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Today's Facebook ad brought to you by the The American Breast Enhancement Association and The Fevered Dreams of every 13 year old heterosexual boy in the world.

November Spawned a Monster

The 11th month of the year, always finds me anxious and leaves me feeling miserable. November is my least favorite month of the year (with March running a close second).

The weather is a big factor.  It usually rains a lot this month.  And it's usually that bone-chilling sort of rain that does nothing but encourage the growth of leaf-mold-spores.  If it's not raining, then we get those frigid mornings that turn into bright, chilly, windswept afternoons.  All you can do is put on sunglasses to avert the glare because the trees no longer filter any of the light - also, the sunglasses help block all the debris that's being kicked up from going into your eyes.   Finally, there are those overcast days that promise snow (but usually just deliver more cold rain) that round out the month's meteorological foolishness.


The topaz month usually heralds the start of my hypochondria...oh yes, usually sometime early in the month I start with a cavalcade of odd symptoms that vex me for the next thirty to sixty days.  Every week I am convinced that I have something drastic and incurable.  Untold late night visits to Web MD usually make things even more terrifying.  This is not anything new for me.  For as long as I can recall, I usually feel ill in November.  It might start with sleeplessness, and then morph into something upper-respiratory, and eventually make it's way to the disease of the week.  Is it any wonder that I started taking Paxil in November many years ago? 

Finally, November brings my least favorite holiday; Thanksgiving.  Oh, I have nothing against a big meal.  It's just all the damn drama that goes along with it.  Sitting around a table with people that you try to avoid the entire year.  Embarrassing remarks made by certain family members, people passed out on the sofa while a football game plays on the TV...and of course, everyone is breathless in anticipation concerning the upcoming Xmas season.

So yeah, not a big fan of November in general and it's weather, holidays or malaise.  And don't get me started on the bullshit that is "Black Friday".  If I had my way, I'd go into hiding and not emerge until Xmas Eve.

Guest Columnist: Meanwhile, On the Other Side of the Bridge ...

... people are crazy for different reasons.

Everyone who has known me for six consecutive seconds knows that I hate to drive. Even though I have the cutest car in the entire world,  that I even named, that is less a car and more a piñata on wheels, doesn't matter. I still have to navigate him (yes he's a boy) through morning traffic from my relatively neutral place in the "better" part of Rowhouseland southward down into the more ... shall we say ... vintage area of the district ...

where the roads are not designed for cars but for 17th-century sedan chairs bearing William Penn and his entourage (and full of loveseat-sized sinkholes that they inexplicably don't mark in any way except to spray-paint around them, in fading white spray-paint, which you can't see until you're on top of them ...)

then back northward and then westward (I guess, I don't own a compass, I just drive where I need to go) across The Giant Road of the Twelve Terrifying Lanes which, depending upon the side of it you live, determines your predilections in much the same way that living in the meadow beneath the manor-house dictated your serfdom or apprenticeship in times gone by.

I won't say which side of that I live on.

Anyway, eventually I end up somewhere where Bill Cosby apparently used to own property; where there are gabled roofs but no sidewalks; wisteria growing from eaves, but only one 7-11 within walking distance; which often runs out of the kind of popcorn I like.

But in between! The things I encounter! The inexplicable luck of getting stuck behind a trash truck and a school bus and another trash truck and a cement truck and a roofing truck! On a one-way street! With someone going in reverse at a rather fierce clip!

And so on. I never know. It's why I have to take sleep medication, from the stress of it all.

But sometimes I play a little game, when I'm creeping along behind the buses and the sanitation personnel. I look into the other cars, whatever I can see, or at the houses, or the people outside them, and I make up names for them and entire lives for them and I pretend I'm a new neighbor that bakes cookies and is their best friend, because I totally would never do that and I totally probably wouldn't be.

It's my form of compassion, I suppose. Other times I just curse and lean on the horn. Sometimes, the person I'm correcting gently with a blast from my piñata has a license plate that's from ... another state. Sometimes, they're honking at me.

Country Boy - Not So Much

My job dictates a lot of road work, most of it in the hinterlands of Southern New Jersey.  Yesterday I found myself lost in Franklinville, trying to find a road that would not show up on my GPS.  Fortune smiled on me when I met two different people, at two different convenience stores, who not only knew the road I was looking for, but they knew the family who lived at the phantom address.  One of them was a middle aged, chain smoking EMT who called her self, "Sunshine" (yes, Sunshine) and the other one was heading to said home to do some roof repair work.  He offered to let me follow him to the road and the house (which was festooned with hand made signs that read, "Private Property", "Guard Dogs Present" and "Only Jesus Saves").  The guard dogs proved to be several hyperactive Corgis  and, as for Jesus, well, he could not save this property from a tree that had fallen on it the night before - hence the roof repair man.

i was not on this road today, but all roads in the garden state lead to hell.

This afternoon, I made my way to a home in Atco, New Jersey.  I knocked at the front door several times and when no one answered, I walked back to my car, figuring that they had forgot about today's appointment.    It turned out that the people I was scheduled to see, lived behind this house, in a trailer, next to a rabbit farm.  This time, there was a pit-bull as well as potbelly pig to greet me as I made my way to the mobile home.  The interior of the house was a cornucopia of hording horrors (dishes on the sofa, Christmas decorations stuffed into cupboards, three televisions stacked on top of each other, clothing piled so high, it blocked out a window...).  We ended up holding our meeting outside at a rusty old picnic table where a flea-bit cat decided to use my leg as a place to scratch his back.  The gentleman of the house sat and chain-smoked cigarettes down to the filter, and his wife offered me some "warm iced tea" (which I declined).   Despite the Deliverance vibe of these people, and the tobacco road living arrangement, I could not help but sort of appreciate the choices of these people (considering it was an actual choice to live in a filthy trailer near a rabbit farm, in someone's backyard and not an unfortunate set of circumstances that landed them here) - the animals, the fresh air, the alfresco dining room.  It takes a lot to live life on your own terms no matter what others might think.  That said,  when my visit was over, I could not wait to get home to my comfortable sofa, large screen TV and running water - I guess I am not as much of a country boy as I'd like to think.

Wacky Facebook Ad

Yes, we all know how evil and addictive Facebook is, but have you ever looked at those little sidebar ads to the right on each page?  Usually they are pretty nondescript. But every now and then one comes along, like this one, and I can't believe me eyes:

  Since when did this walking Petri dish qualify as an entrepreneur?  Being born into a filthy rich family is dumb luck, nothing more, nothing less.    Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, even Mark Zuckerberg, they are entrepreneurs, not this over privileged skank who has only shared with the world a dozen or more venereal diseases - give me a break!

Here I Go Again

I started blogging in 2004.  It was a heady time when blogging was still a unique venture - long before Facebook, and long before everyone and his or her brother started a blog.  In those days, I posted everything and anything that came to mind, usually political in nature (this was back in the days of Bush Jr.), and then, slowly, stories about my life, pop culture, and anything else that struck my fancy.  For awhile, it was a passionate affair - but eventually, I lost that blogging feeling.  I felt I had nothing left to contribute and finally, I decided that it was best just to put the original blog aside (it's still lying in state somewhere out there, so you might eventually stumble across the body on the internet).  These days, I still maintain several blogs - my horror blog is the one that I publish most.  I also have a few photo-centric blogs as well.

Suburban Piney, is going to serve as the place where I post the occasional rant, observations, or whatever else strikes. 

Stick around, and please, please, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.  Also.  If you want to contribute something to this blog, let me know.  I am open to sharing this piece of cyber real estate.