Category: living

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This might be the man in me, which despite being gay that ugly male chromosome sometimes rears its ugly head causing me to have typical heterosexual male sentiments, but I am trying to understand Melissa Garner Lee’s anger with her husband over missing the Taylor Swift Travis Kelce Wedding. Lee’s husband had worked with Taylor Swift once in the past — this is her only connection with the happy couple which, speaking as a totally neutral outside observer seems, at best, really tenuous. So she basically wants to ride her husband’s coattails as a plus one to a wedding that he, apparently, isn’t too driven to attend.

This is why she is angry with her husband? He may have ignored an invitation to the wedding of the century. He saw something in his email queue with a subject like Taylor Swift’s wedding. He thought it was spam, didn’t even open it and deleted it. Crime of the fucking century that is.

First, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, what kind of crass mother fucker sends wedding invitations through email. PLEASE. Taylor Swift. Wedding of the Century. I just don’t think Swift’s the type of woman to send email wedding invitations. If I were her husband I would have been suspicious too and would have deleted it as spam without giving it a second thought.

And, if it was an invitation from Swift, who would want to go to a wedding from such a crass mother fucker. Amy Vanderbilt must have rolled in her grave and I would have been right there helping to spin her coffin. Call me old fashioned but if you don’t have enough class to spend a first class postage invitation through the US mail, I am not coming to your wedding with an electric toaster in hand. This is where I am afraid I draw the line as any self-respecting person would.

Then, did I mention, her tenuous connection? She barely knows the bride and has never met the groom. I am surprised that she was on the list at all. This would be reason enough for me to ignore the invitation. I really don’t know them that that well to feel comfortable sharing such an intimate moment. I have not attended weddings of people who I knew better than this and I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

No. No. You are missing the point. It is the wedding of the century. So what? Your claim to fame is that I was a plus one at the wedding of the century? Give me a fucking break. More troubling, is Lee is a psychotherapist. Talk about over reacting. I mean if I got a wedding invitation from someone who I worked for many years ago and that my partner knew even less, the idea that I would even bring it up with my partner in the first place is a bit of stretch. That my partner would get mad about this missed opportunity would leave me a bit baffled. Why am I getting so much grief over this?

But it is the wedding of the century. I heard you the first time and I repeat so what? I can think of a lot better ways to spend my weekend that watching two strangers get married in front of thousands of other people on a hot July day in New York — just so you can say you attended. I was fucking there and you weren’t. So take that. I don’t know about your psychotherapist but this would certainly make me one think twice before laying down on her office couch and telling her my problems.

Lee does seem to come to her senses at the end of her piece but not before making her husband feel bad enough to apologize to her for not understanding how important going to the wedding of the century might be for her. He apologized to her! If anyone deserves an apology here it is the poor husband who suffers through his wife’s over reaction to missing a stranger’s wedding.

Get a grip lady because the world has much bigger disappointments coming your way.

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I have been in San Francisco on several occasions when a nearly nude man will be walking around with the barest of fig leafs leaving his genitals clearly visible. My San Francisco friends informed me that this is perfectly legal and happened all of the time. I tried to confirm the legality when I started to write this blog because I know that things are changing in the city but was left with a lot of ambiguous information. From what I could learn, it isn’t exactly legal and it isn’t exactly illegal.

My San Francisco friends supported these men’s rights to walk around nearly nude. They thought that they should be free to do what they want. I was uncomfortable with both the naked man and their response. At the time I was unable to enunciate my disagreement. After thinking about for some time, years in fact, I think I have figured out what I want to say.

I knew if I had small children I wouldn’t want them to see it. Not because the child would be traumatized either. I am sure that most children wouldn’t even remember it happening the next day. On the other hand, it might require some awkward explanation on why the man is walking around the streets of a city naked. Like is it all right for me to walk around naked?

Well, it isn’t all right to walk around naked in most places. It might not even be all right in San Francisco. It seems more like San Franciscan cops have given up on enforcing the law as opposed to it actually being legal which is a nuanced position for parents to make. Yes it is a rule Johnny but it is too difficult to enforce so people don’t get in trouble for doing it. Does that make sense to you? Of course, it doesn’t.

And yes this is small potatoes. In a city like San Fransisco there are bigger problems for the cops to deal with. It is a nuisance more than a crime. It is one of the hundreds of small annoyances that people in a city encounter. It requires self policing from individuals and that is what isn’t happening.

There is an extremely small number of San Franciscans who want to walk around with their dicks hanging out. I hardly ever see it. The mass of San Franciscans I have seen almost always have their clothes on. I am talking 99.99 %. It is irritating that this infinitesimally small number of people feel the need to indulge their exhibitionist tendencies for the rest of us to see. It isn’t very neighborly.

There are plenty of places — nude beaches, nudist camps, your own home — you can walk around nude. And then there are also plenty of places where you don’t. You wouldn’t walk into a school nude. Or a restaurant. Or a museum. Or a church. So, even the most free thinking of individuals set limits to when people should walk around naked. The argument then is where to draw the line.

Living in big cities means you are around thousands of people with different ideas of how to behave. We should try to get along as best we can. This means I agree to not being able to do everything I want to do. So, for example, I don’t play music loudly. Now, I may want to play my music loudly but I won’t because I know that I might bother my neighbors. I want to get along with my neighbors so I don’t listen to music loudly.

These men need to face the fact that some people might not want to see their junk and keep that in mind when they go on one of their strolls. Being a good neighbor isn’t that hard, and I’m willing to give up these really minor freedoms to live in a big city. Because I really enjoy living in a big city and, to continue to enjoy this experience, I want to be a good neighbor. I wish everyone would.

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We have two cats — Chloe and Cisco. When we first got them, Cisco would finish first and then nudge Chloe away from her bowl. This didn’t seem to bother her and she would pretty much surrender her food to Cisco. Bob got into the habit of standing in between them so Chloe wouldn’t be bullied away from her share of the food.

Bob proved to be a successful block to Cisco. Cisco stopped trying to bully Chloe away from her bowl. What is weird is that the no longer harassed Chloe can eat her meal without Cisco’s looming presence threatening her but now she always, and I mean always, leaves a little of her meal for Cisco. How did they come to this arrangement?

I am told that in every living situation with more than one animal that there is an Alpha who takes over. Cisco is definitely bigger and stronger than Chloe but she is smarter, faster and more athletic. She can get away from him with ease. Despite this somewhat equal distribution of talents, Cisco is still the boss. But why? Who told them?

It baffles me that they have come to an agreement about this. It seems to work for them but the process is a mystery. Surely, on occasion she comes across a food that she likes more than the others and wouldn’t she want to eat her full bowl — just because she likes it more. But, no every single time, she leaves Cisco something. The mystery of nature.

Chloe is the black one and Cisco is the grey one.

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As you might know, Bob and I are in the process of moving house, so we are furiously throwing away stuff. I found my high school diploma today with a holy card from Monsignor Koch. For those of you who doubt whether I graduated high school, see below. Read it and weep. It’s official and you can’t take that away from me.

Why, at 67 years of age, am I having trouble giving up my high school diploma. Never has any of my employers asked to see it nor did the colleges and universities I attended. I don’t even see the point of giving it to me at 18. It has been sitting in a drawer since then. A new draw ever few years, but a drawer nonetheless.

And the holy card. I didn’t even know who Monsignor Koch was when I was in high school. I vaguely remember the name but what he did and why he gave me a holy card is a complete mystery today.

It was sort of an accomplishment for me. I can’t tell you how bad a student I was in high school. About all I did was show up and that was mostly because my Mom herded us out the door every morning and wouldn’t put up with anything remotely close to ditching school. The only reason I made it through was mid-way through my Sophomore year, I discovered marijuana and thus was able to survive my remaining years in what for me was this educational prison. I hated it more than any other experience in my life.

Yet, I can’t seem to throw them out.

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Back in July, I introduced my first household tip, I am now ready for my second. The gap in time should give you some hint on how seriously I take household chores.

Bob and I are getting ready to move so we are getting rid of our unused possessions at a prodigious pace. One of our tasks in this process is a garage sale. I know Tom and Garage Sale would seem like contradictory concepts as there is nothing more than I hate then talking with strangers and selling shit but a guy has got to do what a guy has got to do.

So yesterday, we found some sterling silver utensils which we forgot about on a frequent basis. We usually discover them when we are trying to get rid of stuff. Decide to save them because they are silver and have sentimental value. Before they get tossed back into the drawer, I polish them in order to make them ready for the next time we use them. Which is admittedly rare, I mean do you really want to use silver when tossing a salad that you are going to then eat in front of the TV. It seems a bit over the top.

Which means they get polished, thrown in the drawer and promptly forgotten until next household purging event. Of course, they are tarnished and require polishing.

Any way, we found these tarnished beauties and we were faced with the question — do we keep or do we garage sale. But before deciding, I had to polish which is depressing because I hate polishing silver. So I do what I always do when faced with an easy but hateful tasks, I smoked a joint, got suitably mindless for this mindless task and polished those mother fuckers.

I am not sure why. I worked really hard on this. At least twenty minutes, maybe even a half of an hour. and the results were somewhat disappointing. First, the silver on the left turned out a lot better than the silver on the right. The silver on the right, from my eyes, don’t look like they’ve been polished at all. Both had stubborn stains I couldn’t remove and the blemishes in the silver would make me think twice before bringing them out for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Which brings me to my question. Why does anybody uses silver? It doesn’t look all that great and it is difficult to take care of. Stainless steel is much cheaper than silver and much easier to clean. I could have washed all the dishes from a 4 person dinner in the time I polished these 4 utensils and 2 of them, in my humble opinion, still look like shit. What a waste of time.

If I have any say in the matter these are going into the garage sale. My judgment on polishing silver is don’t.

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A few backs I reported that my spider, who very cleverly incorporated the light cord on our porch into her web, is missing. I looked at the light cord the other day and saw this:

She is back. Or one of her daughters is. Although she has irritated me a little because I now have to stand on my tippy toes to reach the cord but it is a small price to pay to work with such a creative animal.