NSFE - not safe for ericsons

i purchased a nice slab of london broil steak yesterday, but while it sat on the barbeque i found myself stuck in front of the television, watching discovery channel's survivorman brave a week amidst artic glaciers. i overcooked the steak. it was no longer the slightly browned slab of bloody flesh i was hoping for. instead, it was well done. a bit dry, but good nonetheless.

this post has nothing to do with that steak.

i originally saw myself beginning this post with a slew of vulgarities, poop jokes, and other things that i knew my parents and grandparents would find offensive. instead i decided to begin with a tale of a steak. a steak i cooked too long. a steak that was supposed to be rare with a shell of medium rare. a steak that was supposed to moo when i cut into it. this steak was supposed to be like biting into a cow's butt covered with steak sauce. unfortunately survivorman was building an igloo, eating a raw seal liver, and teaching me how to survive just in case i found myself stranded in the artic circle. you never know, it may come in handy. my steak ended up dry. it was cooked all the way through. derek and i ate the steak with beans and rolls. it really wasn't that bad, just not what i was expecting.

i promise. this post has nothing to do with steak.

it's about a phone call i received friday night while out on a date at cafe rio. a phone call i received just before 10 o'clock. that's almost midnight in the east coast where the call originated.

i promise. this post has to do with the phone call.

let me step back a little bit. those of you reading this on myspace may need a little more background information.

three and a half years ago i found myself bored and started a blog. nobody was really blogging back then. it made me feel hip and nerdy. nobody read it. it was just random thoughts mixed in with other random thoughts. eventually my thoughts became a little more organized and i became a slightly better writer (emphasis on slightly). suddenly people started reading it. friends were avidly reading it. strangers were commenting it. i began getting several thousand hits a week. i liked that strangers were reading it. i'd get e-mails from people all over the place sharing their same stories and struggles with me. it was nice and touching. kind of like a hallmark card, but without the profiting off of others' emotions. my family also started reading it. normally i didn't mind, but i often wondered what they thought of me. you see, my family is very conservative, and i'm somewhat of a liberal black sheep among them. besides an aunt, a couple cousins, and a brother who i've been trying to indoctrinate, the rest of the ericsons are quite ultra-conservative. kind of like the presidential candidate mitt romney (not to be confused with the moderate governor mitt romney, or the liberal senate candidate mitt romney).

when i cut into my steak, i didn't see bloody juices seeping out. so unfortunate.

back to the story. a couple years ago, my older brother and i started a website for our family. it was nothing big. just a place for uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and friends to post messages and keep eachother up to date. along the side of the site were links to indivual sites and blogs.

cut to last week. after reminiscing with a friend about childhood poop jokes, i decided to write up a short post about the stupid 'dirty' jokes i found funny as a child. it was composed mostly of punchlines from the golden age when diarrhea, farting, and other things dealing with butts were hilarious (okay, they still are). there was nothing graphic. the language was clean. i didn't find the post offensive at all.

back again to last week. i didn't know this, but apparently my grandma reads my blog. kinda weird, but kinda cool. how many of your grandma's know how to navigate the internet. i didn't even knew she knew enough to get to my site. but she did, and on the family website, she left this grandmotherly message for all to read. basically, she let everyone know how dissapointed she was that i would use my talent for writing for such evil purposes. she didn't like the punchlines about a farting indian and a monkey trying to shove a cork up an elephant's butt. i guess poop jokes skipped her generation.

i just ignored it and pretended it didn't happen. grandmas can be old and silly. - i must note thought that my 'liberal' aunt, cousins, and indoctrinated brother did come to my defense.

ok. back to friday night, a couple days before my dry steak. in case you had forgotten, i was at cafe rio on a date. incidently, i was eating a grilled steak burrito. it was much better than my steak today.

my dad calls. normally i wouldn't answer my cell on a date. i've been told it's rude. but it was almost midnight on the east coast. virginia is on the east coast. my folks live in virginia. maybe someone was dead. (the last time my dad called me this late while i was on a date, he thought i was dead).

nobody was dead.

"loyd, you have some really good writing skills, but i really don't like what you've been writing on the family website."

"umm. dad. i haven't written anything on the family website. nothing. i write things on my own site. there just happens to be a link with my name on it on the family website. if people want to read what i write, they click the link. they don't have to."

"i really just don't like the direction you've taken your writing lately"

thinking to myself - childhood poop jokes and a video of me flipping off the vice president? seriously dad, i've written much worse. remember the mary kaye huntsman incident? remember my uber-depressing short story that made you think i was terminally ill? remember my spouts during my experimentation with atheism? and now you don't like the way i write. maybe my grandma complained.

"dad. i'm out with a friend right now. i'm just going to keep writing whatever i feel like. i'll have chris take my name of the family site. bye."

a year or so ago, someone in the family complained about my writing, so my brother set it up so that when you clicked the link to my site, a warning came up declaring that the content of my site may not be suitable for children. it made me feel dirty, like i was some pornographer or something, so i had the link removed. others complained that they didn't have a quick link to my blog, so it went back on (without the warning).

now it's off again.

and now, i'm rather bored with writing this tale, as you (who have read this far) are probably bored with reading it. i was hoping to figure out how to tie the steak into all of this, but as i said. this post has nothing to do with the steak.

let me end with a reference to poop. as i was writing this, i couldn't quite figure out how to spell 'diarrhea' correctly, so i turned to dictionary.com for help.

di·ar·rhe·a -noun
an intestinal disorder characterized by abnormal frequency and fluidity of fecal evacuations.

for some reason i chuckled while reading this.