Ancient and Modern

[The following is Special guest post by Zombie R. McDonald, Chief of Neurosurgery Buffet Tasting at Empire of the Senseless. ]

Welcome. Welcome to the Cheesehead Infestation Installment of Circle Jerk At The Square Dance. For those of you that know Brando, or worse, share his allegiances, this may... not be pleasant.

Because we did wager blog posts upon the outcome of the Bears-Packers game, and despite the “utterly random football stylings of Jay Cutler” the Bears did fall.

And I need to interject here that I totally liked the Bear’s throwback uniforms.

Hey, I ain’t gonna rehash the game here. You can get that elsewhere. I recommend calling Brando, if you don’t mind a lot of profanity. And some tears.

But I come here not to bear-y the Bears (see what I did there?). OK, I will leave the fucking funny to Brando. FACK, amirite?

I have to admit that over the first few games, the Packers have been lousy at pass defense. Also inexplicably, the Lions are in first place, mainly because they stomped the shit out of a couple of teams to result in a similar 3-0 record, but have a huge advantage in Points For. But in the end, the Packers are 3-FUCKING-0, the Vikings are winless, and the Bears....well.

Yanno, I grew up in Wisconsin. Probably saw a few Bart Starr games on the t-v, not that I remember. I know we saw at least one game when they still played in Milwaukee. I saw a finals game at Lambeau, the last game played before they finished the Big Remodeling.

But the Packers have always been known as a tough team, and one of the longest lived teams in the NFL; what the NFL won’t tell you is that the Packers are a SOCIALIST team, owned by a non profit corporation, with any number of cheeseheads holding stock certificates, but also unable to move anywhere else. No fucking wonder the NFL made it impossible for any other team to organize around the same ideals. But fuck you; we believe in blue collar workers in Wisconsin, and that’s what we do. Until, of course, Turdwaffle Walker slimed his way into the Gov, but my blog will cover that somewhat more. O, I digress. Also of some interest is the fact that the waiting list for Packers season tickets has topped 80,000 names.

Growing up in Wisconsin, with nearly-genetic sports allegiances, we viewed people from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois with suspicion at best. These are the people who have, with us, formed some of the most long lasting and legendary rivalries. They called us Cheeseheads. We not only wore it proudly, but turned it into money making opportunities; we aren’t stupid.

But fuck me, I ain’t here to talk about football. I am here to talk about friendship.

I have to admit that I have never been good at making friends. I have always been more than a bit of a geek, and kind of bookish; that did not bode well in high school and when I made friends, those friends were deep. That continued into college; I had acquaintances, and I had those I called my FRIENDS.

And I have always recognized that I don’t make friends easy, but I do it HARD. Few friends, but they are loved.

And so, what happens when the Internet intervenes? Through luck, chance, and the fact that I just became an obnoxious presence at several blog sites, I came to know some people: Jennifer. Snag. Von. Fish. Pinko Punko. MenD. Plover. Thudner. Chuckles. Kathleen. mikey. Righteous Bubba. Those fuckers who live upside down. I am sure I am missing someone, and I blame it on the drink and the tears. And I came to know those people, and I call them my friends.

They are as much friends as anybody I have ever known, and not the less because I haven’t met them all.

Wife Sublime and I refer to them semi-sardonically as “imaginary digital friends” and she is is always bemused when we travel somewhere and inevitably meet some of them. (It is surely a random happenstance that whenever this happens, there is drunkenness)

I really looked forward to meeting Brando when his wife did a book reading up here, and unfortunately child sickness prevented it; perhaps Brando might get over his Wiscons-aversion long enough to visit Summerfest next year.

Brando and I share a number of weird, geeky commonalities; not the least of which is a love of the band Rush. We both wave that banner in the face of daily ridicule and uncoolness. And rock on.

But here; One of my first ever concerts, as a weedy highschooler, was Rush on the Permanent Waves tour. And a couple of years later, I took a young lady to see the Moving Pictures tour; it was her first real rock show, and apparently the noise, the crowd, and the lasers disrupted her higher cognition to the point that she eventually married me.

There are all kinds of ways to find friends. And if they mean something to you, then the interface----digital, music, or meatspace--- what’s the difference?

There are two ways to end this post. One would be to talk about how much I love all the people who read the shit I sometimes write, and the other would be: