For Edward Lahey, my grandfather

If there is one regret I have, it is his absence from my life.

There is no beauty in the image of the starving artist, let me tell you. There is no elegance in the tragic life and death of an underappreciated poet, and those who go in search of some kind of meaning in that are fools who have never seen such a thing first-hand. These people who romanticize the idea of being a tortured creative genius have never felt the pain inflicted on the family of sad genius. But there is a kind of magnificence in the kind of artist who suffers as he had and still makes art of it.

I don’t intend to glamorize his life in any way, because it’s not my place to do so. I never knew him on a personal level, not in the same way my mother, my aunt, or even my sister knew him. I didn’t have much of a relationship with him, and while maybe some of that is based in the lack of opportunities I had to be with him, it’s mostly my fault. It’s mostly because I viewed him as being old, and frail, and a broken person who was not worth my time. I was in the pig-headedness of youth, and some strange person with whom I’d had little personal contact was the furthest of my interests. He wrote me letters, and to some I may or may not have responded, but the vast majority were read and put away.

In my defense, I kept every letter he wrote me, so maybe that counts for something. I’m not sure why I kept them; perhaps it was easier to keep them to throw them away, but I think it’s more likely that I kept them to have some proof that he was in my life. He was in my life, even if it was merely in words written on paper.

I do not remember the sound of his voice. I do not even remember just how tall he was, or when I saw him last. I don’t remember the last time I spoke to him. I remember only snippets of the times we visited him, and even these are too abstract to place chronologically- there was a carousel one time, there was a stream with a foot-bridge over it another. I only have a handful of gifts from him, and of these I don’t particularly remember when I actually received them.

The way I know him is the way I would like to think he would prefer to be remembered. I know him because I know his writing. I know the cadence of his language, his choices of vocabulary. His writing speaks a kind of poetry that is not flowery or weak; it is concise and speaks in the voice of a real person, someone who sees the exquisite detail of the world, but trusts that the reader to see it, too. His writing is sensitive, and it is crude. It is a full-bodied range of emotions which few writers ever manage.

I would like to think this is a trait we share. I would like to think that when I write, I write as he wrote, with an exactness that leaves a certain amount of detail up to the reader. I would never claim to know him the way others knew him, but I would claim to know him in a way others did not. I think that writing for some people, for people like him, and like me, is not just a hobby, or a talent, but an extension of the brain. I write when I am upset, when I’m happy, when I’m angry or insecure, and my writing reflects my emotions in ways I could never convey any other way. I think that this is how I knew Edward Lahey- when there was no way to describe something in person, there was always a way to write it. Even if I didn’t speak to him, his writing spoke to me. His life was a hard one, and that shows through in his writing, but what shows through more was that it was a life. Behind those words, there was a person with thoughts and feelings. While I may not have appreciated him as a common person, I appreciate him for his writing, and for the unique artist that he was. It pains me to think that there are no more words that he will write. I don’t write to speak for him, but I certainly write because of him. I write because I was inspired in his manner of recording the world he saw. His view of the place he called home will be missed, and it will never be replaced.

Dads

So I'm reading Bossypants, by Tina Fey, and it is hysterically funny.

Normally, I don't go out and buy memoirs of celebrities because chances are good that it was written by someone other than the celebrity, but Tina Fey is a writer. Not to mention, there was a plethora of great reviews for the book. And I would like to think of myself as having the same kind of strange, sarcastic sense of humor as Tina Fey. So I bought her book, and I'm reading it like reading's going out of style.

She has a chapter about her father, Don Fey, and the kind of man he is. According to Tina Fey, her father was a pensive, deliberate kind of man who took shit from no one but did it in a good-natured enough way that people tended to be impressed by him.

Her description of her father, of his viewing everything as defective if he has to read the instruction manual, of his strings of well-chosen curse words when something goes wrong, and of his general attitude, reminded me (with a pang of homesickness) of my own father.

My father, of course, has some definite differences from Don Fey. My father, for example, cracks highly inappropriate, often semi-politically-incorrect jokes that make my mother say, "Michael!", make my sister blush and groan, and make me roar with laughter. My dad believes in DIY projects, and has a colorful array of swear words seemingly set aside just for those occasions. My dad is tough, not in the "military-father" kind of tough but the "oh-ten-below-zero-isn't-that-cold" kind of tough. He's the kind of gun owner who is extremely responsible about being gun owner (which kind of tends to be rare). His version of hunting does not involve ATVs; it involves hiking a billion miles up a nearly-vertical slope to get his elk, and when he does, he's going to carry that fucker out and harvest everything he can, by god. When I was a kid, and we'd be in the car going somewhere, I'd ask him to tell me things about the pioneers, and about wolves, and about everything else I could think of. And he usually came up with some pretty good responses.

One time, when I was in junior high, my friend and I were followed home by some strange guy. My friend, god love him, chased the fucker off when we reached my house. When my dad got wind of it, though, we got into his car and drove around the adjacent neighborhoods. My father was going to find that creeper, god damn it. I wasn't sure what scared me more; the idea of being followed by some strange man, or what my dad was going to do to that strange man.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, we didn't find him. But that was one of those teaching lessons where I really understood that my dad was a very nice person who took shit from no one.

It is from my father that I learned you do not have to beat people up to prove you're not one to be messed with. I've never had to beat anyone up in my life, never thrown so much as a punch, because I learned that as long as you have the right sort of attitude, people will respect you. My father isn't a violent person, not any more violent than I am. I've never seen him physically harm anyone. This aside, people tend to be impressed by him. Not because he has gun rack in the living room, or a tattoo across his chest that says "Badass." (In fact, it is from him that I got a deep fer of needles) He doesn't act like a kid because he's afraid people won't notice, he does it because that's who he is. He's comfortable being who he is, and he doesn't act like he's got something to prove. He has nothing to prove. The rest of the world needs to prove their worth to him.

And these are the attitudes that I have adopted, for better or for worse. I love the outdoors. I have a knife collection, and I'm comfortable around guns. I'm proud of being one tough bitch, and like my dad, I'm tough because that's who I am, not because I'm trying to make myself feel better.

I love my whole family, and my mom has done just as much for me as my dad has. But in reading that chapter about a father who knew who he was, I was reminded of my own father who knows who he is. And it's my father who made me the man I am today.

Where's That Birth Certificate?

What s it with this "birther" crap?

I mean, seriously, how is there even an argument? How can anyone question whether or not Obama has a birth certificate? Even if he wasn't born on American soil, his mother was an American citizen. Therefore, even if he was born on Mars, Barack Obama is an American by birth. The end.

But that's the problem. It's not the end. Some still demand that he has to produce a birth certificate every time anyone wants to see it.

The funny part is that I'm pretty sure no one wanted to see George's certificate. No one asked to see McCain's, and he wasn't even born in the US. He was born in Panama. His parents were Americans, though, so he was an American. No one wanted to see Mitt Romney's. No one cared to even see Sarah's, and she's GOT to be an alien.

The truth is that this push to see everybody's birth certificate is racism. It's easier to believe someone's American, apparently, if their skin has a low melanin content. People will insist that isn't what's going on, but I'm inclined to think they've got their heads so far up their asses that it's getting hard to breathe.

In Arizona, and now in Utah, you can be asked by police to produce a birth certificate if you're pulled over. If you don't have that document, you get to spend some time in the hospitality of the state.

My guess is that there aren't going to be very many Caucasians being locked up as a result of that, but here's the catch; the probably don't carry around their birth certificates, either. I certainly don't. I'm fairly sure it's still in Idaho. But I'm citizen. I was born here. My parents were born here. Some ancestor or another has been born here since before this was an ctual country that handed out birth certificates. I'm pretty proud of that, and even if your parents were off-the-bot, you're just as much of a citizen as I am.

To make things even more adorable, someone had apparently proposed that we pass a law saying the citizenship of candidates must be verified before they can run for president. I find this fascinating, and I propose we pass a law stating that all representatives shall be forced at gunpoint to read the entire Constitution before taking office. You see, if they had, they would know those clever founders have already put that bit about citizenship in there. Somehow, though, I'm pretty sure they all already know about that. I think they just want to reassure the logically-challenged teabaggers out there that they're taking Donald Trump very seriously.

We have seen this pathetic xenophobia in one form or another since some well-dressed men signed the Constitution. This too, I am confident, shall pass, if only so that we can begin to be blatantly horrible to a new minority. Because discrimination is, after all, the American Way.

Is It Really Rotting Our Brains?

I think television-watching statistics are silly.

I think this because I watch a ton of television- at least, the telly is on all the time. But I guess I don't really watch it. I write. I read the news. I read the forty-five thousand blogs to which I subscribe. I watch You-Boob videos. I read a book. I read the SLC Weekly. I screw around on Facebook. I play Solitaire. I go wander through the magical muck that is the internet. I write blogs.

I don't just watch television. I'm not sure how anyone just watches television. There are people out there who just watch television, I'm sure, but there are all kinds of people out there. There are people who read dictionaries. There are people who think Donald Trump would make a decent president. Like I said, there are all kinds of people out there.

(If you are the sort of person who can just sit and watch television and not get bored, I do not apologize. I merely offer the humble suggestion that you need a hobby.)

So when I hear stuff like "people are watching more television than ever," I cannot help but wonder about that. If by watch they mean leave it on so the room isn't too quiet, then sure, I buy it. But if they mean there are hoards of people out there who just sit and watch the boob-tube without doing anything productive, then I feel our species may be headed in an awkward direction.

Then there's all the crap on television- and I'm not talking about the actual shows. People choose to watch the shows. The commercials are what make me batshit crazy. I hate commercials. Between those goddamn toilet-paper bears to the fucking flowery tampon ads, they all make me nearly homicidal. I mean, seriously, someone has taken the "does a bear shit in the woods" question way too far. And red flowers for maxi pads? Really? Did y'all think of that gem all by yourselves?

And then there are the "corn sugar" commercials. Fricking corn interest groups. I mean, we produce around 40% of the world's corn. It's easy to grow, and thus everybody has a cornfield. Because of this, the people representing corn farmers have a lot of clout politically. Why else would we be using corn to produce ethanol? It's one of the lowest-yielding energy sources we have available (soybean and hemp seed are exponentially ore efficient).

Now they have all these commercials talking about high fructose corn syrup. They want us to call it "corn sugar," apparently. Because, you know, sugar is sugar.

I have news for them. They probably already know this, too, which makes it worse- not all sugar is created equal. Fructose and glucose(regular sugar) are not the same. Your body can convert fructose to glucose, but it won't do that unless there is no glucose anywhere else in you (highly unlikely). More likely is that fructose gets converted into fatty acids, and (basically) into fat. Glucose does a hell of a lot more for you than just that. Thus, fructose isn't glucose, you corn-molesting media whores.

I just hate the amount of blatant misinformation floating around out there. Not only is it disrespectful, it's harmful, and it should be illegal. When I am ruler of the universe, there will be no obnoxious commercials. They will all be creative, informative, and none of them will have "sugar is sugar" shit.

But I need to go and watch a bridal dress show. And by watch, I mean write another ten pages.

New Computer

The hardest part of getting a new computer is getting to know it.

I don't care what people say; computers have their on personalities. Not personalities in the human sense- I would not imagine they prefer green beans to broccoli, or that they have a favorite color. But I do believe that no two computers are the same.

My last computer was a fairly reliable little workhorse. I wrote more than one entire novel on it, and it worked well. This was until about four months ago, when it stopped turning on its screen. The display might come up after four or five tries, but i was clear there was something wrong. I took it in over spring break, only to find out that not only was it unfixable, but it was going to get worse. They told me that, in all probability, there would be a point when it would not come back on, ever again.

I ended up ordering a new computer, one that is a better, more powerful computer than my old one. It's great, and I like Window Seven as opposed to Vista, but it's not my old computer. We were friends, and this new computer, while being an awesome piece of technology, is a stranger.

The keyboard is laid out differently, and what's more, it has a different sensitivity. I get onto the internet and look for a bookmark, only to remember that it's not on this PC. It feels different than my old computer.

Which is not to say I had none of these problems with my last computer. I thought nothing would replace my old PC, because even though it was an antique, it was my friend. I'd really learned how to use a computer on that one. And so, now, even though I love my old laptop and I ordered a new one begrudgingly, I like this one, too.

In one of Tom Robbins' books, he talks bout using a new typewriter to write the book, and regarding it as being inadequate for the story he's writing. I guess I know that feeling- as I write on this new computer, I continuously argue with it and curse it under my breath for leaving out an A or putting in one too many Os. I spend just as much time fixing the mistakes as I do writing, and it's annoying.

I used to handwrite most everything, but since my tendons have begun to fail me, I've come to rely on my computer. Having a computer die on me is like being evicted, and even if the new home is better, younger, and shinier, the stove's not where it's supposed to be. There aren't as many electrical outlets in the living room as yo're used to having. Eventually, you get used to where the stove is, and you buy some extension cords. You start to appreciate it for what it is.

I loved my last computer, and I know I'll love this one, but getting to know it is a real pain.

So you'll hve to forgive any typos I make; it's me and my new computer building a relationship.