I have been reading this blog I found today for about 5 hours now, and something the guy said really hit on the hardest part about writing for me. He said “blogging can really alternate between being a chore and being fun.” It’s not just blogging, which I feel is done primarily for the (desired) enjoyment of other people, but also straight-up personal stuff as well. I wouldn’t consider writing to be a chore unless it’s some lame thing I need to do for class, but it definitely becomes a sort of burden at times. When I am writing, it’s great. When I feel like I’m on a roll, my flow is good, and I can get my ideas out, I’m totally Zen. But when I can’t get down to it, I feel mentally constipated. It’s all building up in there, it’s practically marching to the gate, but it’s stuck. Maybe a little something comes out, like a few adjectives on a scrap of paper, or a fragmented rambling in a Word document, but it’s more frustrating than satisfying.

My left pinky twitches to the shift key as I make it halfway to starting a new sentence. My right ring finger lands on the backspace button to erase some ill-begun thought or sloppily-arranged sentence. My thumbs dance on the space bar in an impatient routine. My brain acts as a child’s hand grabbing at fireflies in the night air, always reaching, but mostly missing the words I want to use completely, or crushing them in the haste of catching them. All this makes me understand why poets and authors are often accused of being broody or morose– it’s because they’re pissed they can’t write. Because when I’d rather scratch at the peeling sunburn on my back than pound away on my keyboard, I’m not a happy camper. Because I know there’s this great well of inspiration in my mind, but every time I lower the bucket to pull some of it up, the rope’s always too short. Writing is only not fun when I can’t seem to do it.

But for all my frustration and impotence, at least I know when to give up. And that “when”, my friends, is right now. I think I’ll go have a beer.

Mine is winding down to Success.

I’m sure it seems arrogant, but I feel like I gotta do something awesome with my life. I know success isn’t something that can really be quantified, and that being successful doesn’t mean being rich and/or famous, but I wouldn’t mind if it did for me. Everywhere are people who fail and succeed, some more spectacularly than others. Our culture is obsessed with the lives of celebrities and criminals, whose comings and goings we know as well as our own. We’re already living their lives along with them through our computer screen, TV, and gossip rag, but there are some people who really idolize and mimic celebrity behavior– for better or worse. These copycats usually wind up self-destructing in a big, face in the gutter, shots of them in lewd situations fluttering in the winds of the Internet, used and abused and burnt out kind of way. But if I were to pilfer from someone’s lifestyle various aspects or achievements, it would be to some creative end.

The choices of who I could imitate are legion, but after careful daydreaming and deliberation, I’ve managed to pick a handful of potential candidates whose lives might be worth snatching up. Or at least Xeroxing.

At first I mused that it might be nice to live the fat life of a musician or actor. But I figured out that I have virtually no tendency toward practicing music of any kind, despite my ability to achieve moderate skill when I do practice regularly, and I just wind up bored, mired in instruments and sheet paper. Being an actor is something I’ve always enjoyed toying with, but aside from being randomly and miraculously discovered while I go about my daily life, I would have no chance of competing with the svelte and coiffed starlet wannabe clones that flock to LA like seagulls to the city dump.

Oh, and have you ever seen “Catch me if you can”? It’s about this kid who was a criminal superhero, basically. Frank Abegnale Jr was a crazy multi-millionare by the time he was 20 or something. Granted, he was an enormous career criminal by the time he was 19 who specialized in bank fraud, but he was a crafty motherfucker. And now he’s got a sweet gig working with law enforcement to catch the crooks that do what he used to. He’s not in a bad place at all.

But I think I’ve narrowed my list down to a single field of specialty: writing. There are so many dynamic and incredible authors whose books I’d like to take a page from. However, I’d found there’s a big difference between me wanting to temporarily live someone’s life and me wishing I could use someone’s life as a template for my own. For example, while I’d love to write an entire novel in a matter of weeks, I don’t have enough Bennies to last a cross-country road trip. And though there is a sort of sinister appeal in going on crazy drug binges and keeping my nose close to the campaign trails, I probably wouldn’t do it in my body since I don’t want to fry my brain and wreck my body before I get to have a mid-life crisis.

So I’ve shortened the list even more. Because the technology for life-borrowing hasn’t yet been invented, my remaining option is to emulate. And even though few people I admire did anything noteworthy before they were 30, I see no reason to procrastinate all over the place and panic when I’m turning 27 that I’m running out of time. But since I know that I probably would just put things off for nearly another decade, I picked someone who would light a fiery blaze of productivity ‘neath my arse. Someone who not only did something before she was 30, but made her big move at the tender age of 23: author Carson McCullers. For her 50 years of life, she was generally melancholy and poetic, with a fondness for the drink, whose moodiness and illness only lent strength to her mind and skill. Although we’re nowhere near a perfect match in a side-by-side comparison, there are definitely similarities that lead me to think “Hey, if she could do it…” with eager, yet complacent hopefulness. Carson wrote her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, when she was 23, and damnit if I won’t try to do the same. I oughta get crackin’.

Plus, the harder I work at something I actually want to do, the less I’ll have to work at crap I hate– like a real job. I’ll be a happy camper if I can hold off on getting another job for a handful of years more. With a spectral Quiznos sandwich mechanic playing my Ghost of Corporate Past, I’d be hard-pressed to run my Luck Ship aground that hard again. From foot-long subs piled with more than a pound of meat and slathered in lardsauce, things can only improve. And that’s one hell of a relief.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must fix myself a drink and get back to brooding hunchedly over my laptop while I feverishly work on my manuscript.

And they both take up a lot of energy. I typically save up my urge to debate, argue, and occasionally erupt for people I also enjoy talking, cuddling, partying, or relaxing with. Why? Because I can’t be bothered to grow a whole field of flowers and I’d rather just nurture the few kinds that I really like to look at. It’s laziness transformed into efficiency. Odds are good that if I like having you around, I’m going to find something to debate about at some point. It’s just because I think you’re interesting (most of the time) and I’m curious to see where the conversation is going to end up. It’s like dragging a child along in a sled when she is more than capable of moving herself; she just wants you to bring her someplace fun. Don’t begrudge a kid her adventure.

One of the people I watch from my Livejournal page said something that more or less kicked my brain into gear for this subject. He said:

“You’re family,” I said. “I might get pissed at you, but I’m never going to stop loving you.”(http://theferrett.livejournal.com).

And that certainly rang true with me, especially when it comes to people I consider my best friends. In fact, I usually don’t bother to get pissed with people I don’t care about. That’s not to say I don’t hate those assholes on the road who cut me off or go really slow, but that anger is more of a stationary angry cloud that dissipates rather quickly, not unlike a lingering fart smell that you walk through, crinkle your nose at, and then keep on moving. But being pissed at someone often means that they (the offender, possibly a friend) did something that hurt you (something you care about) and you feel strongly enough to be affected by it. I wouldn’t really be bothered if some random jerk online called me a foul name, but coming from a friend that would hurt. I’d pro’y call them on it and work it out, and we could continue being friends after repairing our relationship.

But just because I love someone doesn’t mean I’m gonna pick fights with them all the time. I have a few friends I’d probably never really get into it with, but that’s only because I know them well enough to realize they’re pretty submissive or sensitive and wouldn’t do well with me pokin’ at them. My general rule is to know I’m gonna get hit back before I put my gloves on. Even if it’s just one of those hit-and-hide things, as long as I’m sure I’ll get swiped at in return I’m comfortable stepping into the ring. I’m not trying to clobber our differences to death, I’m just getting them riled up a bit so I can enjoy them (most of the time. Sometimes I’ll lay into someone for being an ass, and that’s something I’m trying to smack out of ‘em). I don’t think there’s a person out there who would have the same opinions and ideals as me, but if there was, I wouldn’t be friends with them. It’d be boring as all hell! If I had this conversation: “Man I really hate it when those weird guys on the street ask me for money. I don’t give them a dime.” “Totally! I mean, get a job!”  “Right… Exactly.” I’d probably swap to an opposing opinion just to have some fun. If I just chatted with another Me all day long, it would be like getting locked into a sensory deprivation chamber. I love when my friends have other views, even if they (the views) annoy the crap out of me.

On second thougt, one advantage to having another Me to hang out with would be that she would get all the obscure references I make that go unnoticed by other people (and usually wind up making me look like an ass when I was, in reality, being hilarious. Bummer). For instance, I could pronounce Coup de Grâce like “coupe de gracie” and have her laugh at my impression of the grandpa from Rugrats. Yeah… that would be nice.

The thing is, I have so many interests that it slows me down on a regular basis. It does literally slow down my web browsing, since I have at least three different tabs at all times. Right now I have fifteen. Fifteen separate and important tabs. The highlights are Wowhead (for quick and easy reference for WoW), a YouTube video showing some kid performing Debussy’s Claire de Lune, my school online class page, two tabs on people mentioned in a book I’m reading, the store for the Human Rights Campaign, the Wiki articles on handfasting and empiricism, an informative guide to the biliteral cipher, and the one I’m using to write this. My internet all but gives up from the strain if I try to surf when I’m playing World of Warcraft. But I’m an information packrat, and I’d be lost if my tab bar was unpopulated by things to help me efficiently procrastinate and learn.

It’s clogging up my family’s DVR as well. My ravenous feeding frenzy fills up the recording device almost to capacity, with varied shows like America’s Next Top Model, History Channel documentaries on Nazi and Aryan culture and Armageddon, Logo channel shows like Ru Paul’s Drag Race and a documentary on transgenderism, movies like Grindhouse or  Shawshank Redemption or Showgirls, and numerous episodes of nostalgic sitcoms. I went from hardly watching TV at all for over a year to recording multiple shows a day on a successful channel-surf session. And it doesn’t help that I have to be in a special mood to watch most of what I’ve recorded, so it’s very easy for it to pile up and cause issues. Just today I had to erase all my Fresh Prince episodes because the DVR was at 90% capacity. Such a shame.

And I’m going to need my own library when I settle into my future home, because a small, finite space like my single bookshelf does little to contain my ever-growing collection of fiction and nonfiction books. I’m such a fatty when it comes to buying new books, I really am. I’m busting out of my jeans, yet I tell the server to keep the cheesecake coming. I was out of space (again) before Christmas, but I filled my wishlist with all sorts of things and got many of them. New additions to my nonfiction collection were Collapse, Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Salem Witch Trials, An Easy Out: America’s Addiction to Outsourcing, Othello’s Children in the “New World” about moors, and The Spanish Civil War. I also got four new novels, I think. And I’m currently reading five books to varying degrees. I’m actively reading Why I Became an Atheist as my primary, the collected works of Jorge Borges when I need a short story here and there, Wolves of the Calla for bathroom reading (working through the Dark Tower series again), Legacy of the Drow (five books in one, I believe, so I read one in between other books I finish), and The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama to a lesser degree since I often forget I’m in the middle of it (I will start it fresh to give it a fair go sometime in the future). My Amazon.com wishlist calls to mind that quintessential “I Love Lucy” episode with the candies on the conveyor belt due to the rate at which I add to it versus the rate at which I buy off it. Pandemonium.

And it would be terrible to neglect to mention all of my other brain babies like how to start a micronation, the virtues of an egalitarian society as embodied by communes, Norse mythology, Maya culture (I can thank my love for the use of a textbook to make it easier to research), the influence of pagan practices and beliefs on Christianity, how to make various kinds of alcohol, advantages and disadvantages of holistic medicine, the Dictionary.com words of the day (“brobdingnagian” is my favorite discovery so far), etymology, and how to work the stock market.

I’m so glad I’m relatively unbound in my life so I can do nothing but read or research for hours on end. I have no idea what I’d do with myself if I actually had a job to get in the way of my desire to compulsively Google anything and everything. But with freedom comes much responsibility, I suppose. I have to rein in my urge to one-click order books online and live at Borders since I don’t have much money flowing into my account. But I’m currently pondering the efficacy of using the stock market (and my not-yet gained ability to make money from it) to give me the financial fuel to accomplish my life goal of being a constant student. And my breadth of knowledge in many different areas would lend itself well to trying my hand at being a freelance writer, too.

The secret to lifelong wealth could possibly be held in any one of my many interests, so I like to use that to rationalize my insatiable hunger for an ever-growing collection of books and browsing tabs. I wonder if there’s a market for a “gister”, that is, someone who can give you the gist of something real quick like. I’d have no problem whoring my brain out in that manner.

So if anybody wants anything neatly encased in a nutshell for them, don’t hesitate to come a-callin’. I could really use the cash.

Last weekend, I gave the most precious gift I had to offer to an eager, snow-shocked Texan: her first sledding adventure.

Because I hadn’t had a good slide down a hill in maybe nine years, this excursion to the local golf course for some wintry wiping-out was atypical from the start. First off, I was driving; artfully maneuvering my snow-pantsed legs and booted feet to their correct clutch-and-gas positions proved about as difficult as I’d imagined, but luckily I stalled nary a time. Another major change from my tobogganing days of yore was that there were no parents to supervise me! Woohoo! If I wanted to try the side of the hill with lots of bumps and ramps, damnit I was going to try it. With a renewed sense of youthful freedom, my love and I grabbed our plastic disk sleds and began our ascent, gloved hand in gloved hand, to the first plateaued area of the course.

Being the veteran sledder between the two of us, it was decided that I be the first to go down the hill to illustrate the safety and the enjoyment of the experience. I was a bit hesitant to get started, since I had gained years of wisdom and experience since my last encounter with a slicked hill and recognized the potential dangers that only a preening preteen could pretend to ignore. Setting myself into place at the top of the slope, I dug the heels of my boots into the packed snow and stabilized myself enough to secure my path of motion. Once I felt relatively safe, I tucked my feet up onto the sled to sit cross-legged as I had already begun to creep forward. I careened full-speed down the hill, coming to rest a considerable distance from the starting point. In a response to my beckoning, my adorable novice came rushing toward me, her face nearly cleaved in two by her ebullient, toothy grin. After a brief, snowy snuggle, we marched back up the hill for another ride.

She set her path, grabbed her sled, and let herself be yanked down by the momentum. Once she was safely sitting still, I placed myself at the ready and gave myself over to gravity. Already, I started to see the treacherous frozen phantoms nudging me into the course where a rowdy bunch of teenagers had gleefully dug bumps and ramps into the formerly smooth slope. At that moment, I was torn between two possible courses of action, each with its own perils attached. With my body beginning to wobble and my sense of balance wrecked more by each rotation of the sled, I pictured (vividly and quickly) how redistributing my body weight could adversely affect the day’s fun and …my life.

Option one: I fall backward, causing the back of my sled to gouge its lip into the hard-packed surface of the snow and effectively catapulting myself ass-over-elbows and breaking my neck, the light in my eyes dimming before my lifeless body comes to a slushy stop half an acre from the base of the hill, widowing the once bright-eyed Texan and leaving her only two sleds, my corpse, and no fortitude to relearn the finer points of driving a car with a manual transmission. Option one wasn’t bringing me a lot of optimism.

Option two: I flop forward, slamming face-first into the rushing, wet, frozen ice-ground and crushing the bridge of my nose, transanguinating the breadth of the fairway, and frightening the on-looking children and setting into motion a series of events that would send them running into the arms of a therapist when they, in their mid-thirties, can’t even think of bringing their own kids sledding without succumbing to panic attacks and spontaneously assuming the fetal position. That wasn’t looking so bad for me, but with so many innocent victims, it would certainly be a tragedy fit for Oprah.

I didn’t exactly choose my next crucial movement so much as I slipped into it, but I felt myself tipping backward. Upon connecting with the sun-glazed tundra, I managed to instinctively curl my head in toward my chest as I made contact with the sandpapery snow and proceeded to scoop up several handfuls of the gritty stuff into the collar of my jacket, my sled having long-since jettisoned from underneath me to skip merrily along the path in a whizzing blue blur. After my disorientation dissipated and I was able to crane my neck enough to glance backward, I noticed my animated amiga was gaily laughing in my general direction. I waved, flopped back into my haphazard snow angel mess, and exhaled deeply before picking myself up and tracking down my runaway sled. We climbed the hill again, and again, and again, taking the snowy spray like champs until we couldn’t bear the thought of walking back one more time. Sated (and sweaty), we threw the sleds into my trunk and drove back home.

Unless each one of you is a crusty old adult, I whole-heartedly and most emphatically insist that you take even a scant few minutes to enjoy what’s good about winter. You’ve got a couple months to make your peace yet, since spring probably won’t begin to bud on the bare trees until April at least, but at all costs you’ve got to try to make winter into something other than a nuisance. Hell, about half the year is consumed by it, so you’re pretty much fucked if you don’t. So don’t be a weenie.

My uncle just called my dad about 10 minutes ago, and after he hung up he told us “Mom’s dead.” My grandmother, Mimi, maybe the only person in my family I was ever truly honest with, just passed away. And the first thing I did after we all gave each other hugs was log into WordPress and start writing this. It’s a vast improvement considering what I sometimes do, but it’s unusual nonetheless. And even more unusual, I feel totally unaffected by it. And don’t start with the psychobabble about expressing grief and stuff, cuz I know it all and also know it’s wrong.

But I saw her today and she was all dehydrated and unresponsive and hopped up on morphine and all I could do was talk to her. I know that she’s been ready to go for a long time, so today, after everyone that was visiting had left, she went too. My dad left our house to pick up our uncle that lives the next neighborhood over and they’re going to be with the body until hospice does its thing. And I’m here, writin’ for The Tit.

She was a deeply religious woman since I’ve known her, so I know what she was waiting to happen and I have no worry for her. And I know the family knows she’s been waiting outside the gates of heaven and St. Peter’s just been like “I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list” for several months now. So she’s in the club gettin’ jiggy with Jesus and I’m pretty happy for her. And I know this sounds weird, but I was thinking–not 10 seconds before my dad got the call (no exaggeration whatsoever, I was in the kitchen making tea and walking back with it at the time)–that I hope she goes soon. We had all said our goodbyes, so why not? And sure enough… I don’t want to sound all insensitive or anything, but I’m glad it’s over. Waiting is the worst part of that sort of stuff, and I think that everyone was ready to let her go. I’m not sure where she is, but she’s not lingering in her earthly husk of a body any more.

I’m both sad and glad for my brother who opted to not see her today, because instead of seeing her all limp and doped up, he saw her all happy and smiling last Tuesday when we scraped together a flag ceremony to celebrate her time in the Army.

I doubt I’ll cry much or at all, and that if I do cry it’ll be during the services we have for her since there will be other criers around. She was a wonderful woman who served me as a fountain of advice and knowledge, who treated me and talked to me as an independant person and never as a child, and without whom I might possibly be a vastly different individual.

Nobody lives forever, so it doesn’t make sense for me to mourn the loss of someone who was ready and prepared to go. I know I’ll mourn more for the survivors, since not all of them will be as capable of rationalizing and coping as I believe I am. The burden of death is borne by the living, and when each of us dies it’s finally our turn to be free from the obligations. We just gotta buck up and keep plodding along.

I think I’m going to get back to playing WoW and not watching the rest of Ocean’s Eleven since neither of the others up here feel much like laughing at the moment. I don’t think there’s ever a time where it wouldn’t be advantageous to be in a good mood, so I’ll probably occupy myself with something cheery while I wait for them to cope. Grieving is a marathon, not a sprint.

I promise to write again soon. I’ve felt woefully bereft of my muse, so writing isn’t as easy as it was last semester. Maybe I ought to start taking weekly bus rides to get a periodic dose of crazy so I can start being productive again.

Until next time, folks.

The plan for last night was for me and my friend to drive to Boston, find the theater where the concert would be, park nearby, walk to the theater, enjoy the show, walk back, drive home.

What actually happened was we were a late getting on the road, I missed one bloody sign (or did I just fall victim to a recent sign-stealing crime and miss it because there was not one there?), and pulled over to get directions. The woman was very helpful and wrote stuff out for me. What she could not help me with was the utter lack of signs that would make me feel like I was even remotely in the right area. So I pulled over again and headed back in the exact direction I had come from to get to where I needed to go. So then the haphazard directions which I was then cursing caused me to wind all the way around crazy streets to that this landmark would be on the correct side of us. To make what will be a long story a little shorter, the road we needed to be on magically appeared, I turned around to find parking, we found it, and celebrated. Smoke if you got ‘em. We left at about 6 and it was 8:30 when we left the car.

Then we started walking. We assumed getting directions on foot would be easier than while driving, but we were incorrect. We walked down blocks, doubled back, looped around, asked for directions, went back the way we came, asked again, turned corners, searched for our street signs, asked for directions twice more, and finally found where we needed to be (which was going to be on our right according to the last guy we asked, but it was really on the left). The concert started at 8 and it was 9:30 when we walked in.

The show, at least what we saw of it, was good. Dir en Grey are good performers, so that was a treat. Some ornery skeez with boots that her calves were trying to escape from kept standing in the middle of the aisle with her scraggly-haired boyfriend and appeared to be ready to fight with one of the show staff. I wanted to see that happen. It’s not fucking hard to move back into where you were, you whore. Stop acting like the universe is wronging you. Ps you look like a wad of hamburger balanced on two toothpicks.

The show ended and we left without merch. I said I’d give my brother and his friend (my friend’s ex– kind of awkward) a ride home. Given that we had gone through so much shit to just finally arrive at the theater, it was perfectly understandable that we had a hard time getting to the car. Cut to us finding the car in a location I never would have even guessed to check almost two hours later. I couldn’t have gotten back to the theater from there if I tried.

Luckily, my brother has come into his own as a navigator and we managed to finagle a viable route onto the highway. I cannot drive and work a map at the same time, so I was glad to have him in the backseat soothing me with his confidence and optimism. The drive home was easy enough. I was exhausted and kept driving just to keep us going. I was planning on driving to the video game store and pick up the World of Warcraft expansion, but I missed the exit and even taking the next possible ones every time threw us out way far away. So I said “Fuck you!” and angrily drove back into town to drop off our friends. We got home around 3 and I promptly passed out like an alkie on St. Paddy’s day.

Oh, and you wanna know one of the worst parts of last night? The part that really made me feel like extracting my brain through my anus with a rusty fishing hook?

I had a Katy Perry song stuck in my head almost the whole night.

For next Tuesday, I have due a five to seven page fiction piece on pretty much anything I choose. I’ve got my topic, and after much metamorphosis, things are pretty well-cemented down. It’s going to be filled with regret and a feeling of hopelessness, but in the end –SPOILER ALERT!– the protagonist will ultimately be thinking “Hey, I can turn my life around tomorrow. It’s never too late.”

You know, that sappy shit.

But more than a touching tale of new beginnings, this break-out short story is about riding the bus. I’m happy to report that my misfortune is now doubling as a new way to get around and my muse these days. I’m also excited that this blog is now safe from becoming one of those sitcoms where every episode is complete on its own and is never referred to in later seasons (How do those writers think we’re just going to ignore the fact that there is a totally new actor playing that character or that last week that person was on his/her deathbed only to be back in action this week with no explanation as to how the situation was resolved?)

So, faithful readers, I’m bringing back the topic of my car having shit the bed on me. I’m still carless, and I’m not even really searching that hard right now. I’m kind of resignedly dependent on the family VW and the bus for the time being. The bus isn’t that bad, though. There’s so much weird stuff going on if you just look for it. Great details to be written down for future use in a story or something.

For example, the VERY FIRST DAY I took the bus I had one of those conversations where I learned all about one person by only asking the “…and you?” questions and giving curt answers to ones directed at me. Her name is Amy. She doesn’t go to school because she can’t afford it, but she would love to go back to school. She thinks that it would be great to go back to school because on top of learning lots of stuff, she would have access to the school cafeteria and she could eat there every day. Do they serve pizza? she asked. I could eat pizza every day if I had the chance. And do they have vending machines? What do they have in them? Snacks and stuff, cool. Do they have soda machines? Do they have Mountain Dew? Man, I love Mountain Dew. I drink Mountain Dew every day (She was, at the time, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew, so I wasn’t about to doubt her).

What spurred this intimate conversation, you are wondering? I moved my backpack and asked if she wanted to sit down. I know– that will be the last time I do that.

And I saw winos! They were huddled together in the bus stop booth thing and passing around a bottle in a paper bag! Their conversation was mumbled and rambling at best (and downright incoherent and loud at worst) and they were chain-smoking Swisher Sweets. Cherry, I think.

And there was this old lady with her grey hair pulled back tight in a bun, with this black coat that covered her like some deflated parachute. She was rocking back and forth and muttering to herself. I think she was just moving her lips, because I tried very hard to hear what she was saying. Her arthritic hands looked like claws protruding from the cuffs of her oversized jacket.

And most recently, this very loud woman was talking at this man and she was telling him how she stood by her boyfriend while he was in prison and how now he’s got a new girlfriend but she’s not mad. She likes her. And she doesn’t want the new girlfriend to be afraid of her because she doesn’t want to hurt her ex, so she’d never try to get her to run. In fact, if anything ever happens to Current Girlfriend, Ex Girlfriend will call her cousins to lay the smack down on the offender because her cousins were crazy fighters and were brought up on charges for assault at one point. But they got off. But if anything happens to Current Girlfriend…

This is spun gold, people! You’re never as exciting as those unusual folks you’ll meet on the bus! Two bucks a day, two or three times a week, and I can fill up a notebook with all the awesome stuff I see and hear. And since you never really find out who these people are (except the Amys you meet), you can use and twist their stories to fit your purposes freely!

Bus stops are the Parisian cafes of the twenty-first century.

As much as this is always a pleasure for me, it is also quite a burden at times. I’m frequently pregnant, in fact. It’s almost a constant state for me.

But how, Beth? you may ask. I thought you hated children and had an aversion to male reproductive parts in general? you might wonder. It’s time for a vocab lesson, guys. Get your mind out of the uterus and into… a dictionary. Or something.

The interesting thing about pregnancy (the kind involving storks and babies) is that everything has a different gestation period. Humans take nine months of simmering in placental goo, while elephants take 22 long months to crawl out of their warm womb. And little bitty things like hamsters have less than 30 days before they pop on out (and risk being eaten by their hungry mamas). Not unlike bio-preggers, different ways of being mentally knocked-up require different gestation periods.

For instance, I am seldom without a to-do list. Some of the stuff on my list involves important stuff like calling the IRS about free money, sorting out a mess with the Veterans Affairs office to get free money, and doing precalculus homework. These things take way too long to incubate for their priority level. I procrastinated months on my IRS free money, as long as I could afford on my VA free money, and I’ve all but quit doing my important precalc work. That’s like human pregnancy there.

Now less objectively important things I wanted to do, like email this girl from Basic Military Training I hadn’t talked to in a while, sending a care package full of acorns and leaves for a friend who got stationed in SC away from pretty Maine foliage, and updating this site also take longer than I’d like. There’s absolutely no reason to not do that stuff, but I just keep putting it off like I’ll suddenly say “I’ve got 10 free minutes, so why not do that thing I’ve been meaning to do?”. Except I don’t. This can go on in a very elephant incubation-like manner for god knows how long. I keep feeling bad, but I also keep not doing anything about it. I’d be a horrible elephant cuz I’m always forgetting to remember how much I want to do stuff.

And then I have things that are pretty low-priority, like leveling up my characters in World of Warcraft, watching five episodes of Degrassi in a row, and using this week’s Border’s coupon for 30% off when I spend $10 or more. I do this shit faster than Spiderman can shoot web to grab the remote control because he’s too lazy to stand up and get it the old-fashioned way. Hamster baby mania. I get that warm feeling, know something important is a-brewin’, and race out to get it done. Before I know it I’ve got three new books, I’m leveling and gearing up, and all my Degrassi episodes are gone. And I still don’t know the status of my free money or how my old friends are doing. At that point it’s less like giving birth and more like holding off on pooping even though you really gotta and going pee instead, just hoping that it all goes like planned and you don’t get caught up with big stuff interspersed with your little stuff.

I’m going to try to do my precalc now. I think. No I probably won’t. Baby steps. I leveled up my character yesterday, I emailed my friend two days ago, called about the IRS stuff last week, and updated just now. That’s, like, stuff from each category in one week. I’ll be fine for at least… a while.

Until next time, my little hamster babies!

That being said, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to like post-rock.

For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, post-rock can sometimes be described as ambient, droning, emotional, aimless, and/or deeply stirring. I have long since found the concept of post-rock to be quite interesting. However, my many experiences in sampling this category have left me feeling extremely bored. I once tried to listen to post-rock to help lull me to sleep and instead found– much to my surprise– that I was boring myself awake. I wanted so bad for post-rock to occupy some small niche in my life, yet I couldn’t possibly do it. I think the idea of it is awesome and hip, yet for all my respect I have not one bit of interest in it.

–To digress for a moment, I would like to set the scene to introduce someone–

The web affords each of us as much or little anonymity as we want. In the spirit of keeping identities private, I hereby declare that my good friend– who shall be making future appearances, I’m sure– will be known as Pudding from this day forward. This decision was made partly because of my desire to hold back on personal details, and also because the idea of giving my friend a Bill Cosby-endorsed product as a moniker amused me greatly. I reserve the right to mention Pudding’s family either by real name, by using a derivation of Pudding (for instance Br’er Pudding, Mrs. Br’er Pudding, Mama and Papa Pudding, etc), or by another desert name. Names are subject to change with little notice. Pseudonyms will be issued as needed or for humor’s sake.

–End digression–

To speak on behalf of post-rock, I have asked Pudding what he likes about the genre. Even though I razz him a good bit for being pro-something that I am emphatically con, I definitely respect his opinion and even envy it a little. For him, post-rock has the ability to “convey feelings so powerfully and intensely”, but it’s subtle enough that each listen can get you to notice something completely different. He likes how the typical lack of lyrics forces the artist to show you rather than just tell you what he or she is feeling using musical elements alone. I totally get what he’s saying, and I only wish I could find a song that could show you how out of the loop I feel on this matter.

There was one time, though. One time where post-rock was it for me, where I was so into it I could hardly stand it. The song was building, and the tension was increasing, and everything was crescendoing… It was insane. I wanted the song to just resolve, climax, end, ANYTHING! Every beat in every measure was every emotion for me. For one afternoon I loved post-rock and everything it did for and to me. And then I realized I couldn’t spend the rest of my life high. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

But for those of you who yearn for more depth in your music and take musical exploration seriously, I recommend giving post-rock a shot. I don’t know anything about it, but Pudding’s got a decent arsenal of artists and albums from what he tells me. I wish I liked it, I really do. I think it’s sooooooophisticated (I can never remember what song that’s from, but I always think of it when I’m about to say “sophisticated”). And cool.

But I don’t like it and that’s kind of a bummer.