Blackmoor Vituperative

Nikita Lolita Chiquita Banana Maria Conchita Alonso Blackmoor
“La Femme Nikita”
1995-10-01 — 2011-08-17

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

— Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)

When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she confessed that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference:

Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of peoples’ reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief.

(from Ode to Billy Joe, Wikipedia)

My family is from North Carolina, and I had a cousin who committed suicide when I was seven or eight. It was the first funeral I ever attended. I remember that I had a hard time trying to keep from giggling (I didn’t think it was funny: it was nervous laughter, an involuntary response to anxiety).

This is my niece, Makayla. I think this is pretty amazing. When I was her age, I never did anything like this.

When Makayla Heintz, 11, learned the Breast and Cervical Cancer Program at Harbor Hospital diagnosed her grandmother with breast cancer, she decided she wanted to make a difference. She started a lemonade stand and raised nearly $70. At Harbor’s 1903 Society Reception, Heintz presented the profits to Harbor Hospital President Dennis Pullin. That evening, Dennis and Angela Pullin offered a special challenge — they each matched Heintz’s donation and invited others to do the same.

Heintz’s story has motivated others to give, creating Makayla’s Challenge. Donations made as part of this challenge will be used toward the purchase of a blanket warmer for the Oncology department and to set up an emergency fund for oncology patients in need. It is not too late to participate in Makayla’s Challenge by giving $70 or more. Donations are being accepted in the Philanthropy department by cash, check or credit card.

I am not sure what’s up with the Batman museum, though.

Today is my sweetie’s birthday. As a present, I converted the videotape of our wedding to DVD (something I have been meaning to do for, oh, five or six years, at least). Since it is Mother’s Day this Sunday, I made copies for our mothers, as well.

Okay, so once that was done, I had to make the graphics for the DVD and for the case liner. I have to: I am like that. I browsed the typical “wedding” images, looking for suitable images, but I had some trouble. Our wedding was pretty traditional, but the color scheme wasn’t. The bride’s wedding dress was teal and black, and the bouquet was dark red roses with babies’ breath, wrapped in black crinkly fabric. The wedding cake was black chocolate with teal cream cheese icing between the layers; the icing outside was black with white piping.

Suffice to say, the typical white flowery wedding images did not really fit.

Then I saw an image of a black rose, and I had an inspiration. My sweetheart and I were huge fans of a game called Vampire, which was published the year we were married (1991). It is the only role-playing game my sweetie has ever really liked. The game is out of print, and we haven’t played it in well over a decade, but it was a great source of joy for us in the early years of our marriage, and it still holds a special place in our hearts.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. And thanks, Mark Rein-Hagen and the rest of the White Wolf folks, wherever you are.

P.S. I just realized that I should have called this blog entry “Blood and roses”. Ah, well. It’s far from the worst mistake I have made recently.

I am watching You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley and Luke Wilson. This is pretty funny. I kind of wish we had a family business. It might give us a sense of belonging, of being a part of something. I am glad that it’s not the Polish mob, though.

My nephew Spencer has been selected in this year’s “Who’s who in band”. He plays the cornet, “a brass instrument very similar to the trumpet”. I have been trying to find out more about “Who’s who in band”, but a Google search surprisingly turns up nothing at all about it.

Even so, it’s pretty cool. I always wished I could play an instrument, but apparently you need to do more than wish. Spencer has accomplished something I never did. That’s pretty nifty.

My niece Makayla being interviewed on television.

She earned third place in a school-wide spelling bee. 🙂

You may have heard about “Proposition 8“, the California ballot to enshrine “marriage = one man and one woman” in their state constitution, and how the citizens of California ratified it in November 2008. By itself, I do not find this so surprising. People are really quite stupid, by and large, and California is no exception. Still, it makes me a little sad.

The New Yorker has an interesting article which examines some of the social trends behind efforts like Proposition 8. You might enjoy reading it.

I do not remember my biological father. I was two or maybe three when my biological parents split up, and I do not remember anything from when I was that young (my memory from before the age of ten or eleven is actually pretty spotty — I remember snatches of things, but there are large spans of time I do not recall at all).

A while ago, a friend of mine asked if I’d ever tried contacting my biological father. I said “no”. To be frank, it just never occurred to me. Why would I? He said I might regret it if I never tried to contact him. At the time, it just seemed like a senseless thing to do. Why would I bother trying to contact some stranger?

But after thinking about it a while, I decided to go ahead and try. What the heck? It might be interesting. I guess I was just curious. So I asked my mother for my biological father’s complete name and last known address. She had his name, but not his address. She told me the last city she knew of where he’d lived, but that was decades ago. Well, I was a private detective for a brief time, and that was enough. I found him in about ten minutes. Yeah, I’m pretty awesome. 🙂

I called him on the phone, asked if he was the man I was looking for, and told him who I was. He seemed a little taken aback, but welcomed the suggestion that we meet at some neutral place to meet and see what kind of people the other person is.

Well, that’s not going to happen. He called me back the other night, and said that he’d given it a great deal of thought, and he’d decided that 40 years apart is too long a span to get to know someone again. He said he had a wife and a son, and a good life, and that I was a stranger to him and there’d be no point in our meeting. I said I understood completely, and there were no hard feelings. I told him that I didn’t want to disrupt his life, and that I didn’t want anything from him, and that I didn’t blame him at all for not wanting to meet after all this time.

He seemed a little defensive. Maybe he thought I’d take it badly. He also seemed to have some unresolved issues with my mother. He said things like, “I’m sure you’ve been told a lot about me, and I want you to know that a lot of it isn’t true,” and “I don’t know anything about how your mother is doing, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about her.”

I told him that other than his name and the fact he was my biological father, I hadn’t been told anything about him, and that I wouldn’t mention my mother at all if he didn’t want me too. Not a problem. I didn’t look him up to discuss her. He seemed to relax a little after that, and said that he’d be willing to answer a couple of questions, “within reason”.

He answered a couple of medical questions for me, and we talked a few more minutes. He said that he had a good life, he’d been married for 37 years and was proud of his (other) son, that he’d never been arrested, and so forth. I said that sounded great, that I’d been married 16 years, and that I also was happy and had a good life, and that I was glad that we had that in common.

At the end of the conversation, he said I could call him again some time if I wanted, and that maybe we could meet some day. I don’t think I’ll bother. I think my curiosity is satisfied, and what I told him was true: I really don’t want anything from him. I am glad I called him, though.

My nephew Kai is a real-life Jack-Jack.