Feet are disgusting

Hugs are frivalous, you're being lied to, and yes, feet are disgusting.

Yesterday I had plans to get some gyros and the local record store, but both were closed. I settled on Goodwill and sushi. There's a good place near Wegman's called Lui's. Good sushi and prompt service. I was fortunate enough to be placed next an upper middle class family, most likely out for a mother's day lunch.

As I was looking down to grab my sushi I noticed the father was wearing sandals. This didn't seem to go well with my sushi and I inside I began to rant about my dislike of feet. I kept this all to my own brain, but for years I've hated the sight of feet.

They range is from ugly to disgusting. They were created, or evolved (if you will), to do a pretty serious job and practically speaking they do a swell job, but that doesn't mean I need to see them. What kind of arrogant soul feels the need to show their feet in public?

What's more annoying than seeing feet is seeing painted toenails. Who the heck goes to the trouble of such a frivolous act. Whoever has the time for that should volunteer somewhere. It doesn't even look appealing. No, I don't want to see feet on a woman, I'd prefer knee high dark socks. Forgive me if that's offensive, but, keep the feet covered.

(This being said, I have nice feet for hating feet. But, I have enough class to keep them covered.)

The truth is, feet are dirty. Fungi sometimes grows on them (not mine), but other people. I once knew a man who crashed at our house that long skinny toenails, like talons. We would call them talons and they would tap on the floor. We laughed about it but it was gross. The guy wreaked of pot and tiresome bleeding heart, yet establishment political views. Help us.

Moving back to the sushi restaurant, the dude in sandals began talking about his motorcycle and how he wanted to see the races somewhere in the poconos. His voice kind of made me want to stick a chopstick in his eye but who am I to judge about voices (or anything). I kept my thoughts to myself and remained calm, thinking about how I could turn this everyday situation into a horrible blog post.

I think I've succeeded.

Local Weekend/Greater Berks County

DaintyBones had a nice weekend to kick off the month of may.

Friday we went out to a secluded place on the river to see some friends band play. It was noise music, they had a looping pedal guitarist, drums and another guitarist. It was good. Music went on in the spacious shed with nice lighting to go along to the music. Futon mattresses were placed up front for people to relax on while the music played. I mooched a couple beers off of a friend.

As the music went on, we had a lovely fire going outside, as some folks gathered in the cozy house. It wasn't too crowded. It was all just very nice, relaxed and laid back. Another Danish band played but I was outside by the fire as they started. There was some nice weird sounds coming from the shed, and filling the wilderness and mountains.

Saturday I chose to do a cookout. I threw some meat on the grille, chopped and seasoned it, and we had tacos. I also threw some smoked beef sausage on the grille too. It turns out this was one of rare occasions that I made exactly the right amount of food for everyone. It was a casual gathering and preparation really wasn't that bad. Again, I mooched a couple beers. I went to bed while some friends were still there. The rest of them went to the Fire Company.

Sunday afternoon was the big block party. I got there early to sort of assist with set up as best I could given the fact that I can't carry too many heavy things and my knowledge of sound equipment is quite limited. It started out kind of stressful as what we were hearing from the University's Radio Shack speakers didn't sound to promising. Many of us had our doubts.

Our friend, guitarist and expert sound dude, Dave, seemed to have doubts, which made me a little uneasy, but somehow he magically pulled it all together. I went in the tavern to calm down and have a few drinks and came out to a good sounding PA system. This put me at ease.

The planning for the event didn't allow for time in between bands so everything was a little behind. We had to eliminate 2 of our songs but everything went okay. A few small mistakes on stage, but people generally stuck around and even danced. Below is a photo.

Photo by Eric De Jesus

I ended my Sunday with a quick trip to Bethlehem to see a couple other bands. It was a busy weekend, I hope the rest of them are this busy as it begins to warm up around here.

A clear head and efficient living comes from throwing away.

A clear head and efficient living comes from throwing away. My mom is a mini hoarder and passed a little of that on to me. Most of life, even now, I feel like every little thing has sentimental value and must be saved. I do this with tickets, weekend magazines, and with clothing especially.

I'm finding I save things I may wear once a year. The clothing thing has paid off  numerous times. Often I've found things laying around my room that I pull out that just woos everyone (those suspenders with my khaki pants the girls drool over). Or, I find an old article of clothing will fit nicely with my new haircut or new piece of clothing I've found. It's also a curse though.

Much of the mess in my room goes back to clothing. I'd say about 77.2% of it to be exact. This has given me many ideas. I once thought of getting rid of everything except striped things (stripes are thining). Or, keeping only Dickies pants (since then, I've found Dickie's aren't as flattering for my God-given ass - though I'll still wear them).

Recently, I assume cause of warm weather and good Vitamin D I've been making slightly positive steps. Just yesterday I donated a bunch of stuff. I did that a few weeks ago too. These are tough decisions, but decisions that must be made! The overall result is a plus. A good clean spacious room uncluttered sends good vibes throughout the place and increases chances of nookie if I ever manipulate a young trollop back to the pad.

(I still have another bag to rid myself of)

Dungeons and Dragons?

What's up with the D&D kids? A few come to the bar every now and again. It's something I can't put my finger on.

In gradeschool a D&D kid moved in next door. He had no friends. My parents felt compassion on him and encouraged me to play with him. Eventually I did.

One summer night he was swinging a wiffle bat as the sun was going down in the back alley. I saw the bat, wiffle ball always gets me going, so I went out and proceeded with some caution as I was kind of shy and about to meet a new kid.

I asked him, "what's going on?"

He replied, "..playin' fire fly baseball."

(How the fuck do you play firefly baseball????-I thought)

He handed me the bat and told me I had to swing at lighting bugs. There was no score keeping. WTF?

I killed about three of them, but felt like a complete ass doing so. This "sport" was fun to this child. I faked enthusiasm and tried to be supportive. I'm not sure if my older brother was in town then, but if he was I'm sure him and my dad had a good laugh together watching from the kitchen window.

I eventually said I had to go inside and got a bit angry at my parents for suggesting I play with such a weird kid.

Moving forward, if the kid survived high school and everything else, I'm sure he is probably putting together some awesome music.

Having said all this, there is weird similarity, I believe it's in the eyes, of those who partake in such role playing games. May Lord have mercy on those who judge and those who are judged. One love. Dainty bones.

Down the Mon' in depressed Brownsville.

I remember as a kid heading south from Pittsburgh, when crossing the Mon' river, that a sense of darkness and depression would come over me. At one point this area was booming with industry, now there are only few mills working, if that. I often drive this way, if I'm coming from Pittsburgh, towards the eastern part of the state. And, every time I do, the same feelings cloud my mind.

Monongahela River, Brownsville, PA, much of the River looks and feels like this shot.

Thoughts arise as I drive through these run down pathetic little towns of abandon buildings, shut down bars and rusted out infrastructure. Is the area cursed? How many numbers of immigrants died here while on the job being exploited? What kind of horrible unhealthy lives did these mill workers live? Maybe their spirits are still haunting the area giving it the "vibe" it has today. Whatever it is, I felt it early on and it's still with me. (forgive this last paragraph for being extremely cheesy/cliche....i sort of wanted to delete, but I'll leave it up so you all can shake your heads in disgust, if not anger at the utter sappiness of this)

Today I made the same trip and actually got out of my car to take a few photos.

I kept going south on the Mon' River. Passed some rusted bridges, housing projects, shady bars, and the amusement park, Kennywood. Cruising further down towards Dravosburg and some other factories, there was a skanky "woman" dressed in high heels hitchhiking. I drove by and was wondering if it was really a man in drag with a gun in his/her purse. It was tough to tell, I hope he/she got home to their destination safely. This was on Rt 837 if anyone reading is interested in trying to find her next week on that road to pick "it" up.

Something made in or around Brownsville, I assume.

Eventually, sticking to roads that followed the river I came across this strange run down place called Brownsville. The place is pretty much a ghost town. There are functioning businesses here and there but for the most part its empty. What was open and surprisingly well put together was an art gallery for a local artist named, Frank Melega. He did much of his work on the steel workers/miners and the local area. I was going to buy a print of an etching he did of a steel worker but they were all out. The man working the gallery was polite but somewhat creepy. He had less social skills than I do. Below is shot of the town and the gallery sign, enjoy. Here's a link to the gallery/bio webpage.

Museum, on the main drag of Brownsville.

So, while walking the street, I noticed the town came up with a nifty idea about how to handle empty store fronts. They put some brown board on a lot these store windows and painted brightly colored silhouttes of different types of people. Maybe this is done in other abandon towns but this is the first time I saw it. Below is an example. Kind of scary. Who thought of this?

I found out later I was parked in the "elegant" Historical District of Brownsville. I guess it was an off day for tourism. Below is the parking sign and I believe that middle building is the library.

The following photos are just other shots of buildings and businesses gone tits up. I hope you find these as uplifting as I do. This is our future if things keep going the way they do. Look at it!

Come Armageddon, come Armageddon come!

nifty walkway thingy

Even bats have it rough in this town....lifes hard lil guy.

These guys could've used a bail out.

As I left town, it wasn't all negativity. Some neighborhood's looked quite liveable, at least for me, and I saw a little league practice going on.  So, there are still signs of life and no reason to completely torch the place. If you have a bunch of friends with money, looking to take over a town and start businesses for pretty cheap it might be a place to go. Of course, you would always need people with enough spending money to support your businesses so it could still be a big risk. If the place has one thing, it is lots of potential.

I continued south on my journey and eventually I got to Morgantown, WV. I liked their football team years ago and was sort of curious what the town looked like. This was in complete contrast to what I felt in Brownsville as Morgantown is a lively college town with tons of young flesh walking the streets. It was a warm day and there were lots of good choices to eat. I settled on a Mediterranean Deli on the Main St. and inhaled a gyro with stuffed grape leaves as an appetizer. I did one short walk up and down the street and headed back home.

It would be another 5 hours before I'd reach my destination. Not a bad way to spend a warm spring day.

I'm going to tip my hat to a chain restaurant.

I'm going to tip my hat to a chain restaurant. For the record, I don't attend a lot of chain restaurants. I don't  hate them either. I take a nuetral approach. If it's a good product at a decent price I'll endorse it.

Located about five minutes from where I work there is an ugly strip mall. There is a Chipotle restaurnat located there. It has "trendy" signage, about what you'd expect from a place like that. The design of it is really nice, sort of industrial looking. The place prides themselves on using the best products for their burritos.

The burritos are quite fat and flavorful. And, you'll get your food quicker than at a Wendy's or McDonald's. I enjoy the speed and consistency of everything as well as getting a full meal. Beans, Chicken, Rice, Peppers/Onions, and a decent little hot sauce is what I get. I leave feeling full and okay. It's under seven bucks.

In this age of American decline, where from the top down we're conditioned on shit, it's good see at least one business stepping it up and giving the public something good and healthy and affordable. I forgot to mention the music they play is quite tolerable and sometimes good and it seems to be a place where hot professional women go.

If you're one in fear chains and believe them all to be demonic, Chipotle might change your mind. At least DaintyBones thinks so. I'm not above it.

Here's their own link on the nutritional value of their foods, please contribute if feel the same way or feel otherwise:
http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutritional_information/nutritional_information.aspx

Do they still play nerf basketball?

We had high ceilings. High ceilings can make a house cold, but they can also provide for excellent nerf basketball. My first experience with nerf basketball came when we lived at my grandfathers. My parents had a big room and we set it up in there. It was the kind of hoop with the suction cups to hold it up and light foam ball. There was glass above my parents bedroom door so we had a nice glass backboard.

My uncle bought it for my older brother. We also had a program on our Apple II that would count down time. My older bro probably programmed that shit. So we played with a clock a few times. It made a primitive noise when it was done. It didn't count down like a real scoreboard. This was a BASIC program that counted down, probably from 10,000 or something. That was fun and gave a sense of urgency to the game.

Our family moved up the street and the new house provided for even more excellent nerf hoops on the first floor. My dream was to start a league with all of my friends. While they were committed to this, they weren't as obsessed as I was. My team was the Running Rebels, named after UNLV (they were later put on probation for violations). Their coach was a nut.

I remember buying CooperBlack font for my mom to iron on my uniform. I had good taste back then, but mother had to execute the design.

The area in our new house had wooden panels (which are no longer there). The panelling allowed for the suction cups to stick the hoop up. We had a wall you had to take it back to. My friends and I decided we wanted more fast breaks and dunks so we made a rule that the defense had to take it back too. Sports among kids is great as it allows them (us back then) to work out problems and come up with our own regulations without any outside authoritarian prescence. We knew what was best for our games and while fighting occaisionally existed we managed to work it all out on our own. All we wanted was a good game and good competition.

<<<I would even play on one foot hopping around on a cast but they never called me for "up and down.">>>

Games often got heated. We took out our anger on each by dunking on heads. Yes, we even had slam dunk contests. I stole my dunk from Spud Webb. The old toss it up against the backboard, catch it in the air, then dunk. To give the foam ball a little weight we wrapped duck tape over it.

It was nice a space with a wide enough opening under the hoop that we didn't get hurt or run into the wall after a lay-up. Most of the time it was only one-on-one, but occasionally we'd get two on two.

Me and my gradeschool buddy organized a tournament for my younger brother and his friends. We had brackets and everything. Everyone competed and no one got upset. It was a good time. My brother won. I was rooting against him but I remained a fair referee. I think.

I guess those hoops are still around. Later we evolved to the Jordan Jammer, which had it's own backboard which was velcro-ed to the wall and thicker break-a-way rim (which would break off it you dunked too hard, but you could just snap it back on). When my parents were away, we nailed velcro to the big livingroom wall and played a couple nice two on two games. The ceilings were even higher in the living room and we moved the furniture out of the way for ample space. We could almost run a pick'n'roll. This might have even been around 8th or 9th grade.

I think I want to purchase one again. Am I de-evolving?