Being laid off sucks…especially when your ego is as big as mine.

Before I even graduated college I had a employers offering me teaching jobs.  I turned a couple away and even told the rest they’d have to wait until I got back from my Summer trip to Rome.  —Now keep in mind, my degree isn’t in teaching.  I don’t have a teaching certificate.  I majored in a passion of mine (History) and minored in possibly the most “useless” curriculum in this tech driven town (Classics).

I call Huntsville, AL home and despite what you may think, this town has a big reputation in the science and mathematics scene.  That said, this same town has an infuriating and open disdain for liberal arts (I realize math is a liberal art, but keep with me).  For the two and a half years it took to complete my B.A., I constantly felt the condescending weight of a town that collectively repeated, “Good luck finding a job.”

So, last April when private schools seemed to be lining up to give me a job teaching Latin, I felt vindicated.  I spent my post-graduate Summer with my head held high, shoulders squared, and both middle fingers extended.  I BUSTED my ass in college.  I had worked hard and beaten this town…the way America is sold to other poor people.  Fuck you, Huntsville.  Pedicabo ego vos.

I chose the school with the most potential and friendliest staff.  The director even had plans to utilize my other talents in art and history.  It may have been a little to conservative for my tastes, but it was an educated kind of conservative.

Just like in college I busted my ass at that school.  My boss and my students seemed to love me.  I certainly developed a love for them.  Sadly the invisible hand of commerce does not care about how hard people work.  Private schools are for profit and there just wasn’t enough profit to keep a Latin/Art teacher around.  The lay-off came as a surprise.  Surely working hard has its benefits…that is the American dream.  WRONG!

In one meeting my usual radiation of confidence and optimism failed me.  My chin shrank into my chest.  I had to lower my middle fingers.  I had to tell my wife.  If you want to know the definition of “terrible,” try telling your wife you don’t have a job anymore.  She, as is her normal demeanor, was supportive.  I was hurt, depressed, and felt emasculated.  She promised that everything would be alright.  That whole “for worse” promise we made.

Being laid off sucks…especially when your ego is as big as mine.

Depression manifests itself in me by making me not want to do anything.  No amount of internal or external voices exclaiming “Get over it!” can pull me out of my funk.  I have to work through the problem in my own, slow way.  Finally, almost a month later, I’ve shed this bullshit.  I’m happy.  I’m motivated.  And gearing up to shove my middle fingers in this town’s fat face again.

2013
01/28
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What can we learn from the elderly?

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time recently with her advanced-octogenarian grandparents.  I’ll admit, at first it was a bit of a chore.  Old people have a habit of talking about whatever ails them and what medications they are on.  They talk about this because heart palpitations and irregularity is their small talk.  Arthritis and catheters is their right now.

But, after a few visits, my grandparents-in-law began to open up.  They started to talk about their childhood, their regrets, their passions, their accomplishments, and their failures.  One could ignorantly ask, “What is there worth knowing about life in northwest Arkansas?”

As I found out, quite a lot.  Rural Arkansas may as well be anywhere else in the world.  Humans with human concerns and human needs.   Same shit, different scenery.  Except, of course, that Wal-mart tends to have a lot more street cred out there.  Not the “corporate behemoth” or “necessary evil” descriptors attached to it elsewhere.

I’ve realized that their generation is the last generation that will appreciate anything of value.  We are encouraged to throw stuff away so we can constantly be buying new stuff.  Today I almost threw out a jacket I love because the zipper broke.  The fuckin’ zipper!  A $.85 piece of equipment broke on a $40 jacket and my first instinct was to throw away the jacket and buy another!  AND, my wife is a seamstress, for God’s sake.

We gladly buy another $500 phone because our previous $500 phone is a year old…or dusty…or fingerprinted.

Good God, what has happened to us?  We are a consumerist, locust culture.

As I write this I am sitting at a table made of plywood, eating shelled nuts with a rusty cracker out of a cracked K-mart bowl, both of which are soon destined for the trashcan, and typing on a laptop I am near ditching because I am having power supply issues.  Last Sunday we ate with my wife’s grandparents on a 200-year-old mahogany table, with 100-year-old Gorham silver, and drank good wine out of hand-blown glasses.  These weren’t affectations of wealth.  They were just that generation.  That generation has known poverty, so then know the meaning of wealth.

–Related to poverty, I have realized these last few weeks that my Grandmother’s and my Grandparents-in-law’s generation is the last generation that will appreciate food.  Everybody under 70-years-old in my country is a fat, fucking slob.  If you are reading this and are under 70-years-old and aren’t a fat, fucking slob, then you are trying very hard not to be.  And if you are a skinny 50-year-old and don’t work out, congratulations, you have rolled all 20’s, proceed with your life and leave the rest of us to our diabetes and medications.

My wife’s grandfather has said things to me like, “I can tell you aren’t afraid of eating, boy.” and “You’ve never had a bad appetite, have you, son?”  —  He means to say that he thinks I look healthy and the absence of an appetite is a serious medical concern.  I hear, “You’re looking sorta’ chunky, boy.”

There is a definite disconnect in our understandings of food.

I love food.  I’m a snob.  I cook.  I never turn my nose up to anything.  I have traveled and tried some of the best the world has to offer.  I still take food for granted.  There has always been food.  There will always be food.  I bust my ass five days a week at the YMCA to keep this pudgy figure.

My Grandfather-in-law remembers a time when nobody had food.  Food is a luxury that can go away.  I can hear it when older people eat.  They are constantly remarking, “This is good!” or “Wonderful!” or if their mouths are full, “Mmmmmm…”

—We Americans are fat and self-entitled to new shit.  Lets correct these problems before we deal with the rest of the world.

–When not eating shelled treenuts (his favorite being macadamia), Vaughn is busy writing stuff and not proof reading.  He hopes you enjoy the grammar and stylistic errors.– 

2012
12/19
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Gun control. That is a thing that has become huge today

Gun control.  That is a thing that has become huge today.  Free access to guns was one of those things that kept me in the middle of the road.  The kind of thing Republicans could have swayed me on instead of their rotating circus of batshit lunacy.  Instead of their need to prove that they are for small government while systematically trying to keep certain people from marrying other certain people.  Instead of their need to create councils of old men who are long past getting it up to tell young women what to do with the results of unprotected sex.  

—That said, I’m not much for abortion but as I could never carry a child, I don’t think it is my right to govern those that are able.—

The 2nd Amendment, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”, was ratified some 221 years ago.  Do you think those guys, Jefferson and such, could have predicted the type of firepower available in our time.  I doubt it.  Do you think a teenager looking at a Playboy in the 1970’s could have predicted the cornucopia of internet porn available today?

Apples to oranges, I suppose.

Those guys who wrote the constitution and whatnot weren’t gods.  They left things out.  Ignored other things.  Sorta’ avoided that whole “slavery” thing…which became a big deal in the 1820’s and then led to a civil war which this classical historian in the Heart of Dixie is a little tired of hearing about.  I prefer the civil war which included Cicero.

But guns.  Not, “butt guns.”  I’m thinking “butt guns” probably exist in the world of two normal people who aren’t allowed the tax breaks of a government recognized marriage.

Seriously, but guns.  This whole shooting thing in Connecticut has got me wondering.  Is the inconvenience of having to wait a few extra weeks to get a hand gun worth the 27 lives we all heard about today.  Or the 2 lives we forgot about in a Portland mall?  Is it all that easy to get an illegal gun?  Is it as easy as getting anything else that is illegal?  I have illegally downloaded music on my computer and have smoked pot.  Is getting a gun so much harder?  

I think no it isn’t worth the lives and yes getting an illegal gun is a lot harder.  Guns can’t be grown.  Not just any jerk can make a gun.  They are complicated and beautiful pieces of machinery.  I hear that marijuana is as easy to grow as tomatoes and I can attest to the simplicity of making beer.  With $40 I can make the best legal beer you’ve never had.  And I know shit about biology or chemistry.

Fuck it.  I don’t know.  What do you think?  Please don’t give me rote facts or predictable party opinions.  Think for yourself.

—When not drinking beer and writing stupid things on the internet, Vaughn is secretly excited about shooting a gun at the range for the first time.

 

 

2012
12/14
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Do you like it hot?

At my house, my wife and I like it hot.

We love hot sauce!  I’ve noticed that many of my friends who also love spicy food tend to have a loyalty to only one or two types of hot sauce.  I have a whole shelf of them.  Look!

–Heh.  I didn’t actually mean to get my copy of the Apicius in the picture.  That is something for another entry.–

But notice that it isn’t over kill.  There are none of those hot sauces bought on cheesy boardwalks that have a label depicting a cartoon devil farting fire while smoke comes out of his ears.  Nobody likes that stuff.  Everybody has a bottle of it, but nobody likes “Bloody Poop” brand hot sauce.  Each bottle in that picture has its own special place in my heart and on my taste buds.

But lets start this post off with ole’ familiar:

—Tabasco sauce is the iconic staple of what it is to be a hot sauce in the South.  Everyone’s father had a bottle and maybe its familiarity is why I like it so much.  And while I am sure some hot sauce purists will disagree with me, nostalgia aside, Tabasco is pretty darn good.

Stuff I use it on:  blackbeans, eggs, ketchup for french fries, grits, and occasionally pizza.

——————————————

Next on this list is the Asian-style hot sauce that has taken America by storm and is poised to usurp the top position in the country:

—Americans frickin’ love Sriracha.  So much so that soon hot sauce purists will have to start hating the famous “rooster sauce.”  I own a bottle of it.  I like it.  But it makes everything taste so Asian.  And I keep a dirty, little secret from my foodie buddies…I don’t particularly care for Asian food.  I eat it and I enjoy it when I do but I never am in the mood for duck or huge bowls of soup.

That said, I love sushi but prefer wasabi with my raw tuna and salmon.

Stuff I use it on:  Well, I’ve had that bottle for probably two years, so not much.  Occasionally my wife decides “to hell with my husband” and cooks Thai food.

————————————-

Now we come to the smiling mariachi that has stolen my heart:

—Tapatio (or best I can tell “Uncle Snack”) came into my life about five years ago when my brother came back from Arizona after college.  By then, I had already established a pecking order for my hot sauces and didn’t know if I had room for another.  But my brother insisted.  Plus, Uncle Snack looks like the cool uncle who gives you a beer when you are underage and then plays some minor-chord, Mexican standard on the trumpet.  Tapatio has since ascended the ranks and holds the top spot in my hierarchy of hot sauce.

Stuff I use it on:  Pizza, anything Mexican, basically anything with a lot of cheese.

——————————–

In my early twenties, this next sauce stood above the rest but an aging palate alters tastes and the good cowboy just couldn’t compete against Uncle Snack:

—My best friend and I used to swear by the euphoric properties of Texas Pete.  We’d down shots of the stuff and then while our brains rushed dopamine into our endocrine system we’d paint grandiose pieces of art.  I have a lot of wonderful memories attached to the infamously hot Alabama summer nights compounded with rounds of pure Texas Pete and the smell of oil paint.  My use of T.P. has faded considerably but not my love for it.

(Editors note, I study language, history, and art…I have no idea how an endocrine system works but it sounded like the right thing.)

Stuff I use it on:  Not really much anymore.  I really enjoy it on wings but I never make wings.  It works pretty dang well mixed in with barbeque sauces.  Occasionally I’ll pick up a sixer of cheap beer, an awful pizza, and a worse movie then drown the pizza in T.P. to cover the taste.  Otium sine dignitate.

——————————–

That about covers the oft’used hot sauces, but variety is the spice of life and this is where my special teams come in to liven things up.

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The first “single-use” hot sauce on my list gives life to an old childhood favorite:

—This Mexican restaurant staple finds its way on many an endearing fan’s burrito but my smart money delegates this to a decidedly non-Mexican dish…sloppy Joes.  Really.  Next time you want a bit of comfort food, fry up some corn and make sloppy Joes with a liberal splashing of Valentina.  You’ll thank me.

Stuff I use it on:  Sloppy Joes.

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Although Texas Pete has been recently taking a back seat, he does not go away without a fight.  T.P. doubles up on this list with his delicious pepper sauce:

—Living in the American South you come to appreciate the art of cooking two relatively simple dishes: Mac and Cheese and greens.  Both benefit tremendously from T.P.’s pepper sauce.  The other great thing about the pepper sauce is that when it is empty, you can simply refill it with vinegar and let it set for a couple months.  Or you can enjoy a jar full of tasty, pickled peppers.

Stuff I use it on:  Mac and Cheese and any sort of greens.

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Two years ago I decided to make my own and call it “Bocchino Brand Hot Sauce.”  The label was supposed to have a drawing of my dog (an American bulldog) wearing a fedora and holding a cow horn pepper in his mouth.  The label never materialized but the sauce was wonderful:

—I used only roasted homegrown cow horn peppers, garlic, molasses, vinegar, and salt.  It looked like spicy vomit but tasted like spicy heaven.

I don’t proclaim to be an expert on hot sauce, I just like them a lot.  I know there are several brands I have missed…Frank’s, Crystal, and Louisiana come to mind. So, do me a favor and educate me and take the poll.  Was your favorite hot sauce on my list?  If not, click “other” but make sure to tell me which one you prefer.

2012
05/05
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Food
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Sundry and Out of Touch: The American Anti-Imperialist Failure of 1890s

—This is the senior thesis paper I wrote to graduate with a Bachelor’s history degree at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.  While I am not sure if all of my citations translated well into the WordPress rubric, you can rest assured that all credit has been given to those who deserved it.  Enjoy.—

Sundry and Out of Touch:  The American Anti-Imperialist Failure of the 1890s

     American politics perhaps have never told a story so uneventful yet containing so many A-list historical celebrities as the story of the steady rise and subsequent fizzle of the nineteenth-century American anti-imperialist movement.  When the student of American political history begins research on the anti-imperialists of the 1890s, his first instinct is to search for their accomplishments.  The student will be sadly disappointed.  For all their clever writings, high-powered friends, and enormous spending potential, in the grand scheme of things, the anti-imperialists achieved nothing.  They were, as Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine chided, “noisy but not numerous; Pharisaical but not practical; ambitious but not wise; pretentious but not powerful.”[1]

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2012
04/22
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Drawings of hips and other things

I’ve been meaning to get into drawing stylized pin-ups and semi-erotica for a while.  So finally, after realizing that I waste a lot of my life meaning to get into something but never actually getting into anything, I gave it a shot

Plus, I spend so much of my drawing time illustrating gross monsters and emaciated humans, drawing the pretty curves of a woman is a welcome break.  In fact, it was so fun that Zug, Bok, and the gang may get another delay.

So I present to you my first attempt at erotic-ish illustrator:

 

–Oh God!  It is so offensive!  How are we supposed to revere the wonderful legacy of Queen Victoria if we aren’t afraid of sex and the human body?–

-18×24, India ink and watercolor on paper.

 

Ok, I take it back.  This isn’t my debut as a guy who likes to likes drawing hips.  A few years ago I drew “Composition with Four Shapes.”  People seemed to really like it.  I sold a bunch of prints and gave the original to a silent auction for breast cancer charity or something.  Some sort of female condition.

 

2012
04/14
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“Are you OK?! Are you OK?! Baby, are you OK?! Baby, are you OK?!”

Tonight a guy, far too drunk or far too high to be driving, crashed into the back of my wife’s car.  It sounded like a shotgun with an echo.  BANG!  And then we slam into the car in front of us.  BANG!

“Are you OK?!  Are you OK?!  Baby, are you OK?!  Baby, are you OK?!”  My worst fears as a husband boil to the surface.  It isn’t P.C. but every man feels the need to protect his wife.  Every husband will give himself up to save his wife.

“FUCK!  FUCK!”

She is alright.  Her cursing tells me that.

After a few moments the offending driver stumbles up to our window.  His eyes are half-shut and what is visible is bloodshot.  He asks, “Is everybody alright?”

His breath stinks like beer.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!  Look at my car!  Does my car look like this?!”

It becomes obvious to me that this guy needs protecting, not my wife.

—————-

These are the moments in life when we must face our mortality.  If I were to die today would I be happy with the legacy I’ve left?  Would I be happy with what I have done?

I just tucked Shanna into bed.  We hugged and kissed like we always do.  Then I said, “We got lucky tonight, lets not forget that.”

2012
04/14
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What does Martin Luther King Day mean to an average 20-30 something white guy?

What does Martin Luther King Day mean to an average 20-30 something white guy?  At least for me, not a whole lot.  I mean, I could pretend.  I am fully capable of writing a touching entry about rising up and standing strong in the face of racial inequality.  I’d be talking out of my ass.  My relatives, at least in living memory, have never been oppressed or suppressed.  I don’t know anything about racial inequality.  I know it happened in the past to other people.  If racial prejudice continues to this day (which I am fairly sure it does) then it doesn’t happen to me.  I don’t think it happens immediately around me either.  I can’t imagine myself having much in common with a bigot.

I think these days people are more concerned about judging a person by their political affiliation.

2012
01/16
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Somewhere down the road of life I forgot that fifteen minutes with a good novel while lying in bed can be the equivalent of four beers, sleeping meds, cable television, and then another beer.

Recently I have rediscovered a favorite pastime…reading in bed.  Somewhere down the road of life I forgot that fifteen minutes with a good novel while lying in bed can be the equivalent of four beers, sleeping meds, cable television, and then another beer.  I suppose some people keep a copy of Moby Dick or anything written by James Joyce on their nightstands but I spend all day sifting through scholarly journals and translating 2,000-year-old poems.  Real world case in point:  Today I, along with five other classmates and a professor, spent 15 minutes on these first three words from Catullus 101:

“Multas per gentes” = Easy stuff, really.  “Through many nations/clans”  Even non-Latin readers can pick it apart.  “Multas” looks like “multitude.”  “Per” is still a prefix we use in English to mean “through.”  “Gentes” still pops up in words like “generation” and “genes.”

But why did this take a classroom of advanced Latin students as well as a professor to work through?  Because it is Catullus and he usually ball punches other poets back to the drawing board.  Notice the word picture where “per” is in between the words for “many nations” as if the word itself is traveling through many nations.  This was most assuredly not a mistake.  Also, if you clicked the link, you’ll notice the entire poem is about death but the word Catullus chose for “nations” brings about notions of birth or beginnings: “generate, genitals, etc.”  Death begins at birth.  All this in three words.  Feel like a good writer?  Take a moment to get ball punched by Catullus.

Thinkings on Catullus 101 also helped me get through a friend’s death.  If you haven’t read it, here is my oddly popular Concerning the Death of a Friend.

—But back to my original point.  I spend most of my day doing this kind of stuff so I prefer an interesting but somewhat linear story to help me sleep.  Currently I am reading Connie Willis’ _Doomsday Book_

As good as the novel is, this is not a book review blog post (that may come later).  This is a post about the benefits of reading before bed.  Pre-sleep reading is a healthy way to squelch insomnia.  I can actually fall asleep.  Insomnia comes in many forms but for me, when lights turn off and my head hits the pillow, all my worst demons come to play.  I can not stop thinking about mistakes I’ve made or possible failures or things that anger me.  My brain will even go so far as to create arguments with those closest to me so I can fight them out in my head.

These monsters dance around in my head with no where to go.  Sometimes I feel productive and personify them into drawings.  I give them names and back stories…but really this is just what I see when I close my eyes and attempt to silence my brain…Predation,     The End,     Zug-zug, Souldrinker.  I guess we are all a little bat-shit crazy.

Aside from the sanity and health benefits, reading at bedtime has had a positive effect on my marriage.  Wives, being wives, tend to enjoy being with their husbands.  Busy schedules limit our time together during the week.  Some nights Shanna gets home (around 9:30-10pm) and goes straight to bed.  She’d like me to come to bed with her but, as we’ve already established, when the lights turn off I begin fighting with brain monsters.  But if I lie down and read I can make her happy, clear my head, and be cuddled with at the same time.  Also, simply being in bed occasionally leads to a case of the UFW’s (unexpectedly frisky wives…for those not in the know).  A thing which truly makes the world go ’round.

2012
01/12
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I went to school to learn how to better myself. And I’ve done a wonderful job becoming an insufferable pseudo-intellectual.

I have reached the beginning of the last leg of a great personal journey.  In four months I will finally graduate from college.  At 29-years-old, getting a degree has taken longer than most people.  I am secretly terrified at what comes next.  Obviously the responsible thing to do is get a big boy job.  Grumpy old-timers and jaded working stiffs will condescendingly remark, “NOW comes the real world.”

–As if I have been living in a fake world populated by puppies that never grow old and spicy foods that never give indigestion.

I’ll get that big boy job. It doesn’t matter what. I owe my wife a few years to explore the potential of her brain. Maybe she’ll unlock the secrets to black holes or math or something. Three years is a long time to focus on a wacky side project.  Linguam Latinam didici (I learned Latin).

I don’t have a career path set. I don’t have the qualifications to be a history teacher. I didn’t go to school to get a job later. I didn’t go to school to learn how to become a history teacher (although necessity may pull me in that direction). I went to school to learn how to better myself. And I’ve done a wonderful job becoming an insufferable pseudo-intellectual. I’ve always been insufferable on account of one thing or another. Shanna seems able to ignore it.

–Granted, Latin is a pretty tough sell in classrooms these days seeing as how nobody speaks it so there are no restaurants in which to offhandedly order a traditional flamingo tongue pate’ or dormouse pie.  BUT, when visiting Italy I can read ruins like this…and Rome is lousy with ruins.–

2012
01/11
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