So its New Year's

My ex-roommate invited me to a formal party. I'm here at his place with his wife him watching them get dressed. Its very San Francisco. He's gay, she's lesbian. They are married. He's trying to decide whether or not to wear his harness as a shirt rather than a shirt and cumberbund. She's not sure.
He just asked me if I wanted a harness or a tie. (Clip On.) I passed on both. Oh hell the clip on looks so silly with a blue t-shirt and a kilt, I'll do it. Its very San Francisco. I wear my kilt most New Year's. You can't sing in old ange zine without a Scotsman. I'm the Scotsman. Broque and all. Where is my Kilt Partner in Crime, Ian Clunies Ross? Oh yeah. Stuck in Iraq. Thanks again George. Ian I hope Iraq doesn't suck too much.

Did I mention my ex-roommates Chesapeak Retriever is wearing a wedding dress? We haven't even started drinking yet.

Burbite Definition

Someone on reading my blog recently asked me to define the term “burbite”. I’m not sure I’ve ever used the term in my blog, but I have in a few of my poems. I’ve used the word Unitarian too. Though at the time I was not referring to the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church. However, I was listening to a radio show on the origins of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) a month or so back and they stated that if they can find five occurrences of a word in print its considered for entry in the dictionary. So you can all help my cause of expanding the American/English language by using the term in your e-mails, letters and publications. Fellow writers help me out. I would love the OED to eventually have an entry something like the following:


Burbite (Bur~Bite) 1. A diminutive term used by the urban young adults (18-29) of
San Francisco to describe the individuals of the outlying suburban communities. 2. A
person of origin outside the city of San Francisco, residing outside of the city of San
Francisco, who attempts to assume hippness by visiting the quainter neighborhoods of San
Francisco, or to a lesser extent Berkeley, on an infrequent basis. 3. A person residing in the suburbs
of a major hip city, who has not fully committed him or herself to the assuming the general
kinkyness of the times and herd mentality of a dense urban region. Note, burbites usually
feel its a necessity to own a high fuel consumption vehicle that does not easily fit into a compact urban parking space. People using this term in common vernacular tend to try and out do their contemporaries by acquiring new subdivisions of body art and piercings rather than new tract homes in suburban
subdivisions. Burbites define art and hippness by obtaining large cookie cutter possessions that make them as bland as everyone else in their neighborhood. Non-burbites (urban hipsters) define art and hipness by decorating their bodies like everyone else in their neighborhood.

Etymology: Term first used by the Berkeley poet, Stan Pisle, in his series of poems on urban lifestyles of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. It was originally an abridgment of the term “Suburbanite.” Mr. Pisle with his proclivity to use as few syllables as possible (especially when engaging in conversations with his current significant other on the state and possible direction of “the relationship”) championed the use of the word until it became common in the vernacular

Christmas Limericks

Scott (roommate/housemate) Scott, brought home a book of limericks the other day. We remarked that there are no Christmas limericks to our knowledge. So I decided to write a few. Here is the first one:

There once was a red dude with reindeer
He would drop presents from Kentucky to Zaire
He’d often remark during the flight,
"This would only take half the night.
If it weren’t for the wind drag from my horse’s headgear."


They may get a little more risque as the days go by. Be forewarned. :)

Paul Simon - The senator

So, I was watching Paul Simon's funeral on C-Span today. (Yeah, I'm a political geek. If you read this on a regular basis, you probably figured that out.) One of the great things about being a upper-lower middle manager for a major multi-national conglomerate, is you get to spend a lot of time stuck in airports in bad weather situations. This is what people with six figure but not seven figure incomes do mostly. We sit in airports like Denver, Chicago, DFW or St. Louis and wait for weather to improve and let our flight go out. If we made seven figure incomes, we'd get a corporate jet. Weather wouldn't be an issue. We sit in these airports on our way to meetings with other managers all over the country. They pay us six figures for this, and you wonder why corporations are going to pot.

If you get stuck enough you tend to run into other stuck semi-important people. I ran into Paul Simon one day at the United waiting area counter in St. Louis. We had both been bumped. Its kind of wierd to be standing at a counter look right and see a senator you've only seen on TV. Bow Tie and all. Being somewhat whatever I am, I struck up a conversation: "So, I guess it doesn't help to be a senator, you still get bumped."
He just smiled and said, "Yah, I guess."
Then I said, "If you'd won the Presidential thing, you'd have your own jet now."
He just laughed.
We both got flights on other airlines. Aftewards I was walking away from the counter and a woman stopped me. "Who was that guy you were talking too?"
I told her. She looked at me puzzled. "Who are you. You look famous too. -He knew you. Can I get your autograph?" I just chuckeled. I love the Midwest.