Thankful It’s Almost Over

Ugh. Too dried out and gritty.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This year I am thankful for the end of the Bush adminstration, a general feeling of teh Hope, and the mental image of Ann Coulter sucking a turkey through a bendy straw (although after all of the neocon fellating she has done over the years, shouldn’t be a problem for her).

I am also thankful for my wonderful Stinquers, who made it possible to keep me from slitting my wrists in the run up to Nov. 4. I look forward to another great year.

Thanks all – let us make sure to all toast each other today (as many times as needed to make the family seem bearable).

@homofascist: Let me echo that. DOn’t know how I would have survived this election without y’all. And having my online community has been such a solace for the loneliness of being in a new place with no RL friends close by. Cheers to you all!

I’m thankful for all of you, and I’m thankful for this outlet for my sometimes unhinged venting.

And I’m also thankful I’m not a Lions fan … is anybody watching this? Oy.

@blogenfreude:
I started watching the game but switched. I am finding more drama and suspense in the Macy’s parade.

Could you pass an of eardrumstick please? Hold the brain stuffing. It looks a little overcooked.

@String Bikini Theory: re: brainstuffing – and there’s not much of it.

Listening to the annual noon airing of “Alice’s Restaurant” on KFOG while having pre-trip to in-laws cocktails. It is now officially Thanksgiving.

And as Ewalda and StringBikini can attest, the best part of Thanksgiving in San Francisco is that the Dungeness crabs have arrived.

May FSM, Community Organizer in the Sky, St. Francis watch over all of you and your loved ones! Thanks for keeping me relatively sane in the past year or two.

@String Bikini Theory and blogenfreude: There’s a dog show on NBC.

@SanFranLefty: Can’t take my eyes off the Lions … first the auto industry, now this. Those poor Detroiters. Can’t they even pull it off on Thanksgiving at home? GAAAHHH!

My cousin was killed Wednesday in Santa Fe by a drunk driver, a D.C. lobbyist and former counsel to McCain and Tom Udall. One of Richardson’s security guys was a passenger of the guy who hit him.

Attorney Held in Fatal Hit and Run

@redmanlaw: Oh my … what to say? Just my best to you and your family … here’s hoping you all get through.

@redmanlaw: Thanks, B.

@redmanlaw: Still, it’s not enough. My girlfriend flies halfway around the world four or five times a year, and I’m often terrified that the plane will go down. Car accidents? Feh – in Manhattan we take cabs only when we have to (or when the client is paying). I am always saddened when I hear about a death caused by someone who climbs behind the wheel drunk, tired, whatever. Even in SF you can call a cab and get your car the next morning. A plane goes down – maybe it was something stupid, or more than likely it could not be helped by those flying the plane – equipment failure, whatever. Automobiles? Usually it’s somebody doing something incredibly fucking stupid. So easy to avoid – and that’s what makes me weep.

@redmanlaw: Oh, Jesus, RML I am so very sorry. His poor children. I hope this doesn’t become some sort of political cover-up, especially given the state trooper in the passenger seat. What a douchebag to not even stop. I hope that everyone on the pueblo is coming together for your family.

@homofascist: I second that emotion.

@redmanlaw: That absolutely sucks and I am so sorry.

I am thankful for you guys, who never make fun of me for not being as smart as you, and who are a big reason I am glad I have Internet.

i am so so sorry redman. what can we say? today is the anniversary of my sister’s death. we go on, somehow.

i wanted to say happy bird to everyone, and enjoy the toxic families.
and how very very THANKFUL i am today for this merry band who i’ve leaned on for support in my soap opera life. like marble pillars.
i love you goofs so much.

hey, improvement. i’m at least lurking a little. our rabbi/den mother lefty has pulled that feat off, so here i am. i am living in a nightmare.
a lifetime movie drama.
and do we have gossip for after dark? oy vey.
the best scandal yet not involving a wetsuit.

if lefty would, because she’s so concise and relatively normal, maybe she can write a comment to fill you in on some details…….SHOCKING.
i can’t relive these facts yet.

i’ll know i’m back when i’m here babbling everyday.
til then, the clocks have stopped, says w.h.auden.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! i love and am so thankful to you all. baked

@redmanlaw:
Sorry to hear that news. Seen this too many times (and one is too many)

@baked:
Nice to see you baked. Don’t be a stranger.

Unlike most of you, as a citizen of Canada City I’m still working.

@redmanlaw: I am so sorry to hear about your loss RML. We just had our family dinner and paid tribute to those we have lost over the years (including my cousin this year). I hope that you and your family find comfort with each other.

@redmanlaw: I am so terribly sorry, RML. My deepest sympathies to your family.

@redmanlaw: Sorry, man.

@redmanlaw: RML, I am so sorry to hear this. This is horrible.

@redmanlaw: I’m so sorry to hear this. I wish you long life.

@redmanlaw: That is terrible news. Please accept my heartfelt condolences. (and like Benedick, I wish you long life)

Thanks everyone for your kind wishes. My cousin Willie was buried this morning per his tribal custom. He was well loved in the community as well as within the family.

@redmanlaw: te extiendo mi pesame, hermano.

And to the rest of you, big heaps of thanks for keeping me sane these last 18 months.

So sorry RML. No words. Just sympathy and condolences, sadness.

@baked: I’m not going to try to sum it all up in a comment for you. This is your life and your story and you should tell it as you feel you can. Like I suggested in the notes in the back of class, you should ask Nojo if you can host a very special Stinque after Darque. I am so sorry for what you’re going through, and you have a posse ready to go to T&C and cut the Rat Bastard. As for your sister, dear baked, I hope that you are at a point where the happy memories of your sister outweigh the sorrow.

@redmanlaw: Besos and abrazos to you. I hope that you all sent him off in style, and had lots of good stories to tell about him.

Oh, and I’m home from the in-laws, drinking a martini and watching my Horns CRUSH the Aggies.

@redmanlaw: I’ve always thought that immortality is what you leave in the memories of others. His time was cut short, but it sounds like he made the most of it.

Stinkers must all be full of tryptyophan, snoozing. I am alone, I can anything I want, run around naked singing “Dancing Queen,” whatever.

Tomorrow, taking DudeManBro (what I call my boy) to DC, he wants to see the memorials more than anything, and is excited that the hotel has an indoor pool. Gonna go to JFK’s grave, never been, and to watch the Old Guard at the Tomb of the unknown. The boy wants to see the WWII memorial, and good, my Dad fought in that war. You won’t see me till Saturday night.

Thanksgiving dinner, I boned a turkey, removed all the bones except the lower leg and wings, with only one cut along the back, then I brined it for 18 hours, he stuffed it with 2 duck breasts, so it was a Turduck, and stuffing, italian sausage and the usual, but flavored with spanish smoked paprika, then sewed it shut. Long slow covered cooking, came out moist and very very tender, no knives necessary. Pan gravy.

Candied yams, but candied with thai sweet chili sauce. Individual spinach timbales. Mashed potatoes, with butter and cream, fluffy idahos, mashed till light and airy and just touched with the cream and butter, light. Roasted cauliflower.

RML, your very much in my thoughts.

Fucking world, Mumbai terrorism is a horror, threat for tomorrow, its all so fucked up. Hug your loved ones, everyone.

@nojo: For me the only comfort is knowing we will all die. RML’s cousin is not alone, he just went sooner than we did to where we will all go. We are all one in the face of death. And considering the universe is 14 billion years old, and we live 70, 80 years at most, there’s not a lot of difference between a 45 year life and an 80 year life, if the years of your life are good years, you can live more in 5 or 10 years than some live in 90. But we will all go someday, and in the face of that, aren’t we all brothers and sisters, and knowing that, you can accept the death of others, we are all on the same path, just at different points on the path at different times.

My son was born one floor down in the same small hospital from where my father died 3 years later. Birth, life, death, like they said at the beginning of Ben Casey.

@Promnight: Have a fabulous time in DC w/ prommie jr. If it’s not too cold or raining, make yourselves walk from Abe to the Capitol. I used to jog it in college for training for my team sport, and it really takes your breath away to go block after block and say “Holy Shit, is that _____[insert DC landmark]______?” There’s a cool statue on 20th and Constitution that prommie jr. can climb on, if Abe is being guarded by the park service.

Have a wonderful time – it’s a really cool place that if you’re in the mood can strip away your cynicism. Or add cynicism if you’re not in the mood.

@SanFranLefty: “if you’re in the mood can strip away your cynicism” = the Lincoln Memorial at night.

@Promnight: Also RFK’s grave, and the final resting place of the bravest lawyer who ever lived, Thurgood Marshall.

I’m re-watching for the 600th time my DVD of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” thus revealing that I truly am a softie and not a cynic, because I sob like a baby everytime I watch the movie. If I ever have a daughter I will name her Zuzu, in case you’re all wondering. Yes, I am a sap. At least when it comes to Jimmy Stewart movies.

@Dodgerblue: And my first son or first male dog, which ever comes first, will be named Thurgood. An attorney friend of mine in Texas has two cats named Atticus and Thurgood. I always said, “Why waste those names on cats when you can use them on kids?”

She is the mother of three daughters, though.

BTW, for all teh gheyz, don’t you love that the cab driver and cop in the movie are Bert and Ernie?

@Dodgerblue: I forget who mentioned the recent New Yorker cover, but that drawing of the Lincoln Memorial at night with the logo’s O serving as the moon (and Obama) is really elegant.

That said, aside from two or three visits to Manhattan, the East Coast is totally foreign to me — I’ve rarely been more than an hour from the Pacific Ocean. America to me is I-5, border to border. (I-5 passes through Eugene where I grew up, through Seattle where my grandparents lived, and it’s about a hundred yards from my front porch in Sandy Eggo.) My life has been spent not where America was born, but where it ran out of room. The East Coast has always been the Old Country to me, my own private Europe, mired in its past.

Which is what I find so fascinating about Southern California in general, and San Diego in particular: there is no past here, at least for us European mongrels. There is no future here, either — it’s all an eternal present. Hellish to contemplate at first, this unmoored land. And then you watch your first Hal-narrated slow-speed helicopter chase, and you’re hooked on the existential void of it all.

Then again, Hal’s gone now. And thus history begins.

@SanFranLefty: I design alumni publications for a law school to help pay the rent, and a few years back we did a feature on movie posters collected by a professor there. (RML knows which one.) It was strongly brought to my attention that To Kill a Mockingbird needed to be highlighted, since it was so inspirational to a certain generation of lawyers. And that’s how I became aware of the cultural role of Atticus Finch.

@nojo: I should post some pictures of my old Savage ammunition boxes with the Indian head on them.

@SanFranLefty: Mrs RML and I started naming kids on our second date. Son of RML is named Joaquin because (a) it’s traditional and cultural and (b) it’s hard to make fun of. The boy is Keen to his buddies.

@Promnight: I met his relative GuyManDude. Thanks again for the good thoughts. /lifts wine glass

@baked, beesco, Stinquers: You guys almost got me in tears 2-3 times today. Your thoughts today and in general mean a lot to me.

James Bond marathon on scifi. “The World is Not Enough” Garbage

@redmanlaw: My deepest sympathy on the untimely passing of your cousin.

In the past week we’ve buried both my wife’s uncle and my aunt. Both enjoyed long lives but there’s still a serious sense of loss. Within the same week we’ve attended our youngest grandson’s baptism and met my cousin’s lovely new wife. There’s definitely a sense of simultaneous endings and beginnings.

@Dave H: Thank you for your thoughts and I’m sorry to hear about your family members as well. This was also our first Thanksgiving without Mrs RML’s stepdad, who died in December last year. (His photo was in the Turkey Jam last week).

The driver’s arraignment on a vehicular homicide charge is on Monday. I’ll be there to support the family’s comments on the bond amount and conditions of release if applicable. The driver left the scene of the accident, has a home and business out of state in D.C. and family outside of the U.S., is facing two felonies, possibilty of reoffense if released in town so I’d argue he’s a flight risk, a threat to public safety and that bond should be set at 200-250 k cash only. I bet the judge cuts it to 100 with 10 percent in cash, the rest posted by a surety, w/slightly inconvenient conditions of release.

@SanFranLefty: Do you mean the statue at the National Academy of Sciences? (I can’t tell if you’re trying to keep its identity a secret.) If so, that is a fun one to climb on.

@mellbell: Yes I mean that one. I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret, I couldn’t remember which building it is next to. I guess I could say who the statue is of, but that would be a fun surprise for Prommie (if he’s checking Stinque remotely).

@redmanlaw: I am so very sorry, RML.

@baked: I know you miss her dearly. I’m so very sorry, Baked.

@Dave H: Oh, my. I am so very sorry, Dave H.

I wish I had something truly comforting to say. I’m giving you all a great big hug and thinking about you and what you’re going through.

@redmanlaw: Good luck at the arraignment. Also ask that if he does make bail, that he can’t leave the state and he’s on electronic monitoring. It’s worth a shot.

What’s going to happen to the state trooper in the passenger seat? Can he be charged with leaving the scene of an accident and failure to render aid? At the very least I would hope that he’s going to lose his job over this.

@SanFranLefty: Good ideas on keeping track of the Def. As for the state police officer, they are looking at charging him with failure to render aid, and also why city cops let him go at the scene instead of arresting him. We’re thinking the Gov and the State Police are going to throw the officer under the bus to avoid/minimize any effect on Richardson.

@redmanlaw: I’m so, so sorry for your family and community’s loss. You’re in my thoughts and prayers.

This, plus the horrificly stupid death of the Wal-mart worker in NY, plus thoughts of my great aunt who passed away last month of a completely baffling cause (skin cancer that began in her…wait for it…rectum) has me confronting the total arbitrariness of life and death and feeling moribundly fatalistic on this post-holiday day. I guess Prom has it right that you just need to make the most of your time, get out and take a walk on a sunny day, tell your loved ones how much you appreciate them, and hold your mortality lightly and with a sense of humor. On that note, I’m going to get out of my pjs now and get ready for the day, so I can take a nice long walk around the (free) Lincoln Park zoo and conservatory, knowing full well I may slip as I’m getting out of the shower and be found dead (and naked) 4-5 days from now. Um, actually, if I don’t post here again in the next day or so, could you call somebody? Kthnksbai!

@baked: Tonight I went to a performance of Giselle, midway through which a royal hunting party, complete with dogs, comes upon Giselle’s village, and what kind of dogs should they be but Russian Wolfhounds. I immediately thought of you and Sergio, and hoped that you both were offering the support the other might need right now.