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My brain is *SUCH* an asshole.  I have a photographic memory, but I have *ZERO* control over it.  I recall the strangest stuff but usually can’t remember where I left my keys.

I had another life.  Before this one.  Before the kids, before my wife (well, after her, but before this iteration.)

I was married before.  It wasn’t a good marriage by any means.  We married trying to fix a broken relationship, and I think everyone knows how well *THAT* works out.

But before the marriage there was something that I rarely talk about.

There was a kid. 

Yeah, that kind of kid.  The one that is born before the marriage and only slightly longer before the inevitible divorce.

In 1994 I had a kid.  I was *NOT* mentally well, at 24 I was still a child, and neither of us were nowhere near mature enough to raise a kid of our own.  I did have the presence of mind however to realize how much of *MY* baggage came from my parents complete inability to…well..parent. 

So we went to a lawyer..did the right thing.  Found a set of parents who wanted to have kids but couldn’t, and we put our baby up for adoption.

We met a wonderful couple, liked them immediately…  Everything worked.

And 5 months later we gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

ANd 3 days later we gave her away – secure in the thought that she was going to have a better life than we could have given her.

Now it wasn’t an “open” adoption in the strictest sense.  We were encouraged to keep in touch…through a neutral third party (their lawyer).

So the catch was this.  At some point, 16 years ago, I saw their name written on a peice of paper, and apparently at the time my brain thoght that this might be a tidbit of information to hold on to.

Fast forward to last Tuesday night.  (this is the “my brain is an asshole part”)

I’m working in my office, cleaning out something I should have cleaned out years ago.  When apparently, my mind, in a fit of doing the same thing.  Let the name roll through my concious.  I tried to ignore it…  At which point my brain said….HEY FUCKWAD and did it again.

I knew who the names belonged to instantly.  I knew the gravity of it.  I had just remembered the first and last names of the people who adopted my daughter.

So I pull up a window and go to google. (which by the way I’m not convinced should be government regulated because it can be VERY dangerous)

15 minutes – it took me 15 minutes to have their names, address, phone numbers, business name, and what high-school the kids both go to.

A quick run through myspace and facebook and I now know an uncomfortable amount about them.  (uncomfortable for them, I’m actually pretty happy with the results.)

She’s 16 now.

She seems happy.

And she is the spitting image of her mom.

Back to the “my brain is an asshole” part.  Now I have the dilemma.  They told me I could keep in touch, but it was understood that it would go through a neutral third party.  (I still have the lawyer’s name stored upstairs too)

It has also been 16 years.

Which begs the obvious question.

Now what the fuck do I do?

That’s a serious question yo.

(If you don’t care about the trainwreck that is my family, you can skip this post. It’s really intended for an audience of one – but as I *AM* a blogger and it’s my nature to air dirty-laundry online…here goes)

Wow – I forgot that my sister reads my blog from time to time. I also apparently forgot that she’s absolutely batshit crazy. A lifetime of drugs and alchohol and pretending the real world doesn’t exist will do that to you.

After my last post she sent me a pretty terse email regarding our father, plus she didn’t like the fact that I characterized her little 20-something-foot airstream as “crappy”. (She called it “Classy” – on what planet is a mobile-home classy? Pauline? You *KNOW* classy maybe you can answer that question)

Sis – a few points if I may. (And it’s my blog, so yes, I bloody well may)

Any house with wheels on it is crappy. It’s a refuge for people who can’t stand to feel pinned down, but as a result it’s also a refuge for people who don’t want roots, who don’t want to make connections and have people know them.

You *LEFT* when you were thirteen. Split. Bailed. Vamoosed. You say it was because mom was insane going through menopause. Well that’s understandable. My wife says that her mom was pretty insane during hers as well. Of course her father was trying to kill her mom too, so maybe it just goes with the territory. You can spend days and days telling me what mom/dad were/weren’t like when you were a kid, but the fact of the matter is you weren’t there when *I* was there. (Sometimes you were pretty close by, living with your stoner friends in some house dad bought so that you wouldn’t be homeless, and a further stain on his reputation) You played other people’s music, got high, freeloaded, played the occasional paying gig, but never once created something yourself, preferring to live off other peoples’ hard work and creativity.

You accused me of being a Marxist/Socialist. Well, first off, if you had a lick of education you’d know that those are two almost completely different ideologies. I’m a centrist democrat or a left-leaning independent, depending on how you look at it. But to an illiterate redneck anything to the left of center is evil and must be destroyed.

You are the picture of a hypocrite for your belief that “Socialism” is a bad thing. You spent DECADES of your life on the public dole. You took every handout you could. And I’m aware enough of your earning history to know that you haven’t REMOTELY come close to paying it back. At this point you’re only counting down the years until you’ll be eligible for Medicare/Social Security. (though you’re in for a shock when you get to that age, your payout at the end is directly related to what you put into it, and you’ve spent so much time avoiding real work that it means you’ll qualify for enough to keep you from having to eat dog-food, but that’s about it.)

You are exactly the type of person the right-wing types freak out about when it comes to welfare, saying that “providing for people just encourages them to beg for the handouts.” So are you going to turn down Medicare? Are you going to turn down Social Security? No, probably not. Your body is failing from years of abuse, drugs, hard drinking, and letting losers beat on you. You need that handout, and even though you’ve not paid NEARLY as much as I have into the system, you’ll sure as hell take from it without batting an eye.

I don’t care that you do, I think the system is there for people who need it, even you. I *DO* care about hypocrisy, and in taking that hand-out you are the biggest kind of hypocrite.

But here is one handout you don’t need anymore. And in truth, by your logic, I’ve been remiss in allowing you to keep it this long. For close to two years I’ve been carrying your cellphone bill because your credit sucked so badly you couldn’t even get a phone. Well I think I’m going to take a page from the right-wing handbook. You might try one of those pre-paid cellphones, if the wireless cartel in Valdez allows them, or you might have to go without. That’s what you righties think that people should do right? Just do without if you can’t afford it?

Effective immediately you are hereby cut-off. Feel free to pawn the phone, I don’t ever expect to see it again, and I’ll never again mention again the few hundred dollars per year I’ve spent keeping that phone active for you. Plus the money I’ve lent you that I’ll never see again, plus the money you STOLE from me by using my FedEx account without permission to ship stuff to Alaska when you ran away from your last, best chance at a real life.

See how good that feels? You should be thanking me for forcing you to stand on your own two feet. You don’t need handouts, right?

If you’d like to send back the computer I gave you you can do that too, but at this point it would cost you more to ship than it’s worth.

Secondly, your role in my kids’ lives.

You don’t have one. Period. You don’t get to abdicate your responsibility as a parent and then swoop in and pretend to be grandma. I was hesitant about allowing you into the house, given the fact that to this day you can’t seem to give up the drugs or smoking long enough to hang out with them. You are the worst kind of bad influence they could have. What could you have taught them? That ignoring the law is ok when it’s pot but not when it’s illegal immigration? Dad taught me lessons like that, and it took a 3 year state-paid-vacation for me to realize that mom/dad had taught me completely wrong. They both used to tell me “I dont care what you do, just don’t get caught.” Is that really the lesson we need to teach our kids?

It’s sure as hell not the lesson I’m teaching mine. Mine learn “The law is the law and you may not agree with it but it’s the law for a reason.” I think they’ll have a lot better luck navigating through their adulthood than I did.

That’s the sad part.. You’ve given up any relationship you could have had with them. For what, so you can go back to growing your own pot? That’s *REALLY* mature. Running away to a state that houses nothing but people running away from the real world? (Hawaii is that as well without snow-shoveling.) It’s not like you would ever be able to make the trip out here, and I’m sure the only view my kids are going to get of Alaska is going to be from the deck of a cruise ship. And that’s not bloody likely, there are many better places to see with culture and learning and seeing things that matter in the world.

I’m done. This is good-bye. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but to a one every member of this family has turned out to be absolutely nuts so truthfully it’s in my kid’s best interest to sever all ties, just in case crazy is contagious.

Take care of yourself. I’m hoping you’ll figure it out and turn your shit around, but I’m not going to hold my breath – your last best chance for normal died when you left Phoenix.

And don’t try to comment on this post. This is my blog and I’m allowed to have the last word. You want one of your own, get your own damned blog.

Dear Dad.

You’ve been dead now for 13 years and as I don’t believe in any form of afterlife I know that you’ll never know how I feel. This isn’t for you this is for me.

Fuck you.

You were never a father to me, or more specifically, you were never my “Dad” You made it clear to mom that you didn’t want me when you took me in that you weren’t interested. You only went through with the adoption because she emotionally battered you until you did. (She was *REALLY* good at that, but I’ve come to believe that was from 40 years of living with you)

You see – I know where I stood. You were 52. You had just lost your first born to a senseless murder, your daughter, whom you ran off when she was 13, came back 15, pregnant and on more drugs than you knew existed. You were ready to crawl into your hole and die, not caring that you had a wife and four other kids to worry about, and there is a big part of me that wishes you had.

We would have been better off without you.

I grew up needing a father. You see, mom tried to teach me things, but she was so emotionally beaten that her world-view was, shall we say, skewed. She tried to teach me everything there was about being kind, considerate, compassionate, but was completely incapable of teaching me right from wrong, because in her mind what you did to us was *right*.

At first all I ever wanted, all I ever needed was your admiration. Then I would have settled for approval. Finally all i wanted was acknowledgement.

You couldn’t even manage that. And you wonder why I was always in trouble? Fuck when the cops brought me home was the only time you ever gave me the time of day. That bit about kids craving attention is true, when they don’t get good attention, they settle for ANY attention.

Would it have fucking killed you to say “Good job” even once in your miserable life? Encouraged me just a little? Bothered to show up when I got an award in school? Hell you even bitched like hell when I wanted to play Little League, when you finally broke down and signed me up for it you never ONCE hung out and watched a practice, or a game, and you wonder why I didn’t stick it out?

I know what it was. You viewed me as a potential replacement, I know that’s right or not that’s how mom probably billed it to you. “Here, we just lost a kid but here’s a NEW kid…”

I was a usurper, a pretender to the throne. The bastard child of your whore daughter. (Your words, not mine)

Fuck you.

Fuck you for telling me I was never going to amount to anything.

Fuck you for telling me I was going to live on a park-bench for the rest of my life.

Fuck you for not instilling *ANY* kind of values in me.

Fuck you for blaming me when I showed the world I had no values.

Fuck you for bailing me out, not out of any love for me, but because you were too embarassed to have a son in jail. And fuck you for ensuring that I *NEVER* suffered the consequences of any of my actions.

Fuck you for drinking EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. until you couldn’t stand up.

Fuck you for beating mom and putting her in the hospital in 1984. You think I actually believed you when you told me she had “gone to a hotel” after that fight? I was 14, and not nearly as stupid as you thought I was. It does make me wonder how many of those fights I spent my nights listening too ended in bloodshed…she always went on “vacation” after those fights. (That was also the fight where I put two and two together and realized how long you had been beating her.)

Fuck you for showing me such a damaged version of what being a *man* is that I came dangerously close to being you.

And for my final fuck you:

This is what you did to your family. (I mean the ones that actually tried to follow in your footsteps.)

#1 died because he was into drugs, and potentially into something *WAY* over his head. Shot in the stomach on his own front doorstep with a crowd of people in his house too stoned to noticed he was gone, let alone to hear a gunshot.

#2 is currently living in a Volkswagon Van on the beach in Hawaii, slowly dying if liver failure from almost a half-century of tequilia.

#3 (Daughter) is living broke in a crappy trailer in Alaska, not able to functionally deal with being a part of society. She’s no longer a drunk, which is good, but she’s still quite the pot-head. (This is my biological mom, in case you missed that part)

#4 is the one you would consider the “success” in the family. He tried to mom to move out of her very comfortable house into a mobile home to conserve the estate. (I put a stop to that) And then when she finally passed, he pillaged the estate. He is universally hated, both by his siblings and most of his extended family) One kid who he hopefully won’t fuck up as bad as you did. His measure of success is money, and only money. Treated your death as a reason to throw a party. Actually said (to his wife) the words “There isn’t as much money here as we had hoped, we’ll have to change some of our plans.” WHILE HIS MOTHER WAS ON HER DEATHBED.

#5 is a complete drunk, like you he has gotten drunk every day of his life, can’t legally drive anymore (PERIOD). He fucked up 2 out of 3 of his own daughters, was a grandfather before his 50th birthday, and now sits in his rented house with NOTHING and NO ONE.

And then there’s me. The one you decided *NOT* to parent. The one you gave up on. The one you really couldn’t have cared less about. (I mean other than the times i was an embarrassment to you, you sure as hell cared then.)

Maybe instead of fuck you I should say….

Thank you.

Thank you for not taking an interest in me. Because you didn’t care, I stood a chance. Because you pushed me away, I didn’t learn from you. Because you showed me nothing, I took nothing from that relationship acquaintance.

Though it took a while for me to learn how to figure things out for myself, I thank you for that too; I learned to rely on myself because of you.

And the final win, I’m a better father than you could have ever hoped of being. DESPITE you, not because of you. My kids worship me, and you know what? I worship them right back.

I’m a better husband than you could ever have dreamed of being. I respect my wife and listen to her when she wants to talk. When we argue the possibility of physical violence is NEVER there.

I’m a better MAN than you ever were. Because I take care of *ALL* of my responsibilities. You believed that a husband’s / father’s responsibility ended at providing for your family…you were *ALWAYS* wrong about that.

Because: When I get into a situation where I don’t know what to do, I think of what you would have done, and do the exact opposite.

That one rule, has *NEVER* failed me.

Happy Father’s Day to the *REAL* fathers out there. The ones who give a shit.

Jesse

P.S. To all the fathers who can’t be bothered to take an interest in their kids when they are at home, giving the “i’m too tired” bullshit excuse. I have good news for you.

Some day your kid will write something very much like this about you.

Well, the time has come.  Yet another in a series of manufactured holidays intended to encourage us to go out and spend money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need.  Luckily women have it much easier than men most of the time when it comes to gift shopping.  Tools or small personal electronics and you can’t go wrong, right?

Well since father’s is rapidly approaching I thought it was post-worthy.

I’m a dad.  Three times actually.  And I think it’s safe to assume that despite all my failings I’m a better father than my father EVER was.  I celebrate my fatherhood every time my kids damn near break their necks running upstairs to greet me when I get home from work.  I celebrate my fatherhood with every one of my 14 year old son’s straight-A report cards.  I celebrate my fatherhood when after a full day I relax on the couch with my younger two son’s perched on top of me watching cartoons.  And yes, I celebrate fatherhood every time I turn down work to spend time with my kids.

This post is not for me.

“You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.” -Tod (played by a much younger Keanu Reeves in the movie “Parenthood”)

This was exactly my dad, carried to ten decimal places.  Not because he was a particularly mean person, but he thought that his responsibility as a father was to bring home a paycheck, and that his responsibility ended there.

He was Archie Bunker from “All in the Family”  Racist, Sexist, Arrogant, sitting in his easy-chair and smoking his cigars and driving his Lincoln Town-Car.  The type to drop me off at Little League practice but that in my entire life has never once seen me swing a baseball bat, let alone helped me to learn to hit.

My father ignored me, and he couldn’t figure out why I acted out (to get attention) and when I was older and I did he would give me $20 to go to the movies so he could take a nap in his easy-chair.  (Lesson learned: being annoying pays-off – took a LONG time to break that habit.)  He’d watch sports on TV but never bothered to see me play. (Lesson learned – people on the TV are more important than people in front of him)

This post is not for me.

I am looking for neither pity nor sympathy.  It was my life, I got through it, and became a better parent than my dad could ever have dreamed of being.  There is the argument that I wouldn’t be who I am today without him (There are positives and negatives in that statement) but it’s bullshit.  I am who I am today despite him.

This post is for the “Fathers” out there.

Don’t be a “Father.”  Instead try being a “DAD”  Your first job is to be a husband and Parent, *NOT* to make money.  I could have cared less as a kid if my dad drove a ratty old Toyota instead of his new (every other year) Lincoln, as long as he used it to drive to Little League and gave a shit enough to hang around and root for me.

Don’t be a “Spouse” be a “HUSBAND” – marriage/family is a partnership.  Not a “you  have your job and I have mine” partnership, but a “both of us do what needs to be done regardless of how fucking tired we are” kind of partnership.

My parents spent the last 20 years of their lives miserable, living in separate bedrooms because my mom HATED him but he had kept her so dependent on him she didn’t know how to exist outside of the sham that was their marriage.  (She was also the one that made the call to pull the plug on him when he was dying, I’m never certain if there was more than his failing health to that decision, and I never asked – though I wouldn’t think less of her if there was.)

When you come home from work and your kid runs down the hall to give you a hug, FIND THE ENERGY to pick him/her up and play with them for a while.  You’ll have enough time to be tired later.  These are the moments they’re going to remember for the rest of their lives.

Remember that your son’s are looking to you to see what being a man is all about.  Your daughters are looking to you to see what kind of man they want to look for when they grow up.   DO NOT fuck that up.  (My sister has been married I think seven times, always to the same type of guy)

Remember that if you don’t pay attention to your kids now, there *WILL* come a time when they won’t give a rats ass about you. (Out of six kids, two actually showed up at my father’s funeral, only because they happened to live in the same state I believe – I didn’t go and I really don’t care one bit that I didn’t.)

And yes, while being a provider/breadwinner for your family is a good thing, it’s not the ONLY thing.   Being the provider for a family means NOTHING if you’re not there for them when and how it counts. (Emotionally as well as physically)

And if you’re idea of a good father’s day is for the wife to take the kids out and leave you alone in the house all day, well fuck you.  Do your family a favor, take out a life-insurance policy and jump off a bridge, because you’re no parent.  You can’t celebrate being a father by spending the day NOT BEING A FATHER.

That is all.

Ok, I’m Scottish/Irish.  Therefore i can say I’m almost the whitest white-person on the planet.  (Ok, I carry some Italian blood but we don’t talk about the asshole who raped my biological mom when she was 15 – that’s a different post altogether.)

I was born in Kailua, Hawaii and lived there until I was 15.  And while there, I was quite solidly in the minority.

And not “Apartheid” minority either.  I’m talking “Jasper, Mississippi” minority.

I recently said something this effect on twitter:

“@bwlight – anyone who comes away with a trip to hawaii with positive memories wasn’t paying attention”

I said this because in my quest to find out if this person was follow-worthy (they had quite rudely requested a follow by simply @’ing my name, instead of using actual words like “hello” or “I’d appreciate it if you’d follow me back” or even “Hey Fuck-Nut” (which ironically would have surely earned them a follow-back) I found out that this was simply another idiot trying to capitalize on the perceived popularity of Twitter to make a few bucks.)

Hey Mrs. MBA – give you a hint.  You missed the boat.  Twitter peaked some time ago and is now either late into the plateau or starting the downward spiral to follow such giants as Myspace and Napster.

As this person fancies themselves a travel writer I guess they found it offensive enough to delete the entire exchange. (which is why I had to paraphrase the message.)

Anyone who comes away from Hawaii thinking it would be a wonderful place to move to missed a few things, and in deferance to the Hawaii dept. of Tourism, I’ll point some of them out here.

First of – they missed the neighborhoods where the American flag is flown upside-down.  The seperatists, the natives who blame the white-people for the overthrow of their land, their government, their culture, and the decimation of their gene-pool.  They view the Americans as occupiers and would just as soon throw them off the island.  (Preferably into shark-infested-waters)

In truth, and a large part of my second point, they’re probably right.  The Hawaiian culture is all-but dead.  What was once a proud people was all but killed off when Captain Cook brought the first Missionaries to Hawaii, along with the initial plagues that killed off large percentages of the population.  What passes for culture these days is nothing but such white-washed bullshit as the “Polynesian Cultural Center” and the stupid fake-luaus they put on from the tourists in a (very successful) attempt at seperating the tourists from their money.

I grew up in hawaii.  To understand my point of view you have to understand that growing up in Hawaii I went to an elementary school where I was one of three white-kids in a class of almost 30.  Once a month the ritual of “Kill-Haole-Day” was instituted, and since my parents didn’t bother to pay enough attention to me to realize it was happening, I was the unlucky one who didn’t get kept home on such days.

As I got older this didn’t change.  From 1st grade pretty much through middle-school this was the case.  I got lucky in High-School because my parents moved us to a neighborhood next to a military base, so my odds improved greatly…or so I thought.

There I got a new experience.  I got to see *WHY* they hate us so much.  The military brats (and in some cases the marines themselves) were 180 degress in the opposite direction, to the point that they had simply swapped places.  They treated the locals like shit, excluded them from just about everything (except sports because nothing says “winning football team” like a 16 year old 280# samoan linebacker.) and pretty much every day life.

Now at this point I had *ALMOST* become a part of the “local culture” and was considered “Kama’aina” (loose translation = not-quite-local) I guess because I spent my childhood dodging fists it was worth something in their sick-twisted way of looking at things.  So now what I got to see was people I more-or-less identified with getting beaten down (sometimes literally) by the US Marines.  And I got beat down right along with them.

It’s no wonder I’m as fucked up as I am…

Truth be told, it comes down to this:

Hawaii is a shit-hole covered in a thin veneer of spit-polish and perfumey-flowers.  If you go there as a tourist you can be almost certain that at least once during your stay, someone has spit in your food – I know this because I’ve known enough people working in the “hospitality industry” who have told me as much.  They smile, say “Aloha” and take your money, which of course, is all they want.  The “culture” there is as manufactured as Disneyland. (and true Hawaiian food is awful – if you like it it’s probably AmerAsian or white-washed with enough sugary sauce to make it palatable for American tastes. )

If you’re looking for a sunny beach vacation, Cozumel or Cancun are probably better, cheaper choices, closer to your time-zone, and with more travel options so flights are a world cheaper.

I used to go to Rocky-Point “Puerto-Penasco?”) Mexico – beaches there are *WAY* nicer than anything Hawaii has to offer.  During the peak season you could rent a condo *ON THE BEACH* for about $500/3-day weekend.

Always an asshole…

Ok, I’ll be honest, this is based on my limited exposure to them, you know, spending 2/3 of my life living within 5 miles of a marine base.

First off, if you haven’t, read this post by my other (and much better) half.

The hidden Horrors of Military Service

Then hear this.  This week I’m taking on a new project.  It’s a fairly simple one, rehabilitating a pool that has gone so bloody green you could almost walk across it.

My New Project

The nastiness that is pictured here is the result of either months of neglect or something sitting dead at the bottom of the pool.

Our neighbors moved in about four years ago.  Since then I’ve spoken to the husband a few times, the wife once or twice, and their daughter was in my son’s class a few years back when they were both in grade school.

That was it.  Not much interaction, I was disappointed because i was really looking forward to having *REAL* neighbors after the last ones left. (Anti-social is about the kindest thing I could say about them)

After a few years I just figured it was the same way with these, and I went about my business.

Then he takes off for a job overseas, in the middle-east somewhere.  And two years go by and we don’t see them…at all.  One of the neighbors says that someone came by and picked up his motorcycle.

Turns out that out he bailed.  30 year marriage up in smoke.  And it’s worse – I’m hearing stories of MASSIVE amounts of emotional abuse, including an not limited to his commitment to making sure she ends up ‘living in the ghetto’ and telling his daughter that “she’ll never amount to anything.”

Bastard.

SonOfABitch.

PeiceOfShit.

Now granted I’m only hearing half the story, but given the rest of my experiences it all rings true.

My question is this.  Doesn’t HONOR mean anything to these people?  I mean it’s only supposed to be one of the founding principles, right? It’s all they fucking talk about.

Well here is how I see it and this is to my wife’s father as much as it’s to my neighbor soon-to-be-ex.

If you’re idea of a fun time is forcing your wife to watch you put a loaded revolver to your head, you have *NO* honor.

If you bail on a 30 year marriage to go get your jollies, you have *NO* honor.

If you do everything in your power to destroy the woman you promised to love and cherish, you have *NO* honor.

If you do everything you can to tear down the emotional well-being of your adolescent daughter, you have *NO* honor.

If there was a shred of justice in the world, the Marine Corps would hold their members accountable for their atrocities, both at home *AND* on the battlefield.

Man up and do the right thing by your family – don’t leave the most important job of your life for your neighbor to do because you’re too much of a pussy to own your mistakes.

Step up, or step the fuck aside.