be respectful

Riding my bike around a corner a few days ago some dude standing there said "Hey clown, bet you get to meet a lot of bitches." 
Me: "So far just you."
 I don't know how that landed but I hope it hit him in the junk. 

The irony of course is that fellas who call themselves "Incel" are actually quite voluntarily celibate. They don't have to be untouchable.
Dudes who treat women with empathy, respect and kindness get shagged six ways to Sunday...or so I hear.

Sometimes when we do personal appearances a Dad will say something degrading or sexist to his wife. Then he looks at me nodding his head and laughing like I'm s'posed to agree with him. 
My smile is painted on but what I'm thinking is "i hope you bite your lip on that slipNslide later.



To be fair my wife calls me "bitches" almost every day we leave the house. 
She says "OK Let's go bitches" even though I'm the only other person in the room.
 It's a callback from when she was a hardcore baller in High school.
 That was the way she motivated her basketball team (ever notice she walks into rooms with head held high, that's because she is used to being hard to stop) so when she needs to motivate me (or my son and I) that's what she says. 
My son once asked me a very fair question. 
"Why does she keep calling us Bitches Dad?"

Hey! Like what we do?
Maybe you are in a place to throw down for the clowns. 
Here is our donation page. WooHoo!
http://oliveanddingo.com/donate/

Riding the wave of the kindness of others.

Riding the wave of the kindness of others. 

Thanks to the folks from far away who still put into our "virtual jar of sustainability" oliveanddingo.com Today I'm thanking The Vasquez family (April and Johnny Vasquez) from my hometown Corpus Christi Texas. Out of the blue they dropped us $50. That bought us a mess of strings and things today. Thank you very much! These are the four necks I use for my clownistry. They all needed new strings and now we can keep rockin' the casaba. After our gig we dropped into our favorite music shop Trade Up Music and got squared away. We love them. Every stick of gear we have came from there so we get amazing deals but anyone can get a good deal at Trade up. Thanks again Vasquez family!!!!!! WooHoo! http://www.tradeupmusic.com/Home.aspx

I don't like arguing. But I enjoy ignorance even less.

I don't like arguing.
But I enjoy ignorance even less.
You can only go so far though. I have points that come in paragraphs.
I study a lot and I have lived what seems like several lifetimes in a only a few decades.
So there is never enough room for all the opinions.
I noticed folks with the worst opinions often need very little details.
Their entire political opinions come in crude bumper sticker slogan form.
Not good enough. It reveals more of what reality they want than what actual reality exists. I expect things I say to be double checked and when I'm proved wrong, I'm grateful.
I would rather be "correct" than be "Right".
Others it seems would rather be Right" than "correct".
If they are drawing a bad conclusion, the last thing they want is some clown pointing it out. They are looking for a positive feedback loop not the brick wall of logic or perspective.
Also some folks are not qualified to counter argue because they don't get good info in the first place.
I don't know how to navigate McOpinions.
Lots of places are locked in groupthink, ignorance or their whole situation depends on their bad conclusion.
The ignorance on the internet makes me cringe.
I don't think I know everything so it also points out that my opinions probably look primitive to folks with far better perspective than I.
This makes me prone to interrogating my own beliefs almost daily.

me: My neighbors are great people, they love each other and are great parents. Why would you back this legislation treating them like they are sinners/deviants?"

McOpinion Person: The bible says Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve."

me: "That's whack (and immediately this pours out of my face)
Things aren't correct just because they rhyme.
Bronze age people didn't know what happens to the sun when it sets.
There is no such thing as God.
I cherish the relationships I have had through my life with the members of the queer community, wouldn't trade it for anything.
Homosexuality is a gift of evolution and a very important part of the human experience.
Your religion is an actual blight on the country for spreading so much superstition and, exploitation and hatred."

M.O.P. "But Laviticus 18.22"


me: "Laviticus 11.9 baby, shrimp seems to be a much bigger problem with the cave people than queerness. Maybe you should track that down before trying to ruin my neighbors life."

"I hope you fall"

Today a man drove behind me as I rode my tallbike up Division street. 
He kept honking his horn and yelling "I hope you fall" 
I been riding my tall bike since 2005.
 I fell twice. Both falls were dog related. 
Never been hurt too bad.

I had only been riding in a straight line by the side of the road, he didn't get cut off or anything. 
He was just protesting my existence as people do sometimes.
 I feel sorry for him. Maybe he hates my freedom (moohoohahahahaha!) It doesn't bother me since I mostly get treated to smiles and waves all around. 
Hope that guy gets it together.Right before that another guy (really old codger) in a truck yelled "This is a car street buddy!" That was pretty funny.
Another man in an orange car just shook his head no like a clown and did a great frowny face. 
I laughed at him in my normal face. 
Everyone else cheered and had a good time with us. 
I don't know why three guys on the road today were acting like they come from joyless places. 
Good luck!

my paintings up at Henry Higgins

same old story

Seeing posts about voter fraud get me grumpy.

Election fraud is far far more prevalent than voter fraud. 
I'm curious, why my fellow countrymen have such bad priorities? 
Voter suppression is huge and had catastrophic effects on the last elections. 
Do you really think voter fraud is anywhere in the same scale of magnitude as the scams around easily hackable voting machines, Russian interference, Dem super-delegates and the electoral collage? 
Who's side are you on? 
Democracy is predicated by the existence of an informed public. Lots of folks and bots are happy to distort, dis-inform and exploit low info voters.

Olive creating the unicorn painting

I had already dropped my drinking problem when this blog began.

I wonder what my blog would have looked like had I still been a drunken clown.
Could I have even gotten it together to type?
I remember talking to folks when I was soused. It wasn't pretty.
Drinking a lot came with the clown job.
Everyone wants to buy the clown a beer.

Shy kid likes his face paint.

 Last weekend we performed at a company party at the Mcmenamins Edgefield. Swank place. The shin-dig was for a law firm that had to cancel the party last year when the venue they picked happened to be in the path of a forest fire. 

So this time around they chose this great place and didn't forget the clowns. 

We had a blast. These lawyers know how to have fun. Charming folks. 

None of them had ever seen our show. In our line of work, every day is a job interview. 

Olive painted faces and Dingo was the balloon guy. Then in the second hour we did our rock n roll show. 

Afterwards they invited us to the buffet for the best grub a clown could ask for. At the end of the day we made a lot of new friends, were treated well and enjoyed a magnificent old building from Oregon's history. 

When we got home we were delighted to see an employee had visited of oliveanddingo.com site and left us a very generous donation on top of our rate that the company paid. Thank You!!!!! We highly recommend doing the company party thing at Edgefield...and don't forget the clowns.

Check out the conservation status of peyote. It's threatened in the wild. I don't like seeing members of any ecosystem go extinct. This plant comes from my home ecosystem.
Peyote cracks me up.
This was the easiest drug to find when I was growing up in South Texas. Corpus Christi has the typical pushers you would find anywhere else...Grey haired Hispanic ladies.
We would just go up to any typical porch and ask in Spanglish "Hola Senorita How much for the ugly little cactus" and she (impressed that we were into horticulture) would say "$3 Mijo" with a smile. Worked like a charm.
Unfortunately the score was not as fun as the chase.
It's a heavy trip.
Maybe you aren't always wanting to spend 6 hours way up on a watertower talking to your ancient ancestors until sunrise.
A lil dab did me for life.
I recommend everyone lose your mind (in a controlled environment) at some point for personal growth but then let it be after that. lol
Maybe keep one on the porch for their sake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote

We got home today soaked and face melted after rocking a party appearance.

We got home today soaked and face melted after rocking a party appearance. 
We could have worn raincoats but we purposely don't. When folks in traffic see us drenched in bad weather they lose their minds. 
People honk, yell and encourage us the entire commute. Normally they only do that for most of our commute. 
It's a profound delight to make those folks so happy. 
We do pick our moments and do this sparingly. 
The gear and threads can only take so many torrents. 
Also this is how George Washington died. 
He got sick after a long horse ride in the rain. We ain't going down like that. 
All warm and dry now. 
Hope you are too.

We are not going to have a baby.

We are not going to have a baby. 
We love our life as it is. 
I think some certain folks overheard us fake arguing and thought we were trying to Have a baby. 


What we were talking about was Halving a baby. 
Mission accomplished. 
This is my half. 
We get all our fake marriage counseling from Soloman and sons.

I felt a little guilty eating this sitting at a table with my kids and Olive who don't eat wheat.

I made this Stromboli for my dinner last night. Made the pizza dough from scratch. 
This one had Moz, Pepperoni, Can bacon and shaved garlic. The crust was eggwashed but we were out of the sesame seeds that I usually add to the crust. 

I felt a little guilty eating this sitting at a table with my kids and Olive who don't eat wheat. 
They were having pizza crackers, also hand made but not as appetizing to me. They loved their pizzas of course.
 I want to make a tutorial on how I make pizza but I no longer have windows 10. 
That means no videos until I square away an editing program. 
The Linux ones aren't quite up to par. I will make a video when we get back in the game.