JimFormation

I am watching them churn the last milk they’ll ever get from me.
They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.
Where are my sisters and brothers?
That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap.
And that idiot student of his — I never saw that muffler before.
Poor uncle, he lets them load him.
How sad he is, how tired!
I wonder what they’ll do with his bones?
And that beautiful tail!
How many shoelaces will they make of that!

~ Gregory Corso

This is where I got my tagline, “Making Buttons From Bones.” Maybe I’ll write a bit about why I’m attracted to this poem some other day.

Maybe not.

I’m going to bed.

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh –
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

~ A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne is one of my favorite writers. He’s the gentleman who wrote the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Those stories are brilliantly written.

This poem, Happiness, is one of my favorite poems. It can be found in Milne’s When We Were Very Young collection.

To me the little poem says that whatever is going on around me — be it rain or any other form of bad day or oppression — that I can put on my boots, hat and raincoat (Mackintosh), and have the kind of day I wanted to have anyway. World be damned.

I am in charge of me.

Happiness.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

~ Epictetus

So the cat decides that she wants to use a corner of my daughter’s room to pee. Her cat box is down in the basement, and the cat’s old.

“Fuck them,” she says (because that’s what cats say), “I’m going to pee right here.”

Anyone who has had cats knows that if a cat pees on something, you have to toss it out. It’s going to smell like cat pee forever.

And if your house smells like cat pee, your guests are going to talk about you behind your back. Cable news shows are going to show up late at night doing mini-documentaries about you. DYFS social workers start knocking on your door to check on your children. All sorts of stuff.

So you have to toss it out.

But I can’t toss out a whole room. What I can do is cut out that piece of carpet that the cat peed on and replace it with remnant carpet from the same rug that I’ve saved in the basement.

Which brings me to Lowe’s (Lowe’s is like Home Depot for hipsters — what-the-hell, I’m a hipster). I’m there with the Wife-Beast to grab some carpet padding. She says, “What if this doesn’t work? We’ll have to replace the carpet. How big is the room?” She wants to price out some Lowe’s carpeting.

“The room is like 15-feet by 13 feet,” I answer.

“No. I think it’s 13-feet by 11 feet.”

Now you don’t know my wife but, let me tell you, if I don’t play my cards right: Armageddon. “Nah. It’s 15-feet. I just measured where the pee was …”

“I don’t care what you measured. I know the plans. It’s not 15-feet,” she interrupts.

“Tell you what. When we get home, I’ll measure it. If I’m wrong, you kiss me on the cheek; if I’m right, you can kiss my ass.” I smile. She smiles. But still says …

“It’s not 15-feet.”

We’ll see.

What happens when we got home played out on Twitter. It went something like this:

Me: My wife & I are arguing over the size of the bedroom. She doesn’t like what the tape measure says so she’s looking for the blueprints.

She: You are wrong @jimformation. The blueprints do not lie! I can’t help it you don’t know how to measure!!!!

Me: She’s putting her hands on me because the blueprints say one thing & the tape measurer says something else! CALL 911! CALL 911!

Me (to my dog): She was mean to me, Digger. She said, “Punching you in the stomach is NOT MEAN!”

She: You’re emphasizing the wrong words. It should read, “Punching YOU in the stomach is not mean.”

So when the cops came to break things up, she says, “We were sparring.“

So I says to Johnny Law: “We weren’t sparring! She knows Muay Thai kickboxing; I don’t. Look at my bruises; I call it an ass-kicking.“

She: Men are weird.

Me: Women are weird. But their boobs feel nice.

For the record, the local 5-0 didn’t come to the house. The were never called. And if she EVER came at me with her Muay Thai shit, I’d just have to jiu-jitsu her ass.

…

…

Umm. Don’t tell her I said that, ‘k?

My favorite sodas in order are:

• Birch Beer
• Cream Soda
• Ginger Ale
• RC Cola*

*My wife protests this one. She says, “I’ve known you forever. You don’t drink RC Cola. We drink Pepsi.” Sure, we drink Pepsi … because I can’t find RC Cola.

I’ve read on the internet that the stuff that they sell in Aldi is the same as RC Cola — or, at least, tastes the same. I’m going to give this a try.

This is my Number One son. (Number Two was born seven years later).

He’s an A-student in advanced placement classes. He plays trumpet in the band and is often invited to play in special school gigs. He’s a self-proclaimed “band geek.” He’s quiet in school and has been known to be picked on.

He’s also a student of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (like his dad) and has been studying well over a year. In the past several months he’s been taking Muay Thai kickboxing & mixed martial arts classes and has one hell of a Muay Thai kick.

One day someone is going to mess with the wrong trumpet player.

Not 15 minutes ago, Matt Hughes put Ricardo Almeida to sleep in the first round at UFC 117. And I am livid.

Ricardo Almeida is a top notch Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. He lost because he didn’t trust his jiu-jitsu. Period.

Let me back up a little bit. I study Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I started studying almost 20 years ago (before there was mixed martial arts events in the United States). I quit studying for 15 years or so and just got back to it about 2 years ago.

The first person who taught me any jiu-jitsu was Royce Gracie when he would make trips from the West Coast to Steve Maxwell’s gym in Philadelphia. Royce said to me that when he fights that he wants to avoid being punched or kicked: “I don’t want to get hit. No one is punch-proof.”

He taught that it only takes one punch — even if it’s a lucky punch — to put you down and end the fight. He doesn’t want to dance that dance.

Instead he and my next teacher, Craig Kukuk — the first American black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, taught us how to close the distance without getting hit, how to bring the fight to the ground, and how to end the fight there.

Kukuk once said, “I want to teach you how to (get into position to) punch without being interrupted.” To get into that position, you had to not get punched yourself. Sure, we learned how to punch. But we learned how to punch when we were into position to punch, on the ground in the top position.

Fast-forward to Ricardo Almeida’s fight. Almeida is top-of-the-food-chain, no-bullshit Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert. He is one of the legendary Renzo Gracie’s top students (as a matter of fact, he asked for this fight because his mentor, Renzo, lost his last fight to Hughes). But he refused to use, to trust his jiu-jitsu. Instead, he thought he’d box.

Box!

He’s been learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu his entire life. Maybe he’s a boxing student, but he’s not Roy Jones Jr. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, he may be Roy Jones Jr. He’s good. You’d think he’d rely on his jiu-jitsu.

Instead, he boxed. He ate a left hand. Fell backwards, stunned. Matt Hughes jumped on top of him, slapped on a choke, and put him to sleep.

You see this more-and-more in mixed martial arts events: jiu-jitsu guys cum Muay Thai kickboxers relying on striking to try to get the job done. And they are losing.

And as a proud Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu student, I’m sick of it.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the rules that have forced the jiu-jitsu guys to get into the stand-up, pugilistic game. Maybe I don’t understand the sport well enough. Whatever.

I just know that I want to see jiu-jitsu guys use jiu-jitsu.

Maybe the UFC isn’t for me.

At supper my oldest son reported that the new Rock Band video game will include “a guitar with six real strings that you can play like a real guitar!”

“Why not just get a real guitar and learn to play that?” I asked. But then I took it a step further:

You know, when I was a kid people learned to play guitar to get chicks. If you learn to play a video game guitar, you’re just wasting your time. No girl wants to hang with the best Guitar Hero guitarist; they’re digging through the floor with their fake nails just to get away from them.

“Do yourself a favor, knock it off with the Rock Band and Guitar Hero and learn to play the guitar I got you for Christmas a couple of years ago. That’s a good investment in time.

“Better yet, sell your guitar and buy a microphone. All the hottest chicks go after the lead singer.”

At that point there were some protests from the table. My 19-year-old daughter said she liked guitar players.

“You’re just trying to be avante-garde. The fact is that all the hot chicks went after David Lee Roth. All the ones he shook off eventually turned to the guitar player … what’s his name? Oh yeh, Eddie Van Halen.

“See!? The group was named after him and I couldn’t even remember his name. He was the best guitar player of his generation, my generation, and I couldn’t think of his name.”

My wife mentioned that Eddie Van Halen wound up marrying the beautiful Valerie Bertinelli.

“Let’s be honest, Bertinelli was cute. But she wasn’t cover of Vogue beautiful. I know that wasn’t hip to say in 1982 — in the 80′s we had to say everything that Eddie did was awesome. The truth of the matter is that David Lee Roth was using girls that looked like Bertinelli to Simonize his Lamborghini while he was in his hotel suite having sport super model-types.

“Besides, Bertinelli married Van Halen. She’s the marrying-type with hips to make babies. Roth wasn’t looking for marriage and babies.

“The point is: the lead singer gets the hottest chicks. My son should put down the Rock Band game, sell his guitar, and front a band. He should be positioning himself now for chicks down the road.

“Even if he just became the guitar player or worse, the rhythm guitar player, he’s only going to get fat chicks. This stuff isn’t even my opinion, this is long-proven fact! Take a really good look at Bertinelli — there is and has always been a fat chick eating her way out of the center. Think about it: She’s the spokeswoman for the Jenny Craig weight loss program!

“You don’t see any of David Lee Roth’s old flames strumpeting it on the I-Just-Lost-a-Bunch-of-Weight circuit.”

My son said he didn’t even want to be in a band. He doesn’t even plan on playing video games all that long. “I want to be the guy that develops video games. That would be cool!”

“Cool?! You think that would be cool?

“Do you know how many chicks work at the video game development company? One. And she’s fat and ugly. But the sin is all you geeks think she’s hot. She’s not hot!

“Oh. This is a travesty.”