One song which gets my feet tapping is “Dedication To Me Ex” by Lloyd. It’s infectious and gets stuck in my head like a badly-thrown ax. There’s something about the funky old-school feel of the song that’s never aged for me.
Years ago, I was blasting it on the work computer, filling the warehouse with the vibe of the song. I downloaded a mess of songs, most of which I’d never heard before. I still play it at high volume at 3-4 a.m.
A co-worker came running up to say, “X, you can’t play THAT song in here. You’re gonna get in trouble.” I looked at him like he was crazy.
“Why? It’s a cool song!”
My coworker looked at ME like I was crazy. “Yeah, it is a great song, but it’s dirtier than Grandma’s Sunday dish towel.”
He walked toward the back where I keep the computer loaded with music. He listened for about a minute and returned.
“Huh! I’ve never heard that version before, X.”
“What other version is there?” My coworker still thought I might be joking with him.
“Well, he isn’t talking about love in the version I know. Look it up, and you’ll see why.” He laughed about almost running to the back to shut it off when he heard it begin playing.
I did listen to it a little later, the explicit version. He wasn’t kidding.
The weird thing? I didn’t watch the video until a couple of months ago. There is both a clean and an explicit version of the video, too.
This song, and a few others like it, pulled me out of a funk this morning. I lit the warehouse up with booming energy. I sometimes remember my coworker’s face as he ran up to me, wondering if I might lose my job.
X
P.S. I remember the first time I heard the newer song “Favorite Song” by Toosii. I’m not a fan of his music. I heard the song without knowing the artist – a habit that I love doing. There’s something undeniably hypnotic about the chords and melody. I’m the same way about the artist Lloyd. I’m not drawn to any other songs of his I’ve heard. And that’s okay with me.
I start these kinds of posts by saying, “I’m a liberal, but…” Every person needs to be DNA profiled at birth. Not just for paternity but also for identification. We all submit fingerprints and other biometric data, as well as register for selective service. Of course, such data can be misused. Everything can be misused and often is. I still participate in GEDmatch, the service which law enforcement uses to compare DNA for crimes. My DNA allows investigators to triangulate relatives across generations and an incredible number of people. Obviously, this is a problem for people who mistakenly believe they avoid detection due to choosing to have no DNA samples taken. DNA belongs to all of us, whether we like it or not. For example, if they can guess someone’s age within a few years, they can identify almost everyone by taking a random DNA sample from anything. Anonymity is a smokescreen, just like privacy.
It’s also spectacular to see archaic/ancient DNA family members, such as the Neanderthals 49,000 years ago. What’s fascinating is that Erika and I overlap with almost all the known ancient DNA samples. It is wild to think that we have common ancestors 2000+ generations ago who moved across the continents and started new lineages that once again converged. This is true for most of us. We usually only think of the last few hundred years for ethnicity. The reality is not so short-sighted; most of us derive from the same vast gene pool hidden in the shadows of forgotten and unrecorded history.
Rarely does a day pass when I don’t think momentarily about the satisfaction of knowing my suspicions about my family were true. My relatives kept secrets for their own selfish reasons, blissfully unaware that technology would soon rip the ability to conceal truth and people from the rest of us. I missed decades of knowing a sister was out there, that my cousin Jimmy had a daughter he would have loved to get to know. I am certain there are other surprises and people on the fringes of being discovered. I waited almost a decade to find my sister.
As gigantic as my family tree is, I still have several ‘floaters’ who escape placement. When I first started, I had my grandma’s family tree back for hundreds of years. It was obvious by five or six generations that somewhere along the line, the parents attributed to them were not biologically related. I deleted dozens of generations from my family tree branches as a result. I still love family trees. The research, the triangulation, and the discovery. But none of it compares to the black magic science of DNA, the stuff that literally codes us. It also makes the inevitability of one day having a billion-person family tree a reality. With incredibly sophisticated computers, not only will everyone’s DNA be codified, but each of us will be woven into the most complex family tree ever imagined.
In theory, each of us has 128 5th-great grandparents. I have only about 1/2 in my family tree, and a portion of those are due to DNA only. Due to pedigree collapse, this is often not the case. (A fascinating concept in itself.) Going back further into history, our trees were not coned-shaped. Due to the mule rule, most marriages happened within the range of 2nd cousins or closer. Most people lived their lives in a 5-mile radius. You can’t trust family trees based on paper trails and documents. At least a 1/3 of such trees become inaccurate by the time your great-grandparents are involved. This is true even if the best researcher in the world does your family tree. DNA steps in to fill gaps you didn’t even realize were there. I don’t look at family trees like I once did thanks to this. They simply are not reliable.
Intermittently, the databases used to calculate ethnicity get updates. More people participate, and science gets increasingly more exact. It’s the perfect analogy for science; what you think you know evolves with new information. Whatever you identify as it’s usually an agreed-upon and arbitrary association when you factor in the span of modern human history.
I am in awe of the science. I’m certain that as our curiosity builds in tandem with technology we’re going to find even more striking revelations built into the tiniest components of the cells of our body. For many, this is troublesome. Not for me. It’s a revelation of discovery.
Based on obvious need, I invented a new app called WhereWolf. If you’re drunk, you only have to say “WhereWolf” to your phone. It will speak in a mom’s voice, telling you exactly where you are and to get your ass home.
This is a fancy word for lightning lover. The meteorological kind, not one afflicted with a lack of bedroom longevity. It’s a word without a certain je ne sais quoi, which is a French phrase meaning, “Don’t stand under a tree when it is lightning.” I probably took some liberty with the definition of that. The French gave us a statue that basically gives me the inalienable right to make stuff up.
My cat wanted no part of the light show this morning.
I got absolutely drenched standing outside watching it. At times, the streaks of lightning branched into dozens of tendrils. Oddly, it made me a bit melancholy despite the fierce beauty of it.
Corky the squirrel ranted at me for a couple of minutes. I accidentally walked right up upon him as he sat on the transformer dining on tidbits left by a fellow animal lover. I didn’t see him. Because I startled him, he did a flip on top of the transformer, crouched down to give me the evil eye, and then leaped up the tree a couple of feet to stare at me further. I That’s when the rant commenced. Though I don’t speak Scuirusese, the official language of squirrels, I did catch the sounds for trespass and butthead. I took a picture and then reached up toward him and he didn’t move. After a few seconds of me staying motionless in that position, he fluffed his tail up in indignation and casually went up the tree and out of sight. I’ll leave him some food offerings later today or tomorrow in penance. X
I used points to get this roll of “for rectal use only” labels at no cost. Something compelled me to purchase it. What kind of shenanigans could I possibly get into with such an amazing item? .
This is another word that fell out of usage. It literally means yesterday evening. It uses the same bastardization that Halloween derives from. It doesn’t have the same poetic fluidity that overmorrow does, which is one of my favorite words. The word evokes the name of a strange pharmaceutical, probably one invented to combat the effects of constipation. Judging by many of the faces I see, it’s likely that a lot of y’all need it.
Yestereve, of course, means last night. Yesternight is another synonym.
I was in the pool by 4 a.m. When I climbed out of the pool into the chilly air, I briefly turned on the strings of Edison lights to watch them sparkle. It wasn’t quite as beautiful as the lightning storm I witnessed yesterday. But with the moon peeking through the branches of the huge tree overhanging the fence, the odd mixture of clouds passing overhead, and the subtle birdsong melodiously echoing, it was beautiful in its own way.
It reminded me of the joke about the chicken crossing the road. To which the answer is: why does everyone question the chicken’s motives.
I’m in Springdale at a beautiful Airbnb. Erika found it, of course. It’s a large beautiful house on Tara Street. My favorite part are the hidden Narnia rooms upstairs. I’ve been walking the streets since 3:30. The sky is flashing and rolling with lightning. Though no rain had reached me yet, the crackling of thunder occasionally surprises me. It’s gorgeous out on the wide expanse of Don Tyson parkway with almost no traffic. It’s as if all of it coalesced just for my private enjoyment. It’s definitely a stolen moment, one impossible to plan. The rain started at 4: 43. I made it back to the house a few minutes later. One of the best people at work, Carlos, brought delicious dark coffee back from his trip to El Salvador. It’s brewing now. If you’re a coffee lover, I probably don’t need to describe how delicious it smells as it’s burning. As is the case with these moments, I wish time would stand still for a few hours. Love, X
Several years ago, when I worked at Cargill, one of the guys that worked In my department took pleasure in telling one of his favorite stories. His brother’s application for continued residency was denied. His brother had bought a decent vehicle from one of the pay-as-you-go car lots. After his brother returned to Mexico, my coworker continued to go in and make the payments. After making the payments for several months, he went in to pay the car off. The car lot suddenly decided that because the car wasn’t in his name, he could no longer have it. It’s not that they were wrong legally. You get the idea. My coworker was angry, but didn’t argue. He jumped in the car and drove it home.
That’s where he got creative.
A couple of days later, a truck pulled in with a very simple towing bracket to repossess the car. The tow truck driver was expecting an argument. He pulled up quickly and attached his tow truck to the front of the car. My coworker went outside and was very polite to the driver and said he understood that he was just doing his job. He told the driver that something had gone wrong with the car and that a mechanic had been working on it. Further, he told him he should check it to be sure it was safe to tow. The driver still acted like he didn’t trust him. He didn’t get out of his tow truck to do once-over on the vehicle.
The tow truck drove away quickly.
While my coworker did not get to witness the ensuing mess, he did get an angry call from the dealer who owned the car lot. At some point while towing the car, the tow truck driver realized that both of the rear wheels of the car had come off during transport. He did not however realize this until he was most of the way back to the car lot. Dragging the car directly on the pavement evidently did not increase the car’s value.
The dealer was belligerent and angry. My coworker told the dealer what he had told the tow truck driver. And he reminded him that he was not the owner and was not liable either way. The dealer threatened to call the police. To which my coworker replied, “Make sure and include the part where your tow truck driver failed to check the car for safe transport before he drove it.”
He listened as the dealer cursed at him and used racist language.
A couple of months later, my coworker went to the lot with a friend. His friend had thousands of dollars of cash to buy a car. They negotiated the sale and right before closing, my coworker said, “We’re not actually going to buy the car. We just wanted to make sure you understood how much business you lost for what you did to me and my brother. Make sure and tell (owner’s name here) that I said hello.”
They both got another racist cursing. But they left laughing.
Never buy hair color at Dollar Tree. The box clearly indicated it was supposed to be sort of purple. No, I’m not in the habit of coloring my hair. I don’t have enough to warrant such foolishness. I literally applied the coloring as indicated. It struck me immediately that it was about the opposite of purple. But of course I left it in for 30 minutes. When I got out of the shower, I saw an adult male version of a ginger ferret looking back at me. Since I’m more tan than I’ve been in 10 years, the color looks even more striking. The only thing missing is even a hint of purple.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 