I didn't want to leave anyone hanging, so I'm just posting a quick word this week that I won't be adding to the blog this week. I'm working on a couple of projects and don't want to interrupt my groove. One of those projects is a short story that I plan to post here once complete. Or maybe I'll serialize it over a few weeks. We'll have to see how the story's structure plays out and where I am on it by this time next week. It's a sci-fi story of sorts in the tradition of early Kurt Vonnegut and/or Ted Sturgeon. The inspiration for it came from a Sturgeon story called "The Ultimate Egoist". So, if you're looking for something to read in place of my musings, you could definitely do worse.

Blogger's Clearinghouse

May 6? The sixth of freakin' May? That was the last time I posted anything here? Hey, what can I say, the summer was busy. There was a little traveling, a little work around the house, and a whole lot of nights spent trying to convince an infant that it was not, in point of fact, proper for an infant to be awake between the hours of midnight and three AM (which, coincidentally, is usually the only time of day I find to contribute to this thing). I offer my humblest apologies and can only hope to regain the hard-won trust of my faithful few.

There were a few topics which sprang to the forefront of the zeitgiest this summer I would have liked to have spent some time chewing on, were I not such a slacker. Humor me, if you will. I'd like to touch on a few things here with the intent of revisiting them with more depth (and clarity, no doubt) at a later time. After so much time away, I feel the need to reseason my pan a little before I start cooking again.

So, what happened this summer? Let's see.

My oldest child turned eight back in May. It's amazing how quick that happened. I remember growing up and hearing grown-ups talking about how quick time passes, but here I was sitting listening to the grown-ups talking about boring things like how fast time flies and couldn't imagine time moving any slower than at that moment. As I get older, I am now discovering just how fast time is slipping past. I think that as you get older (if you're doing it right), you accumulate more and more things that make life worthwhile. Those moments you spend with the people and things you love and treasure are to be celebrated, and the passing of every minute is to be mourned. Scarcity makes something precious.

Michael Jackson! Wow, that was sort of unexpected, right? I mean, I don't know that anyone who's seen him in the past decade can convince me that they were surprised, but it still was sort of a shock. It reminded me of when Princess Diana died. It was a Saturday night, and I had just come home from the late shift at the bookstore where I worked at the time. I made myself a snack and turned on the TV, expecting to watch the last half of Saturday Night Live. It was only after several minutes of waiting for the punchline for what I thought was an extremely distasteful sketch that I realized the same coverage was happening on every channel. When I saw the news about Michael Jackson, I was in the middle of a week in Florida with my family and had turned on the TV to catch up on the news for the week. It flashed across in the crawl before anyone said anything about it on the news. I apparently had turned it on just as the initial reports were coming in. There was quite a lot of celebrity death this summer, wasn't there? I've been hearing others comment on it, so I don't think I'm the only one to notice. I think we're going to continue to see this happen. Think about it: the pop culture explosion happened just about forty years ago in the mid- to late-Sixties. With it, many more avenues to fame opened up here in America and abroad. All those twenty and thirty-somethings of the sixties are now in their sixties and seventies. More celebrities = more celebrity deaths. I'm sure my grandchildren will wake up one day to find the headline "Nation Mourns As The Guy From YouTube Video 'Guy Gets His Scrotum Caught In His Dog's Collar' Succumbs To Testicular Cancer". I only hope I can be there to comfort them in their time of loss.

On the subject of Michaels, what about Vick signing with the Eagles? This sleazebag gets his old job back? I sort of thought he had a promising career as a hot dog vendor at a stadium somewhere. "He's done his time! He's paid his debt!" the people yell at me. Bullshit. I want weekly footage of him hosing out the kennels of local dog shelters and actually doing something to rectify the enormous fuck-up that is his life. And no fair throwing money at the ASPCA or whatever. I want to see penance, you disgusting piece of dogshit. You are in a public forum. You have the potential to be a role model for my children. You are expected to perform among the world's elite sportsmen, a paragon of fair play. And you choose to run an underground dog-fighting ring like some sleazebag gangbanger? What the hell were you thinking? Were things really that boring in Atlanta? I firmly believe everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) deserves a second chance when they screw up, but I'm just not convinced that someone convicted of such a crime should be allowed back into any sports franchise. Isn't it true that if a truck driver kills someone while driving drunk, he doesn't get to get back behind the wheel EVER? How is this different? Vick showed, in the most inhumane way possible, I might add, that he has no idea what sportsmanship is. He gets to just go back to work now? Sure, I'll still root for the Eagles this year (gotta support the home team, as long as they aren't playing the Steelers). I'll cheer when Desean Jackson runs back a kickoff for an eighty-five yard touchdown (was that great or what?). I'll groan and wonder why the hell they don't just put Kalb out there when it's clear McNabb is wearing out his wittle muscles in the second quarter. And I'm going to be scouring the local news for some sign of true contrition from our resident monster.

All right. I have more on my mind, but I have to be up with the kids in a few hours, so it'll have to wait until next time. And I'll try my best not to let "next time" be four months from now. Cheers, all.