Just the facts, M'am

Booked by Joe Friday?

Would anyone like a snack?

Dig in.  There is plenty for everyone.

There is nothing but trash on the television!

Cookie is simply vexed by Comcast.

Because we just barely live in the city of Baltimore, our taxes are double those live in the houses across the street.  Our insurance on our cars and home are double what we would pay if we just lived 300 feet north of here in Baltimore County.

And we would be rid of our Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, who is a wretched excuse for a mayor and sterling example of a micromanager and control.  On the other hand, Baltimore County has this yutz named Kevin Kamenetz, and he's just bullshit rip off artist shyster.  But, if I had to be stuck in an elevator with the two, I would have to pick Stephanie because bitch would get us out.

Anyway, we are stuck with total trash on TV because we can only have Comcast television in the city of Baltimore. And that sucks, because it is nothing but trash TV.  And it's outrageously expensive.  When I called today to complain the price and the selection, do you know the Comcast employee said?  

"You could upgrade to the Premium Sports Package with the NFL, NHL, MLB and,"  he says moving in for the kill, "Tennis Network."

Bitch, what?

At least with the UFC channel I get to watch sweaty men humping each other.  Who the dickens watches Tennis anymore?   The last tennis match I watched was a game of PONG on a Magnavox in Marion, Ohio when Jimmy Carter was President.

And contrary to what Mr. Peenee says, at some point too much porn gets terribly rote.  Unlike like the days of Joe Gage's classic art films that told a story, we have reverted to the pre-Gage era of two men meet, take out their dicks, give bad oral sex to one and other (Thank GOD Al Parker isn't alive to see the bad fellatio that permeates modern art films) and then they have coitus, that goes on f...o...r...e...v...e...r in a fashion that makes Henry Ford's assembly lines look terribly inefficient.  Cookie is terribly bored by an art film that is nothing "butt" homosexual coitus.  Hell, at this rate, an Operating Engineers training film on pistons and pistons sleeves has more plot to it than anything starring Colby Keller or that vile Dale Cooper.

So here I sit, nothing but trash on the television and yammering away.  Such is life, no?

The one where I have a "genealogical orgasm"

Yes, your read that right.

Cookie is basking in the afterglow of orgasmic success in breaking through a brick wall in a genealogical line.
As we have discussed, one of my great grandfather's first cousins - the financial tycoon, as it were, sat down and wrote a 1,000 page book, which my mother called the Kennel Papers.  That book got me my start when I was a young lad of 14 into the dank and musty corners of family history.

My attention to the hobby has ebbed and flowed over the past 35+ years, but since 9-11, genealogy has been my form of personal therapy.  It preoccupied me so much that when we moved to Baltimore, COOKIE, not the moving company, moved the papers 400 miles.

In genealogy, though, you come across those people who seemingly have no past.  The inability to get beyond a point with such a person is called a "brick wall" because its stops you from going any further.

When the Tycoon wrote his book, he recorded "Eleanor", the wife of his cousin by her first name and the name on the marriage license, and that was all.  Problem is that when I went looking for Eleanor's place of birth, I could not find her in the censuses.  In fact, I could find nothing at all on Eleanor. That was in 1978, and since then, I have periodically washed her name through the online databases that the LDS church has at www.familysearch.com and through Ancestry at www.ancestry.com or even google without any luck.

So I tried again for giggles, this time through Google and low and behold it brought me to a site that had held no promise for me before - One Billion Graves.  And son of Eleanor there was her tombstone, which meant I had a date of death.  Then I discovered that the LDS Church had Colorado and Nebraska marriage records, which shocked me because neither state is known for its openness when it comes to public records.  Colorado is second only to Indiana when it comes to making it impossible to leach out a death certificate.

Still, one thing led to another, and another, and each time, the clues kept coming faster and faster and each lead held more information and within two hours I had to muffle my pleasure at the advances I was making on ELEANOR!

YES, I found her maiden name!

YES, I found her place of birth!

YES, I discovered that her previously thought maiden name was from HER FIRST MARRIAGE!

YES, YES, YES!

Reader, if I smoked, let me tell you that after all that, I bet that cigarette would be the sweetest one I smoked in a long time.

And in the post genalogical orgasm's afterglow, I pushed through that wall and I found everything that I could ever hope to find...

And more.

The thing is with these finds, you get your questions answered, only to find yourself with more questions.

And that is why I love this hobby.  You never know what you will find. But keep at it, because there is always something new around the corner.

The one where I sit at the computer in the nude and...

...create a blog entry is this post right here, right now.

Why am I nude you might want to ask.  Perhap you don't want to know, either, since Cookie is resembling the Sunshine Chef of late.

I am sitting here in the nude, and by nude I mean tastefully, not salaciously because, well, its my house and I can.

There is something to be said about sitting around in the nude for us non-nudists, but I am not here to make a political statement.   So here is what is on my mind:

1) We have returned from the Charleston, West Virginia taping of the Antiques Roadshow.  Yes, we got tickets and we went.  Charleston is only six hours from Baltimore, so I figured it was just a hop in the car and go.  I was mistaken.

To get to Charleston, we had to take I-70 to I-68.  Driving on I-68 means you have to cross over Negro Mountain, I kid you not.  That name makes me cringe.  Anyway, I have a terrible fear of heights and I-68 is a terror filled ride for me.  But that was not the worst.  In Morgantown, we had to go south on I-79, and let me tell you, those three hours felt like ten.  Three hours of nothing more that mountains and trees. Swear to God.

We got there and had a good old time. We were staying at the same hotel that the appraisers were staying at and Cookie got to meet Kevin Zavian, who is, in person, devastatingly handsome when he isn't in a sharkskin suit and dripping with gold.  There I stood slack jawed while he cordially chatted with us for a minute.  Absolute heaven!

Two of our appraisals went well, and two of them went nowhere.  Ken Farmer (Folk Art) took one look at what we brought and said "These are folk art, but they are too well done for folk art."  Evidently people like their folk art crude.  The other appraiser that was a real dolt was Noel Barrett, the toy appraiser.  Barrett took one look at the toys we brought, which are original vintage 1960s, and 9 out 10, and sniffed like we had put a dead 'possum on his table.

On the other hand, the art we took both surprised us ("It's worth how much? Someone would pay that much for that thing? Well shut the front door and call me Maudine.") , and made us very happy.

If you have the chance to go - DO IT.  It was fun.  But keep away from Noel Barrett.  He's grumpy and not worth the two hours we spent in line to see him.

2) Work at the Beef House and Strip Club continues to grow more interesting every day, and I am learning new things.  We are all being trained on loss prevention because the home office feels that is the topic of the day.  I am appalled at what I am learning.  Cookie has a background in auditing, but the creative ways that people steal these days is appalling.  "People really do this?"  yes, they do.

We are also short staffed and and pretty desperate to find people to work.   I don't think I could do it full time.  "What do you mean I can't return this lap dance and silver tea service?  It hasn't even been a year!"  No, I could not deal with that without losing my mind.

3) We think we might just get an uninterrupted weekend to ourselves this week, so we are doubly excited.

Whats up with youse guys?

Attention Ladies, Women, Girls, Females, Bitches...

We feel that this should also carry a warning about trampolines.

What do you think they left off the list?

The Children Are Coming!

Are you prepared?

The old woman, that N****** Obama and me

So, Cookie was sitting in a the Timonium, Maryland Best Buy yesterday, waiting for the phone rep to come back with my old iPhone (which I was trading in), when an old woman using a walker meandered near me.

I found this odd, because Best Buy is not usually a place where the old and the decrepit congregate - that is a Rite Aid thing.  And she looked like she was wearing what could have passed for Stella Toddler's clothing.

But she slowly was walking around looking at all the technology that she never imagined in her life.  She had to be 90.

So I sat there playing with my new iPhone, and she comes up and says:

"I think Dr. Ben Carson is a good man to run our country, not like that n***** Obama."

At first I looked up at her and then around to see who she was talking to.  No one else was within 20 feet.

She was talking to me.

Since working at the Beef House and Strip Club, Cookie has been on diplomatic autopilot.  Because our clientele can be pushy and condescending, you have to have control of yourself and your mouth.   Because it really is easier to smile at these assholes than it is to engage in their lunacy, which you can't change with your outrage, so conserve your energy, right?

So my immediate vocal reaction was to say "I'm sorry," with a healthy dose of sarcasm, and return to my phone.

But she took that to mean I didn't understand what she had just said, or perhaps she wondered if she had said what she wanted to, or something else, or whatever, and she started to repeat the offending statement.  I stopped her in mid "Cars..."

I explained that I was "sorry, but I don't care to hear about your politics," since that was the nicest way I could think of to tell her to shut the fuck up.

"Well," says she in a huff.  "I have a right to speak my opinion."

Bottom line, she does.  That is what makes this country great.  We all get an opinion.  And she is entitled to it, no matter how racist, how hateful or stupid it is.   And the Constitution protects that opinion, in the right she has to criticize the government without fear of retaliation.  The down side to this is that she has a Constitutional right to her offensive and bigoted opinion, no matter how unwelcome it is.

So in forming my response, I did a couple calculations in my mind:

1) This was not a teaching moment on the offensiveness of the term "nigger" to African Americans, or my ears.  Why, because at 90+, this decrepit old woman, who spent her days sitting in front of FOXNews wasn't going to change.  She also looked like she wasn't going to make it to the 2016 primary season, either.

and 2) Causing a scene would make it look like Cookie was giving this woman a tongue lashing for being sweet (which she was not) and old (which she was) in that order.

So my response was "I don't care to listen to your political opinion, good day."

With that she tottled off.

And then a Best Buy employee came up and asked if the Old Crazy One was with me.  I said no, and he started towards her to help her.  I wonder went on in her mind when a six foot man, dark as midnight, walked up to her see if there was anything she needed help with.

Cookie knows that we live in troubled times.  And Cookie does live south of Mason Dixon line, so technically, Maryland is in the south.  And old habits die hard for the ignorant. But Cookie is also glad that the old woman will naturally go to her reward, and when she meets God at her reward, I'm hoping for her sake that God is a black man or woman.   Because that is the moment she will cower.