Jesse McDaniel

You know how sometimes you don't sometimes see people for months or years and then one day something comes over you and you have to know where they are right that very moment? I finally wondered where Jesse McDaniel had gotten off to so I called up the boys' father and asked him. What kind of response do I get?

"Hell, Jesse died back last fall."

Now why in the hell don't people ever tell me these things? Everyone knows I don't read the paper, don't look at the weather and don't watch the news so it's very important that someone calls and lets me know if I need to put on a coat, check to see if my Malt-o-meal cereal is being recalled, or buy a dress for a funeral. My best friend always calls me with weather updates and gas price reports and very rarely does she forget to keep me up to date. But other people are falling down on the job.

And really, I'm rather sad about the whole thing because Jesse was his own person and not one of those people you ever forget. I met him 10 years or so ago at the old Huddle House on 441 North. And maybe a random Huddle House doesn't seem like a big deal, but this was the Huddle House and there was always somewhere there I knew. It's where I went for grease to soak up the alcohol when I got plastered and it's where I spent a lot of time with the boys' father before they closed it down. It was old as hell with orange laminate tables, fake wood benches, chipped floor tiles and horrible, horrible greasy dark brown paneling straight from awesome 1972. God. I miss it.

Jesse was always there. He was a veteran of some war, though I can't ever remember which one - maybe Korea. Sometimes he lived at the Veteran's Home, but I guess sometimes he got tired of putting up with other people's rules and shit because he'd leave and rent a room at the New Milledgeville Motel, this little shit dive, right next to the Huddle House.

When he stayed at the Motel, he was in the Huddle House three or four times a day for tea and dinner, or bullshitting and companionship. He wore these ancient old overalls, brogans and had liver spots on his head but no hair. If you ever met him, you never forgot him. At times, he'd talk and talk and you'd have no idea what in the hell he was talking about because the pitch of his voice was so odd at times. Everybody at the HH knew him and everybody tended to him.

Whenever he saw me, he'd pull lint-covered pieces of candy from his overall pockets and say, "Give this to RAINey!" and shove candy in my hand for my daughter. Double Bubble bubble gum or now & laters. Whatever he had on him at the time. He always remembered to give me candy for Rain, although I don't think he ever realized or remembered their kinship. He was Rain's great uncle on her father's side. Maybe he did remember, I don't know.

My Huddle House closed almost seven years ago. People went in for dinner early one evening and the employees were sitting in front of the locked door wondering why no one had bothered to tell them they weren't going to have jobs. Everybody wondered what Jesse would do now because the Huddle House was his home away from the Veteran's Home. Folks fretted about who would look after him and worried about him walking up and down the main dragstrip looking for a new place to bullshit and get tea. Not everyone was going to appreciate a rheumy-eyed, overalled old man with lint-covered candy in his pocket.

I don't know where he went after that. The Huddle House was closed and their was never another grease joint that felt greasy and icky enough with paneled walls to appropriately be called a grease joint. Maybe he went to the new Waffle House across the street, but it seemed more like he roamed from one place to the next. He'd walk to Kroger or Walmart. No place was ever the same as the Huddle House. The last time I saw him, I was walking into Kroger with my youngest and there he was on the sidewalk.

"You tell John SoandSo I said I'm waiting on my hogleg! I need me a hogleg to take care of these hoodlums!" he said.

The boys' father (John SoandSo) had been promising Jesse a hogleg (a long barreled gun) for months. I think it was a bit of quandary for John. Everyone worried about Jesse walking up and down the highway by himself, but it was a more worrisome thing to give a crotchedy old veteran a gun to wield at hoodlums. John gave Jesse a lot of rides over the last few years to try and keep him off the highway.

I told Jesse I'd get on to John about that hogleg for him. Then he asked me,"Where's RAINey?" and I told him she was at school. He reached into those endless overall pockets and pulled out a couple of pieces of lint-covered candy. "Here, give her this candy." I took the candy and stuck it in my pocket.

Jesse passed with hardly a ripple through this town, but there should have been.

KAR slams the poetry

Revel in the oddness of my very first ever "slam poem." Please excuse the shoddy sound. I am but a poor, humble writer devoid of adequate funding. Since there is a bit of static in the background, I've included the poem on this post for you.

I’m not jealous of Freud’s penis
Freud was a dick
I’m not jealous of any man with a penis
because dicked people look crazy
naked Crazy with kibbles and bits hanging off
like a funny afterthought

I’m not jealous of the
masculine testosterone WCW John Fucking Wayne NASCAR drive
to conquer and deliver forth a world of
Fighting gamecocks

I’m not jealous
I’m frigging pissed off

I’m frigging pissed
because I can’t wave my labia around like a
Kamikaze windmill
I can’t get raving piss drunk and piss my name
in the dirt I can’t piss standing up but always
just in my shoe
I don’t get to aim and hit the bull's eye

When I was four years old I tried to pee standing up
because it seemed so much
easier so I got naked
And straddled the toilet backwards ass to the door
and I pissed down my leg

I’m not jealous

I’m pissed because I have to wait in line
to urinate

I recently celebrated my third 30th birthday

In homage of my first 30th birthday, I pulled up an old post of mine from a certain parenting message board. My friends and I went on a drinking rampage for my first 30th and I came back home and attempted to relay the details of the day while still under the influence under some twelve shots. The day began with a commitment ceremony of two ladies I know at the AA center. It is an interesting read if you like drunken posts. I am too old to drink like that now. It took me days to get over the copious amounts of alcohol after I posted this. (Names edited to protect the dastardly.)

went to a lesbian wedding this afternoon. very bootiful. at the aa center. they met at aa.. my mom and i were the only non aa peopke there. one of the groomsmen or something wore brogans with his suitl. little disturbing. combination ghetto redneck wedding. very interesting. had a full dinner at at the wedding. fruits. vegetiable. cornbread. shrimp. chicken. salmon patties. collard. rootabagas. cake. punchj. )(nonalchoholic punch.)

dn't like the bride. known the brood grime or whatever for years. very sweet lady. bride bride wore a traditional wedding dress. bridegroom or whatever wore a nice blue suit, been to redneck weddings. been to g hetto wedding.s never been to a redneck g hetto wedding at the aa. very sweet. i evejavascript:checklength(document.vbform);
[check message length]ned teared u7p. i don't cry. so it was a very sweet wedding at the aa center. they met at the aa. They didn't do hor deversses. I am drunk. fuck foff. Thjey didn't do hor doevres. They did a full fucking dinenr. fruits. vegetables. collars. green beans. rootabagas. black eyed peas. potaota chips. n on alchoholic beverages. I'm still full from attedning the wedding.

went to the bar for my 30th birthdat. don't want to do that no mopre. I think I had ten shots of somethning. maybe 11. strange people kept byying my drinks. took me 7 times to sign on here. met some weird gyy. met lots of weird= peopel. people. in this weird town are fucking weird. the band sucked. i zm 30. I am 30 met some guy named tommy who bought me two shots of jack. tommh's stepdad was a presbyterian preacher. I forget what happened to his real dad. maybe he was heaten by pure whit ewolves. tommy was 23 before he ghot laide. what the hell? I think he has one of those big holes in this ears. he freaked me the hell out. but he bought drinks.

then io got to meet goerge who should be marrried to my friend tammy and i may have told them so. nopt sure aabout what i said. do know that i kept telling alica to shove a cue ball up her soon to be ex husbands assa. maybe two and a pool stick.

the band scukec. i have the hiccups. imy oldest freidn (of over 25 years) is having an affrair with a married man. I think I told her he was a balless fuck. Her ex husband and her nephew awas there. It was really weird seeing her nephew there. Ir emember when he used to waer diapers. i am old. oooooolllddd.

I questioned sme other guy about our shared parenting segment of psychology 101 in 1994. My first (rain's father) owe's a really cute tall guy 2000 dollars. I have to remember to tell him that. Too bad the really cut e tall guy has a fuckign girlfriend.

My best best best friend took very good care of me. riding in a car with yar eye's closed and complety drunk is ddizzyng. I had toast and water at the huddle house. am goijnt to bed now. dom't want to do this driniking thinkg anymore.


Saw lots of old friends i have not seen in a while becaus I was always busy. realized how much i miss them. want to see more of them. but not when i'm drunk. the band sucked ass. closed the bar down.

kearning nto to laugh at fat peole dressed in skinny peole clothes. laughed at fraeky looking people then it turned out i knew them and then tey bought me drinks for my birthday.

don't want to be drunk no more. gong to bed. i cried a little at the lesbian wedding. tina is suvh a sweet lady. used to see her all the time when i worke dat the convenience sotre. when i was abougt 14 or so. used to confuse me because i thought she was a cute little man but kept thinking she looked like she had boobs or something. took me over a year to figure out the cute little man was a woman. going to bed now. no drink no more.

Stolen from Venus.

Here’s how it works:
1. Go to www.photobucket.com
2. Type in your answer to the question in the “search” box
3. Use only the first page
4. Insert the picture into your Blog

1. What is your relationship status?



2. What is your current mood?


3. Who is your favorite band/artist?


4. What is your favorite movie?


5. What kind of pet do you have?


6. Where do you live?


7. Where do you work?


8. What do you look like?



9. What do you drive?


10. What did you do last night?



11. What is your favorite TV show?


12. Describe yourself.


13. What are you doing today?


14. What is your name?


15. What is your favorite candy?

So apparently my dream of being the Swiss Family Robinson is bullshit.

I took all of my children to Lowe's a couple of weeks ago and we picked out all kinds of vegetable seeds, herbs and flowers in homage to my sudden raging desire to make something grow. This happens almost every spring. The sudden urge to plant and become productive, to create sustenance from dirt and sunlight overwhelms me and I come up with huge, wonderful, awesome ideas for herb gardens, vegetable gardens, day lilies and fruit orchards. (Don't ask me where the fruit orchard would go, I live on a third of an acre. But it's a great idea.)

This is actually the first time in several years I've tried planting anything. I've been in school working my way toward a job that will allow me to pay off my massive student loans and between that and children and children in school and children randomly puking from the top of the bunkbed, it's been a bit hectic. I held back on that deep, instinctive nature to play in dirt.

It is for the best as my gardening abilities are not really abilities so much as depraved and sadistic activities. I've killed nearly everything I touch and was dubbed The Dark Gardener by a concerned family member when I was still a teen.

But this year finally caught me. My children are older. My goth girl is 13. The boys are 6 and 5. I'm a senior now and I thought they would be more interested in gardening. I am also suffering with an insane case of senioritis. I don't wanna play with words anymore. I want to pump gas for a living or dig ditches. I want to grow things. It became plainly apparent to me one Sunday that the best way to foster a sense of family unity while simultaneously ignoring my homework was to plant a massive garden.

As we speak, I have successfully transplanted the sunflowers to the front yard and they are still green. I did kill a hydrangea a few days before. The hydrangea, though, was on clearance and already looking a little green around the gills so its demise is not entirely my fault. Now, I have watermelon, hot peppers, bell peppers, chives, mint, pole beans, cow peas, lavendar, oregano and a strawberry bush all growing up very nicely in their little greenhouse thingies. I don't even know where I'm going to put all this stuff. Maybe I'll borrow a bit of the neighbor's yard.

The problem though (besides buying more plants than I have yard) is my secret desire. Picking out the plants and the lawn cultivator and the cheap frigging garden rake that does not stay all in one piece I had such wonderful dreams of being a loving little single parent family unit. My daughter would divest herself of the Robert Smith eyeliner and we'd wear cute little matching sunhats with gingham ribbon as we talked about her day at school over the watermelon patch. My boys would gamble about in their cute little buster browns and perfectly coifed hair with the little wave in the front, pulling weeds willy nilly while exlaiming over the size of the tomatoes. Okay, so maybe it's a little too cheesy for my tastes, but my point is we'd radiate love, happiness and togetherness. We would be A UNIT.

I think the neighbors have been blowing their pot smoke through my bathroom vents because I was obviously out of my mind. I should have known to leave Lowe's without spending the money. One stomped because I wouldn't by the Venus flytrap. Another kept climbing up on the plant tables and jumping off. And the other developed a random one-time bout of diarrhea right before we were ready to check out.

It was all downhill from there. My UNIT dissolved into whining messes. I made the mistake of only buying one garden rake and everyone wanted to use the garden rake. No one wanted to actually touch the dirt and the whining reached a crescendo when my oldest informed me I was so unfair and no one was making me dig up the yard and no one made me clean house and no one made me cook, I did it because I wanted to and it was unfair for me to make her dig up the front yard.

Oh, my poor little Orphan Annie. I sent her to her room until they found a cure for puberty.

So now I have all these damned sprouting things in my house and only a third of my back yard dug up. My kids think it's the hokiest thing ever. I'm left out there all alone while they run around the yard with the neighbor kids and I festered over my inability to create unity. What the hell it is about me that cause such disjointed behavior is beyond me. Maybe it's the hair. I've never successfully pulled off one cohesive thing in my life. My plants always die. My children act like war combatants, demanding and vying to be heard over everybody else until I hide in the closet with a key lime pie and pretend it's all perfectly normal. My cars . . . you know what. I'm not even going to talk about my cars. That's a whole can of worms that should be discussed in therapy. Unless it can be put together with duct tape, I'm apparently incapable of pulling it together. Maybe I should just duct tape my plants to the ground.

But I have discovered one thing. When I stopped trying to involve my children in the gardening to create the perfect White Trash Stepford unit and stopped grousing because they whined, I discovered it was quiet. Apparently the best way to get my children to ignore me is to stand in the yard with a lawn aerator and a garden rake. For the first time in countless years, I was left virtually alone for an hour while they played with the neighbor kids.

As I step-punched-twisted holes across the back yard, I thought about my capstone portfolio due in two months and I wasn't quite so hysterical about it. I could begin to feel the form and the ending of my brilliant masterpiece that will be the bulk of the portfolio. That little freak in my head who runs around with her hands ripping out her hair while declaring the apocalypse was upon us went somewhere. Maybe she took a nap or went looking for the rest of the key lime pie. (HA! I ate it! nyeah nyeah!) And even though my hands were starting to blister, I kept going across the yard because I was calm. I had my hands in something and somehow it gave my ideas a shape and a feel.

I didn't want the peace to go away so I ignored the dishes in the sink and the clothes in the washing machine and the obvious fact my five year old was slowly divesting himself of his clothing in the back yard. We had sandwiches for dinner because it was late when I finally went back in the house.

My thesis leader dude has been telling me to breathe for three months now. Every time I saw him, my whole being was in an uproar and I was absolutely sure I was on the verge of an aneurysm or a stroke. (The facial tics may be more indicative of a stroke.) And he kept saying to me, "Just breathe. Take a walk and breathe." Of course, being the nutbag I am, I only nodded at him like it all made perfect sense and then ran to the bathroom so I could rant by myself:

"Breathe?! Breathe?! I don't have fucking time to breathe. I'll breathe in May after grades are distributed. But there is no breathing now! No time for breathing! What crunchy hippy granola zen goddamned bullshit. I don't need to breathe. I need someone to tell me what to do."

So I've been directly ignoring everything everyone has said for months and drowning in my own hysterical melodrama. Then I haphazardly set out to plant a garden in this random stab at creating this family idea that I keep seeing around town. HOW does my middle son's teacher manage to walk out the door with three triplet boys and they are all wearing shoes, socks and presumably underwear and they sit so quietly in public? What is she doing? Bribery? Duct tape? Nyquil? So far, I've failed miserably in creating a garden of togetherness. But someone should remind me to tell Stephen I've started breathing again.

Church Wrasslin

The best of everything. Church. Wrasslin. Getting saved and getting piledrived all in one building. Words cannot express my enraptured joy. It's like chicken and waffles. Cheese and pecan pie. Sheer marketing genius. The Lord and speedos. I am complete.

A random rough draft from Schott's

Foremost, I absolutely must recommend Schott's Miscellany to all random information lovers. This is a random poem created around a one of Oscar Wilde's droll quips. It's not anything special. I particularly like it because it was a clear step outside of my general first person view.

Displaced Housewife

He hadn’t a single redeeming vice
No divine and decadent lust for life
Never a nip or a tuck or roving eye -
But her devious dreams weren’t so nice

What virtuous valor – really he was
Holding his counsel, holding the cause
Stoic and sad when she burned her bras.
She - hell bent to breathe, never gave pause

Looking ahead, she left him behind
Took with a man who screwed her blind
She screamed with joy – she was alive
While he sat at home and gave just a sigh