huzzah

I suspect that the closest any mortal can come to truly knowing the travails of a can of beans errantly placed in a microwave is to don a full suit of armor on a sweltering and cloudless day in Tennessee, but that is merely speculation on my part. At any rate, combine this with the added factors of a sweaty horse, heavy wooden lance, and other armor-clad individuals with heavy lances on big sweaty horses and you have the medieval equivalent of NASCAR. Have all this occur within fifteen minutes of my house and I will have no choice but to attend.

So it was that Mrs. Camino and I enthusiastically accepted to the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Scarborough to witness the Gath of Baal National Jousting Tournament on the last day of the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. Mrs. Scarborough was quicker on the blog trigger and has already accurately relayed the details and posted some pictures of the day. Each of them is an ubelievably talented artist, and I can only hope to soon see jousting inspired work on each of their sites.

Now, the more hardcore of your renfest goers will look something like a cross between a science fiction convention and impersonators of the original line-up of the Allman Brothers Band with assorted roadies and groupies. I mean this in a good way. Far be it for me to mock those who have experted themselves in the forgotten arts of fire breathing, axe tossing, and falconry.

However, not all renaissance festivals are so professional. I can recall attending the Alabama renfest while growing up in Florence and being thoroughly entertained by half-drunk rednecks in suits of armor pummeling one another with wooden swords, their mullets swaying from behind their helmeted heads. They would strike with shouts of "On guard, mutherfucker!" before an audience that sometimes included the visiting mayor of Florence, Italy.

It may have happened differently, but that, along with a "Don't Fear the Reaper" soundtrack, is how I remember it.

Part of the lure of medieval culture is that famous medieval violence, and, much like the aforementioned sport of NASCAR, those who attend full contact jousting do so with the hope, though sometimes not expressing it as fervently as Mr. Scarborough and myself, that they will be witness to something gone horribly wrong. However, there were no men or beasts impaled on lances this day. The most one could really hope for is to see a good unhorseing, and there were a couple of those within the contests we watched. Still, it is really something to just lie in the grass within feet of full contact jousting. You can feel the thundering of the horses, crashing of sudden contact, and then, if you are lucky, you will get to dodge the occasional shattered lance.

As for the rest of the festival, I managed to accomplished my goal to avoid being the poor bastard chosen from the audience to participate in any of the various carney stage shows laid out within the makeshift village. It is one of my three main fears.

My second and less rational fear in no particular order would be that of sunken ships. I watch documentaries on the sunken Bismarck and various other ships with the same adrenaline fueled anxiety that others watch horror movies to achieve.

The third and least rational will remain nameless, as it is a common children's toy that friends and coworkers, were they to discover its kryptonite-like effect, would no doubt chase and/or taunt me with.

People can not so easily chase one another with sunken ships.

But I digress.

We may have "poached in the stew of the day", as Mrs. Scarborough so eloquently described it (Mrs. Camino and I noticed our stench once back in the air-conditioned Camino mobile. Swampy ecosystems had taken root upon each of our persons, and methinks it was akin to what one could olfactorally expect to encounter when meeting another in medieval times), but a festive time was had by all. It was good to see the Scarboroughs for the first time in a few years, even if our hopes of witnessing a good impaling were left unfulfilled there on a muddy jousting track.

merchandise of doom

Need a light switch cover? Fresh out of post cards? At a loss for what to get that father who relies on Father's Day and other assorted holidays for his wardrobe? Want to do all you can to get me that senate seat just in case it actually happens and I turn out to be the type to hold a grudge against the non-believers?

Well, do I have the solution for you.

By the way, does this count as a campaign contribution?

a listening tour

Does it bother me that Al Gore cares more about the environment than I do? Of course it does. His voice admonishes me from the back of my mind each time I slip on a pair of Styrofoam pants or climb into my SUV and run over the occasional baby penguin, and it gnaws at me something fierce.

At least, it did until last summer when I drove by the former veep’s house on a daily basis going to and from various landscaping gigs in Belle Meade, each day spotting an SUV in the driveway that could easily eat my 4-runner and still put away a Volkswagen or two.

Why the hell do you need an SUV?

Because a bull fiddle cannot be transported in an AMC Pacer so easily. Also, I often travel with a fat and endlessly gaseous Spaniel.

Does Gore have either of these needs?

No, but Gore carries with him an enormous truth, and it would simply be too inconvenient for him to attempt transporting that truth in a tiny hybrid. He would have to make multiple trips each time he needed to take his truth anywhere, and the masses gathered to accept his truth would soon lose interest and wander off even if Matt Damon stalled by telling the crowd different truths that George Clooney read in books and magazine articles and then kindly summarized for Matt Damon.

Ah.

Besides, Gore has keen reflexes and is much better at swerving when penguins enter the roadway.

But why does Harold Ford Jr. drive around in an SUV on that television commercial?

Because Al Gore sometimes allows him borrow the truth.

Are the Republicans therefore in danger of losing a senate seat in Tennessee?

Yes. The Republicans will probably lose because their candidate is likely to be Van Hilleary, and many folks would agree with ceeelcee on this particular point.

However, it also has quite a bit to do with the brilliant Democratic plan of giving Republicans too much power. I could take the time to explain it here, but it would simply be easier to tell you that it’s sort of like the end of Ghostbusters when they fill the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man with too much energy.

Ah.

You see, the worst thing you could do to a political party is give them the power to make good on all the clichés they’ve been regurgitating throughout the gridlocked past.

I see.

The second worst thing you could do to a political party is have Lee Greenwood sing songs for them.

Still, both parties are pretty much full of shit, and it’s beginning to sound like another non-voting year for Rex.

You needn’t relegate your options on the names listed on a ballot for your voting options, you silly bastard.

I needn’t?

No. You can always write in a candidate.

But I have no one to write in, as Carl Weathers presumably lives in another state.

Well, in the absence of Carl Weathers I propose this:

Why would I do that?

Because senators make much more than people who are employed as…uh…well, whatever the hell it is that you do.

Will I have to actually do anything?

Absolutely not. You belong to no viable political party and therefore never have to fear actually having any political power or responsibility. You can say whatever you need to say to get elected and then sleep soundly with the confidence that you’ll never have to actually follow through on any of it.

So it sounds like I just have to repeat the performance I gave at the interview when I got that teaching job.

Yes, but this time you should probably leave out the part about strongly disliking children.

in which i am afforded the opportunity to quote from "my name is earl"

My preferred liquor store lies on the other side of the interstate from Casa Camino. The wider selection and cheaper prices are generally worth the extra time and half-mile of traffic, but there are occasions, like this past Saturday, when the liquor store that sits beside my grocery store will simply have to do. Weekend traffic on my side of the sprawling boro is an ever-thickening bitch that I am increasingly reluctant to battle, and I am therefore, at times, willing to settle for higher prices and a diminished selection to keep from crawling that-half mile in a baking Camino mobile.

So it was that I stepped into this second choice of an alcohol merchant, picked up a bottle of Rex Goliath pinot noir (my standby noir due to it’s name and affordability), and waited patiently in line behind a group of aging blondes as they chose from an assortment of schnapps along the bottom shelf behind the counter. The guy working the register leaned from his stool just far enough to hook each bottle between a couple of nicotine stained fingers, groan for effective, and then slowly upright himself and smile crookedly at each of the ladies.

He’s the same guy who’s always there on the weekends. He’s thin and somewhere in his fifties, with thinning black hair slicked backwards and the top of a pack of Marlboro one hundreds peeking from the pocket of his plaid shirt. He may own the place for all I know. The only thing I’m sure of is that he’s the type who samples from the airplane bottles at the counter when the store is either empty or that aisle of Australian merlots obscures him from the random customer.

Let it be known that I in no way mean to imply that these traits are less than admirable.

I eventually made it to the counter. He took my bottle and turned it around in his hands a couple of times before scanning it into the register.

“Rex was a 47-pound rooster” he gleamed from the label. He then gave me a different, yet equally crooked smile and added, “That’s a big fucking chicken.”

I smiled, agreed with a grunt of some sort, and then remembered one of Randy’s lines from that episode of My Name is Earl containing the subplot of Randy’s fear of chickens (which, by the way, would be officially diagnosed as “alektorophobia”).

“A rooster is a man-chicken” I quoted.

He paused for a moment with my bottle halfway into the thin paper bag and furrowed his brow without looking up.

“Alright,” he said with a nod, “that’s a big fucking man-chicken.”

about this whole illegal immigration thing...

Now, I don’t pay much attention to national affairs or hot button issues, but the best solution I’ve heard thus far to the immigration issue would have to be the great Sarcastro-Rick Shaw proposal, which…

Uh…

What is it? Can’t you see daddy’s working here?

Forgive the interruption, but it appears that you’ve linked to the wrong thing.

...Ah, So I did.

Also, the actor who played “Quint” in Jaws was ROBERT Shaw.

Yes…correct again…I thought his name was RICHARD for some reason.

Honest mistake.

I think I confused him with Richard Burton.

I see.

Yes.

Well, I believe you were saying something about illegal immigration when I interrupted you.

Was I?

You were indeed, and it was going be prefaced by a quick reference to Sarcasto’s "rickshaw" post.

Ah, yes. That would make more sense.

What I meant to say was that Sarcastro’s great rickshaw proposal works best because it combines the immigration issue with rising fuel costs and therefore marries the two most “pressing domestic problems of our nation”.

But it is always good to have as many options as possible, and I have a couple more to throw into the mix.

Now, It seems to me that the nation was willing to look the other up to a certain point. There could also be a great deal of election year politics fueling the issue, but I think we probably just reached a saturation point and would be fine if we could somehow deport a portion of the illegal aliens and return to the comfortable side of our acceptance level.

Let’s say that we do that. How will we then keep the borders managed?

The fence thing doesn’t seem like a good idea. Fences are so last millennium. A kickass Great Wall o’ China-styled wall would both be effective and win style points along with tourist dollars, but we unfortunately live in the age of the aluminum building and other examples of tasteless/soulless architecture. A great wall would be too costly without the ironic benefit of cheap and illegal labor. Besides, methinks that finding a solution will require one to think outside of this literal box idea that so many have settled upon.

Now, I haven’t completely ironed these out yet, so please take them as 'ol Rex thinking out loud.

First, the border is not completely sealable. We can seal portions and monitor other parts, but there will always be a way through. Therefore, I propose that we watch as much as we can and then cover the rest with one end of a giant Teflon-coated wind tunnel. The currently understaffed border security will funnel any escaping Mexican into this tunnel where they will then be whisked away to Canada.

Trust me, it will be a fun ride. We will pump in Tejano music, and you will envy them.

Think about it: I’m sure that there are jobs in Canada that the Canadians are unwilling to do. Also, they already have more than one national language. Spanish and the Mexican culture can sit alongside the Canadian and French Canadian cultures to make the nation one big carton of Neapolitan ice cream. They can then market themselves as such.

I want to go already.

Yes, but won’t the Canadians be mad?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…

Ha…ha…heh…

Ah…yes, well, Canada is like our little brother, you see. Therefore, like any good family, we should disperse our troubles and pass some of the burden on to them.

So, it’s like a noogie of sorts.

Well, it’s more like getting your kid brother a keg for the first time. You know, like, “Here’s a few million illegals. Just sit back and don’t worry about landscaping or the picking of citrus fruit for a while.”

We’ll have to remember to send citrus trees.

Make a note of it.

Now, would this plan be legal?

Probably. I think there’s a clause in NAFTA that covers it.

What else you got?

This is a reusable option that would come in handy on more issues than this one. I like to call it the “Great American Cloaking Device”. It simply makes the nation invisible whenever necessary, and I’m sure the government already lifted the technology off one of those crashed flying saucers back in the forties.

So, we would essentially be taking care of one "alien problem" with technology gained from our other “alien problem”.

Exactly.

So, the would-be illegal immigrants would come to the border, find nothing, and then just go back home.

Right again. I think it would go something like this (by the way, prepare yourselves for some hot bilingual action):

Would be illegal immigrant #1: Donde esLos Estados Unidos?

Would be illegal immigrant #2: Que?

#1: I said, donde es Los Estados Unidos?

#2: No se. It should es right aqui.

#1: Well, it no es right aqui.

#2: I can see that con mi ojos, Uno. All I know es Los Estados Unidos was essing right aqui a few momentos ago cuando we were crossing el Rio Grande.

#1: Well, Dos, no es aqui...So, donde are we going now?

#2: No se. I feel like having un bullfight or maybe un siesta.

#1: Wouldn’t that be a bit stereotypical?

#2: Not really. In the first draft we concluded by doing a hat dance while Speedy Gonzales found a way to thwart the cloaking device.

#1: He probably used his speed.

#2: That’s generally the way it happens.

#1: Did you notice that we’ve stopped with the Spanish?

#2: It really doesn’t take that much to exhaust Rex’s Spanish vocabulary.

#1: Wait, did you just say “Speedy Gonzales”?

#2: I did.

#1: Isn’t he the current Attorney General of Los Estados Unidos?

#2: You’re thinking of ROBERTO Gonzales.

#1: For some reason he didn’t seem like a “Robert”.

#2: And thus we have harkened back to a meaningless gimmick used at the beginning of the post.

#1: So we can clock out now?

#2: Absolutely.

#1: I can see why Americans don’t want to do some of these jobs.

#2: Indeed. Let the cerveza flow and the hat dancing begin.

a year in the life

Today marks the one year anniversary for the humble Blog of Doom. Here's the first post. Ah, such optimism.

Anyway, I had a couple of weeks off from work around this time last year. The lovely and quite talented Mrs. Camino had a short-lived blog detailing the planning and execution of our trip to England, Wales, and Scotland (we ended up saving money and going to Maryland and Virginia instead. You can read the four part series here, here, here, and here), and I figured that I could start a blog of my own to post some of the essays I'd written for my own amusement, continue some of the dilusional rambling that I would sometimes send to friends in emails, and occasionally attempt to channel the spirits of favorite authors.

I figured that I would soon lose interest and just delete everything after a few weeks. I tend to do that. However, a few very talented fellow bloggers and an assortment of friends and random passers-by started showing up on a fairly regular basis to read and sometimes comment on something I'd written. So it was that I kept writing.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

the foley foodfight

A friend asked if I had a chance to partake of the throwed rolls while in Foley. He was of course speaking about Lambert's Cafe, a Cracker Barrel-esque establishment with the notable distinction/gimmick of having waiters throw bread at paying customers.

I did not.

I’m sure that the food is fine and the waiters throw with a tempered velocity and without any malice whatsoever toward the hordes of pasty invading tourists. I’m sure that a good time is had by all and that no one ever suffers an injury and no rolls make it on to the floor and then somehow wind up thrown to customers elsewhere who are completely oblivious to the fact that Uncle Willy on the other side of the restaurant has lost quite a bit of reaction time in his eighty years. I’m sure also that everyone washes his or her hands.

However, I still have no plans to sample any of these throwed rolls.

The whole concept elicits more questions than answers. For instance, does one ask for a roll to be thrown or are they tossed at random? Must I then maintain a cat-like state of readiness throughout my meal? Should I remain sober and alert in order to sharpen my reaction time? And what of the young and the elderly? If I bring along my grandmother will I then also have to keenly be aware of any projectile bread products within her vicinity? Is anywhere safe from these rolls? Must I remain guarded while in the restroom, lest some quick cornbread to the side of the face disrupts an otherwise unguarded moment?

Methinks the whole situation would not be conducive to proper digestion.

Still, some people are obviously into that sort of thing, and I dare not judge them. But as for me and mine we will stick to any one of the thousands of seafood restaurants that sit around Lambert’s. There, any thrown food will be taken as a sign of primate aggression and then dealt with accordingly.

I will get up and run away with the all the speed and adrenaline of a skittish marmot, which is actually a much more natural reaction than feigning giddiness at having your meal thrown at you.

goodbye charlie drake

There was an odd moment a few months back when I popped Jimmy Stewart’s Harvey into the DVD player and saw Charles Drake in role of Stewart’s would be psychiatrist. It was the very same guy I always pictured living out my mostly true, though often uneventful recountings here, and there he was on my television.

During the Blog of Doom’s first couple of weeks, I used my actual picture in my profile. It wasn’t the same one that sits there now, but there was a moustache and worried look involved. Then I came across Charlie Drake wasting away on some B-movie fan site and thought that he represented the exact mix of paranoia,

… intoxicatedness,

…and swank that I was hoping to achieve.

Anyway, it was fun to hide behind him for a year, sometimes even literally. I could always use him to talk about playing around town,

…hosting Hee Haw along side Buck Owens in the seventies and eighties,

…or the time Rory Calhoun misunderstood my poor attempt at a Brokeback Mountain joke on the set of Four Guns to the Border back in 1954. Indeed, it was perhaps a bit too early for those back then.

So, does this mean that I have now achieved the desired level of paranoia and intoxicatedness within myself that Charlie was here to provide?

Sure, it was there all along. However, I could never hope to come close to his swank and machismo.

Gracias, Charles.

the foley art market

You may think that Foley, Alabama's 34th annual "Art in the Park" was the only place to experience a fine selection of Foley's amateur art on Saturday, but you would be sadly mistaken. Sure, there was a lot to see at there in the park, and you would be seeing it now had the various artists, perhaps fearing the very real possibility that I would come home and render my own cartoon flamingo paintings, been a little less nervous with my snapping pictures left and right, but the handful of antique stores scattered about the small Foley downtown also had quite a bit to offer with the added benefit of being camera friendly.

By the way, I don't frequent antique stores for the art. I do love the vintage movie posters and product advertisements, but they are often overpriced or in too poor a condition to be worth the purchase. For instance, I came across some nice Chesterfield ads sporting a young Bing Crosby in part attributing his smooth voice to that particular brand of cigarette, but each was a bit too yellowed and torn at the edges.

I also found a nice stack of Tommy Dorsey records, but each was too scratched and really not worth the hassle of attempting to bring on the seven and a half hour car trip home in eighty-degree weather.

But I digress. This is supposed about three particular paintings that I came across on Saturday.

Walk into any given antique store across the south and you will be guaranteed to encounter a statue or painting of Jesus, but only in Alabama will one expect to find paintings of George Wallace.

(Again, click to embiggen on any of these).

It was sixty-five bucks. Had I talked them down to fifteen it would've been mine.

Believe it or not, George Wallace, Jr. was actually there across the street in the park campaigning for Lt. Governor at the very moment this was taken. I would have also paid fifteen bucks for a shot of him holding the painting, but that didn't happen either.

From a distance, I thought this next selection was meant to be Lyndon Johnson.

Upon further inspection, I am convinced that it is Lyndon Johnson. However, the priest outfit threw me off a bit. There was no explanation for why our thirty-sixth president would be posing as a Catholic priest, and one was left to wonder if this was some sort of political statement being made by the artist. Antique stores are not the place for political statements, but, then again, I suppose an artist never goes about his or her work with the hope that it will someday end up in an antique store in Foley, Alabama alongside the likes of this:

Yes, I know it would have been kind of me to give you warning before subjecting you to this disturbing sight, but that would've kept you from feeling a mere fraction of the repulsion that I experienced upon stumbling into it. Besides, it isn't nearly as frightening in it's small incarnation there. You really must embiggen this one for the full effect.

I don't know who she is or if she played a pivotal role in state or national politics at any point in her life, but she strangely resembles a girl I went to middle school with. She was an angry lass, as I recall.

Who could blame her?

Who indeed?

Anyway, I can't remember her name, but she once blindsided me with her rather large purse to the side of my young skull after mistaking me for the kid who had just hit her with a snowball. With ringing ears, I turned and took a reactionary swing at her, but that only angered her more and worked to further convince her of my guilt. It, like most of my childhood fights, ended rather badly for me there in the principal’s office trying to explain why I fought and was subsequently defeated by the big girl with the misplaced eyes, though I’m pretty sure I called her by her actual name during the formal inquiry.

But you digress.

Indeed, I do. Where was I?

You were finished but at a loss for how to wrap it all up. This led you to take a strange tangent.

How else should I end it?

This is good enough. We appear to be out of coffee.

Ah, so we are.

mrs. camino and i hunt gators

There is much flora and fauna to be found in the chewy center of the man-made island that holds Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, and most of it lies undisturbed within a nature reserve or semi-disturbed within the Gulf State Park. I camped out at this park frequently with my mother’s family while growing up and remember hearing the alligators in the water just down the steep embankment from our tent. We were perfectly safe, as the bastards aren’t known for their wall climbing skills, but there was little to protect us from the wits of banditing raccoons and their thumbed ingenuity that caused us to lose so much granola and lunchmeat. The fiends can actually open Igloo coolers, and this led to my cousin and I having to share a tent with all of the raccoon enticing food supplies.

I put on a lot of weight that summer.

Anyway, there is now a paved walkway being laid through the middle of the island, and Mrs. Camino and I brought our fattened Brittany spaniel along to traverse it, though there really wasn’t much traversing to be done. Hurricanes have slowed the construction, and there are only a couple of miles to be walked. Still, the sunlight, eighty-degree temperatures, and exercise were enough to exhaust Carl Weathers, seen here cooling his soft underbelly on the elevator floor upon our return.

Click on any of these to embiggen, by the way.

The more feral animals one might find within the island are presented on a chart along the trail, though none were actually encountered during our short stay.

There are the aforementioned raccoons along with an assortment of lizards, turtles, diamond back rattlesnakes, alligators, bobcats, birds of prey, and a couple of different types of foxes, my favorite being the red fox.

They appear just as they do on television and are known for their peculiar defense mechanism of feigning a heart attack when surprised or upset.

However, we were more interested in the elusive alligator.

A marshland near the main beach has been laced with elevated walkways for the sole purpose of allowing tourists to possibly view the gators in what closely resembles their natural habitat.

Although these are wild alligators and not subject to the same contractual obligations as the zoo variety, this “do not feed the gators” sign gave us hope of spotting a few.

Mrs. Camino actually thought she saw one as we entered the walkway. It was at the front of the creek along the sidewalk and road, and it appeared to me to be nothing but a discarded tire partially sunken in the mud.

Anyway we circled through the walkway a few times and found nothing. Here we are actually looking at nothing.

A couple staying at an adjacent RV campground said they spotted an iguana that had escaped from a kid in the campground, but even that was gone by the time we got around to see it.

The discarded tire was still there as we left, and Mrs. Camino was not ready to accept my explanation. We stared at it for a while, and she snapped this picture.

Upon further inspection over coffee this morning, I’ve come to agree with Mrs. Camino. The bastards have perhaps evolved to mimic the appearance of discarded tires, as there is no sign specifically prohibiting the feeding of discarded tires.

Nature always finds a way, I suppose.

Sorry, dear.

back from where the weather suits my clothes

The big difference between last week's short vacation to the Alabama gulf coast and my usual southward meanderings is that last week didn't make me want to stick around and earn my keep as a gator wrangler, bassist in a buffett cover band, driftwood merchant, or the guy who paints names on the sides of newly purchased yachts.

No, I meant to leave out "airbrushed t-shirt artist".

Anyway, it had been years since I had been there so close to the tourist season, and the extra traffic and longer waits at the seafood restaurants were not a welcomed difference from my annual winter visits.

Still, a good time was had by all. I returned a bit sunburned and full of seafood and Negra Modelo, and you can't ask for more than that...except that maybe it wouldn't be so effing cold back in Tennessee. Then again, that is to be expected, I suppose.

Anyway, vacation slides are probably coming soon. Don't say you weren't warned.

dog propaganda

A friend and his wife are the proud owners of a rescued greyhound. I just noticed a link to this on his wife's blog and immediately wanted a greyhound of my own.

Take that, human children of a previously honorable level of intelligence.

file under gossip

I had planned on spending Saturday sampling the music and carney food of Murfreesboro’s Main Street Jazz Festival, but having to go in to work for half a day kind of put the kibosh on that. I usually avoid working weekends now that I have less responsibility at work, but the fact that I’m taking off the last half of this week to head to the beach sort of guilted me into it.

At any rate, I still had time to run downtown for my monthly headbuzzing on the square. The guy in the barber’s chair before me was a plumber and the talkative sort, and it turns out that he helps set up the water systems at Bonnaroo each year. According to him, this will be the last for the festival. However, do not fret, for once this year’s crop of neo-hippies is swept from the Manchester landscape, plans will begin on an Opryland-esque amusement park to sit in its place.

(insert own hippie amusement park joke here)

Wow, you really don’t like hippies. Anyway, I don’t think that the park will have anything to do with the festival. It sounds more like a different group of investors who simply want to occupy the Bonaroovian space once it’s no longer needed.

Then again, the Murfreesboro square is known to be a haven for all manner of delusional individuals.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

By the way, I have some rough sketches for Rex L. Camino’s Land of Doom if anyone is interested. Bear in mind that martini waterfalls and animatronic kinkajous are relatively cheap.

birthday 2: a not quite jesus-like boogaloo

The great thing about being adopted is that you get an extra birthday. It wasn’t quite on the same level as the regular birthday, as I never got a second skating rink party, but there were still the extra birthday cards with tens or twenties from aunts, uncles, and grandparents. My mother would buy a cake or bake cupcakes and bring them to me when I was in kindergarten, the same as she and most mothers would do on regular birthdays in our small class. I would get a couple of presents and then there were only about six months to wait out before the next birthday.

I highly recommend being adopted. I don’t want to tell you how to raise your kids, but those of you who are parents should do what is best for them and trade them with another set of parents just so they can get that extra birthday.

Everyone knew that I was adopted, obviously. It was the early eighties, and my folks were really big into the whole Free Will Baptist lifestyle, though their churchgoing now consists of showing up at the Methodist church every Christmas and Easter. Back then it was all about that little Falwellian community, and I attended a school run by our church from kindergarten until fifth grade. These people knew me from the time my parents brought me home from the adoption agency in Montgomery.

I mention this to preface a strange thing that my Sunday school teacher said when I was seven years old. I don’t remember the exact wording of his comment, as I paid even less attention in Sunday school than in regular school, but it was something along the lines of, “Jesus loves you even though he doesn’t have to, and that makes the love greater. It’s like (Rex’s) parents love him more than most parents love their kids because they didn’t have to love him. They chose to.”

I got two things from this:

1. My friends’ parents only loved them because they had to. They secretly wanted to hate them, but couldn’t.

2. I was like Jesus in a way.

Again, I really wasn’t paying attention.

This didn’t embarrass me, but I did feel embarrassed for the Sunday school teacher. My situation was way more like Superman than Jesus, and anyone could plainly see that. I was born with a different name and spent my first six months as an orphan baby, essentially a ward of the state of Alabama, and everything before that was really up to my imagination.

I let it pass, as it was church and things at church always had to be about Jesus, but I knew in my heart that I was either Superman or maybe Luke Skywalker.

I knew that I was nothing like Jesus…or Annie.

Anyway, today is my second birthday. Ma and Pa Camino called and sent a card but neglected to make any cupcakes.

Really, I’d be passing them out if they had.

the case for invisibility

Let it be known that Rex L. Camino has nothing against the ability to fly. Were the choice just between normal human capacity for movement and the superpower of flight, I would prefer to fly. Flight certainly kicks more ass than the conventional methods of narrowing the distance between points A and B, and I would never dream of insinuating that those of you in the “flying” camp are anything other than god-fearing and productive members of society who have simply chosen unwisely in this particular hypothetical preference that you contemplate in those quiet moments to have at the ready for when the question is posed.

I, however, choose invisibility without hesitation.

Consider this:

Let’s say that an imminent threat looms over your city. Let’s say, for example, that it is a disgruntled minotaur of some fashion and that the weak imbeciles who comprise the citizenry of your chosen town no longer even feign an interest in taking care of their own damn problems. They see a minotaur an immediately begin whining for that guy with the superpowers.

That would be you.

However, you don’t need this shit. You’ve grown weary of your neighbors and may even feel that they deserve to reap the ill effects of having voted a freakin’ minotaur into the office of county mayor. Allowing this rampage is either the only way they will learn or the quickest way to remove them from the voting segment and perhaps even the gene pool. Either way, you have chosen to sit this one out.

You can’t do that if you’re Flying Guy. Your common dumbass walking down the street will see an angry minotaur and then say something original like, “Shit! Where’s that guy who can fly?”

The large woman standing beside him in the Big and Rich T-shirt will pry herself from the cell phone and her very public conversation about one of her relatives needing a new organ to say, “You mean Flying Guy?”

“Yeah, that’s him”, the first dumbass will reply. “Where you recon he is right now?”

It may take a while, but they will eventually look up, and you will be there. You’re Flying Guy. That’s what you do.

You could choose not to help, but that would cause some considerably unfavorable publicity. It would follow you from place to place, and no amount of good deeds or heroic actions would ever keep the newscaster from adding a brief mention of that time you just flew around while a disgruntled minotaur gored the population of your old town. Things like that are hard to spin in your favor, and any attempt at an explanation, no matter how sincere, would always come out sounding like an excuse.

Now, imagine that you’re Invisible Guy and you hear something like, “Shit, that minotaur done gone all crazy and shit! Where’s that guy we can’t see?”

“You mean that guy who’s there and does stuff sometimes without us seein’ him?”

“Yeah. You see him anywhere?”

No, she doesn’t, and Uncle Junior will soon have a donor for that new pancreas.

See, Invisible Guy can always choose who to help and who to ignore in a god-like manner without the worry of consequences. When asked after the mass goring why you did nothing you can simply say, “I was on the other side of town getting a cat out of a tree. I’m not Guy Who Can Get There Really Fast Every Time Mayor Minotaur Goes Berserk Guy.”

Of course you’re not. You’re just a guy who can flip the hero switch off when he wants, wander around restaurants randomly eating things off people’s plates whenever he’s hungry, and then do all the nefarious things that first come to mind when people choose invisibility.

running of the bull

I am not a follower of Rutherford County politics, but it would appear from this yard sign that some sort of minotaur is running for the office of county mayor.

Note the tie, rolled up sleeves, and reading glasses. This isn't your typically illiterate minotaur gallivanting about in a loincloth. No siree, Bob. This is a hardworking, yet housebroken and unmythical beast of some intellect willing to work hard for the Middle Tennessee citizenry.

Or is he?

no trabajas?

I hope for the sake of my morning commute that a significant number of you bastards who generally sit there in my way on I-24 are immigrants.

If so, gracias in advance.