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09/28/04 10:58 p.m.

My sis, Eartha, she of the supremely talented writin' and picture-takin' genes, talked me into submitting a couple of poems to this year's Nashville Scene competition.

And you know what, it feels good to be back in the fray. Granted, it was embarrassing to look back and realize that a poem I feel like I wrote a couple of months back happens to be three years old and the one that seems only a little older was written six years ago. Shameful. I have notes and notes in a folder, of ideas that I wanted to get to, and I've just never gotten to them. Poem ideas. Short story ideas. Essay ideas. You name it, I have notes. I've just let myself get out of the groove of actually producing anything other than music reviews, and to tell the truth, those are beginning to feel like a bigger and bigger weight around my neck.

So what now? Well, I'm about to sit down and continue the new trend. It felt good to do something truly creative, even if it was just editing some old scratchings. I think I'll sit down and produce something new, or at least take one of those drafts from way back and see if I can turn it into something.

Not that I have any dreams of grandeur, but I can be OK with words when I want to be, and that may be my only way to ever get out of Working for the Man.

As for the contest? No way in Hell I'll win or even place, but at least my stuff's out there now. When the winners are announced and those poems are free to submit again, I'll have the envelope ready for sending them out somewhere else.

Productivity. Coolness.

09/27/04 1:01 a.m.

Something you don't expect to hear at an estate sale in Belton, SC:

"They said I had an illegal 'gator. But it's like I told 'em, 'If I thought my 'gator was illegal, I sure wouldn't be keeping it in the pond out in front of the house!'"

09/20/04 10:40 p.m.

M and I decided to make an offer on a house today. After much deliberation and a second visit to our first choice, we walked over to the real estate agent's office and attempted to seal our fate. Our main concern with the place is that the owner is keeping a forty-foot patch off the right side of the lot, so that he can -- should he ever need to -- carve a driveway to the back of his twelve acres that would be behind us. He claims that he has no plans for the place, although I believe he'd be willing to have it cut to sell the timber. At any rate, we factored this into our offering price and sat down at the negotiating table.

Steely eyed negotiators, we're not. We'd already talked ourselves out of following my sister's sound advice to get a buyer's agent, because we felt good about this lady and felt like we had a "code of honor" type of agreement with her, since she'd spent a whole day showing us houses. The exchange went something like this:

Agent: OK, you can't shock me. What do you want to offer?

Us: <Amount>

Agent: He's not going to take that. But at least you're starting out better than the last folks.

Us: Ummm....

Agent: OK, how about this? I'm not allowed by law to tell you a price that he'll accept, but just start going up in increments and I'll tell you when you get there (translation: here's the rod; hook yourself and reel yourself on in!)

Us: Um, OK ... <Amount + small increment)>

Agent: No, keep going.

Us: <Amount + slightly larger increment>

Agent: Let me check the numbers (easily translated into car-dealer speak of "Let me check with the manager"). <punching numbers on her calculator). No, not yet!

Us: This <amount + slightly larger increment> is as high as we're willing to go. That whole issue with the 40-foot access road really raises a lot of questions.

Agent: That's understandable. <Punching numbers> Hmmmm...it's close. I'll submit it to him.

So yeah, we got played, but I have to say that we got played gently and by a courteous master. In the end, we ended up making an offer that we were comfortable with, but were placed face-to-face with the fact that we won't be deposing Kissinger as artists of the deal anytime soon.

So we'll see what happens. If the owner refuses it, we'll walk; we're at the top of our price comfort level on this particular place anyway. It's not our dream home, but an awful nice one that we can see serving our needs for a few years. If we have to, we can certainly find another place similar to it. If we get it, that's great, too.

09/15/04 11:58 p.m.

Mix CD madness! A new creation from the House of Tea: Hidden Tattoos!

09/15/04 -11:41 p.m.

The house hunt began today, as M and I are finally sick and tired of driving at least 45 minutes to work every morning and then doing it again at the end of the day. So we looked up a couple of places and called up a realtor.

The best place on the list is a little 4-acre plot out in the country, about halfway between here and work. It's immaculately kept and the house is in perfect shape. Neither of us are terribly excited that it's a '70s ranch house but on the other hand, I think we both feel we're up to answering the ultimate unanswerable question: "Is it possible to bring personality to a '70s ranch house?" We're going out again on Friday, and will presumably make a bid on this low-slung little slice of hermit heaven.

We looked at some other places, each of which had their odd points. The best looking house was an old '30s two-story deal, with a ton of character. Too bad they'd just built a toll-road interstate right in front of it. Not only that, but the massive toll booth, which the realtor told us stayed lit all night, towered right in front of the house. The house had a tree farm behind it, but the tree farm had just been sold, so the chances of something unpleasant and industrial being built on its plowed-under tree-farm bones was pretty likely.

My favorite, though, came in the form of a ranch house sitting on seven acres, at a very attractive price. It also would have allowed us to live with "the fair folk" -- by which I don't mean fairies, but honest-to-god carnies. We turned onto the road and saw this massive plot of land just covered with fairground rides and vehicles either in storage or in various states of repair. There in the middle of it were a couple of tattooed carnival folk building a brush fire for no discernible reason. As we wound down the road, it got tighter and tighter, and the trailers got more plentiful and run-down. I thought to myself, "I'll bet surly, bitter clowns live there."  By the time we got to the end of the road, what was probably not a bad little ranch house sat at the end like the sad little lord of all it surveyed. Kinda the opposite of the spooky house at the end of the cul-de-sac overlooking the pastel neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands. I told M later, "the only way I'd buy that house is if I could buy every lot on the entire road and God gave me access to at least one cleansing fire."

There was even a really odd contemporary stab at a Japanese feel in one really run-down home. I hope someone grabs that one and can bring it back up. It was intriguing, but way too much work.

We only had time to look at a few, but we had printouts of others, including a few obvious money traps that were really tempting me. A 2500-square foot Victorian on 2 acres? You say it's been on the market for two years? It's scared everyone else away? Ooooh, tempting...

All in all, it looks like the house hunt will go pretty easily. We've found a good one early, so the chances of more stories are slim. Not at all like Eartha's past hunts, which yielded tales of manacles on earthen basement walls; doody floating in toilets under bare, dying 40-watt bulbs; and god knows what else. Plus a couple of hauntings.

09/02/04 11:47 p.m.

You go, girl!

09/02/04 11:06 p.m.

Fear and Loathing from the Couch

Have caught bits and pieces of the Republican convention, and it only confirmed what I already knew: the current administration is the most mean-spirited, spiteful, falsehood-spewing, land-scarring, reputation-raping bunch of miscreants I've seen in office in my lifetime.

Lesson learned: never come home feeling bad and full of bad attitude and turn on the Republican convention. Things aren't going to get any better.

You had Zell Miller making his bid for "Not your father's Pat Buchanan. This one's angrier and scarier." You had Dick Cheney snarling his way through a litany of fake smiles that proved he has not an ounce of joy in his entire Halliburton-hugging body, and you had Arnold giving what seems like a good speech when you hear it, but when you walk away, you think, "Too bad the Republican party he described hasn't existed in about thirty years."

I'll lay it on the line. I think the current administration intentionally misled the public about the threat posed by Iraq, I think they've committed treason in revealing the name of a government operative, I think they've done everything they can to reverse every major environmental protection of the last twenty years short of personally smothering baby spotted owls in their sleep, and I think George Bush is a clever card-shark who knew to surround himself with his daddy's cronies, but who has all the intellectual curiosity of your basic lichen or fungus. I think they suck, I think they've abused their positions, and I think it's time to fire them.

And the Democrats couldn't find anyone better than Kerry, at a time when the political environment is ripe for sending Bush back to the ranch? It's sad, really. Kerry's better than Bush, but he's just so ... uninspiring. I don't buy into any of this flip-flop nonsense other than I would for any other politician. But issues do typically have more than one side, and it doesn't do Bush any good in my eyes to say he means what he says and he says what he means when he's JUST WRONG.

I also resent the fact that they've fostered this attitude that if you say anything against them, you're somehow un-American. Maybe they need to go back to grade school Civics class and get a refresher on how this whole bleedin' country got started to begin with.

For some pretty sad reading, check out McSweeney's Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush.

Sigh.