(response to message)

Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to try anyway?

That proverbial fucking ant has a better chance of picking his fucking rubber tree up and twirling it like a baton than I have of even getting close to anything even remotely feasible, but I'm supposed to try anyway?

Fuck that ant and fuck his high apple pie in the sky hopes.

I hope he has a fucking heart attack from the strain.

Do ants even have hearts?

I sure as shit do. So does she.

I don't know who you fucking are. You may know me and you may know her, but you don't know shit else.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, you say? Fuck you. Ever hear of loss? Ever hear of failure? How about heartbreak, sorrow, or grief?

Damn I'm pissed.

So this is the new me.

How do you like me so far?

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-five seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-four seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-three seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-two seconds...

...

...

...

Motherfuck shit piss double poo-poo.

One second...

Two seconds...

Three seconds...

I've written before about some of the funny things I see in my weblogs. Things that people type into Google and get led to my site.

Today I got another doozy:

dave having a poo face

Whatever, dude.

A while ago I wrote about how anxious I was to become whole again.

I'd completely evaporated in the Fall, and I was finally starting to see some semblance of a personality develop in me. No more would I be a walking, talking, collection of symptoms. I'd be an actual person.

Well, that coalescence has finally happened. I finally feel whole again.

That's the good news.

The bad new is: I think I might be kind of a dick.

Allow me to 'splain.

I'm finding everything funny. Even things that are decidedly not funny. And it's not just that I'm laughing on the inside all the time, it's the kind of laughing that I'm doing. It's like inside my head are those guys from Mystery Science Theater. Everything I do and say is accompanied by this running internal commentary of sarcasm and dark humor.

Another thing is that I'm very quick to irritation. I seem to be unable to keep anything bottled up at all. People piss me off without even trying, and I take the most innocent actions and words as personal attacks. And the guys in my head crack jokes about them, their shortcomings, their heritage, whatever.

This irritation, this mocking attitude - these are not attributes that I thought I'd end up with.

My God, I've turned into my grandfather after all! My sister was right!

When I start calling my nieces and nephews "damn brat" and wearing coveralls every single day of my life then I'll know for sure.

Oh well, from what I understand PaPaw got a lot of action. So I guess I have that to look forward to. Plus, I get to keep accumulating old electronic junk and never ever get rid of anything.

So yesterday I was sitting at Polly's Freeze, enjoying my lunch and thinking about my childhood.

I grew up 200 yards from Polly's. My mom and my aunt worked at Polly's. My best friend's parents owned the place. My grandmother's house sat between my house and Polly's. My uncle's family lived back by the woods. They had a pool.

There are an awful lot of memories crammed into that quarter-mile stretch of highway 62. I like to sit at Polly's and let them come flooding back to me.

Anyway, yesterday I was eating my lunch and this school bus pulled up to MaMaw's old house and a bunch of kids got off.

Got off the bus, you pervert.

It was just weird.

I know that new people, strangers to me, are in that house now. I just never really thought of them as living there until I saw those kids. To those kids, that is their house.

Those kids have no inkling of all the fun my sisters and cousins and I had in that house when we were kids, no inkling of the love that my grandmother had for all of us. They're too busy making their own memories.

I wonder if they ever get scared of the upstairs like we used to.

I wonder if they've discovered how to get in to the attic, or that you can squeeze through the vent and get from an upstairs bedroom to the living room without going down the stairs.

I wonder if they look at that huge Maple tree in the front yard and wonder, "Could I build a treehouse there?"

I hope they do all those things. I hope they appreciate where they're living. I hope they make that house a home.

My own childhood home is long gone, a victim of death and deceit. My old yard has reverted back to being just another field. My woods have been leveled to make room for even more houses. My grandfather's propane business, later my uncle's nursery, those are gone too.

All those memories, crammed into a quarter-mile stretch of road. That's all most of them are anymore, just memories.

But two things remain. Polly's Freeze and MaMaw's house. They stand as they always have, watching over that stretch of road.

And where they stand, a part of me stands.

Last night a friend asked me what I wanted.

I don't remember how I answered. Probably with some bullshit cop-out.

Oh, I didn't lie, I just didn't quite tell the whole truth.

The fact is, what I want doesn't matter. It's irrelevant.

What does matter, what is relevant, is the sad truth that what I want stands in firm opposition to what is possible and what is right.

I think this is the case for most people most of the time. Really, how often do we get what we want?

I'm not talking about the little things. You want ice cream, you go get some. You want to sleep, you take a nap.

But start wanting to win the lottery, and things get a little tougher.

Start wanting things like everlasting happiness and love, and you'll probably be better off forking out the cash for those Powerball tickets.

My friend probably thinks I'm stupid. Stupid for finally knowing exactly what I want (something some people never do) but not fighting for it.

Maybe she's right. Maybe I am stupid. Maybe I'm just scared.

Hell, I'm sure that I'm both of those things, and quite a few other things as well.

But some things that I'm not are insensitive, or mean, or selfish. Fighting for what I want, when I know that it's not the right thing to do, that's just not in my nature.

Or maybe this is just another bullshit cop-out.

Okay, one of you women out there reading this - preferably not a relative or friend of mine.

Please e-mail or PM me. If you use the Say Something Dammit form at the side of this page you'll have to tell me what password you want, or I won't be able to respond.

I have a question about your species.

Thanks.

Well that was brilliant.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, good.

If you do know, pretend that you don't.

Thanks.

Made a slight change to the 'blog displays so clicking on the category name will bring up a search of all entries in that category.

Clicking some of the categories, like drink, will return a shitload of entries.

I should probably look at a way to limit the entries returned from a single search. Maybe display them in blocks of ten or so.

We'll see.

His strength has been slow in returning. His wounds are healed, but he knows that the scars will last a long time. He wanders aimlessly about this, his island, and reflects constantly how lucky he is to at least be alive - to at least be safe.

He doesn't see it coming.

The tsunami roars in from the West, and sweeps him back out to sea. Back to where he'd started.

The depths welcome his return. The depths are so beautiful.

He opens his mouth to laugh, and his lungs fill with water.