Buffet o’ Life: The Commandments of the Broccoli

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One of my favorite quotations in life is by an author unknown to me and yet it has helped to guide me with its simplicity. It is this: “At the great breakfast buffet of life, most of us prefer to waffle.” A slice of wisdom that inspires me every time I read it. It reminds me of one of the happy memories with my step-father when we made our trek to consume the buffet of Little America in Cheyenne, Wyoming every Sunday. The excruciating pain of dressing up and dealing with ridicule was soothed with a balm of syrup on my cinnamon french toast. It reminds me, almost daily, that I don’t want to be the waffle. I want to be the bacon, before slaughter, running around squealing with abandon.  I don’t want to waffle.

For whatever reason I gravitate towards the word buffet.  It’s pregnant with choice, with possibility and, as a verb, a word that tells of making one’s way under difficult circumstances. One powerful small term that sends a thousand images through my head. I like to play with it. Buffffaaaay. I like to do the Mr. Furley-ism of Three’s Company fame to it: Buff-ETTE.  I seem to find great analogies to life by thinking of it – you’re welcome to dine on my latest: Read more

Facebook: It’s Been Three Minutes Since My Last Confession

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(Note:  To my more, perhaps, delicate or easily queasy readers you may want to skip this one as it is quite graphic – although therein lies the point.)

Social Networking?  Really?  Or is it just too much information?  I wholeheartedly admit that I am as addicted as the next guy.  Every morning, after grabbing my cup of coffee and my first cigarette of the day, I log in to Facebook and proceed to spend the next hour or so reading comments, watching funny video clips, wishing people happy birthday, and just moseying around.  At night, while I’m in bed watching re-runs of L.A. Ink and puffing on my last cigarette of the day, I catch up on my Tweets.  More and more often lately as I’m reading status updates I am utterly shocked, mid-drag, over what is shared.

Does social decorum not exist in social networking?  There are certain things that I just don’t want to know.  I definitely do not want to read that, “while douching a pungent odor came wafting out.  What could be wrong?”  I don’t know!  But book the appointment now.  Don’t bother with logging out of Facebook.  You don’t have time.  Leave that survey “What Kind of Pus-Filled Boil Are You?” undone.  It will still be there when you come home with that prescription cream and a healthy round of antibiotics. Read more

Fiddler on the Quad

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I have been called a Non-Traditional student many times over the past sixteen years and I have yet to figure out exactly what this classification means.  Traditional, or tradition, implies something that has been done for a very long time.  According to my proverbial right arm, the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “tradition is an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior.”  Religions have traditions, cultures have traditions, families have traditions, even Tevye the Milkman (of  Fiddler on the Roof fame) lived a life based on traditions, but apparently I do not, and am therefore labeled as non-traditional.  WTF?  Should I be offended?

Every morning I stumble to the coffee pot, fill up the well until it comes dangerously close to overflowing onto the counter, and shovel in six heaping scoops of the strongest java I can buy. Every day it’s the same, well, except for that occasional exuberant overfill when I’m thinking I might get an extra 1/4 cup out of the pot.   Is that not a tradition?  Traditionally I drink seven cups of coffee throughout the day.  I’m traditional.  I have traditions.  In fact, I’m at my most traditional during the Christmas season.  Traditionally I put up my Christmas tree right after Halloween because I can’t wait any longer and then I proceed to  gorge myself on my favorite holiday fare for the next two months. Tell me that isn’t a tradition. Read more

An Ice Cream Carol

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“Wake up and piss, the world’s on fire,” my step-dad used to yell up to me every morning through the railing of my bedroom loft. I would simply roll over and wonder what my mother saw in this vile man whom, with bitter irony, would get so plastered drinking Milwaukee’s Best that he’d forget where the bathroom was and piss next to the coal burning stove. Had I had more balls at age fourteen I would have hollered back to him that he had already put out the fire the night before. Alas I did not. It seems for my whole life the universe has been coming up with new and sardonic ways of getting my ass out of bed.

To put it mildly, I’ve never been a morning person.

After my step-father had urinated his last in our home, the task of waking me was once again set upon my mom’s shoulders. She’d shout at me to get up. And I – thinking myself rather crafty – would shout back, “I’m awake!” Then I’d quickly go back to sleep for fifteen more minutes. Read more

Does Jesus Pee? – A Treatise on Self-Love

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Woke up today with another hangover. Truth be told hangover doesn’t really do it justice. If I have to call it a hangover then you’re going to have to imagine that I’m dangling halfway down the Eiffel Tower held in precarious position by a thin cord of Silly Putty wrapped around my left ankle. Going on three hardcore days of the hangin over and the putty string is stretching so thin that I thought it imperative to have a mental health day.

Melanie’s mental health day consists of comfort food, candles, my bed, Van Morrison, and the second and third seasons of Sex & the City on DVD. (For future reference in all blogging done by me I do nothing in moderation. Food, alcohol, smoking, twelve hours of Carrie and the girls, even masturbation. To say I’m an extremist is to say hangover rather than dangling by silly putty.) With those things in my muddled mind I head to the market on West 9th to visit my friend Costas who hooks me up with the best cuts of roast beast in the city. This man is my comfort food savior. They don’t sell roast beef on the shelves of Constantino’s Market, but I ask with my pleading bloodshot eyes and he kindly goes to the cooler and cuts a slab right off of the cow, or so I imagine. He also brings me a baggy filled with a smear of tomato paste, a few bay leaves, a stalk of celery, a couple sprigs of thyme, and instructs me on how to prepare the beast. I leave with said heifer and sixty-four dollars and some odd cents worth of comfort. Read more