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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Podunk USA - a re-post


In 2009, I stumbled across this nifty little article from another friend's blog that is about my hometown of Cleburne, TX.  In it, it describes with scary accuracy Cleburne and what I personally think of it.  It really does capture the frightening essence of a town left behind by time... and by me...


"My father grew up in a very small town in Texas called Cleburne. It’s about twenty-five minutes outside Dallas, and it is absolutely the most miserable place I have ever visited in my life. I used to dread taking family trips to visit my grandmother, aunts, and uncles (of whom I have fourteen on my father’s side) because entering Cleburne was like entering a foreign country. The rules as I knew them just didn’t apply.My father was born in 1941, three months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was raised in Cleburne, current population 29,050, with his six brothers and sisters in a two bedroom house right next to the train tracks. His mother, my grandmother, is currently 98 years old and living alone in the same house she’s lived in since she married my grandfather at 17 years of age. She has never been on an airplane and never traveled further than 50 miles from the place of her birth. All seven of her children live within 200 miles of her. Most of my paternal family lives in Texas because if they were to move anywhere else, the culture shock would probably kill them instantly.

I have never been to Appalachia, but the entire time I was reading Kathleen Stewart’s A Space on the Side of the Road, I kept picturing Cleburne, Texas. My experiences in small-town Cleburne, although no where near as dramatic as Stewart’s in Appalachia, are overwhelmingly similar to the cultural atmosphere that Stewart found “by the side of the road.” Cleburners have their own manner of speaking that is almost unintelligible to outsiders, inflecting their words with meaning and sound that was foreign to me as a child. I was always incredibly confused by the meaning of the word “drawers” whenever I visited my grandmother. A drawer to me was a place to store clothes or toys. A Cleburner firmly believes that “drawers” are the same as “underpants.”

But despite such petty examples, overall the feeling that I got from reading Stewart’s book was the same feeling I used to get while visiting Podunk, USA. Stewart writes:

“Imagine, in short, how culture in an occupied, betrayed, fragmented, and finally deserted place might become not a corpus of abstract ideas or grounded traditions, but a shifting and nervous space of desire immanent in lost and re-membered and imagined things. Picture the effort to track a cultural “system” that is “located,” if anywhere, in the nervous, shifting, hard-to-follow trajectories of desire and in-filled with all of the confusion and aggravation of desire itself. Imagine a world that dwells in the space of the gap, in a logic of negation, surprise, contingency, roadblock, and perpetual incompletion.”

This is Cleburne. A remnant of an old America that no longer exists. The town is poor and small. It used to depend on oil and farming, two sources of income that are dwindling now in the area. Beautiful farmland has been superseded by commercial structures, fading and becoming dingy with neglect. It is a place that still harbors the old seeds of racism and conflict. A place where people are aware that they should be tolerant, but just can’t bring themselves to comply. A place the young are constantly trying to escape from (my father married at 18 just to leave his mother’s house — the marriage failed, not surprisingly), and the old can’t bring themselves to leave. The gaps that Stewart talks about so often in her book are everywhere in my memories of Cleburne, a place stuck in a memory and tradition that the rest of the country has left far behind."

~(my reply)~

"Wow. Nice to see someone else out there has the same view as me. I was born and raised in Cleburne and I managed to not only survive and escape, but I was also able to flourish thanks to my self-sheltering imagination (which turned out to be a double edged weapon as it also made me quite shy and timid) and then later in life, the internet fed my constant cranial needs. I absorbed as much culture as I could get my grubby little paws on, even in my earliest of years. I knew from the first tangible sentient thought that there was something terribly wrong with this place and it was keeping a great deal of knowledge from me, strangling my very being. I was always gasping for air. I yearned for interaction with people, books, buildings, and LIFE in general. I’m lucky that I did not escape by the means that most youth “escape” Cleburne, that being heavy drug use which is ironic in itself that it just strengthens their anchor there. I was very amused to see others so trapped in that cycle and know that it was the wrong answer. You could often find me smirking at others because I held all of the correct solutions, all the right cards if you will, and I knew that this town would be their lifelong destiny. Even though I hold such loathsome feelings for this little speck of dirt, it was rather nice to take a proverbial stroll down that memory lane. Much better than the real thing. ^_^"

Friday, June 15, 2012

I'm all ripped n'shit...


Stacy:  Now, why can't you sleep? 

Brad:  *shrug*  Just can't.  No reason.

Stacy:  Rub one out and then go to sleep.  Always works for me.

Brad:  Way ahead of ya... and nope.  LOL!

Stacy:  Really?!?  That always works for me!  I mean, very rarely does it not! 

Brad:  Doesn't work for me

Stacy:  o.0  Weird.

Brad:  Maybe I'm doing it wrong?  Do I need to run laps during?  o_0

Stacy:  Well yeah, duh...

Brad:  'kay... if you ever hear me on your treadmill when you come home... don't walk in...

Stacy:  LMFAO ROTF!  Actually, I would have to ... just to see that sight. 

Brad:  "What are you doing?!"  "Running one out!  Now leave, MOM!  Gaaahhhhhh!"

Stacy:  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Thank god I wasn't drinking when I read that!

Brad:  LOL!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Okay, Cupid! Quiddit! >:-(


Brad:  I just LOVE talking to guys on OKCupid.com; when it seems like we're really clicking, meshing, and hitting it off, they apparently get abducted by the mob for ransom, because they DROP OFF THE FUCKING FACE OF THE PLANET!  >_<
Stacy:  Oh, hello sarcasm.  You've been hiding for a few days.
Brad:  Like, they realize, "Oh, he's a comedian! Well, I'm just not too fond of laughter. Bye!"
Brad:  Sorry for making you laugh?  o_0
Stacy:  I LOVE laughter!
Brad:  I mean WTF? I know a lot of guys out there want serious, meaningful conversation to connect with, but good lord that shit is boring!
Stacy:  I know, right?!?!? 

Brad:  {first date conversation}

             Guy:  "I just want to know what your goals are in life. What are your dreams and aspirations?"

             Me:  "..... got your nose!"

             Guy:  "......."

Stacy:  LMFAO ROTF!!!  I TOTALLY SEE YOU DOING THAT!
Brad:  ^_^
Stacy:  Oh.  My.  God.  I'm having fits of laughter over here.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Tardy for the Party


Today has been... unique.  First, my phone alarm, which is set for 5:00am every morning, went off as usual.  I hit snooze, as usual.  What's unusual is that it did not go off again!  I was an HOUR late for work!  I looked at my phone and it said that it was STILL in snooze mode!  Bitch, that is not "snooze mode", that is "Rip Van Winkle mode"!

I get to work, and a problem comes up.  I have a script that has an issue; scripts navigate an online bank site automatically to download files for all accounts listed.  This one is crashing and not getting all files.  I sent an e-mail to the team lead about it; "The script is not getting all the files."  His reply?  "The script needs to run to get all the files"  You have NO idea how much I am resisting sending him this:

So, after that, I decide that I'm hungry as all hell since I slept for gawdamn forever.  I go downstairs to the convenience-eatery-cafeteria amalgam type place to get a simple bagel and cream cheese.  That's all.  Just a quick in and out so I could scurry back up to the ninth floor and continue my fury of catching up.  I go up to the counter and see the little penny pinching Korean that I have mentioned several times before.  I am to the right side of his peripheral vision, but somehow he doesn't see me.  I tap my foot.  No reaction.  I sniff loudly.  Nothing.  I clear my throat.  He starts hiking his pants up to his nipples.  I jiggle the change in my pocket.  He IMMEDIATELY turns to me, lets go of his nipple belt, and acknowledges me with "How I help you?!"  :-|

Bagel finally in hand, I head for the elevator.  I get on.  Just as the doors are about to close, a boney manicured little hand swoops in at the last second to open the doors back up.  Bitch, really?  There are three other elevators.  Really?!  I am also stunned that the doors didn't crush her fragile anorexic hand.  The doors open, and she looks off in the distance and shouts in true woo-girl style "Tiffany!  HAAAAY gurl!  How you doing?!"  She holds the door this whole time waiting for her waifish friend to board the increasingly late elevator while I sit there with my bagel that is getting colder by the second.  Her friend finally boards the Two Twigs and a Fattie express.  Guess what floor they went to?  No, really.  Guess.  I'll wait.  This is an easy one.  This is what they just HAD to hold the elevator up for this entire time...

Two.

Yes, the second mutha fuggin' floor.  It would've taken a LOT less time for everyone involved if those bitches just took the stairs.  Well, if their twiggy little legs don't snap under the pressure in the process and send their heavy bobble heads over the edge.  Oh, that thought gave me a warm fuzzy.  ^_^

Two?!  Are you friggin' KIDDING me?!  >_<

*eats cold bagel*

~(UPDATE)~

Brad:  There is no hole in my bagel at all... looks like an asshole... is that like a Jewish four leaf clover? o_0

Stacy:  LMFAO ROTF!

Brad:  I am SO calling assholes "Jewish Four Leaf Clovers" from now on.

Stacy:  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Brad:  I dunno if I am hungry or turned on...

Stacy:  Every Jew's greatest dilemma; hungry or horny.

~(RELATED SIDE UPDATE {yes, I just made that a thing})~

Dear Rude Walking Teeth and Hair,

Next time you might wanna think about the ramifications of spraying your designer knock-off, stank nasty, candy ass, Willy Wonka, tween wannabe whorefume on a closed elevator with other people, because next time I ride the elevator with you, when the doors open, I WILL kick you out to your floor... which, BTW, once again, was TWO! Just couldn't wait the whole ten second ride without needing a spritz of Rapist Attractant, could ya?!