13 posts tagged “qotd”

What was your very first job? 
Submitted by Laurel.

Probably hauling hay.  What great work that was, really.

I don't remember when I started, maybe around age 16.  My brother Kevin (same age as me -- we're step-bros) and I had a friend named Alec Briggs, who I think got us into it.  He and his brother Curt (Kurt?) were in their early 20s, and they were cool to hang out with on Friday and Saturday nights, driving around drinking alcohol and smoking pot and listening to rock & roll.

I've actually tried to find Alec since then.  I spent those couple years in Missouri a few years ago, and I thought it'd be cool to get with him and drink some alcohol and smoke some dope and listen to rock & roll and just talk about whatever'd happened to us in the world since those days.  He was a great guy, the best kind of bad influence, really pretty responsible, considering the terrible irresponsible behaviours in which we partook.

Anyway, hay hauling.  It was usually me and Kevin and Alec and Curt, one of us (I don't think it was ever me) driving the truck, one of us on the back of the truck, and the other two walking along beside, picking up bales of hay and tossing them up to the guy on the truck who would then stack them.  Fucking sweaty work, and we'd suck back water and pop salt pills all day and pour water from our pores in steady streams.  It really got you into good physical shape.  I remember my friend John Nelson saying something about how I was always walking around without a shirt, showing off my buff body.  I really wasn't showing off, I just wasn't embarrassed to go without a shirt in the oppressively hot and humid Missouri summer.

One year, the day after the first day of hauling, I literally couldn't make my body move enough to get out of bed.  My Dad harangued me and hassled me and finally made me get up, but it took literal herculean effort and I could barely move.

When we first started out we used to each get 3 cents per bale, but we were very good and got a good reputation, so we got to a point where we'd get 5 cents each per bale on jobs.  Sometimes a job'd be 1000 bales, so $50 at a time or so was good for alcohol and whatever meagre requirements I had as a teen.

I should write more about the Friday and Saturday partying with Alec and Curt and Kevin.  I'm drinking right now, so it's all feeling like pleasant memories...I miss feeling good, even if I'm not sure I ever did.

Do you play any musical instruments?

Wasn't this a QotD before?  Is vox trying to rub this in my face, or is it trying to rouse me to learn to play guitar?

I can play kazoo and Jew's harp!

How many pets have you owned in your lifetime? Tell us about them.
Submitted by jennajellopy.vox.com.

When I was too young to remember any details beyond the dim sensation of riding I had a horse named Champ.

At about age 3 I got a couple of ducklings, but for some reason Dad gave them away after a very short time.  At that same apartment (College Street, Berkeley) I got a pet baby cayman that I dearly loved, but it got somehow mortally wounded in my bath.

For awhile there Dad also had a rattlesnake in the cupboard in a Quaker Oats box.  He'd retrieved it from someone's property, and ultimately ended up setting it free somewhere.

Later, maybe age five or six, we had a cat named Gingerbread and a dog named Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.  I think I named her.

About that same age I remember one day when Dad came to pick me up at the Unitarian Universalist daycare/Sunday school/whatever they have he presented me with a long cardboard box that turned out to contain an iguana.  One day I had my hand in its aquarium and it climbed up my arm.  I panicked and shook it off, where it slammed against its heating rock and died.

We had a goldfish around that time, too, but my toddler sister Barbara climbed up on the counter and bit its head off and spit it on the kitchen floor.

Also, I had a rabbit when we lived there.  I used to feed it lawn clippings.  One day we came back from a day or two away and it was dead.  I remember Dad tried to pick the corpse up by the ears and the skin of the ears slid off in his hands.  I was appalled, of course.

And one day Dad looked out the livingroom window and saw a red tailed hawk in the neighbours' back yard.  A kid was about to shoot it with a bow and arrow, so Dad jumped out the window, leaped over the fence, and yanked the bow out of the kid's hand, harangued him heartily, and brought the hawk home.  He called the animal people, who let us keep it and exercise and feed it (it was somehow wounded) until it could fly.  Then they came and got it.

Around third or fourth grade my brother Kevin and I each got a guinea pig, which died somehow, and hamsters, which escaped and died somehow.

Kevin saved up for a parakeet (budgie) around that time.  I was terrible about saving allowance, so I couldn't afford one of my own, and then an amazing miracle occurred.  I don't think my Mom *ever* came to believe this, but I swear it's true.  I was walking back from Sun Valley Mall in Concord when I saw a blue budgie on the sidewalk, just standing there.  I very slowly edged forward until I was close enough, and then I just reached forward and picked it up and took it home.  Mom was sure I'd ripped it off, as I'd recently gotten into some trouble for shoplifting.

One day he got out of his cage and was killed by our cat Anastasia.
Anastasia occasionally got pregnant and pooped out babies which she then ignored and allowed to die.
A cat we called Ed appeared one day when we lived there.  He had a flea collar on, which he'd worked one foreleg through and had subsequently sunk beneath the surface of his skin.  We had to perform back yard surgery to take it off.

We also got a puppy named Ralph, but he was killed by the neighbourhood sociopath kids, Mike Mills and Jeff Hanawalt.  They threw green peaches at him over the fence until they killed him.
We also had a beagle named Yo-Yo.  He didn't like living in the suburbs and ran away.  We put out an ad and had him returned, only to have him then run away again.

Oh!  And one day Dad brought home a coatimundi he'd caught behind the dumpster at work.  That was such a wonderful pet, basically a cross between an anteater and a raccoon.  He liked to stay in the rafters in the garage.  He also liked to steal butterscotch candies out of the candy bowl and take them behind a chair in the livingroom where he'd unwrap them and eat them.
He ran away one day, and later a girl in my class, Venita Stevens (or however she might have spelled it) shared with class that they'd found a coatimundi and turned it over to the animal services people.

Mom one day brought home a rat-sized puppy, a chihuahua-pekingese, which we named Fang.  She ended up being that family dog that lives with the family for decades.

On the way moving to Missouri Anastasia escaped into the desert in Nevada.  She ran out chasing a jackrabbit or something, just tore out and dissappeared.  Remember this, as Ana shows up later in the story.

In Missouri we started farming, and we treated all our livestock as pets.  We named and befriended all the animals, and it was difficult when it came time to eat the meaty ones.  We weren't a religious family, but we thanked Porkchops and Pig at meals before we ate them.  They were good pigs.  The chickens, jesus, we had lots of them, and they had or we projected personalities each.

Kevin and I each got a pony, mine was Molly and his was Cricket.  Molly once stillbirthed and had serious complications.  The vet had to come out and chop up the foetus to get it out.  Molly then spent a long time in a big full-body sling, and I had to go out daily and clean the fly eggs out of her gaping wounded vagina.  She got better, and she was a good pony, if a bitch.

So one day Kevin and I were out riding Molly and Cricket, and we went a few miles out to the home of the weird vegans.  They ate their placenta when they had a baby.  They fried it up with onions, as I recall.  Anyway, they asked if we'd like a kitten, as their cat had recently had babies.  When we went back to see the kittens we immediately recognized the mother cat.  It was Anastasia!

They explained that one of their parents were travelling out to visit, coming from California, and had stopped to visit some friends on a native reservation in Nevada.  The people there had given them a cat (Ana) which had wandered up to their home, and they'd taken her to Missouri and given her to the weird vegans.  !  So we took her home.  We had her for a few more years, until she had kittens once and decided to raise them ferally.  We saw her occasionally, but she never came home to roost.

We had a cat there, also, named Bob's Cat (we got him from a friend named Bob).  Bob's Cat liked to go swimming with us, and he'd follow Kevin and me around when we rode Cricket and Molly.  He made friends with all the livestock, and it was common to see him out lying in the fields cuddled up with a cow or calf.

For awhile one summer I kept two or three leeches in babyfood jars full of water and fed them my own blood, but they ultimately died in the direct sunlight.

Bob knew a guy who had some spitzes, 'toy Eskimo' dogs, and we went to get a couple.  We picked up two females, which we named Hellion (after Bob's wife Helen) and...crap, I can't remember the other one's name.  The guy was about to shoot another one he had, because he said it was too mean, and Dad wouldn't let him.  We took that one home, too.  His name was Tobias.
Tobe was mean, alright, as he was expecting everyone to kick and hit him for no reason.  We just let him live in the front yard and treated him nice, and eventually he adopted and loved us.

Tobe was funny.  Sometimes we'd be sitting out in the front yard and have a visitor, and Tobe'd go up and lie down next to them.  They'd start petting him, but if they ever paused or stopped he'd growl menacingly until they started petting again.  We always acted like we didn't notice.

Tobe killed a couple kittens that wandered into his doghouse.  He just went in and brought them out dead and dropped them on the ground.  I saw it all.  It happened fast.  Once I saw a bluebelly (fence) lizard on a rock when Tobe and I were out for a walk.  I pointed and said "Sic 'em!" and he did.  He went up and killed it and came back to me.

I still have a small scar near one of my eyes from where Tobe bit me when I once tripped and fell on him.

For a short time we also had a hunting dog named Blue.  I guess he was a bluetick hound.  All I remember about him is that we went out 'coon hunting a couple times.  We never got any raccoons.

During my time in Missouri I had lots of pet spiders, scorpions, preying mantises, lizards, and snakes,which I'd keep in captivity for short periods and then release.  Oh, and I often kept several ant lions in small cups of sand and fed them ants.

There was a dog, a border collie or something, that came by and spent a couple weeks just looking at us from the edges of our property.  He'd just sit there and watch, but never come in out of the edge of the woods.  I named him Fringe.  Eventually he moved in.  I learned that I could reach out and call him and he'd jump up into my arms.

My first pet as an adult was a sweet tabby named Mickey.  I eventually handed him over to my parents when I joined the Air Force.

Later my wife insisted on a pomeranian, which I warned her were terrible creatures.  After a few weeks of shitting all over the place we gave it away.

Next I had a boa constrictor named Jehovah.  At that time I accumulated a horned toad lizard I smuggled from the Nevada desert, folded up in an envelope in my shirt pocket on the airplane, to my home in Georgia, a gecko whose name was only pronounceable in my head but who I told people was named 'Eep', two cats, Vishnu and Trillian, and a cockatiel named Nietzsche.  One of the cats killed 'Eep'.  Jehovah became quite ill after I fed it a pigeon, and I ended up selling him for $50 to some kid.

Later we had a couple of terrible conures.  They were terrible creatures and I shamefully admit to having treated them terribly as a result.  I hated them.  I let them go.  We lived in Biloxi, Missisissippi, and there were a few tropical birds living in the trees there.

When I got to California I ended up catching a black widow, Gretchen, who lived in a jar for a year or more.  During that time she hatched out thousands of babies, which I took out and set free in fields.  We also had a lizard named Jesus, a rat named Big Rat, and a tarantula named Big Spider (toddler Berkeley named those two).  Gretchen eventually died, we gave Big Spider away because I felt bad about the small space we had for her, and Big Rat got a giant tumor and we had her euthanized.

One day Berkeley and her Mom and I were out for a walk when I saw a one-legged cockatiel sitting on a fence post.  I walked up and caught it, and it lived with us for quite some time before escaping out the front door.  Its name was ECCO (after Lilly's Earth Coincidence Control Office).

Later we got Cosmo the cat from the humane shelter, and a year later we got Frank (whose name at the shelter was Cosmo, but Marie didn't want two cats named Cosmo).  Frank and Cosmo are lounging their worthless selves on the couch next to me now.

Somewhere in there we got a couple of African emperor scorpions, but they died of something.

I don't know, I'm sure I missed twelve or fifteen creatures in there somewhere; but you're not reading this and I'm tired of typing.

What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?

For awhile now I've been listening to audiobooks in bed.  While I'm finding where I left off the previous night, I usually spend some time thinking that I probably shouldn't be listening to audiobooks, as I tend to get to bed around 3:30am and have to get up around 6:30am.

My current audiobook is the "Ender's Game" saga, which seems better than I expected.

If I don't have the audiobooks I just stew in freefloating anxieties and regret and all that.

What's the last thing you crafted, constructed or created yourself?

Not long ago in my not-even-a-whole-cubicle I fashioned a little guy out of paperclips who stands balanced on one foot, holding a barbell.  For the weights I poked the barbell wire into the asses of two little plastic bunnies with cigarettes in their mouths.

I wish I had a digital camera.  I bet you do, too.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)  Inspired by Stephanie.

Broken Family Band - I See How You Are
Beck - Minus
R.E.M. - It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Boards of Canada - Pete Standing Alone
Flaming Lips - *******
Rage Against The Machine - Calm Like A Bomb
Terry Pratchett - Discworld, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, track 27
Talking Heads - Making Flippy Floppy
Suzy & Maggie Roche - Praise Song For A New Day
Tool - LAMC

How many places have you lived in your life?

Well, let's see, shall we?  Here are the places I recall...

Fort Bragg, California
a couple places in Berkeley, California
Castro Valley, California
Concord, California
somewhere in the woods off highway 5, near Mansfield, Missouri
a couple places in Windyville, Missouri
San Antonio, Texas
a few places in Valdosta, Georgia
Biloxi, Mississippi
Vacaville, California
Suisun City, California
a couple places in Fremont, California
Beaverton, Oregon
Aloha, Oregon
a couple places in Conway, Missouri
Portland, Oregon

That many.

What was the last game you played?

I believe that would be Nethack.  That would usually be the answer to that question.  For those who don't know, Nethack is like Diablo, except good and more complex and actually challenging.  Oh, and with simple ASCII or tile graphics.  Diablo was a sort of a very chopped-down implementation of Nethack wrapped in eye candy.

The last boardgame I played was Scrabble, which I also enjoy but rarely play.

What's your favorite song to sing karaoke-style?  If you don't have one, why not?

I don't know about "karaoke-style", as I've never actually been to a karaoke event and don't recall ever having sung in front of anyone during my adult life, but I'm just going to go ahead and pick Donovan's "Sand And Foam" as the answer to this question.  It seems like I've sung it to myself all my life.  It's probably the one tune that's oldest of all the songs in my 'personal tunes' quiver, the songs I sing to myself.

SAND AND FOAM
Donovan

The sun was going down behind a tattoo tree
And the simple act of an oar’s stroke put diamonds in the sea
And all because of the phosphorus there in quantity
As I dug you digging me in Mexico

There in the Valley of Scorpio beneath a cross of jade
Smoking on a seashell pipe the gypsies had made
We sat and we dreamed awhile of smugglers bringing wine
That crystal-thought time in Mexico

Sitting in a chair of bamboo sipping grenadine
Straining my eyes for a surfacing submarine
Kingdoms of ants walk across my feet
I’m a-shaking in my seat in Mexico

Grasshoppers creaking in the velvet jungle night
Microscopic circles in the fluid of my sight
Watching a black-eyed native girl cut and trim the lamp
Valentino vamp in Mexico

The sun was going down behind a tattoo tree
And the simple act of an oar’s stroke put diamonds in the sea
And all because of the phosphorus there in quantity
As I dug you digging me in Mexico

What is your favorite cover song?
Question submitted by Ray.

Whether or not it's actually my favourite, the first that always comes to mind when I'm asked this question is Devo's "Satisfaction".

If I think too long, others start to crowd in...like any Dylan covered by Hendrix, The Gourds doing "Gin an' Juice"...oh, and remember Aztec Camera's cover of Van Halen's "Jump"?  I haven't heard that in a decade or so, but still, or Beck's recent doing of Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You In The End", The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's "California Uber Alles"...

Anyway, for simplicity I'm just going to start answering this question "Devo's 'Satisfaction'."  That one's at least as good as the original.