Twenty Four

I'm twenty four.

It never fails. Birthdays come and go and I never really feel any older.

I guess I should start investing for my retirement. Kinda weird to think about. My first investment - the... uh... the lottery tickets I bought last night - sort of failed miserably. I figured it was a lottery draw day AND my birthday, it must be some sure sign.

Nope.

There are probably a lot of things I should be doing. I think, however, that anarchy is looking mighty fine right now. I'll just ride this wave out and see what happens, I guess.

Hmm, that sounds more fatalistic or nihilist than I really want. I'm totally working on stuff, drawing and stories and idea fermentation (speaking of which, Grungy Noir's been updated). It's good times. And it's not like I'm not enjoying life, because I certainly am.

What percentage of people live for their hobbies? How many people work at jobs they can tolerate so they can afford to go home and bake or garden or make pottery or sew or draw or write? How many people achieve a worthwhile satisfaction doing that?

I imagine it's quite a few. It seems to me that since forever, even before governments and jobs and corporations etc. (yeah, I know, good list) people did what they had to most of the time and really delighted in the times when they didn't have to gather wood, hunt animals or build houses for the community. Or something.

It's weird that we've developed this overinflated sense of enjoyment for fun activities after a hard day of work. Actually, it's not that weird. The people who did what they had to and then had fun were way more likely to survive and make little babies with similar states of mind than the lazy and self-indulgent.

Anyway, it all makes me think of a rather fitting, profound Futurama quote.

"Its just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. Then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"

Is any of this getting through to you?

Abuelissima

I've been thinking a lot about it and I've decided it's true, Grammy Jo is pretty damn cool.

She doesn't skateboard or listen to hip, young music. She doesn't skydive and I can't imagine her wrestling alligators. But for such a tiny woman she has a massive heart. It's gotta be three or four times the normal sized heart, which you'd think would provoke serious medical problems. In her, though, there just seems to be a preponderance of love. It's staggering, really.

She has seven children, siblings, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. So just in the family she has 30 or so people she loves. Then there are the myriad friends she's made in her long and hearty life. I believe she loves them all, too. And the dogs! And cats. And now even a bird.

If you need proof that she's been loving to all these people, try remembering all the names at one of her birthday parties. They regularly get bigger attendance than my college graduating class. People coming and going throughout the day, camping out in tents. Traveling from foreign countries, even. Although in all fairness, that's usually her firstborn and company.

All for one little woman. She's tiny. I'm not sure she's five feet tall but she's ridiculously dense with love.

Here are two examples:

In WWII when my Grandfather went off to join the army, she followed him. Wherever he may have been stationed, she worked for the troops. When she first started she was on sandwich duty. It was war time and the country was still pretty desperately poor from the Great Depression, so you can imagine there were pretty heavy rations. My grandmother ignored them all. These were hungry boys! So, she fed them what she felt they needed.

Of course she was caught. So she was pushed down to coffee duty. Where she was only too happy to hand out extra rations of sugar and cream.

Then they put her at the candy shack. Apparently you could only buy candy bars two at a time for a nickel a piece. Of course, when a young soldier came up and said that he and his boys were going out for a tough mission or whatever it is army boys do, and they were going to be desperately hard up for sweets.

Accordingly, she sold them several crates, ringing them up ten cents at a time.

Of course, when the powers-that-be found out about that, they busted her down to water duty.

When she was working in the cafeteria, she always had the cleanest dishes. The dishwasher was, apparently, some sort of booze hound. It was common knowledge and not a lot of people treated him with much respect. But of course my grandmother was nice to him and of course her dishes were the cleanest.

Here's another example. This one transcends humanity.

My grandmother had a horrible car accident a couple years ago. She crashed into a tree and was pretty close to dying for a long time. Way longer than any of the family (and friends) really wants to think about.

This wreck, this catastrophe, happened right around the corner from the house and her dogs were in the car. The running theory is she was distracted by the dogs (which were all fine) and lost the road for a second.

But the reason she was even on the road was that the dogs were all barking at a toad. She packed up the dogs into the car to protect the toad. My grandmother cares so much for an amphibian, I can only imagine what's going on in her heart for her family.

Anyway, it's a lovely sentiment and I love my grandmother very much. I can't imagine a person who couldn't.

Thanksgiving 2K7

Y'ever write the date and realize it's the future? That just happened to me.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! Time to take stock in life and realize a whole buncha stuff. Like New Years but with a focus on Cooked Turkey instead of Wild Turkey (I'm so clever).

So, I'm sitting here in my little editing cubicle at the age of 23, 24 in less than a week. I work 4 AM to 12:30 PM at a job that I like well enough (but don't love). I'm pretty happy with my living situation. I like my roommates and the city quite a bit. I'm thankful for that. I've got a family that loves me and vice versa, I'm thankful for that.

An example of love (maybe?): My car had a pretty catastrophic and spectacular breakdown yesterday. The starter has been giving me grief for a while and I've been avoiding getting work done on it because a)I'm poor and b)it always would start eventually. On my drive home yesterday, I started to realize that my car was sounding and smelling awfully funny. Wicked funny, even. As I pulled up to my parking spot on Neal St. and turned off the car to have a little peek-a-loo at the engine (mostly to see that it's there, for all my mechanical skill)I realized I'd have a slight problem.

The car wouldn't turn off.

It's a sort of weird feeling. My keys were out of the ignition, sitting in my pocket, and the beast was still trying to turn over. There's a story of a pirate ship captured by British forces. The pirate crew was in a line shoulder-to-shoulder along the deck, guns trained on them to properly illustrate the gravity of the situation. The Pirate Captain was bound and dragged to one end of the line where the Brits offered this ultimatum: "As the Captain, your life is forfeit. You will be decapitated. But you have it in your power to save your men. Every man you walk past after being decapitated will be spared."

Clearly that wasn't verbatim. I imagine there'd've been a forsooth or two in there.

So, the pirate steels his reserve. The sword swings, the head falls. The headless body burbles and sputters past his entire crew of 20-odd pirates before succumbing to Gravity or God or Blood Loss or whatever.

All right, so it's only vaguely related to my car. But I feel like it's a good story. Any excuse for a good story, right?

Anyway, I call Dad. Dad says, "Pull the plug on the battery, but get some gloves first." I had contemplated doing such earlier, but really didn't feel like getting shocked. He assured me there was no danger of such a thing, told me to grab some gloves. When I opened the hood, smoke billowed out and by the time I had donned my knitted fingerwear, the starter had exhausted itself in a futile effort to keep a car moving that wouldn't be saved. It was an impressive show and I would've liked to have seen it a whole lot more had it not been happening to me.

I call tow companies and repair shops and arrange to have it investigated. Hopefully an update Friday will say: I've got my car back and someone left several gold bars and a stripper machine in the back.

But I doubt it.

Anyway, back to how this is an example of my family loving me:

Normally Thanksgiving is held at my grandmother's Fortified Compound and Llama Emporium in Lee, NH. But because I'm working until 12:30 Mum convinced the whole gaggle of relatives to swing down to Sebago and thus ease my travel and exhaustion. Of course, I thought that was a swell idea because driving to Sebago after work ain't no thang.

Ain't no thang if you've got a car. But now that the dang thing's busted, Mum's driving out to Portland to pick me up and driving me home, then running me back out to Portland so I can work again on Friday.

So. I'm thankful for my family. It's pretty cool.

Also, friends! I like you guys. Continue to be my friends, it's OK. I'm thankful for y'all, too. Well-wishers, I'm glad you're around but c'mon, dudes, open up! Become friends! It's neat. It's like a special club of love, except with less sex, than the phrase "Club of Love" might lend itself to.

Also, I think a Club of Love would be a pretty cool smashing device. Smashing warmth into hearts, that is. Or band name. Or maybe an album name for a band.

All right, this thing's dragging on. I'm thankful for a lot of cool things! If you're one of those cool things, please know you're thanked.

Travel

I'll take back everything bad I've ever said about Homeland Security. You know, I went to Europe for a month and was bouncing around and on the ride back they didn't catch any of the paraphernalia I had on me. They missed the cork screw, the swiss army card, the bottle of contact solution, the moisturizers, shampoos and face washes I had readily visible in my carry-on.

My carry-on. It got X-Rayed.

Here I am flying to Rochester, NY from Portland, ME and I slip my toothpaste and swiss army card into the bag. The card, mind you, has a knife, a pair of scissors, a slim pen (for stabbing!) and a nail file (for additional stabbings). I walk through the metal detector and set it off with my gargantuan belt buckle and the bag goes through the X-Ray and as I'm finally cleared through the metal detector, the X-Ray guy looks at me and says, "This your bag?"

"Shit," I'm thinking, "I'm in trouble. They found the card and they know I'm a leftist. I'm fucked."

"Found this hidden on the side. Knew right where to look." He holds my toothpaste towards me. "Can't carry more than 3 ounces, you know, gonna have to confiscate it." He hands dumps it and hands me my bag.

"Oh," I say, acting glum, "I guess that's the price of freedom."