Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: Random Rantings

  • Burning Desires

    In AA there is the “custom” and I’m not sure if it’s just here on the East Coast or all over (I don’t recall hearing such things in the Midwest), called Burning Desires. With a few minutes left of the meeting, the lead asks: Are there any burning desires, does anyone feel like if they don’t share they might drink?

    Inevitably, some one will raise their hand and start to talk. Now it’s rare that this person has a real crisis. There was one time when someone used his burning desire time to talk about his upcoming birthday party.

    Truth be told, I hate burning desires. I find that they usually tend to speak so long the meeting does not get done on time. They are usually very insignificant to whomever might have been sharing and a complete and total waste of my time.

  • Don't Think About Green Beans

    Few weekends ago I traveled to Mohonk Mountain House ( http://www.mohonk.com ) in New Paltz, NY. My best friend Suzanne and I rode up together, she likes to drive she’s …. you know…. American. I do not like to drive, it has never been one of those things that I want to do, which is why I live in Washington, DC and will always live somewhere that personal transportation is optional.

    I should let you know at this point that I was horribly ill, the flu or some nasty cold had taken hold of me. I was full of snot and sneezing, groggy and a bit grumpy. I made do cause I wanted others to have a good time.

    Suzanne and I stopped to eat at one of her favorite restaurants near NYC. All the servers were dressed up in white jump suits, had sideburns and reminded me of Elvis. I hate Elvis. But the food was good (yes, I was stuffed up and couldn’t taste anything, I’m being nice.

    When we arrived at the Mountain House, I was about ready to collapse. This place was huge, beautiful and just stunning. The staff were there immediately to take our bags, check us in and make sure all was good. I found my bosses, smiled and nodded and moved on to dream world.

    Sleep did not come easily, I found myself awake on numerous occasions with limited breathing and fits of coughing or sneezing. So rest I did not get.

    Saturday morning, Suzanne and I went off to the breakfast buffet, I still feel like crap, but I’m putting on a good face…. so I think. Then Suzanne and I both had spa treatments scheduled so we headed off to do that. The spa services menu at Mohonk is quite extensive, several which include them inducing you into a “power nap”. I don’t know about you, but paying someone to put me to sleep is not a pleasurable way to spend money. I chose the back revitalizer, a nice back scrub and massage.

    So a woman arrives in the staging area, and calls my name. I think that this is very nice of them to have staff come escort me to my masseuse. She leads me to a room with a tub, tells me to get in. I don’t recall this as part of the description of my treatment. I look at her a little confused, she asks me what’s wrong. I say, well, first off I asked for a male masseuse, she says: oh, is that a problem. “I guess not” I say and get in the hot tub. The whirlpool tub is actually very nice, hot and scented. She leaves me in there long enough to tenderize all of my organs for harvesting by cannibals. Then she returns to escort me to a room, “disrobe and lie on your back cover up and then i’ll come back in”. She is the professional, but I am wondering how she plans to do my back if I’m lying on it, but I do as she says. When she re-enters the room she says, “good, now we’re going to start with an exfoliation and then I’m going to lead you into a power nap”. Ding! “Now I know this is the wrong treatment!” I say loudly. Turns out it was, they had screwed up my order and the bath was considered a “bonus”, even if I didn’t like it. Once the treatment started that I was actually supposed to be getting, it was very nice.

    The dinner that night was a mandatory part of the trip for work, jackets required for men. I wore a nice mock turtle neck, some tan pants and looked pretty sharp. Suzanne wore a nice outfit that had shades of purple, mostly I liked her shoes. I might mention at this point that Suzanne is beautiful, she really is…. she’s had a boob job, is very skinny, always has men looking at here butt in department stores… mostly, I like her shoes. One of the people from work, came in with his girlfriend, they were a lovely couple; when he removed his jacket, I saw that his V Neck sweater was on backwards, I mentioned it to him and he ran from the room to change it. Everyone had something to drink, I had a cold glass of water that I dropped two Alka-Seltzer Cold and Flu into. That is the last I remember of the evening.

    Sunday morning, I could actually breathe… which was nice. I slept most of the night and was feeling a little better. Not 100% but better. The breakfast buffet was nice again, I had some pancakes and Suzanne had some fruit. The fruit caused Suzanne to be “green beans”, all the way home…. and she said: ‘please don’t write about my “green beans” on your blog’ as she rolled down the window. The ‘green beans’ were all I’ve been able to think of since… So truly this is a story of ‘green beans’, the first few paragraphs here are to mask my true intentions. I’ve become obsessed with her ‘green beans’ and the fact that the ‘green beans’ were not detectable by me… I had a cold!

    It is my understanding everyone had a good time on our excursion, even if they were exposed to ‘green beans’.

  • The Never Ending Apology

    Lets say I’m a comedian, politician or what have you. I’m at a big shindig and tell the following joke.

    “Some friends of an old gentleman decided to get him something special for his birthday. They bought him a hooker. She went to his house and knocked on the door. Upon opening it she said “Hi I am your birthday present.” He responded, “What am I supposed to do with you?” “I am yours for super sex”, she answers. He replies: “Well I am 90 years old so I will take the soup.”

    Chances are I got lots of laughs, but how many people have I offended? Lets count.

    1. the Religious Right (come on, they are offended by everything)
    2. Politicians (they have to be offended to appease the Relious Right that might vote for them.
    3. Parents (the parents who feed their children ritalin like it’s candy, but wont take away their game consoles when they are fat)
    4. and possibly… Old men (obviously the old men that are politicians – are there other kinds of politicians?)

    I also might be offended, I’m a man… and lets face it… I’m old in some people’s eyes. I’m also offended cause I’m gay, and having this heterosexual lifestyle thrown in my face is just not right.

    Rule 42. Don’t take yourselves to seriously

    Comedians make jokes, if you can’t take a joke you may want to consider doing away with entertainment in your life; but you should certainly not go see comedians. Rosie O’Donnel is not so much a comedian any more, but she certainly does manage to stick her foot in her mouth alot. Donald Trump is no comedian, but he has money so you laugh and he may pay you.

    If the incessant apologizing continues, I’m going to demand apologies from any black comedian I’ve ever heard tell a white man joke. I’ll also demand reimbursment for every advertising campaign that misled me, jail time for politicians that lied, and mental health appointments for being forced to look at bad Hollywood makeovers.

  • So

    If you’ve ever worked with me in the past, you know how I get when I get pissed off or malcontented…

    I hush up, quiet down, frown…. nothing gets me out of that but me.

    So, this is not a “healthy” way to do this, and I should find another way to take care of these feelings.

  • Money and Morales

    Lets sit and think about how much money is donated to the people who want to enforce morale principles of the Religious Right and Republicans… Millions if not Billions of dollars given to organizations that are morally superior to the rest of the nation.

    Meet some of the finer examples of church and state:

    Tom Foley (text messaging teen agers explicit content)

    Father Oliver O’Grady (pedophile that the church moved from town to town when he needed new children)

    Rush Limbaugh (prescription addiction)

    Vice President Dick Cheney (says the F word on live TV)

    Lets send them more money… obviously it’s helping.

  • 5 Years Later

    The first thing that comes to mind is the still photograph on CNN, of the impact site on the first tower. In the background we could see another plane headed in the same direction; then we knew it was more than an accident. I was working at Children’s Hospital on the 6th floor. When the second tower was hit people started to get a little crazier saying it must have been an accident or something. When Sheila came screaming out of her room “They’ve bombed the Pentagon!!!” I remember thinking that she had to be crazy… the Pentagon has to be the most secure building on the planet… no way could then bomb it. But, the smoke we could see from the window confirmed her story only a bomb could make that column of smoke so big.

    The phones in DC lit up, everyone was trying to call someone to check on them. They hospital sent messages asking everyone not to use the phones cause the government needed them. That didn’t stop people, I did manage to call my hyperventilating mom, and my clueless friends who were busy at work and not watching the news… Midwest Work ethic!

    People were in tears, freaked out. Some people didn’t understand the impact at all and asked “Was her kid on the plane? If not, why is she crying?”

    Everyone was sent home early, they said on the news not leave your house if you didn’t have to. I and probably the rest of the nation then watched the two towers collapse on live TV. Then the images were put into cycles, they would show the crash over and over again. It became a little more than disturbing.

    There was a caravan of tow trucks inching along the road near the pentagon, each one of them had a flag shown proudly honking their horns as they drove past. The huge black spot marring the surface of what I had assumed would never be marred, the Pentagon. The firemen near the Pentagon, the military in the streets of DC that appeared from nowhere. Acts that seemed entirely too childish or silly; banning french fries from menus, gathering on the front steps to say the Pledge of Allegiance, saying it was God’s way of punishing us for Gays and liberals.

    Mostly I look back and see those images in my head and start to tear up. Today I can’t do sirens well… everytime I hear them or see an emergency vehicle of some kind I start to tear up; its probably some kind of PTSD. I don’t want to forget though, I never want to forget the images and feelings associated with that day. I don’t want you to forget either.

  • Idiotic

    OK, Turner is going to edit Tom and Jerry Cartoon’s where the characters are smoking (story here) . This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read in my life… Why stop with Tom and Jerry, lets change Little Red Riding Hood to be a non-gender specific book, and remove the wolf as it may frighten the children…

    How long before we start to change novels that have words that may be offensive today in famous stories? Lets remove the “N” word from every book ever written, and lets take “gay” and “Homo” out too… I have a better idea, lets wrap ourselves up in bubble wrap so we can never experience… this will save the naysayers and protect those who don’t know they should be naysayers!!!!!!!

    Tom and Jerry are classic cartoons that should be left alone.

  • Athletes Elite

    I’m tired of Drug Testing scandals on the news, it distracts from the really important stories; like the wax Brangelina baby or a Suri Cruise sighting. Lets decide here and now to do away with steroid testing entirely.

    I want to see what kind of monster killers we can breed with drugs for the Olympics. Of course all countries would be able to do the same, lets imagine the super elite athletes in every major sporting event known to man. If steroid use isn’t enough, perhaps we could do some genetic splicing, play with the genes of our children until their skin is as hard as steel…

    It’s bound to happen anyway, or just more clever ways of avoiding detection.

  • Update

    Hi,I’ve probably told you all more than enough, to check my site: http://mrjamezq.blogspot.com/ if you want to know what’s going on with me… well… I haven’t written anything there in a while… so you can claim you did and still don’t know what’s going on.

    I’m temping at the NAHB which is about a 20 minute walk from home. Nice job, nice folks… but only 4 days a week. There are issues there… like the one woman who put together a fax, even made the cover sheet… walked past the fax machine came to my desk and said: “This needs to be faxed to this number (pointing to the number on the cover sheet she made) ASAP.” So, I smile and don’t ask why she’s such a lazy cow.. I get up and fax her two pages. Or the fact that “short-term” means anything from 1 month to 25 years… but I digress.

    I’m also working at Olsson’s Books and Records, in DC. Very laid back. I’m pretty sure there are three people (minimum) that don’t like me… I don’t much like them either. I hate when there are author events and the authors and their fans can’t seem to understand what closing time means… perhaps if they hung out in more bars they would get the concept. Remind me, IF I ever get famous, what I hated about book events.

    Gary and I went bike riding on Monday, was a little hot but nice. I need to exercise more, but the bike seat is broken and I’m saving cash… and DC drivers are nut jobs (no offense to you nut jobs… er DC drivers).

    WHC (Washington Hospital Center) finally called back about the job I intervied for over a month ago… they want me to come in (Monday) and take some tests: Word, Excel, Power Point… no worries. The job is a union job, and I don’t know what that means yet. I would almost rather stay at NAHB if it was 5 days a week.

    I was hoping to go to WI this summer for an AA thing… but it just can’t happen in this financial situation. I’ll have to see what else I could do… but winter is fast approaching there so no promises.

    No men… as there is no time. The cats are a little grumpy due to not getting enough attention, but when I do give it they are content if only for a purr or two.

    I am going to my meeting in Georgetown, and considering getting a sponsor… there are two candidates… don’t hold you breath, I’m very picky.

    On Monday, I’ll be contacting Northern Virginia Community College about classes this fall, I need a minimum of six credits to maintain my financial aid. I hope this shouldn’t be a problem… just have to decide which classes I would like to take.

    I read: To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time, and I must say it was a really good book. Currently I am reading: Hunting in Harlem which has promise.

    OK, its way past my bedtime. I miss most of you (some of you I actually see on occasion)Jamez

  • Independence Day

    Welcome to America land of the free and the brave; where freedom reigns and the hope of a brighter tomorrow is the dream of millions of immigrants each year.

    One definition of Independence: freedom from control or influence of another or others. This is a founding principle of our country, our forefathers designed this country’s laws to make freedom from control and influence of others a top priority. This was especially true of religion. The original settlers of this great land came here to escape religious persecution. So in designing the laws of our nation they ensured that this would not be the case for future generations. Our founding fathers also maintained there should be freedom of the press. The First amendment states:

    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

    These words are from our “Bill of Rights”, one of the many things that make up the foundation of laws in our country. The first paragraph in The United States Constitution states that we want to “… secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves …”.

    The year is 2006, the elected officials in our once bright nation seek to suppress the press, oppress citizens, and keep out the dreamers.

    So if you are a heterosexual Caucasian Christian, Happy Independence Day… To the rest of us, we’d better watch our back, phone records and bank accounts… They are.