Douchebag of the Day

Nope we all aren’t. Our eelight douchesacks can give your douchesacks a run for their money.

I’ll admit to keying a luxury car parked in a handicapped spot out of social spite, er justice. I saw the handicap sticker on his car, but if the thin well to do guy was handicapped then I’m 6’10” and white.

A newspaper once did a spotlight on the number of luxury cars with handicap stickers including low slung and not so easy to get into if you have a bum leg Ferraris and Porches.

@ManchuCandidate: most of the offenders around here seem to drive Range Rovers. You know you’re dealing with a complete douchebag when it’s in a handicap space AND the thing has the full rhino package, bull bar included.

@ManchuCandidate: Most of the registrations for cars carrying HP plates are for the blind. The thing that lets this go on is the fact that cops were the first to take advantage of their blind aunt or uncle to get HP plates – when they should be pulling those cards and registrations from the hands of guys jumping out of HP-tagged cars with tennis rackets and checking to see whose name is actually on them.

That’s a whole bag of fail right there.

Loved the “5th Gear” Veyron video though. I see Ferraris, Lambos etc all the time here in L.A. but I’ve never seen a Veyron on the street.

I still think Canadians are polite. An American wouldn’t have bothered with the picture. He’d just key the motherfucker.

@ManchuCandidate: Quebec plates, should have guessed.

Friend in high school had a Grand Am, and he pulled that parking shit. I never forgave him for it.

SanFranLefty: HA! The legend of Quebecois drivers extends beyond the Northeast, I see.

@SanFranLefty:
@chicago bureau:
Yeah. They do suck. It seems they’re either too slow or too crazy.

Driving in Montreal is urban combat.

Not to brag, but the drivers from where I live are pretty shit too. No look lane changes. Inexplicable braking. Three lane turns.

@ManchuCandidate: Sounds like Jersey driving, minus the continual honking.

Out here in Ess Eff, the problem is stoner drivers who space on things like going on green lights or going over 15 mph on the streets. Nobody seems to honk at them, though, except for me (too many years driving on the East Coast where the horn is an extension of the thumb).

The freeways when you get out of The City, on the other hand, can be scary if you’re not used to them. Everyone’s going 75 bumper to bumper in the #1, 2, and 3 lanes. Delivery trucks and scared old people and Asian females [not a stereotype if it’s true] are restricted to the far right #4 lane, or at least that’s how it goes on 101.

Not Liveblogging the Correspondents Dinner: Colbert ruined it for everyone. Now MSNBC is compelled to cover it like Oscar night.

@ManchuCandidate: @SanFranLefty: Wimps. Come to the Southland, land of idiot drivers and helicopter chase coverage. Even a short trip to the store is like a high school drivers-ed movie.

@SanFranLefty: I admit I can’t drive worth a shit in Ess Eff, straight or stoned. Too many distractions- it’s dark, lots of blind entrances, bikes, pedestrians, neon, you name it. Total sensory overload. 101 I can deal with, especially compared to DC beltway. Things do get crazy after dark, though.

Fun fact – If you start with a full tank and drive a Bugatti Veyron at its top speed (some 23o plus mph), you will empty the tank in 12 minutes.

@ManchuCandidate: I could get a handicapped sticker, onacountof I drive my aged mother about quite a bit, but it would be sooooo douchey.

On the other hand, I have no respect at all for the “fuel efficient and compact” spaces at Costco. The “mothers with small children” spaces I usually respect.

Its not rare at all to see a douchesack park a hot car in the middle of 4 spaces around here, but they always do it way out in the parking lot.

I would not drive something I am that obsessed about, thats the point where you don’t own it, it owns you.

@blogenfreude: I guess this would be why formula one racers tend to be just a bit lighter than a Veyron.

@blogenfreude: I also have to admit that my last boat, a 27 foot runabout with a fridge and a wetbar in the cockpit, when cranked up to top speed, burned about 29 gallons per hour. Thats why I bought a trawler, top speed is 13 knots, at 6 gallons per hour, at 8 knots, its 2 gallons per hour, when you remember its 9 tons, and you can have 15 people on it, the per person efficiency is impressive.

Re: the Audi. Torch it where it sits. Barring that, I call the cops and get them a $500 ticket issued.

My car story for today – drove at 90 on caffeine and speed metal to get to the turkey woods at dawn after leaving town around 4:30 am, Set a new personal record from Santa Fe to Mora County, just past where “Red Dawn” was shot. On the way back, totally shamed a guy in a new sporty SUV like a Cayenne or something who thought that he would have no problem blowing away a 2000 Toyota Tacoma. Cat and mouse all the way back home for an hour, keeping myself just out of his reach. He and his blonde female companion totally ignored me after I let them pass.

@SanFranLefty: @nojo:

First, New Jersey drivers do not know where the horn is. I cannot remember the last time I heard one or used it.

Round here, the driving depends on the road and the time of day.

Major roads, the Parkway and Turnpike, during rush hour, the professionals are out there, they go 80 bumper to bumper.

Same roads, mid-day and weekends, its all over the map, soccer moms and oldsters, slow in the left lane, random unpredictable groups of slow vehicles, it can take considerably longer to drive the same route than during rush hour, when there are 5 times as many cars on the road.

And it can depend on where you are going. I have to drive into Trenton, all state workers. They don’t drive so well as the people hurrying into Manhattan. But, they don’t go to work on Fridays, so the roads are clear then.

And then there is the weather, rain and snow make some people turn into idiots.

And my commute is its own hell. There is no highway, no limited access 4 lane, between where I live and where I work, I drive local 2 lanes for 40 of 60 miles. Fortunately, most of this is through the completely unpopulated Pine Barrens. But, the pines have many gravel mines, and the bane of my existence is dump trucks, huge 80,000 pound dump trucks. Very often in convoys of 3, 4, 5 of them. They accelerate slowly. If there are 2 of them in front of you at a red light, and it turns green, sometimes it will take all of the green cycle for just 2 of them to get through the intersection, and you get stuck at the light again.

The worst of all is the masonry contractor special, an old, mid-sized dumptruck hauling a flatbed trailer with a backhoe on it. Aaargh.

And I also get stuck behind farm machinery at times, thats a delight.

What New Jersey is famous for is traffic circles. The official New Jersey drivers handbook actually says that local custom determines who has the right of way. The tactic of the seasoned driver is to accelerate into the circle like you own it, and avoid all eye contact with other drivers. If they see you look at them they know you will yield for them if you have to; if you put a crazed look on your face and stare straight ahead, they will yield, at least they always have so far.

In the end, all my long-winded opinionizing and offering of anecdotes, all it boils down to is “I am here, is there anyone out there?” I am up late, I have had more than a few cocktails, and I am alone, and I don’t want to be alone. I need friends, to talk to someone.

In the end, I am lonely, I am socially clueless, I am so lacking in self-confidence. I have never known how to act, how to have or be a friend. I have lived in books, back before the internet, I would be reading now, I would be reading, obsessively, every night, about anything, and everything, escaping from my inability to have a social life, living vcariously through the lives of fictional characters, or just losing myself in the joy of learning, loving the world and all its amazing complexity and everything I can learn about it.

But I don’t know how to be me with people. In my life the most positive feedback I have ever gotten has been from my intelligence and knowledge, and it has made me inclined to try to show off, and I know, when I am seeking attention, I am obnoxious in my showing off, my trying to one-up and display my knowledge and my opinions I am so absurdly proud of. I know that I have been so stupid and spouted off unthinking, but still, offensive, views, in my stupid belief that I am somehow admirable for being so contrary. I am mostly the most kindhearted, empathic, sympathetic person, I cry for the lonely and sad in the world, but then, I am also bitter and angry, at being past middle aged and seeing my life as meaningless, so far. And I have hurt people here by being an unthinking asshole, and that has made me wretched, believe me. Because you all are the smartest, coolest, most amazing bunch of people I have ever known, and I have sometimes, from insecurity, been desperate for your attention and approval, but my flaws made me try to seek it in the wrong ways. Oh yes, I learned well when young and desperate for a girlfriend, nothing repels people like desperate need.

The long and short is I am often an asshole. I apologize to all of you I have offended when the asshole in me is showing. I wish I knew how to simply give and receive normal human friendship.

You all here are the smartest, coolest, most amazing group of people I have ever known in my life. My insecurity makes me want too much to have your favor, your esteem, and my desperation makes me do things that make me unloveable.

This is when I am most honest. These are words I suppose I should be speaking to my lifelong best friend on one of those long nights you share your soul. I don’t have one of those friends. My wonderful wife, yes, and she understands, but I think everyone needs more than just one single person in the world who they can feel, well, trust and comfort and sympathy with.

So I said this all here, sending it out for anyone in the world to see.

If I wake up tomorrow and look at this and say, “what was I thinking,” that will be denial. This is my sincerity, I have noone to give it to, but everyone.

Peace and love, thats all I can think now, all I can say, I do so wish everyone peace and love.

@Promnight: I have learned one thing going through a long depression where I isolated myself from everything and everybody. You must go out there and try. I’m a pretty social person but once I entered the dark phase, it became extremely difficult to be in social situations. It was painful. I always worried about what everyone was thinking. But that’s ego, don’t you know? You have your cooking. That is an incredibly social, selfless act. This whole summer you will be be engaged in an act of providing for the most basic human need – giving people food. Stop looking inward. It is in the act of reaching out that the connection is made. Sometimes the joy is in making the connection for somebody else…. You have a good life. A respected job, a wife who loves you, a beautiful son. Enjoy.

@Promnight: So?

Surely you can’t think you’re alone altogether? And any of us (I’m pretty new…but I’m feeling that I belong, somehow) could recognize themselves in your description of the pain and loneliness that besets you right now.

I notice that you are among the first to comment when someone else needs solace and sustenance. And it’s not a passel of platitudes you offer; you’re committed to whatever is truly needed. My domestic shorthair black cat of fifteen years, Josephine, has just come over to hang out briefly, as if I ought to assure her I’ve read your comment and
will respond. She even deleted some text with her tiny, grace-note sized
feet, then went and hurled by the front door.

Promnite, you’ve got it right. You are a part-time, partial asshole. Not a flamer. Your neediness is not solely offputting, all of us recognize it for
what it is: the fear that we will not be able to cope with the incredibly harsh demands of the human experience. Just as you reach out to others’
needs, they will respond to yours. We are able to control very little, but
your frankness could be hurtful. That can be remedied by recognition and effort. Peace and love=peace and love. QED.

prommie, you’re beloved and you goddamned know it. and your probably humming this morning as you prepare a mother’s day feast.
i enjoy when you get in your cups and despair to us, i think most of us relate. i admire your ability to express yourself so well when in the Dark Place, me, i hide under the bed incommunicado, till i get a peek of sun in my head.

DRIVING! just this very morning ratbastard went to take his driving test and failed!! he’s 50 years old and has been driving very well, if too fast, for decades. there is much more combat going on in the streets of jerusalem than at the borders. the cab drivers here make nyc cabbies look like 90 year old asian women. the best is, they take you for your road test ON THE STREETS!!! no pussy pens with cones and let’s see you parallel park!! tough people here!
as for me, i lost my driving privileges in 3 usamerican states, rightfully so. i do have a turks and caicos licence, but i only drive when i am alone. it is understood among my friends and family that they will get into a vehicle with me only if i’m nowhere near the drivers seat.
i like powerful cars and whats the point if you can’t let em loose to do what they were built to do? i just get caught often, and tend to get distracted and drive into things. like trees. the world can rest easy, i don’t drive anymore, except by myself in my awesome jeep, off road, waiting for me in paradise.

@cassandra_said: You have nailed it,
Cassie. The man can transmit delicious cooking aromas cybernetically. My biggest disappointment this year was not missing the
inaugural festivities, it was not being able to meet Prommie and his family
and having food prepared by his very hands. This would require as a host/hostess present no less than an authenticated VSOP cognac
overlooked by Napoleon, plus two bottles of single malt whisky
chosen by the recipient. I concur with you as well regarding isolation. By
nature I am shy and reticent, if not downright secretive. I forced myself to be gregarious and get involved in the lives and interests of friends and
newcomers. I like the results.

@cassandra_said: @EffeteHipster:

but HOW do you do it? i know you are both correct re isolation being the worst thing you can do when depressed, but HOW do you FORCE yourself? sometimes i lay in bed willing scotty to beam me into the shower, having no personal momentum or desire. alas, scotty does not and i’ll lay there for days sometimes until a switch in my faulty wiring turns back on and i get going. carrie fisher claims 3 weeks as the longest she languished in bed. i just claim days, but is there a trick either of you have? something that triggers movement? i am not in this state often, but it sucks, and i have to re-evaluate my crazy meds.
my favorite hebrew word: psychopharmacologist=”sickyatta” hehe

so, advice? also, prommie, i love you!

@bakedI’m not sure I’ve experienced
anything quiet as disabling as you or Cassandra_said have. If I suspect I’m
feeling depressed, I’m inclined to treat it as a mind-over-matter situation (i.e. a moral issue). Which is bullshit, I know. When I was first diagnosed as a Parkinson’s syndrome patient, I began taking some pretty strong drugs.
From 1997 on, I felt as though I had traded one symptom profile for another. Difficulty sleeping countered by sudden-onset three-hour naps. A phenomenon known as “dry mouth” caused the sudden disintegration of half a dozen teeth in a short time. Eventually, my medications stabilized, but I still take paroxetine (paxil) 20 mg each morning. A token amount, I’m told. But, one of a number of factors that contribute to the dreaded erectile dysfunction . I gave up driving myself in 2005.
I do retain a valid driving license. I know I’m depressed each time I decide
to give up photography. This is necessitated whenever I go out to find and capture images, and wind up frustrated with my lack of mobility and
the struggle with the tripod, camera, remote release, lens changing, etc.
However, I always overturn this decision right away. Why? Because it’s
the thing I do best that has the power to communicate my feelings and
sensibilities to others, be they loved ones, friends, or complete strangers. My favorite coping mechanism, tested over time and still very
much in use, involves always picking out something to look forward to.
Right now it’s the telecasts of the National Hockey League’s quest for the
Stanley Cup, North America’s oldest professional sports trophy. Each
match is so intense that virtually each one reveals that it has long periods
featuring some of the best hockey ever played or witnessed. How important is that? Not very, I suspect. But for me, very important.
Try it. It might help. Warning: use only as directed. You are to have fun,
Doctor’s orders.

@EffeteHipster:
i like that….thinking of something to look forward to….i will keep that in mind next time the Black Fog descends. thanks.
i’m a shutterbug too! and just like you, it’s a warning sign to me when i don’t pick up the camera.
isn’t medication roulette fun? i relate to that too. side effects are a bitch.
i truly believe the best med for whatever my condition is, is weed. calms my hyper-activeness, the side effects? i snack and giggle. doctors outside of california are inclined to zombify me with something manufactured at merck, not growing in the garden unfortunately, but i’m a resourceful girl! you feel good EH, and thanks again!!

@baked: I once didn’t leave the apartment for 8 days, but I did the other stuff. I was aided and abetted by local businesses, who deliver anything you want. If I had a work-at-home job I could stay in the building and only leave the apartment to do laundry in the basement.

Vladimir Horowitz admitted in an interview towards the end of his life that he was so depressed he didn’t leave his townhouse for 12 years.

@baked: I love that the Israeli DMV is open on a Sunday. When I had a pupster, there were many mornings that taking her out was what got me out of bed. Nowadays, it’s fear of losing my job that gets me out of bed.

@All: Good piece in NYT Magazine by Daphne Merkin about trying to deal with the Black Cloud.

@SanFranLefty: This expressed what I experience so well:

In some way, the quiet terror of severe depression never entirely passes once you’ve experienced it. It hovers behind the scenes, placated temporarily by medication and renewed energy, waiting to slither back in, unnoticed by others. It sits in the space behind your eyes, making its presence felt even in those moments when other, lighter matters are at the forefront of your mind. It tugs at you, keeping you from ever being fully at ease. Worst of all, it honors no season and respects no calendar; it arrives precisely when it feels like it.

Reading of experiences like hers makes me immensely, immeasurably grateful that my depression (so far) has responded to medication.

@Mistress Cynica: @baked: Funny you should mention the green veggie of choice. It works for me that way, too. I absolutely cannot tolerate smoke. There is never enough to cook. I do have a vape, but no good source. I’ll tell you what, I’m tempted to traipse out to the west edge,
establish residence, see a doc, get a ‘scrip, fill a bag, pin on a note, and point myself back to the heartland. Ms. Cyn: that’s a great piece of writing you quoted (would that be Ms. Merkin’s work?) Her description of its taking up residence behind the eyes definitely strikes a chord with me. Let us pray that your medication continues to work for you.

@Mistress Cynica: Me too.

@EffeteHipster: You don’t have to establish residency in CA to get a prescription. At least I don’t think so. I guess the difficult part would be getting back to the Midwest. Doesn’t Wisconsin have medical marijuana?

@EffeteHipster: That is Merkin’s writing.

Black Cloud, meet The Unnamed Feeling:

Then the unnamed feeling
It comes alive
Then the unnamed feeling
Treats me this way
And I wait for this train
Toes over the line
And the unnamed feeling
Takes me away

Get the f**k out of here
I just want to get the f**k away from me
I rage, I glaze, I hurt, I hate
I hate it all, why? Why? Why me?

I cannot sleep with a head like this
I want to cry, I want to scream
I rage, I glaze, I hurt, I hate
I want to hate it all away

@Mistress Cynica: You know, when I read this paragraph,

It sits in the space behind your eyes, making its presence felt even in those moments when other, lighter matters are at the forefront of your mind. It tugs at you, keeping you from ever being fully at ease.

it really articulated how I have felt as long as I remember. As a child I was often told that I was “too serious” or “too negative” because I could never fully embrace unabandoned glee without some nagging worry or sadness in the back of my mind. It all goes up and down to this day. Some of us are just wired that way. It’s so much a part of who I am, I can’t imagine not being constantly hyperaware of it.

You know I love you all and I am deeply grateful for all the kind words, so very grateful.

I am not really depressed. I am terribly lonely. I have a serious anxiety problem, and this is why I take meds, and they work, but they have not made the habitual learned behaviors go away, . Its the anxiety that makes me lonely, because what I am most anxious about is social situations. And the ironic thing is that once I am in the social situation, I get very happy and I am really very outgoing, too much so, so starved am I for it that I overshare and I have the curse of honesty even with mere acquaintances, but I always have great fun, I am joyous to be among people. The problem is that when I have a social engagement on the calender I am horribly anxious in the days and hours leading up to it. So to avoid the anxiety, I avoid making social plans, and it makes me lonely, its all related to the extreme anxiety and lack of self-confidence. Once at the party, people smile at me and I am happy, I am getting positive feedback, and I am over it.

But my habitual avoidance of the anxiety makes me avoid social situations and that makes me very lonely.

I am so so excited and happy about my venture. A food business is a very social thing, and I so look forward to daily social contact with hundreds of people, its half of why I am so happy about it. The other part is simply the opportunity to make my greatest joy a much bigger part of my life, creating wonderful things that make people happy and sharing these things with people.

Now I do also have ADD, or thats what they call it, to me its just that my mind is so active, so constantly active, so fascinated with everything, and always my mind needs stimulation.

I am on meds for what has been diagnosed as ADD, but to be honest, they only really work for about a month after a dosage bump, and I avoid bumping up the dosage, because what happens when it can’t go any higher?

But, and here goes the confession that could get me in trouble if the wrong people read it, weed is so much the perfect antidote to the ADD. When I first started it, and each time the dosage is increased, actually, the one time it was increased, the effect, for about 6 weeks, is exactly like the effect of weed, exactly. But it wears off, and I am loathe to ask for an increase. I prefer the natural cure I have discovered. It puts you so completely in the moment and causes me, at least, to find so much fascination and happiness in the most mundane tasks. I so enjoy brushing my teeth when high.

But that is not the problem I was talking about last night. I was just so lonely and so needed to talk to someone.

BTW, for what its worth, and I know that all of the SSRI drugs have slightly different effects on everyone, and from what I read, the trick is not to accept unacceptable results and try others until you find a fit, but the Lexapro I take does not cause erectile dysfunction, and it has some effect of delaying orgasm, but really, that is a happy, a good, a wonderful side effect, it delays it to just the right degree. Its wonderful. 5 or even 10 more minutes is not a bad thing at all.

So, are we good and augered in for the night?
Fine. Tomorrow is another day.
Now let’s get that ‘dozer over here to fill in the crater.

@Promnight: Thanks, all who shared.
Prom, I forgot to mention before that weed tends to have an aphrodisiac effect on me. Levitra only helps about 40 % of time. I haven’t
tried Cialis. Viagra works ALL the time. The next day, though, I feel as if I lost a very one-sided bar fight, and I’ll have to surrender my eyeballs by 5 PM. @SanFranLefty: good thinking.
I’m going to the land of cheeseheads and Heinekens to a family get together this summer. It sounds plausible. @Mistress Cynica: Say, that Merkin person can flat-out write, can she not?

@Ewalda: I know that somewhere down the line I put you off, and then compounded it. I would not care except that, based on this simulacra of “knowing” someone, I respect and “like” you, I enjoy your perspective and commentary and knowledge. And its not just like I am so self-centered that my subjective enjoyment is what I think makes someone valid, you stand out among outstanding people, sir.

When I speak like this, I may just make it worse, but if I were a shallow shit, as I often appear to be, I would not care and would just write you off, and I cannot, because I do respect you.

We are very different, obviously, I am needy and I overshare, you appear to be a stoic, and hold back, I must seem weak and self-centered from that perspective. My life, only very recently, has had some very good fortune occur, and from what you have said, you have had some bad fortune. I mention things like my old rattletrap boat, that I keep running with spit and bailing wire, in an ironic sense, and portray it as a “yacht,” because I find my circumstances ironic, a marxist at heart, somewhat twisted inside at finding myself so fortunate in a world where so many are so miserable. I can only afford it because when it breaks down, constantly, I have to crawl into the bilge and work on reeking sewage pipes myself, and when I look at the people on the other boats, and I know they just call a repairman and pay out the money, I feel I am an imposter, its only because I spend hours covered with grease, combing the internet for used parts, that I can have the damn thing. I constantly invite everyone to come visit, so I can share the boat and my good fortune, it means nothing without human contact, it is an empty pleasure to me unless I can share it. Its not crowing about my “success.”

I hope that crater gets filled.

So what’s going on with us? It’s highly unlikely that this online community would attract only depressives. Still, I went out today only once, to get a few supplies across the street. Work tomorrow, but I’d rather not leave my apartment. But the rent must be paid.

@Promnight:
I’m not such a much (as the kids used to say).
I meant no disrespect.
Now quit obsessing over me, please.
Move along, nothing to see here.

@blogenfreude:
don’t worry bloggie, i’m manic much more often!

@EffeteHipster: @redmanlaw: @Mistress Cynica: @SanFranLefty:

and merkin. just wow.

@blogenfreude:
what? you thought we were all attracted to huddling here because we had nothing in common? turns out mild mental illness is the common thread!
the best people i know….. here and everywhere!

Dark humor requires dark minds.

@Ewalda: I’m not obsessing, much, anymore. Thanks for that.

You are as much of a much as anyone else alive, and better than most.

@baked: @nojo: Oh, its awfully self-congratulatory, and therefore a thought that is inherently suspect, but high intelligence, I think, is a form of mental illness.

I laugh at my ADD diagnosis, I know I am just too mentally active, too curious and aware, and repetitive mental work bores me absolutely to death. Repetitive creative activity, even repetitive physical activity, calms me. I can think about anything and everything, when I am painting a wall ( we are at the painting stage of preparing the store), but writing a memo, I am forced to think of nothing but the boring fucking topic of the boring fucking memo. Its torture. ADD is only a mental illness when you you find yourself in a situation where you are required to dedicate your mind to simple boring bullshit day in and day out.

Mental, intellectual work, is far harder for me than simple physical work, when I am doing simple physical work, my mind is free to play.

Depression, I think, is a side effect of a big worldview, a moral sense, and intelligence. Its hard to believe that there is any purpose to your existence when you are painfully aware of the futility of existence. Voltaire, in Candide, that was all it was about. The moron neighbor was the happiest person on earth, untroubled by care and angst. The aware person, who feels the pain of everyone, who knows that all his or her striving and trouble really means nothing on the cosmic scale, hell, life, existence, is depressing, only distraction keeps everyone from suicide.

My own personal spiritual sense of purpose, the thing that keeps me thinking life is worth living, it hit me one day, when a mite crawled across the page of a book I was reading. It was microscopic, this little creature, almost beyond my vision, little larger than the period at the end of this sentence. I went to rub it out, and I saw that it reared itself up on its microscopic legs and challenged me, tried to defend itself against my fingertip, which was as much larger than it, as a blue whale is larger than me.

This insignificant thing, it wanted to live, and it was going to fight, no matter how impossible the fight, to remain alive.

And I had an epiphany. Being alive, thats enough purpose for life. The meaning of life, is simply being alive. Remaining alive is really, seriously, a deeply meaningful purpose, nothing more is required.

“Enjoy every sandwich,” as one of my heroes, mostly because of the amazing grace and dignity with which he died, Warren Zevon, said. Enjoy that sandwich with knowledge of those who don’t have a sandwich to enjoy, enjoy every sunset, every raindrop that hits your face, BE ALIVE, experience it and love every minute of it, because, in the end, every single moment of it, as said in the last moment of my favorite movie, American Beauty, is so fucking beautiful, every mundane, painful, joyous, moment of being alive, is so fucking beautiful, a miracle, every second, every moment of being alive is a triumph over death, the common enemy of us all.

@Promnight & all: “We live, as we dream – alone”

My affliction is that I thrive best when the stress levels are highest; I’m the guy who sees 20/20 when the building’s on fire or the child soldiers are checking IDs in between huffs of glue. So I’m seriously contemplating trading my suburban ho-hum back in for The Shit, cashing bigger paychecks for the risk of getting shot as a civvie in places like Bumfuckistan or the Sudan while my beautiful family holds the insurance policy.

Do Somali pirates maintain sea-going WiFi?

Coming from the Northwest, I always thought the nine-months overcast contributed to our collective dark sense of humor — Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Gus Van Sant, and so on.

When Twin Peaks debuted, we suddenly realized that David Lynch was one of ours. Which we should have known, but it hadn’t been so obvious.