Gerald R. Ford.

Anyway, CNN just reported, “breaking news”, he’s dead. As Wombat said on gchat, “he just couldn’t go on without James Brown.”

Although I would only be in Scranton overnight, I took my laptop with the faint hope that I’d be able to find a wireless internet connection in range with Grandma’s House – which is really Aunt P’s House. This was a hope that was proven to be in vain. Thankfully, I’d corrected my wireless problems from Thursday night by doing a system restore to the previous week, at which point my laptop had no problem saying, “Hey, look, I’ve got a wireless modem! Let me get on the internet.” (The weirdest thing about that whole event was that while my laptop wouldn’t detect either my home network or any internet networks – even the seven or twelve WPA protected ones in my building – my “streaming radio” icon was happily blinking that, yes, it had located a wireless network!)

Particularly when surrounded by family, I can’t help but feel judged (and I’m not entirely certain why that is, maybe it’s just normal to feel judged by your family). My family and extended family loves me very much, and of course, I love them very much. I just don’t always feel very comfortable around them. It’s one thing with certain individuals, particularly a certain uncle who brings out his dad’s WWII souvenirs and enjoys the twelve-pack of Natty Boh I’ve made a habit of gifting him every Christmas. But particularly when the family gathers, I’d rather be elsewhere, even if I am just over in the next room. Anyway, so my plan for this overnight stay was to make the visiting rounds, then to hide in some distant room and surf the ‘net (I might just have an internet addiction after all). Instead, I’m stuck composing this in a word document with the intention of copy-pasting it into a Word Press post and delaying it for Tuesday (today!), and that’s actually fine with me. Here’s why I’m cool not writing fresh posts, checking my e-mail, and taking too much time to look at SiteMeter: finishing my Christmas shopping at Border’s a few days ago, I came across a book called “BLUE BLOOD” by Edward Conlon, a memoir of a Harvard-educated English major turned NYPD patrolman. I started reading it on the car-ride up, and at just after five pm Saturday evening, I’m two hundred pages into it.

Most often, though, the babel of the city just mixed with the police jargon in striking ways, as we struggled to express ourselves with bits-of-hand-me-down language that didn’t always fit. One would-be street lawyer protested what he took to be an “illegal search and seizure” of his cocaine by declaring it “an illegal circumcision.” (Now that’s a civil right’s nightmare for you, rogue mohels with guns.)

It’s a very fascinating book, worthy of a read.

I remember as a kid, a young kid, I could never remember if my grandmother lived in Pennsylvania, Scranton, or in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Even as an adult, I think there’s something a little freaky about a state that rhymes with Transylvania (or, y’know, anything that does).

I think the first time I realized that Scranton, Pennsylvania was known somewhat more widely than just the people who are from Scranton or who have family there, was in the movie “Home Alone”, which I will admit to enjoying when I was a kid and it was in theaters (I think I was twelve). The mom is trying to fly home where one of her children has been carelessly neglected by her naggish and worthless self, but the closest she can get is “Scranton?!”, which she exclaims very similarly to how I’ve written it above when the airline clerk informs her. At least, I think that’s how it goes – I haven’t seen the movie since I was twelve (sixteen years ago, for those wanting to figure out how old I am), and I’m in no hurry to do so anytime soon.
Driving towards my grandmother’s house – actually, it’s my Aunt P’s house, but just because she pays the mortgage doesn’t mean everyone in my extended family doesn’t refer to it as “Grandma’s House” – with my sister and folks, I realized that my parents are fan of NBC’s “The Office”, which is set in Scranton. I’ve seen the show a handful of times, and noticed some familiar looking sights in the introduction, but they were pointing them out quite specifically – “That row of houses, there”, talking about a row of rundown structures over a sharp bank and some minor tributary of a larger body of water as you get off I-81. Buildings down the road through Scranton University. Another one, down by the Old Prison, but out of visual sight. Something missing from the introduction, but which should be there, the long condemned North Scranton High, with a vague “Coming Soon!” sign planted prominently, years ago, in front of its Gothic structure with its boarded up windows. Grandma’s House is just up the road, from her back porch, North Scranton looms below, an inviting attraction to adult urban explorers and children alike, “No Trespassing” warnings be dammed.

Grandma’s House – Aunt P’s, really – is at the top of a steep hill. They’ve been living here for close on twenty years, it seems, yet driving up or down this hill still makes me nervous, as if releasing too much of my foot from the brake will send my car directly into the hands of gravity which will propel me with considerable force into oncoming traffic across Main Street.

The house itself isn’t much wider than a rowhome in Baltimore, with a steep narrow staircase connecting three floors on the far right, and an unusually long garage with an apartment-like-unit behind it supporting the floors above. Decorated with ugly wood paneling and uglier wallpapering, quasi shag carpeting, and Catholic icons everywhere (Jesus, Mary and rosmaries galore) the house feels like it stepped straight out of a 1960’s catalog, and only a shade away from a Stephen King novel (Carrie, anyone?). After she bought this place, Aunt P. discovered that many years ago, waaaay back, it had been owned by a distant relative who had operated a small grocery store out of what is now the garage.

The world, even the narrow one of the Scranton valley, home to Scranton and Archibald and other small townships, is a very small place.

In the fictional world surrounding both incarnations of Battlestar Galactica, “frack” or “frak” (the first the spelling on the original series, the latter for the better series), is a word intended to stand in for ‘fuck.’ The next time you feel the need to drop the f-bomb, substitute “frak” and you’ll see it works just as well – “You fraking motherfraker!” “I’m a franking idiot.” “I need a fraking drink.” The side benefit of “frak” is that by not being an actual curse word, the FCC has no authority to regulate its use.

With the popularity of the new Battlestar Galactica, the term “frak” has begun to spread. In the third season of Veronica Mars, the hot chick detective learns about the word and its fictional usage, and immediately begins using it “for real”, albeit within the context of the fictional world she exists in.

Here’s where we get to the meat and potatoes of this post: I have never, ever, noticed a town called Frackville in any posted sign anywhere along the drive to Scranton. Yet, I did just that on Saturday, blinking my eyes at the signs, and thinking about a town in Austria with a seemingly innocent name: Fucking, Austria. The benefit of a town called “Fucking” being located in Austria is that only English speaking tourists would find the name funny. However, if “frak” continues to invade the public usage as it has, soon the residents of Frackville, Pennsylvania will be in on the joke (assuming, of course, that they aren’t already).

***

Side note: if you live in Fracksville, does that make you a Fracker? And if you’re unfortunate to live in Fucking, Austria, and take a trip to an English speaking country, how funny would it be if you said (without knowing the meaning of the word ‘fuck’ in the English language), “I’m a Fucker from Fucking”? VERY!

I love my Aunt P., very, very much. I just want to say that first, so that when I comment that if you’ve got your dog wearing a diaper because it is too taxing to get down the stairs to the backyard, and too dangerous to let her out unleashed, you’re probably at a point where you should just stick with cats (even if your current cat is the living reincarnation of the devil – yes, Geisha, you have a “devil cat”, but Aunt P. has the original Big D Big C Devil Cat). That sounded kind of cruel reading back over it, so I wanted to add the opening clarification (so there was no confusion).

I don’t care for Diaper Dog at all, although, forced to choose, I’d probably take him over Devil Cat. Diaper Dog is a tiny white whining rodent who I’m half tempted to smack with the book I was reading (more on that later) keep her from eating my shoes. It is especially an unattractive quality that Diaper Dog is literally carrying her own waste around her ass. Yes, that makes me so not want to bring you up into the chair with me, creature!

(This post contains spoilers for “Little Miss Sunshine”, So, Uh, Be Warned).

A Dodge Caravan, older model, on I-83, just before the exit to I-81, written in soap across the back window: “TO GRAMMA’S HOUSE WE GO.” If there was a boy in that van, I bet he rolled his eyes before getting in. Ironically, so was I (both rolling my eyes and driving to my own grandmother’s house, which is actually my Aunt P’s), driving my parents’ car, with my dad to my right, and my mom and sister in the back, although we would only be there for the night, making the return journey to Maryland on Christmas Eve. “I wonder if that’s the grandma in question in the tarp,” my dad commented, noting the blue tarp tied in a long bundle across the back of the minivan. “You’re awful!” my mom and sister commented from the back. “That’s how they did it in Little Miss Sunshine!” he argued, although one doesn’t need to know my father well to have been able to ascertain that he was joking.