Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: We're Back!

If you have been a reader of this little slice of the Internet, you know that there are a couple of things that I like.  Well, boobs, yes, and they usually travel in a pair, so good job.  You aced the pop quiz.  Nicely done.

The other things I like are explosions and doing stuff around the house that makes me feel all handy and manly and rawr, I want to feel some boobs now.

This story begins on Valentine's Day. I was preparing to take a shower ere heading off to the grocery to get something to cook for dinner.  I turned the water on and left it run so that I could climb in and enjoy the warmth of the wet water running down my tortured and aching muscles.  However, when I stuck my hand in to check the temperature, it was like feeling ice pelting down on me. 

There's some kind of Eskimo fetish
going on out there...apparently

Huh.

So, I let it run for a little while longer.  Still cold.  Then I turned on the sink's hot water faucet.  Call Manny and Sid, cause we got another Ice Age on our hands.

At which point, I uttered many a swear word, almost all of them beginning with "fuck."

Fortunately, I have a brother who is a plumber and an electrician.  Unfortunately, my brother the plumber and electrician lives four states and approximately 13 hours away.  Fortunately, there is this website called Facebook, where you can stalk your old high school crushes AND ask your handyman siblings for assistance when needed. 

He told me to press the reset button.  Reset button?  I didn't know there was such a thing.

There is.  It's usually hidden under the top panel and it's big and bright red and you can't miss it, even if you think you can.  You will immediately hear the water heater switch on, too, upon pressing it.  Neat.  Sexy AND informative, this blog.

So, I crawled into the darkened depths of the crawlspace and pressed the reset button.  Everything was Jim Dandy, Hunky Dory...for about 36 hours.  On Tuesday, I had to reset the water heater four or five times.  All the mind-numbing cold water pouring out of the shower...numbed...my mind...and so I lost count.  But it was definitely a whole number and it was more than three and less than seventy five.

Anyway, I decided to act.  Coming home early on Wednesday afternoon, I drained the water heater and rushed off to buy a replacement kit for the water heater elements--those things which do the yeoman's work of heating the water in the tank.  It set me back about $40.  Not a problem.  The problem was, though, that I began to worry just a bit, because in order to heat all that water inside the tank, it requires electricity.  A LOT of electricity.  So, I was fearful of electrocuting myself under the house with no one around to notice that the lights went dim for a few moments and that the lovely smell coming from under the floorboards was not dinner, but it was, instead, roast Dad.

Precisely what I was trying
to avoid doing...

Spoilers:  I'm savvy enough to have found the correct switch to throw on the breaker box, AND I double-checked the flow of electricity through the machine.  Multiple times. There was none.  Cool.  Let's do this.

Switching out elements on a water heater is actually fairly easy.  I'm here to attest to this.  For real.  It took me all of fifteen minutes to get the top element switched out.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I was going to get this done in an hour and a half (an hour of the project being the draining and the shutting off of power) and we would have hot water by dinner time.

Eh, not so fast, my friend.

The bottom element...was a bitch.  To put it kindly.  I sliced the living hell out of my knuckles trying to get the beast to move.  I laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it.  Nothing.  It would not move.

After two hours, I decided to call in professional help.  Enter Kevin, the friendly guy from Roto-Rooter some national chain who laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it, nothing.  He even put a hex nut head on the element and stood on the wrench.  It. Would. Not. Budge.

Well, fuck me running. 

There's a little back story to fill in here, as well:  the water heater was easily 30 years old.  I'm shocked that it lasted this long.  It was not up to code, and since I'm looking to sell this money pit house in the near-ish future, I made the decision to get a new water heater installed.  Again, I relied on the professional.  Mostly because there was a SECOND fear lurking in the back of my mind while dealing with maintenance on a water heater.  Namely, that it would build up pressure and burst, shooting through my house like a rocket.

Seem far-fetched?  Again, not so fast, my friend.



I know I give Mythbusters some shit for their "scientific" claims for all their experiments, but there is some serious proof in the pudding here.  That video should set you up with another video to watch from Mythbusters where they destroy a small house by having a water heater shoot THROUGH the entire structure.  It's pretty impressive.  For real.  Watch it.

Science

Oh...the explanation.  Right!  When the pressure builds up inside the inner chamber of the water heater, the water begins to get really pissed off.  It wants to expand, to turn to steam, something--anything!--to relieve that pressure (which is why there is a pressure release valve on water heaters).  These water heaters are engineered to release out the bottom in just such a scenario (rather than rupturing and shooting shrapnel everywhere, which is actually a lot worse than what you just watched), which unfortunately turns them into rockets.  Rockets that fly 500 feet in the air, gushing superhot water, but rockets nonetheless.

Ah, science!

So, not only was I glad to not have electrocuted myself, but I also am glad that I had the professional install the water heater so that it was up to code AND installed correctly.  Even if my $40 fix-it-yourself project suddenly turned into something that cost over $1000.  I'm up to code, and there's nothing firing off through the two floors of my house and the roof.

Oh, and the showers?  Yeah, they're nice and hot now.  And I don't have to crawl under the house in order to press the reset button on the water heater.  Now I can save all that energy for pushing better, more sexy buttons.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that means, either.

Felix Dies Natalis, Roma!!!

I keep meaning to tell you about my new life, but, hahahahahahahahahahaha, whatevs.  I'll get to it eventually.

The one thing that has struck me as strange is that I picked up a new follower, though I can't identify who the noob is.  I find this remarkable because I've been staring at the same 107 pictures and names for the past year or so, and then someone new pops up and confuses me.  Regardless, welcome to the fold, my new friend.  I hope you're not scared away by the word "vagina."

The reason for not telling you about the "exciting changes" in my life today, however, is that we have a very important birthday to celebrate today:  Rome's.  That's right, the Eternal City was founded on April 21st, 753 BC.  In Roman terms, this was year 0 AUC, which stands for ab urbe condita, or "from the founding of the City."  It was a Roman demarcation of time, which makes sense.  The Romans didn't give much of a shit about what happened before their majestic home and city was founded.

They didn't give much of a shit, not because they were proud (well, okay, they were a little full of themselves), but because the place where Rome currently sits was a majestic slophole of a swamp prior to Romulus cracking his brother over the head with a spade and then breaking ground on his new home.  A slophole, I might add, that was inhabited by a bunch of fucking savages--like a town in New Jersey with a Quick Stop.

You've heard about the Seven Hills, right?  The Seven Hills are the seven hills (duh) surrounding the Tiber river on which the city of Rome was built.  The ancient Romans chose to live on those hills because the valley was an insufferable bog rife with malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and the lowland wasn't really all that habitable until the Cloaca Maxima (or, "largest sewer") was constructed.  Even then, in the beginning, it was more for draining the lowlands and may not have been the best at removing waste from the city itself.  It took subsequent improvements on the sewer system to make it more effective.  In the beginning, it was still open the atmosphere around, so mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects could still breed in the water that was being transported away.

It's kind of strange to think about how far we've come in 2700 years...

Romulus went on to become the first king of Rome.  We don't know who his parents were, because he was found in the wild and suckled by a she-wolf until he became a man, along with his twin brother, Remus.  I mean, his real parents.  Romulus and Remus were the offspring of a Vestal Virgin and Mars, the Roman god of war (and, originally, agriculture).  However, Virgil, while writing the Aeneid, was able to link Romulus and Remus (they're a package set, until it became king-making time) to the hero Aeneas, who fled the burning city of Troy after Odysseus et al. snuck into the city and ended the war.  You remember that, right?  Big wooden badger horse and all?  Good.

Aeneas, after doing his own tour of the Mediterranean world--including plowing Dido, Queen of Carthage--went on to become one of the people who helped found Rome.  After plowing Dido's fields for a while (figuratively, as Carthage didn't have a lot of agricultural lands), Dido wanted a little more commitment, and Aeneas said, "Pax, ex sum!"  He then crossed the Mediterranean from north Africa to the boot of Italy.  There, he met a cat named Evander who told Aeneas where a great place to found a great city was.  That place, naturally, was the Seven Hills (and nasty swamp).

So, here we are, celebrating Rome's birthday, with three possible founders.  Incidentally, Evander was a Greek who fled the southern part of Greece and settled with his many followers on one of the hills of Rome--the Palantine Hill, if you must know.  It is from here that we get the word "palace."  When Evander was showing Aeneas around, he probably said something like, "See, this is my hill.  You go over there and settle on one of those other six hills.  Capisce?"  He totally said that, because it's Italian, and when in the place where Rome will eventually be founded, do as the people who will eventually become Roman do.  Er, yeah.

This is what the founding of Rome most likely was:  an accumulation and aggregation of the tribes that lived on the seven hills under one crown, the king being Romulus.  From there, with the city founded, they went on to war with the surrounding tribes, including the Latins (from whom the Romans stole a language), the Sabines (from whom the Romans stole women), and the Etruscans (from whom the Romans stole a peninsula).

So, in your post-Easter ham coma, and before we start planting trees on Earth Day tomorrow, if you're feeling like you need a reason to celebrate, why not take a moment to wish Rome a happy 2767th birthday.  Darling, you look marvelous, not a day over 2500, if I do say so, myself.

Wednesday Morning Latin Lesson?

I was planning on re-emerging from my bloggery hibernation period on Friday, which just so happens to coincide St. Valentine's Day with Friday, which is the traditional date of all things Latin Lesson-y.  However, a wrench has been thrown into my plans, so I decided to go ahead and post something today.  You're welcome.  My sudden popping out of the slumbering hole can be linked to the impending doom heralded by the slow, yet ferociously fierce arrival of Winter Storm Pax.

Wait just a minute.  Winter Storm...Pax?

A large, fierce system of moisture and air just cold enough to freeze water is moving across the southern plains of the United States right now, as we speak.  Er, type.  Er, read.  Whatever, you get the picture.  With said wintery system--which has been deemed to have the potential to be 'catastrophic' by CNN, among other major news outlets--forecasters have predicted dangerous conditions for travel as well as large swaths of the American Southeast to go dark from power outages.  There will be deaths on the roads from auto accidents and there will be deaths in peoples homes from carbon monoxide poisoning brought on by improper ventilation while running their generators.  There will be people getting frostbite and suffering from exposure, there will be people who are chilled in their homes without power, and there may even be heart attacks and strain injuries from shoveling snow.

All of this paints anything but a peaceful picture.

However, the braintrust over at the Weather Channel has dubbed this particular weather system "Pax."  In case you're unfamiliar with the fuckwittery that goes on at the Weather Channel, a couple of years ago they came up with the notion to name "winter storms" in the same way that we name hurricanes.  Granted, there was no rhyme or reason behind the method to their idiocy madness; anything that spits snow is a winter storm now.  Also, for some strange reason, they decided to pull a mixture of historic names and obscure mythological entities for their list of names; all of this had a heavy Greco-Roman bias to it--except for Orko.  We all know that Orko comes from He-Man and Eternia lore, not from some obscure Iberian weather deity that barely has a registry in the Encyclopedia of Mythology.

All this aside, for 'p' this year, they chose "Pax."

Pax, as you may have guessed from the title of the this blog entry (you're so clever, you), comes to us by way of Latin.  Pax is a third declension noun (you can tell by the -x on the end of the word), which means that it probably entered into Latin via Greek.  If you've attended a Catholic Mass, or you're familiar with hymns, you've come across pax or one of its other forms in the line dona nobis pacem, which means "grant us peace."

There are two other flavors of pax that have appeared in English over the years.  One of them is the phrase Pax Romana, which describes the roughly two hundred year period of peace within the Roman Empire after our boy Augustus took power and thus ended the Roman Republic.  Pax Romana brought peace and prosperity to the people of Rome, and for those two centuries--minus the end of Nero's reign which led to the Year of Four Emperors--Rome was basically without internal strife.  No civil wars, no great rebellions by conquered people, no piracy along the coasts or across the Mediterranean, just wonderful, blissful, ever-loving Roman peace.  Yes, there were still foreign wars, but the Empire had ceased its indefatigable expansion and now focused on protecting their borders and their people.  For a couple hundred years, it was good to be Roman.

The other flavor of pax that you might have encountered is Pax Christi, which means "the peace of Christ" and it has its origins in Pax Romana...er...sorta.  Pax Christi was an attempt in 1945 to help normalize relations between France and Germany after WWII.  The notion was that the two largely Christian nations should try to emulate the teachings of Christ so that they could work together moving forward and avoid these types of conflagrations again.  You know, war, invasion, death...those kind of things that Jesus was pretty much against.  From there, the notion that people live a peaceful life based on the teachings of Christ really took hold in the churches--both Catholic and Protestant--and so Pax Christi has become a thing where Christians attempt to better emulate the lessons Jesus passed along to his followers.  Novel concept, I know.

So, clearly, it makes sense that a dangerous, potentially 'catastrophic' winter storm would garner the name "Pax" as it leaves frozen roads, closed schools and businesses, wrecked cars, and dead bodies in its wake.  Way to pick 'em, Weather Channel!

For reference, other weather outlets such as NOAA have largely dismissed the notion of naming winter storms, describing the practice as silly and potentially dangerous.  This is pretty much just a Weather Channel thing, though the supplicants at Time Warner Cable (another group of people renowned for their brilliance) have thrown their support in with the Weather Channel.  I guess this means the practice won't go away anytime soon, no matter how many people make fun of them.  If so, I hope they think a couple of moments before grabbing any old Latin word out of the lexicon in order to name their storm.  Next time, might I suggest "Pugnax."

Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol. CVIII

April was an exciting month in the life of Emperor Caracalla.  Oh, you weren't familiar with Caracalla?  He was Roman Emperor from 198 to 217, part of the Severine dynasty.  To give you the short history of Caracalla, he was a dick.  Don't believe me?  Just ask his brother, Geta, with whom he co-ruled the Empire after their father, Septimius Severus Snape died.  That is, until Caracalla had Geta murdered in 211.

Caracalla was born on April 4, 188, in Lugdunum (which we call "Lyon" nowadays) and was saddled with the name Lucius Septimius Bassianus.  There we go with the names ending in "-anus" once again.  Understandably, ol' Low Asshole (rough translation) changed his name to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Caesar to better connect with former, greater emperors, Marcus Aurelius and a couple of the Caesars.

The name Caracalla?  Oh, I'm glad you asked.  He earned it because he went everywhere wearing a cloak with a hood.  It was a bit of local fashion among the Gauls, and when Caracalla became Emperor, the fashion really took off.  Kind of like a Ronald Reagan jelly bean theme or a Bill Clinton saxophone motif. 

Caracalla was a military man, which was important for two reasons:  one, commanding the army (and having their support) went far when trying to stake a claim to the throne in Rome.  Just ask Geta.  You know, if he wasn't murdered by his brother's goons.  The second reason it was important was that it helped him keep the throne after he won it.  It also was nice that his soldiers decided that they would also wear caracallae, thus helping make the garment popular.

Caracalla gave a finger to the traditional look of an Emperor, wearing his hair and beard in traditional short, military fashion.  Also, most of his depictions showed him scowling; Caracalla wasn't going to take your shit.  He was one of the first Emperors who didn't try to beautify his image, and it showed.  Oh boy, did it show.  Diocletian is usually the first name on list of megalomaniacal asshole Emperors, but Caracalla was near the top.  Thousands died in the persecutions under Caracalla, mostly for supporting his brother Geta's claim to the throne.  Or for just pissing him off.

The boys had been sparring on-and-off for years about co-rulership of the Empire, so their mother, Julia Domna, arranged to have her sons get together, sit down, and work things out.  Caracalla did, sort of.  He ordered those members of the Praetorian Guard loyal to him to kill his brother.  Geta ended up dying in Julia Domna's arms.  Classy, Caracalla.  He then ordered the military to slaughter anyone who supported his brother's claim to the throne, pretty much ending all threat to his rule.

Caracalla then claimed that he killed Geta in self-defense, the old "he's coming right at me!" defense.  The people of Alexandria did not quite believe the Emperor, and thus produced a satirical play about the subject.  Caracalla, who didn't have time for your shit, was unamused and, when 20,000 citizens of Alexandria came out to welcome him to the city, Caracalla had them slaughtered.

For all that, Caracalla also did some good things.  His big thing, the thing that he might best be remembered for, the thing that almost absolves him of the boorish dickishness was known as the Edict of Caracalla.  In it, he extended the rights of citizenship to every free man and woman (this was a big deal) in the Empire.  Previously, citizenship had been granted only to those who lived in Rome and was extended out to cover the Italian peninsula.  Caracalla thumbed his nose once more at tradition and extended citizenship to anyone living within the borders of the Roman Empire.

Caracalla is also known for construction of one of the last major public works in Rome:  the Baths of Caracalla.  Covering a sprawling 33 acres, the baths were one of the few to also include a public library with rooms for reading in both Greek and Latin; two palaestrae or gyms for practicing boxing and wrestling; a row of shops; a dedicated swimming pool open to the sky and featuring bronze mirrors to warm the water; and several large gardens for bathers to stroll in after they finished splashing about in the heated waters of the baths.  It was all open to the public; an estimated 1600 bathers could be accommodated at one time at the Baths.

Though this might seem like an exceedingly generous thing to do, it was one of the ways that Caracalla kept his enemies at bay.  He taxed the rich families heavily in order to provide for these public works.  After killing Geta, Caracalla took the army and began moving around the northern and eastern provinces of the Empire, demanding more money from the rich families to support his army's movements.  He also levied heavy taxes in order to pay for meaningless temples, palaces, baths and other such constructs in these outlying provinces.

However, the Baths were his most famous and lasting works.  They are still a popular tourist attraction in Rome today, and there is written evidence that the Baths were used well into the 19th century in Rome, though they had to be rebuilt a few times thanks to the ravages of time, earthquakes and the odd band of savages moving through the area.

Seems fitting that we should honor Caracalla with today's Latin phrase:

Balineo utimur!
Pronounced:  "Ba-lynn-aye-oh oo-tee-myur!"

Um...yeah.  Hovertext.

I mentioned April being a big month for Caracalla.  Well, the always-friendly and terribly-tactful Caracalla had been offered a marriage proposal with a Parthian bride that would bring about peace between Rome and neighboring Parthia.  In true Caracalla fashion, he went through with the sham of a wedding and then had the bride and all the guests put to death. 

Damn.  Red Wedding, anyone?

The Parthians, none too pleased about this, threatened and then attacked Roman lands and so continued the Parthian War of Caracalla.  Satisfied with his handiwork, Caracalla mustered his soldiers and headed east, hellbent on finishing off the Parthian threat once and for all.  Many had thought or hoped that Caracalla's daddy, Septimius Severus Snape had ended the Parthian threat, but it turned out only he could keep the Parthians at bay.

On April 8, 217, while on the way toward the enemy capitol of Ctesiphon, Caracalla called a halt to the march and headed off to the side of the road to toss a whiz.  A man named Julius Martialis, pissed because Caracalla had killed his brother, went Inigo Montoya on the Emperor and killed him with a single sword-stroke while the Emperor was pissing.  There's a good chance that Caracalla died with his dick in his hand, the attack was so fast and so decisive.  The assassin was then shot through with an arrow ending his fifteen minutes of fame right then and there.

Conveniently, the chief of Caracalla's Praetorians was a man named Macrinius who, amazingly, succeeded Caracalla as Emperor.  Macrinius was Emperor for about a year before he, too, was assassinated.  No word on where his dick was when he died.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson: Vol. CV

Thank Gods it's the Day of Venus!  See what I did there?  A little bit of Latin/English bastardization!  It's brilliant, I tell you!

Fine.  Be that way.

Anyway, we're sliding down the back-half of February now as yesterday was the mid-point of our only four-week month.  There was something else that went on yesterday, too, but we've already covered that a few times in ye olde blogge.  Yes, I'm a shameless self-promoter.  Actually, I'm just backing up my claims with...well, not fact, since a lot of that was speculation.  So, yeah, shameless self-promotion it is!

The fifteenth of February, though, marked the final day of the Roman celebration of Lupercalia.  The Lupercalia was a three day festival, beginning February 13th and running until the 15th, in which the Romans honored the god Lupercus, sometimes identified with the (somewhat more recognizable) Faunus, who really resembled the Greek deity Pan.  Lupercus was the god who watched over shepherds.  More importantly, Lupercus stood in (and presumably helped protect) the cave where the twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf lupa when they were abandoned in the wild.  You might remember that Romulus grew up and later founded the city of Rome (after bashing his brother over the head with a shovel).

Incidentally, a slang word for "whore" in Latin is lupa...not a very loving remembrance for what could be considered the city's matriarch.

So...if we celebrate the Lupercalia in February, why is February not Luperary?

It all boils down to where the month falls on the Roman calendar.  This is the time of year when the world begins to emerge from its long winter slumber (the world here being the Mediterranean...when Minnesota conquers most of the known world, then we'll talk about when spring arrives).  As such, thoughts turn to planting of crops and birthing of babies, which all ties back to fertility.  Februus was a Roman god of purification, and in order to get the world ready for planting of crops, it was time for purification.  Februus is possibly linked to a much older purification and fertility rite, Februa, which was probably adopted in after the Romans conquered the Etruscans.

There is also a chance that Februus is tied to the Roman goddess Febria, who was the goddess of the fever.  The fever (also associated with malaria) was seen to be a sort of internal purification flame; if you survived it, your body was purged of whatever ills had caused the fever, and you were the stronger for it.  Remember, viruses were a couple of thousand years away from being known.

While we were busy celebrating the purification of the world and preparation for planting and birthing the spring clutches of agricultural animals, we might as well throw in human babies as well, right?  So, all of the celebrations about purifying the land and body were lumped in with the Lupercalia.  The final day of Lupcalia was recognized as the Februa.

Lupercalia involved young men of the city running around the city walls.  It wasn't a race so much as it was just a tradition.  All of the women of the city who were pregnant or who were hoping to be pregnant, or who might get pregnant, lined up along the streets and the course of the run, holding out their hands.  The youths running through the streets and around the walls struck the waiting ladies' hands with thongs made from the skin of the goats sacrificed in the name of Lupercus (because wolves like eating goats and sheep--get it!?!?).  This would then bless the women of Rome with ripe, fertile uteri, ready to be impregnated.  It was also to help ease the pain of childbirth and to make sure healthy babies were born, so it wasn't all just foreplay.

As Christianity took hold in the Empire, the Lupercalia was frowned upon (as were most pagan rituals); it was essentially phased out by the fourth century.  There is no real proof, but given the church's predilection toward placing "major" Christian feasts and holidays around popular pagan rituals, there is a chance that the Saint Valentine story was retconned so that he conveniently died during the middle of the Lupercalia.  Here, instead of celebrating a guy with furry goat legs, let us celebrate a man who may not have existed and who was martyred for performing these Christian weddings.  Killing goats, bad; beheading peaceful men, good.

As someone who grew up in northern climes, we didn't start thinking about such things as planting and such until much later in the year.  February was always pretty harsh--it was cold, snowy, and there was a lot of flu and colds going around.  Maybe, for the folks in the south, Februus and his prepping the land for planting season makes sense, but for those in the frigid north, Febria is more appropriate.

Either way, these days February usually invokes images of cold and snow, which provides a perfect backdrop for today's Latin lesson:

Quoniam figeo, tremo!

Pronounced:  "Kwo-nee-ahm fri-gay-oh, tray-moh!"

Shaky translation in the hovertext

As if on cue, the master prognosticators of the area have told us to be ready for snow over the weekend.   It's not supposed to be much, which means that the mass panic will be somewhere short of riotous stampedes in the street, but with minor bouts of teeth-gnashing and wailing.  Thank God no one has decided to name this "winter storm".  Regardless, stay safe, stay warm, and brew up an extra pot of coffee.  I might drop in for a visit.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol. CIV

August 23rd was not a good day in the history of the Roman Empire.

In a positive light, August 23rd was the day the Romans celebrated Vulcanalia, which honored the God Vulcan (associated with Hephaestus in Greek) because late August was the height of the hot and dry season.  Ask someone in the American west about fire risk or in the American Midwest about drought and you can understand why the Romans associated August with a deity who worked a forge and was generally symbolized by fire.  Though Vulcan was associated with Hephaestus, he was more of a fire god and was generally invoked--especially during this time of year--to prevent destructive fires from ruining crops, destroying forests and ravaging cities.

In the year 476, Rome was failing horribly.  On the throne was a sixteen-year-old boy who had been propped up by his father and seated as Emperor, an ineffectual lad named Romulus Augustulus (or just Romulus Augustus).  You might notice that his name is awfully precious:  Romulus being the twin brother who beat Remus over the head with a shovel and staked his claim as "founder" of Rome and Augustus (Augustulus means "least Augustus") being the first Emperor of Rome.  This kid was fated to do great things with a name like that!

Except, no.  Rome had already split at the time into East and West, the East thriving rather well in Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul.  The West had already seen the Franks, Vandals and various Goths sweep through and carve up large chunks of its territory for their petty kingdoms (all of this because they were running from the terror of the Huns, which forced all of the other "germanic" peoples west).  By the time Little Romulus' pappy had rebelled against the "rightful" western emperor--a bloke named Julius Nepos who fled to the East to save his skin--the Western Empire was in tatters.

Nepos was considered the proper Emperor by the rulers of the East--generals Zeno and Basiliscus who were fighting for the Eastern throne--but that didn't phase Little Romulus nor his father, Orestes.  However, neither Zeno nor Basiliscus were willing to commit any resources to ousting Romulus since they were busy fighting each other.  This left Nepos with no army to support his claim, and in Rome, when you had no army backing you, you really had no power.

Which is why the head of the foederati (soldiers who were not Roman citizens but who fought for Rome) decided to make his move.  Odoacer was a clever man and, seeing that the Eastern troops were busy, moved against the callow youth sitting on the Western throne.  His troops moved down into Italy and, as they began to capture more territory and exert more influence on the locals, his soldiers declared Odoacer Rex Italiae on August 23rd, 476.  This essentially sapped all of Romulus Augustulus' power as he no longer had the backing of any army, plus his now chief political rival did have troops willing to fight and die for him.

As the King of Italy, Odoacer moved to unite the disjointed bands of tribes living on the peninsula and, as a sign of his newfound power, began laying siege to the city of Ravenna.  Rome the city had been abandoned for some time by the rulers, who in stead had set up shop in Ravenna.  When the city fell, Romulus Augustulus was captured and the ruling power in the West all but collapsed.

At this same time Zeno was wrapping up conquest of the East.  After having fought a civil war in order to be named Emperor, Zeno was loathe to send troops into the West, especially not the save the hide of a child whom he did not particularly like, anyway.  With no army and no aid coming, Romulus Augustulus had no choice but to give up.

He did have one thing going for him:  youth and beauty.  Odoacer felt something akin to sorrow for the lad and must have liked his spunk enough because, rather than simply beheading him and being done with the whole ordeal, Odoacer allowed Romulus Augustulus to abdicate the throne.  As he did so, Romulus named Odoacer King of Italy.  Ever the polite politician, Odoacer allowed Romulus Augustulus to retire to the countryside with a hefty pension where Romulus Augustulus sort of...disappeared.  It's assumed that he lived at least another twenty five years or so since his name pops up on a legal document sometime around 500, but generally nothing else is ever heard from him since.  Hell, he could still be kicking around the hills of Campania for all we know.

The other thing that popped up on August 23rd--and this one is almost too coincidental to be anything other than ironic--is that Mount Vesuvius began its earthly rumbling and grumbling on August 23rd, 79 AD.  The people of Rome, who were in the midst of celebrating Vulcanalia to appease the god Vulcan who lived in a volcano (feel free to draw the connecting dots there) thought that Vulcan either wanted more lusty celebrations in his name or that he had decided to get in on the act himself.

And party hardy he did, too.  A day later, August 24th, 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted, destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum as it did so.  Noble, fat Pliny the Elder watched the whole thing and then died while trying to save people from the eruption.  If you want more story on that, feel free to read about it here.

I can't help but think that, during the orgy of wine and ass-sex that would have gone on in the depths of Vulcanalia, the forbidding orange glow of the volcano lighting the night, someone would have had some misgivings about the fiery mountain rumbling away in the background.  Pompeii was, at the time, the Roman equivalent of Las Vegas:  a place for the rich to go to fuck and party it up without guilt.  The brothels of Pompeii were some of the best-known in the Empire, and Pompeii was also one of the chief ports for the Italian peninsula, bringing in drink, whores and other narcotics from around the known world.  Despite all this, you'd think that someone would have looked up while they were plowing one of the choicest lupae (the Romans had lots of words for whore; "she-wolf" was one of them), seen the ominous fires of Vesuvius and thought to themselves, "that isn't right."

Or perhaps they'd turn to her and ask:

Sicut calidum est, neque hic est?

Pronounced:  "See-coot cah-lee-doom est, nay-kway hic est?"

Extremely hot translation in the hovertext

Fortunately for us in this part of the country, things haven't been as hot as it has been over the other parts of the summer.  In fact, they are forecasting that the Carolinas will be colder and snowier (dare to dream, fellaz) over the coming months.  I'm giddy with anticipation.  

Not so for other parts of the country, including the rain-starved midwest and the western regions which are mostly ablaze.  Take heart in one thing, friends, at least it's a dry heat.

TMI Thursday: In the Out Door

It is with a heavy heart that I share this story of misdeeds I've done with my dick. No, no...it's okay.  I'll make it through.  I just have to be strong.  Like bull.

Yesterday, my friend Nick became dead to me advanced his career, taking a different position with a different company. Since I'm a jealous asshole, I shall miss his presence here within the hallowed halls of my main job, though I am happy for him.  As Nick is a regular reader to this blog--as regular as you can get for something that never updates--I thought I would finally piece together the story that I promised back in the dog days of summer. It's called that because I was as hot as dog balls on thigh humping night.

I'm not sure what that means, either.

Anyway, this one is for Nick, who not only is far smarter than I, but is also far better looking. Not to mention he's been banned from nude beaches because the other bathers are terrified of the beached sea serpent that unfurls itself when Nick lays out on his towel. I'm not saying he's massive or anything, but he's better hung than the jury for Phil Spector's trial.

Enough about Nick's anaconda (as a note, it don't want none unless you got buns, hon!); we're here to read embarrassing stories about what I've done with my pecker. And it certainly is interested, even if you don't got buns. Hon.

When it comes to sexual encounters, I've certainly had a few. Unless, for some reason you're my mother reading this. In which case, please, continue lying to yourself and believe that I've only had two. Ever. And none of them were upstairs in my old bedroom. *shifty-eyed*

While my encounters are many, it seems that the greater number of sexual foibles and/or follies took place with She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named, otherwise known as Sheila the Buxom The Ex.

If you haven't met The Ex before, feel free to peruse old TMI Thursday posts, as she and her lovely breasts and perfect ass show up there quite often. I feel that, if I compliment her, even these many years after the fact, it will soften the blow should she someday discover several of her sexual misdeeds have been recorded in electronic media. Because it's not like that shit's forever or anything. Oh, internet, what would we do without you? THANK YOU, AL GORE!

Anyway, let's cut to the chase. One night after working at the old bookstore, I went over to the Ex-Fiancee's house. Instead of watching a movie or going out to eat, we decided to probe each other's bodies with parts of our own. This happened on a fairly regular basis. You'd think that, with all the food I wasn't eating, I would have been thinner. Hmm. Go fig.

We were back in her bedroom and I had just worked her out of her clothing and, admittedly, I was had removed my own garments. We were making out pretty hard, hands and lips were moving over every part of each other's bodies. I cupped her breasts, ran my hands down her sides and slipped my fingers between her thighs and into her. Once I felt she was ready, I kissed my way down to her nipples and trailed my lips and tongue down her body as I slipped off the bed. I nestled between her thighs and went to town. After thoroughly enjoying a bout of oral, I decided that I'd try to last as long as possible and just enter her while she was moist and ready.

As a taller man, one of my favorite ways to do the deed is to be standing at the edge of the bed, clasping her thighs, and thrusting into her while her ass is essentially hanging off the edge of the mattress. As I had just finished cunning her lingus, not only was she basking in a post-orgasmic bliss, but she was wet and lubricated and ready. I stood, pulled her willing thighs apart and entered her. Her green eyes flared open as she gasped, she started moaning, and I was off.

Being a gentleman, I started slow, letting her natural juices envelope and lubricate me (this is an important point, so pay attention; re-read that shit if you have to), but as time passed and I things became slicker with her body's essence, I began to lose myself.

It's also important to note that the Barenaked Ladies song, "One Week", had been pretty popular around this time. If you're unfamiliar with the song shame on you!, it features the lyric "Like Sting I'm tantric!" It's a reference to a rumor that Sting is all about the tantric sex and can go on for something like four or five hours worth of sex. It's not so much that he's tantric; it's just that he's motherfucking Sting!

Anyway, this got me to investigate what tantric sex was. With all that "last as long as I can and unearthly glow of awesome sex" reading in my mind, I decided that this night, the night I was with my fiancee, I was going to try the tantric moves. So there I was trying the shallow, shallow, deep shit. And things were going well. This might be skewed slightly because I was having sex, which means that, in my mind, things were probably going pretty well to begin with.

All that aside, I was trying the alternating shallow and deep thrusts. As I mentioned earlier, my fiancee was pretty wet from our foreplay, and by this point all of me--shallow or deep, doesn't matter--was pretty well-lubricated. So I tried the shallow, shallow, shallow, shallow...thing when my mind was like "Put it in her! Hard! Motherfucker!"

Which is what I did.

Except...as I was doing the shallow thing, not much of my penis was actually in her, so when I pulled back for a deep, hard thrust, I kind of slipped out of her. This did not deter me when I went for the deep thrust.

BAM!

I was in her.

Guaranteed to satisfy

Except...I wasn't in her. When I went for the deep thrust after all the shallow bullshit, I kind of forgot to aim. The next thing I knew...I was in her ass, buried up to the hilt. I knew this because those green eyes that had gotten wider when I entered her now goggled out of her head in a fashion that can only be described as "cartoonish". Her body also started contorting and shuddering in a not good, not so sexy way.

Oh, and she screamed.  Loudly.

Unsure of what was going on, I looked down as she was rolling onto her side and feeling around her ass with her fingers to see if she was bleeding. Me, being the suave and debonair lover, did manage to ask if she was okay before I started giggling.

"Well, I'm okay. It's not that I'm opposed to that...it's just...that was the first time...and I kind of wasn't ready for it."

And my loving and caring response?

"I understand. It sure did feel tight. But I understand."

I'm such a prize.

After I washed myself up, we resumed with normal, vaginal sex. However, the butt-cherry had been popped and it was only a few weeks until curiosity got the better of both of us and we returned to the tacitly taboo sport of anal rompage.

How very apropos

But (heh) that's a story for another day.

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a hip-hop-happy Easter. May you find all the creamy goodness inside a chocolatey egg and marshmallow shapes encrusted in sugar that your little heart desires. And can take before it shuts down.


In case candy isn't your style, I hope you find her.

Happy Easter to all, and to all, a Cadbury-riffic night!

Happy Hyacinth of Poland Day!!!

Today is my best friend Joe's birthday. Joe attended Virginia Tech, thus the picture of the leggy blond wearing the Tech sweatshirt. I remember it's Joe's birthday--at least, in the time before Facebook reminding me--because today is also my brother's birthday.

My brother didn't attend college, which is unfortunate because I can't post any nearly nekkid chicks sporting his college's colors. He did, however, once get really drunk at a kegger at my undergrad and tried to bang this girl named Linda...which was apparently a Jenks-boy tradition (the trying part, not the banging...mores the pity).

In lieu of scantily-clad whores, I'll give you a charming story starring me, myself, I and my brother. There will be special guest appearances by our cousins, as well.

This takes place during the Christmas of (I think) 1996. We had all gathered at my cousin Napoleon's house for Christmas Eve. Napoleon's older brother (for continuity's sake, heretofore nicknamed Kip) was also there, along with his (second) wife and their little girls. Also in attendance was my cousin Scott (whose last name is vastly different from mine, so I don't feel the need to hide his identity nearly as much) and his parents.

There was also an eight hundred pound gorilla sitting in the corner that went by the name of "Kip and his (second) wife and my aunt and uncle really aren't getting along and the marriage is about to dissolve any second now--Happy Holidays!!!" attending the holiday festivities that year, too.

After the present exchange and before the meal, the tension was growing between Kip, his wife, my aunt and uncle. Because my mother was in attendance, she was also in a bad mood. My father and my uncles did what they did best--slept in front of the television. My cousins Napoleon and Scott and my brother and I sat around staring at one another feeling really uncomfortable with every snarky, snappy comment made between any of the "adults" who were still conscious.

"We should go bowling," someone stated--I'll credit my brother since it was a brilliant idea and it is his birthday, after all.

The plan was made quickly. Napoleon would drive. The other three of us would ride with him. We would bowl, we would escape the house, and we would...uh...not have to put up with the bullshit anymore.

The one snag, however, was going to be asking my mother for permission to leave. Since someone had pried her off the couch at home, she was miserable, therefore everyone else would also have to be made miserable. I knew asking her for permission would be painful.

So did my brother. Which is why he left the house via Napoleon's window. Opened it, raised the screen, bailed, and was already headed toward the car. In fairness to my brother, Napoleon had already done the same.

Scott had been granted permission, but true-to-form, my mother said absolutely not. Fortunately, my aunts convinced her that "the boys don't get to see each other much anymore, since they've graduated". My mother, pissed that she was outnumbered in this, finally relented. I bolted, not even feeling a pang of guilt.

Of we went, down the road, to the sprawling metropolis of Huntington. Being as how my brother was banned from the bowling alley on the north side of town (I'll admit, I'm only telling you that to flash my family's white-trash street cred), we were forced to go to the one on the south side of the city.

Aside from the owner, we were the only derelicts in the bowling alley that fateful Christmas Eve.

We each bowled three games and had quite a good time doing it. I don't know who won--my paltry 111 average doesn't garner me much in the limelight of bowling alley fame--but that's not the point. We escaped the house, we had a good time, and we didn't have to be around the snarling cur that was Kip's (second) wife.

As good things are wont to do, our time at the bowling alley ended. We turned in our shoes, loaded ourselves back into Napoleon's car, and headed back east for home. Now comes the time for the set-up: it was December in Indiana, which means that we had had some snow, but not a lot. There was a bit of a crust of snow along the edges of the road and some snow hidden in the folds between the high clumps of grass along the edges of the fields.

As we were returning, Napoleon was driving the speed limit--not because we were obsessed with being safe (the main roads were quite clear), but because none of us wanted to return to the simmering tension pot that we called "Christmas Eve" that year.

I voiced that opinion aloud: "Wow, I am in no rush to return to that any time soon."

My brother seconded my opinion: "Yeah, we should take a drive through the country."

Napoleon, hearing this, decided it was an excellent time to turn off onto a country road...without slowing down.

A country road that wasn't paved.

A country road that retained some of the ice from earlier winter storms.

A country road with a very steep drop-off past the shoulder.

A country road with a very steep drop-off past the shoulder without a guard rail that wasn't paved and was still retaining some ice from the earlier winter storms.

Tragedy Comedy was about to ensue.

This is the greatest "Oh Fuck" moment of my life, when the brown sedges and grasses came hurtling up toward the passenger side window, when the car was dangerously close to rolling, when we were--most certainly--hurtling toward death.

I felt kind of like Steve Martin to Napoleon's John Candy:

Needless to say, we survived. Unfortunately, we were at the bottom of a very steep "hill" surrounded by woods. We got out to assess the situation.

"I think we can push him out," I offered. "Napoleon, you just need to gun it."

So, Napoleon gets back into the car. My brother, Cousin Scott and I, get behind the car.

"Put it in neutral first" I hollered. We pushed on the car and found that we could move it quite easily. "Put it in drive and see what happens."


Napoleon put it in drive. He started moving, but the ice and snow that was hidden down in the bottom of this hollow did not make for good footing or traction. He threw a lot of mud, but the car was moving some.

"Alright..." I said, seeing the situation was going to call for us to put our legs and backs into it. "Scott, you take the middle. Brother and I will take the sides behind the wheels."

They stared at me with questioning looks upon their faces.

"Brother and I can go home and change pants; Cousin Scott can't," I explained. It was one of the most brilliant things I had ever thought through. Because, you know, if we came back muddy from having pushed the car out of the ditch, my parents would have killed my brother and I for surviving a wreck on Christmas Eve.

More importantly, we would never be allowed to escape family gatherings ever again.

And so we took our positions. I signaled Napoleon, who gunned it. We pushed. The car heaved forward. He gunned it more. We pushed it more. The car found traction and climbed the least steep part of the hill and found purchase on the gravel of the road once more.

I looked down at my pants. They were coated in a layer of mud at least half an inch thick. Brother's was the same.

That's when we started laughing, because when you go through a harrowing experience and don't die, shit gets a lot funnier. We laughed so hard we doubled over. We finally climbed into Napoleon's car and were off, all four of us laughing until tears streamed down our faces.

Napoleon drove brother and I home, where we quickly changed pants. As Napoleon lived only about three blocks away from our house, we weren't late in returning to the Christmas Eve emotional bloodbath. We finally stopped laughing in Napoleon's driveway, put our game faces on, and re-entered the house in time for the meal.

Awesome.

To this day, I'm still amazed that we somehow were able to pull that shit off without even the barest hint of suspicion out of any of our parents.

So, happy birthday to my little brother. I'm glad we made it through the best--and worst--Christmas Eve ever.

Cue the Alice Cooper Music...Now!

Today is my kids' last day of school. No more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. And you can eat lunch with real silverware and get a second napkin, if you'd like.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing especially special planned for the last day of school. They had pizza parties on Monday, and so today is just a final winding down of the entire year. Today is actually a make-up day from the week where we had some snow, so it's like it's double plus good when they finally achieve their freedom today since it was an extra day to begin with.

I can remember, as a child, on the last day of school we would have paperwad fights on the bus. Since you came home with all the paper that had been collecting in your desk throughout the entire year, you were fully armed. My first bus driver, Allen Kitt, was cool about the whole thing. He was just an old farmer who drove the bus for some extra money. I think since we were mostly well-behaved throughout the year that he didn't mind us inundating the bus floors with discarded paper.

My second driver, however, was Gene Tumbleson, and he was kind of a dick. He never let us have paperwad fights. As far as I know, he was never married, raised ten thousand hound dogs, and worked on derelict autos that covered his property. My friend Nick and I drove past his house once so that I could see where he lived. It was like the Bumpasses with all the hounds trotting around the place, but without all the charm and humor. Sonsabitches! No one leave a turkey lying around!

We recently passed the sixteenth anniversary of my very last night of school...well, not counting college and graduate school. June 3rd, 1994 was the fateful night when I shuffled off this educational coil and became "an adult". Graduation was "fun", because we got frisked on the way into the ceremony so that no one would sneak in anything untoward that would cause a disruption.

Of course, when they patted me down, they wanted to know why I was trying to sneak a garden hose into the ceremony in my pants. I was told to immediately pull it out and hand it over, but I declined, saying that I'd get arrested for indecent exposure and I didn't need that on my permanent record. True story. No, honest.

We also got Bibles after we graduated--you know, after we were no longer associated with the school--but we had to return our caps and gowns in order to receive our diplomas and our Christian propaganda. We left the gym and we started toward our home rooms when my friend, mild-mannered Dan King, turned to me and said, "Fuck this, let's run!"

So, we did. We ran through the halls of the high school. Oh what rebels we were. Actually, we wanted to get the fizzuck out of there as fast as possible because our mutual friend J.J. was having his graduation party that night, and it was going to be awesome.

And...it was. Sort of. After days of cajoling my mother into allowing me out from under her thumb for a few hours of fun with my friends, I finally was able to go. I showed up, well after the party had begun. I stayed until my curfew--one that I had even after I graduated from college, mind. The best part was riding around in the back of this girl's new convertible--cherry red--with my prom date and someone else. We sat on the back seat, not in it. It was dangerous, it was stupid, and it was the first time in my life I had done such a thing. Dawn--the driver--sped through the streets of Huntington while we sat, unrestrained, in the backseat. My heart raced with each twist and turn of our journey, wondering if I would tumble off the backseat and die having banged only one chick throughout my high school career, and that experience being something unworthy of bragging.

And I loved every minute of it. The ride in the car, not the regretting only fucking one girl in high school.

My kids aren't near the age of graduation yet, and won't be for a while. However, since the end of the school year is upon us, congratulations to all this year's graduates. Have fun, good luck, and don't pick your nose in public.

And if you need a substitute keynote speaker at your graduation, my rates are cheap. It's mostly just boob pictures and a bottle of rum.

A fella's gotta sleep, you know.

Happy Carmentalia!

Today is the first day of Carmentalia, which was an Ancient Roman festival celebrating the oracle Carmenta. The prophetess was the mother of Evander, who founded Rome...er...sorta. Evander built the city Pallantium near the Capitoline Hill, which was later incorporated into Rome after Romulus clubbed his brother in the head with a shovel. You remember that back story, right?

Anyway, Evander was there to welcome Aeneas to the peninsula when Aeneas got done fighting that pesky little dust up called the "Trojan War", and the subsequent unassing of the place once the Greeks did that whole "surprise, is us inside horse!" trick. Oh, yeah, and Aeneas went to Carthage for a while to bone Dido. "Thank You", indeed.

Sorry, I've gotten a bit off track. I'm still weeping over the fucking Packers shitting the bed choking on their successes from the week before. Say, is there room for one more on that Vikings' bandwagon? As a wise man once said, "Football makes strange bed fellows." A sage, that one, I tell you.

Have I digressed further? Shame on me.

Anyway, Carmenta was originally named Nicostrate, but since she was so damned good at her job (which was prophecy), she had her name changed to "Carmenta", because "carmen" in Latin means "a song, a poem, an oracle" and can also be defined as "a magical spell", and it is from where we pick up the word "charm". When Carmenta died, she was deified and became the goddess of prophecy and also childbirth.

However, her most important and famous gift to humanity was in creating the Latin alphabet, supposedly by changing 15 of the Greek letters to their Roman counterparts. The Romans only used 24 letters (remember, no W, no J), so they had to pick up nine other letters from elsewhere. Most of them came from the Etruscans in the early days when the Romans were trying to assert their authority over the other tribes in the area. Carmenta made the Roman alphabet, which she gave to Evander. Evander, in turn, showed the letters to the Latins, who in turn used it to write down their language, which eventually begat a certain Friday series. So, we should be thankful, otherwise this blog would just be Greek to me...

Sorry about the bad pun. I had a much better joke there, but apparently Blogger doesn't allow you to cut and paste in Greek letters. Harumph. Kind of killed the momentum.

Anyway, since she was the Roman Goddess of childbirth, her festival days (January 11 and January 15) were celebrated mainly by women. Not much is known about the celebration other than the fairer sex were the chief celebrators. From the extensive study I've put into what women do when they are together with one another, I can only assume that the women of Rome would gather at Carmenta's temple, strip to their panties, garter belts and stockings, (bras optional) and have a pillow fight. A sexy pillow fight!

With that in mind...ladies...I suggest that we reinitiate the celebration of Carmentalia in all it's pillow-fight glory. Just, uh, conveniently leave a ladder outside the temple, okay?

What Can Brown Do For Me?

Well, I just got off the phone with my local post office. Seems as though the package I ordered December 16th and was shipped to me on December 17th and was supposed to arrive to me on December 22nd won't get here until after Christmas. Really? You know, you could have thrown the package on the back of a truck and driven it from Nevada to Durham in that amount of time, but apparently, it hasn't arrived in Raleigh yet. According to them.

Here's the rub: the shipment tracking that I'm using to follow the status of my package? It says the package arrived in Raleigh Monday night. At 9:46 PM. But, you know, that's a fucking lie, according to the postal service. That was auto-generated by the people in California, according to the postal service.

Looks like I'll be doing all of my business through UPS and FedEx from now on. Fuckstains.

Dump on top of this frustration that I went out this morning to buy the food for the Christmas feast. Traffic was ten times worse than the crowds at Target or Kroger. Although, both places were out of fresh thyme. Who the fuck runs out of thyme?

They were probably waiting for a fresh shipment from the USPS. Cockknockers.

You know what? Fuck you, postal service. You are not stealing my fucking Christmas spirit. Where's the fucking eggnog?

So, to make me feel all warm and glowy on the inside, I'm going to talk my wife into some hot, angry sex tell you a story about my favorite time traveling for Christmas.

With my mother- and father-in-law living in South Bend, IN and my parents in the Fort Wayne area, we have, in the past, driven up to Indiana in order to celebrate the holidays. When my thirtieth birthday rolled around, we decided to head up to Indiana so that I could see my family and get drunk enough to pass out on the couch mid-sentence have delightful and intellectual conversations with some of my college buddies.

The bonus prize in all this tomfoolery? There was a six-inch snow pack on the ground in northern Indiana. We were hoping we'd be able to celebrate a white Christmas with the kids. As luck would have it, a massive bubble of warm air traveled up the Mississippi and situated itself over the lower great lakes valley that week, and as we were driving up, the snow was melting.

When we drive up, we go up through a brief slice of Virginia and up through almost the whole of West Virginia and up to Ohio, where we cut across countryside and go through Columbus and then head up 75 to Lima and cut over there to Fort Wayne and then on up to South Bend. It's a long drive. Since the kids were little, we tried to make that drive at night, so they could sleep.

Crossing into West Virginia, there was snow on the ground. By the time we got to the point where we were crossing over the breadth of Ohio, the snow was almost totally melted. It was actually warmer at three in the morning in Ohio than it had been at six o'clock in the evening in North Carolina. All the melted snow plus the rising temperatures caused things to be foggy, but not so much that it completely obscured the roads. It was sort of a heavy haze hanging over the fields and forests of the Buckeye State.

Fortunately, Ohio was one of those places where the glaciers had flattened everything out all nice and dandy. What that meant was that I could look out over the plains and see, literally, for miles, because the highway was raised slightly in relationship to the farmlands stretching out toward the horizon.

Every little farmhouse and every little homestead had their lights on that night. So, I could look out and, through the gloom of the darkest part of the night, see hundreds of twinkling lights in every shade imaginable. It was beautiful. It was magnificent. It was truly magical.

My heart swelled three times that day.

Whenever I need a little pick-me-up--like, if the fucking postal service is dicking me over with a special little gift that I had ordered for my wife to brighten her Christmas--I think about the trip across central Ohio and looking out through the black and blue and gray haze and seeing little spots of colored lights shining through the murk.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Addendum:

This is fucking brilliant. Go read it.

When It Comes to "Do or Do Not"...I Did Not

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