as far as that goes.

But I’m getting an itchy red yucky spot from where the underwire lace rubs against me.

Please, consult the following diagram:

You can see the pink circle represents my boob, which is nestled where it belongs in the cup of my bra.  The black line represents the underwire, which is responsible for making a solid barrier between my boob and the rest of me menacing enough for my boob to respect. Of course, the whole thing is covered in lace, I don’t know, I guess so that outsiders are fooled into believing that bras are decorative and not hard-working?

Anyway, where the lace and the underwire and the most stubborn part of my boob all come in contact with my underboob skin, I’m getting chafed.  This doesn’t happen on the other side.  Could I have one evil boob and one good one?

Shill, I thought you were going to start up a bra business on the side and bring comfort to women like me.

Hurry up!

Let’s Switch It Up

It has become all “God, families suck” around here and so I propose a listing of ten things/memories about my crazy-ass clan of ne’er-do-wells that are awesome.

Let’s get started.

1. I love how the Butcher and I can be silently watching TV together and I’ll say something like, “God, that reminds me of pancakes” and he’ll say, “I always wondered what Clinton saw in Flowers” and we’ll both laugh and nod and go back to the TV show and know exactly what the other person meant.

2. I love how my Grandma A. always used to have tiny graham cracker pie crusts in her pantry, four to a package, and we would whoop up some chocolate pudding, put it in the pies, and she and my cousin M. and I would eat them as a special treat, just us girls.

3. I love how my nephews act like riding in the car with me is the biggest treat since sliced bread, even though I know it’s in part because I let them eat candy and drink pop.

4. I like how anyone in my family will break out into song for no reason, especially my dad’s amazingly rocking version of “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” on the piano. I mean, he does the song on the piano, not that they have a fountain filled with blood on the piano.

5. I love how easy it is to scare my mom and how she screams with her whole self, just this unchecked “blaheghah!”

6. I like that they took us camping every summer.

7. I love how my Uncle B. always talked to us like we were adults and always listened carefully to what we were saying.

8. I loved teaching the Butcher how to drive.

9. I love how the recalcitrant brother is willing to stay up late or get up early just to make sure he has time to talk to you one on one.

10. Mrs. Wigglebottom. The dog of my heart and the dog of my soul. If not for everything that is fucked up about my family, she would have never come into my life and I would be much poorer for it. I’m thinking of changing my religion from the veneration of my ancestors to the veneration of the dogs of my ancestors, because, no matter how fucked up my family, they’ve always had awesome dogs.

Mark My Words

Not that it matters, but let’s say I once went down to the Stovall Plantation, where, you blues fans may remember, Muddy Waters was running a still and playing in the plantation band before he went north to fame and fortune.  And let’s say that, while I was there, I went into the plantation store and there, on the counter, in English and in Spanish were a pile of rules for how to order your food and how to treat the women behind the counter.

I may have written about this, that realization that the same systems are in place; we’re just in the process (in some places more complete than others) of swapping out the folks doing it.

And I had a work-related epiphany, there looking over the cotton fields of Mississippi–out there in those fields somewhere is the next great American art form.  And we won’t recognize it now, but fifty years from now, our kids and grandkids will be swapping old mp3s of those dudes doing whatever it is they’re out there doing right now as if, even in its antiquity, it’s more fresh and real than whatever corporate bullshit they’re being fed.

I still think I’m right, even though I’ve been pooh-poohed.

Today, I wandered over to Pandagon only to find that Chris Clarke had posted this video:

Clearly, I don’t know if this is it.  I’d hate to think that folks who listened to Cannibal Corpse were onto something in terms of how the future of music might sound, but I tell you what, I have half a mind to put on the good bra and practice drinking beers like the chick in this video:

Edited to add:  Of course there’s a million things wrong with this post, not the least of which is “who is this we?” and who’s to say that Brujeria is only worth looking at now because I, white girl, have turned my gaze towards them.  Those might be interesting things to discuss while I practice drinking my beer without using my hands.