Tag Archives: really important stuff

Collectively, we ARE good.

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So, yeah, Boston. Jeez. Wow.

It’s hard for me to write about this stuff. I wrote about the shooting in Aurora, and that was difficult. Which is why I didn’t write about the shooting in Connecticut. I feel like at some point it becomes repetitive. As heartbreaking as these things always are, my talking about my little feelings can and does get old. It’s a downer. But I’m still going to talk about it.

We’re always sad.

We’re always confused.

We despair, as a group.

That sense of “Oh, holy shit. How should I feel? What should I do?” is overwhelming when these events happen. And yeah, I know that in other parts of the world things like this are everyday occurrences, par for the course. Some people, unfortunately, have had to learn to just flinch and count the dead and go on with their day. That’s sad and horrifying and shouldn’t be the case, obviously. I am aware that, relatively speaking, what happened at the Boston Marathon is small potatoes, but that doesn’t diminish it. Not for me. Those involved or affected are still involved or affected. People still lost limbs and lives and loved ones and no amount of math or relativism will change that.

So. Moving on.

Interestingly, this is the first of these sorts of tragedies that I’ve watched unfold online. Usually I read about them later, after it’s all over. I don’t have tv, so I didn’t see it on the news. The first I heard was someone on Twitter telling Amanda Palmer to turn on CNN. Palmer’s from Boston and was in the city at the time (her blog piece about it is really great). And then I just watched the Twitter feed roll for the next few hours. It was pretty fascinating. The outpouring of love and condolences, mixed with people on the scene or nearby offering help, shelter, and information. The misinformation and bad reporting from actual news sources. The scammy motherfuckers who, only minutes after the bombs went off, set up fake organizations claiming to be accepting donations.

I like to think that I have a pretty tough shell, a reasonably thick skin. But through it all I felt horrible. I wanted to help somehow and couldn’t, which made me even sadder, feeling so impotent and ineffective. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hug my mom. I wanted to be in a room with people who love me and just sit and be alive and safe and sad and loved, together.

But I was alone. Me and my computer. And a few million people on Twitter. I got to thinking about how many historic tragedies I’ve seen. Columbine, Waco, two Middle East invasions, Aurora, Oklahoma City, 9/11. These are the things that have shaped our generation (or will, eventually), like the Kennedy assassination or the Vietnam war shaped our parents’, and World War II our grandparents’. And on and on, all the way back. The people of Boston celebrate Patriots’ Day every year with Revolutionary War reenactments, a Red Sox game, and the Marathon. That juxtaposition is interesting. Different types of struggle. Different measures of accomplishment. We seem to be bound together by tragedy and misery more than we are by joyful festivities. By “observing,”"honoring,” or “paying tribute,” more than “celebrating.” But I guess it’s all just commemoration, of a sort, no matter what word you use.

We get through these shitty things, though. Some of us more quickly and easily than others. Maybe it’s that getting through that really binds us. Shared experience. We all have those moments when we look at each other and know that things will never be the same. And maybe this isn’t one of them, in the long run or in the bigger picture. It’s amazing what we can get used to. How adaptable we are. How horror can become so commonplace. But I like to think that coming together, supporting each other and showing love, that those become commonplace as well, by extension. The good outweighs the bad, then, doesn’t it?

It can.

It should.

And I know that those candlelight vigil kind of moments can seem cheesy or overblown, but they can be precious and powerful, as well. It says something about us as a group that we do those things. They’re deeply, purely, human responses to inhumane acts and they’re more than empty gestures. Solidarity is important. There really is strength in numbers. If we make it our mission in life to truly support and protect and love each other, ferociously and unconditionally, then the bad stuff can’t crush us. If we know that someone will always be there with a prayer or a hug or a pint of blood, we know we can get through. We know that we are never truly alone.

Anyway. All my love to Boston. All my love to anyone who was hurt or sad or scared, or even just sitting alone and crying. We’re all spinning on this rock together. Let’s make the best of it.

Self-improvement makes me cranky

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Oh, great. Another blog post where Vanessa just talks about herself. Bleh.

Shut up. You love me. I’m awesome.

Wow. I wrote that little hypothetical argument with the theoretical “you,” but it totally sounds like the inside of my head. That’s tremendously unsettling.

Sorry. I’m all scatterbrained and out of sorts. I’m trying to quit smoking. I know this may not be a blogworthy subject, but it’s bringing up all kinds of interesting questions. Introspection. Self-analysis. Icky things like that.

This started because I had a really weird moment the other day. I was driving down the road and I thought to myself, “If I get to live to be an old lady, that means that I’ll have time to do a lot of cool things. I could learn to speak Chinese. I could rebuild a classic car. I could walk across the country.” This is a weird moment because I don’t usually think that far ahead. Like, old lady far ahead. I can think maybe someday future kids or maybe someday future bookstore, but that’s about where it all gets fuzzy for me. I’m very comfortable with my own mortality. It’s inevitable, and death can just show up on your doorstep uninvited whenever he wants. It’s why I’ve written my own eulogy many times and keep a current will. But I had this unexpected little string of extra-long-term thoughts and I got a butterfly flutter in my gut, like you do when you’re excited about something. I don’t get excited like that, physically, very often. I get nervous a lot, but that feels different. I’m much more familiar with being nervous. Anyway, point is, if I want to live that long, I should probably not beat up my body quite so much. I’ve only got the one, you know. Such as it is. And the grossest thing that I do to it is smoking.

Ugh. It’s so fucking gross. My teeth are all jacked up. I smell like an ashtray. My fingernails are yellow. And it’s completely unfulfilling. The only thing one gets out of smoking cigarettes is the enjoyment of smoking cigarettes. That’s it. There’s no bonus. There’s no upside. It’s not like smoking weed where you get the extra added benefit of being high at the end. There’s no reward system to smoking except you get to keep wanting to smoke. Seems fallacious. In retrospect. Oh! And it’s ridiculously expensive. Let’s do the math. I pay $7.50 per pack for cigarettes, now, in California. When I started smoking I paid about $3.50 per pack, in the 90s, in Virginia (the holy land of smoking). I smoke half a pack a day now, but at my worst I smoked about a pack and a half. So let’s call that an even pack a day at $5.50 per pack, just taking the median numbers because I suck at math. Over sixteen years that’s $32,142. That’s almost half my college education. That’s three used cars. That’s a down payment on a house. That’s a good chunk of the therapy my children will certainly need. That’s money that I pretty much just set on fire. And as much as I love watching things burn, that figure hurts to look at.

That’s a little off-track. Money is good motivation because I seem to be consistently broke, but this should really be more about my health. I’m not a terribly self-aware person, in a physical sense. I’m extremely clumsy. I don’t give a shit about clothes. I tend to think that I’m invisible in social situations (which is either an unhealthy delusion or a superpower, I haven’t decided yet). I ignore my body most of the time and pay way more attention to my brain. And if I’m being brutally honest, both of them need (and deserve) work. That’s the crossroads where I find myself, hoping to reconcile these two concepts. Because I just turned thirty, right? Physically it’s all downhill from here. So I’m trying to train myself to think of my brain as just another organ in a bigger system (which is really hard) and to think of my body as being a healthy vehicle to carry my brain around in (which is actually more difficult than the other thing). It can’t be one or the other, it has to be both. Neither is more or less important. Although every time my brain goes to shit, my body follows. Oddly, having always had a less-than-healthy body, I never thought of it as also being directly related the other way around. But it is. Obviously. And I’m not talking about how I look, by the way. Let’s just clear that up ahead of time. I have allergies and asthma and a weird heart thing, as well as depression and anxiety which affect the body more than most people think. One of my legs is shorter than the other. I’ve got a fun inventory of exciting skin conditions. I have freaky tiny hands. Not a great combination of factors. So I’m just not really “connected to my body,” or whatever enlightened thing I’m supposed to say. I think of it more like driving a car. Or that lifting robot thing from the third Alien movie.

My mother was a champion bodybuilder in the 80s. There’s a long list of awesome things she’s done, but I think that’s the weirdest. She’s a total badass, my mom. But her being a wicked hot health nut made it very difficult to be an awkward little fat kid with glasses and braces and asthma, right? “Hey, sweetpea, let’s go lift weights! Let’s go to an aerobics class! Let’s go for a run!” Sounds like fun to her, torture to me. I wanted to be an athletic kid so I could hang out with her, do things that she would think were a good way to spend one’s time, and make her proud of me. As opposed to sitting under a tree, reading books, eating my secret stash of Oreos, which sounds like little Vanessa’s perfect day. I’m not good at all that sporty stuff, though, and I don’t like doing things that I’m not good at. I really tried, I swear, but I couldn’t help hating it. I tried to play softball (and got cut from the team three years in a row). I tried to play volleyball (and broke my nose twice). I even tried cheerleading (they did not appreciate sarcasm or eye-rolling from the goth girl). See the problem? I’m physically much more suited to playing games like chess, Magic, and what-can-we-turn-into-a-bong?.

So on top of all that hating-my-body-because-it-doesn’t-work-properly bullshit, I’ve been smoking since high school. Half my life. My dad was a heavy smoker. As are most of the friends that I’ve had since childhood. And my sister, until last summer. And my husband. Not that being surrounded by a thing is any reason to not quit that thing. That would be a cop out. I’m just saying that it’s not the easiest environment to work in. Peer pressure is a bitch, and always has been. Maybe that’s why I smoke in the first place. If I’m going to hang out with smokers, I think it’s important to tell myself that I don’t have to be totalitarian or dictatorial about quitting. I don’t have to pick a cigarette and say “this is the last one ever ever ever,” because that’s just setting myself up to fail, right? Moderation is an easier goal than abstinence. And one every once in a while is worlds better for me than the half a pack a day I go through now. Which isn’t that much to begin with, relatively speaking. In college I would smoke a pack and a half a day, easy, and more if I was drinking heavily. How did I survive college? Seriously? I should probably not be alive.

Now that I’ve spent a thousand words talking how gross and broke and broken and weird I am, I’d like to follow that up by saying that I’m fucking charming as hell. I’m smart and funny and a blast to hang out with. Let me assure you that none of us wants me to die over something as stupid as smoking. It’s a dumbshit way to kill myself. It’s slow and painful and just not dramatic enough, frankly. It’s the most boring kind of suicide ever. And I’d like to think that if I go through this process now, tough as it may be, one day I’ll get to be that fun old lady who speaks Chinese and drives a little sports car she restored herself and has stories about walking across the country. And more. More than I can even imagine now, from where I’m sitting. If I kill myself, I kill her, and that’s not fair. I should give her a fighting chance. Wish us luck.

Scalzi vs The Bigots: Round One

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I’m going to do something now which totally surprises even me: I’m going to recommend an author whose work I’ve never read. Gasp! He’s on my List. I fully intend to read his stuff. Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted. Fret not. Meanwhile, go read John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. I kept seeing his name pop up in other writers’ blogs. And his book Redshirts was a giant meganerdy bestseller. So I checked him out and he is awesome. Mostly because he’s brutally honest about pretty much anything. His work, his friends, raising a teenage daughter, politics, religion, the business of writing, ukuleles, and probably most importantly, churros.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, being honest about things that matter, out loud, on the interwebs, with a huge steady following, means that you’re going to have haters. Fact of life in the Digital Age, and something we’re going to have to deal with until the end of time. (Should I be capitalizing those words? Digital Age? I don’t know. Imma do it anyway.) And thus we arrive at the Scalzi-centric kerfluffle, which I find simply compelling. The opponents: in this corner, wearing the red shirt of brutally honest nerdy writerdom – John Scalzi. In the opposing corner, wearing the icky grey robes of hateful trolliness – the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit (hereafter referred to as the RSHD).

A while ago, the RSHD and his gaggle of mindless followers started making trolly comments on Scalzi’s blog and on the RSHD’s own website. Busy as he is, Scalzi still moderates all his own blog comments. Admirable. (On a related note, why don’t y’all comment more on my blog? I know you’ve got shit to say. Quit keeping it all bottled up inside. It’s bad for your liver.) So he started using “the kitten setting” on those comments, a practice which I adore adore adore. Formerly known as the Mallet of Loving Correction, the kitten setting is when a troll’s comment is edited to reflect a more fuzzy unicorns and puppies and sparkly rainbows sort of outlook. All the hatey things directed at Scalzi are turned into heartfelt expressions of the RSHD’s schoolboy mancrush on him. Feels like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Lots of fluffy bunnies. Takes the teeth right out of those comments, takes away their power. It’s fucking awesome. But, understandably, it further agitates the trolls.

Finally reaching his breaking point, Scalzi decided to put his money where the RSHD’s mouth is. Every time the RSHD does his asshat thing in 2013, he (Scalzi) is going to put five bucks in a jar, up to $1,000, giving the RSHD two hundred opportunities this year to say something hateful. And at the end of the year he’s going to donate it all to RAINN, Emily’s List, the Human Rights Campaign, and the NAACP, in loving support of everything the RSHD hates.

Brilliant!

But wait, there’s more. Scalzi’s fans started asking if they could get in on the action. Not wanting to take anyone’s money up front (in case the RSHD cools down and shuts up – unlikely), he set up a pledge system: the Counteract a Bigot Drive. At the end of the year, all the RSHD activity will be tallied and quantified into money dollar terms, and everyone sends their donations all at once. Here’s the breathtaking bit: the pledges rose to $60,000 in two days. That is a lot of anti-hater money. I don’t think I can say “fucking awesome” too often about this whole thing. It’s just…accurate.

Good on you, Scalzi and fans. Good. On. You. Many heartfelt hugs and thanks.

Besides being inarguably badass, here’s what interests me about this story. I’m wondering why it seems that nerds are, by and large, really, really nice. From my perspective, the occurrence of assholery appears to be generally lower among the geekier slices of the American cultural pie chart. For the purposes of this discussion, I will stipulate to the fact that I may have built myself a bubble of liberal, accepting, open-minded, lovely people. If I hadn’t I probably would’ve punched many a bigoted motherfucker in the mouth by now. Thanks, friends, for being decent humans. Also, I’m from an infected pocket of the world where people who appear otherwise normal throw around racist/sexist/homophobic terminology as readily as they do Nascar references. My nerdly homies who rescued me from high school suicidal tendencies were never like that, nor were the people that I later gravitated toward. All these people somehow or another reinforced in me the non-judgmental mindset that my parents engendered very early. Because they’re awesome friends and awesome parents. It’s really hard for me to be objective here, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, the easy answer is that nerds are nice because we got made fun of as kids or are lonely people or have the deck of mainstream media stacked against us. I take it for granted that that’s the case. However, I think the more interesting variable here might be the influence of science fiction and fantasy. For example, look at Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry populated the Original Series cast with people of every color and creed to make the point that in the future we’re all one. We’re all Terrans, and nothing else matters. In the mid-1960′s, that was a bold anti-racist statement, even if it was couched in such ridiculousness as Captain Kirk getting the hots for the green Orion slave girl. Hamfisted, perhaps, but important. Similarly, I recently heard Kevin Smith say that the X-Men comics are one big metaphor for homosexuality. I’d never made the connection myself, but it does make some degree of sense. You have this secret that could get you socially ostracized and you keep it quiet until you can’t anymore and then you come out of the mutant closet? Yep. That tracks. And while sexism is a hotly debated topic, still, among scifi/fantasy fans, I think there are more positive female role models in those pop culture areas than in others. I’ll take Princess Leia or Jean Grey or Trinity over Paris Hilton or Snooki any day of the fucking week (my burning hatred for reality tv obviously provides serious bias on this particular point).

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for prejudice in scifi or fantasy, though. It’s often in a futuristic setting where the social mores are so different from our own as to be unrecognizable (ie, The Handmaid’s Tale). Or, contrarily, there some sort of uber evil that must be defeated by disparate groups coming together against a common enemy (Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves vs the Orcs of Sauron). Consider, too, that our opinions of scifi and fantasy change drastically as we move along our own cultural timeline. I’m fine with Kirk boffing space tramps in every color of the rainbow, but I still get weirded out when Quark makes out with that Cardassian chick in DS9. Why is that weird? I don’t know. This whole thing might be a chicken-or-egg situation, though. Does scifi/fantasy make us nicer because it illustrates and exposes us to a prejudice-less worldview? Or are we nice because of environment and circumstance, and when we get a chance to make stuff we want to show the milieu that we would ideally create for ourselves?

I’d like to find a way to examine these questions with hard science, instead of just spewing my watered-down opinions at you. But it seems like there would be too many variables. Someone should at least try to do a study. Maybe I should take my anthropologist buddy to Comic-Con and set her loose.

No, that won’t work. Comic-Con tickets sold out last week. Also, bonus, she’d kill me dead. One can still dream.

Meanwhile, in the real world, we can all show the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit how we roll, nerds and non-nerds alike, by pledging to the Counteract a Bigot Drive here. And if you’re a fan of scifi or social commentary, you should definitely check out Scalzi’s blog at whatever.scalzi.com.

Sometimes I can be a truly horrible person

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I did it again. I got into a stupid tiff on Facebook. Fucking Facebook. Sometimes I think they should really revoke my Facebook privileges.

No! Don’t do that. I take it back.

I live in complete isolation. I needs my Facebook.

Anyway. Here’s what happened: I posted a link to this article on my sister’s wall. (For the rest of this story to work, you should probably go ahead and read that. I know y’all don’t like to click on links. I have the numbers to prove it. But it’s the crux of the whole thing I’m trying to do here. Sorry.) Because she’s also a huge Harry Potter fan and was also a Literature (with a capital L) major in college, I thought she’d find it interesting. She didn’t. So then, our cousin commented “HA HA HA!!!!!!,” which ruffled my feathers a bit (I’m easily irked by extraneous exclamation points). The damn thing is about child abuse, and I could see no way in which that would be funny. And I said so. And I was probably snippier than I needed to be about it but, you know, ruffled feathers and whatnot. To which my cousin replied: “A conspiracy theory on a fictitious children’s book. FUNNY!”

What went through my mind was, Well, clearly, she just read the headline and didn’t read the article. No one could possibly find humor in this. It’s too awful. You see my logic, right? At this point, I’m not being an asshole. Yet. Just give it a second. My booknerd dander was up so I said: “The theory itself is really interesting, and totally plausible. Just because it’s a children’s book doesn’t mean it can’t be serious literature with heavy issues.” What a fucking Lit major thing to say. I could have said a lot more Lit major things, but I let it go. I had met my snippy bitch quota for the day, I guess. Achievement unlocked!

A day later I sent my cousin a message to apologize. She hadn’t given me any indication that her feelings had been hurt, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Family’s family and I know I can come off more harshly when I’m typing than I would in conversation. She wrote me back. And I cried. It was a play-by-play account of her own abuse as a kid, which of course I won’t put in print here. But trust me, you wouldn’t want to read it anyway. Here’s the part where I’m an asshole. Ready?

I had completely forgotten that all of that had happened to her.

I was there. I knew shit was bad. I should probably make it very clear at this point that this particular cousin was adopted into our family after escaping her own horrible one at age eleven. No one in my own family would treat a kid like that. We do the exact opposite, take them in with open arms and love them with everything we’ve got. It was rough, though. And I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway. Moving on. So then I have a conversation about child abuse in literature with her and it completely slips my mind that she knows what she’s talking about in way more important ways than I do? What a fucking jerk I am. Standing on my self-righteous little soapbox talking about books and their cultural impact and blah blah bullshit. Completely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, right? People (if you can call them people) hit little kids! In real life! That trumps anything I have to say.

Doesn’t mean I’m not going to say it. Maybe that makes me even more of an asshole. Might as well keep going. I’m on a fucking roll.

A small quote from my cousin’s message: “Harry Potter IS just a book. I know what the real thing felt like. To me that’s why taking the book somewhere it wasn’t meant to go is funny.” I get that. I really do. It’s all relative.

However.

I’m going to stand up for escapism. I have to. And if you don’t take that article seriously or see how one could read the whole HP series as an extended metaphor, fine, whatever. But we all agree that Potter’s family treated him like shit, right? I don’t see any way around that. If Hogwarts was all in Harry’s head, that’s tremendously unhealthy. And that would mean that his real life was a lot more awful than we could imagine, for a long time, and I don’t want to think about him that way. I would prefer to think that’s not what Rowling was trying to do or say. I like my fantasy worlds to be real, if that makes any sense. (It probably doesn’t.) He’s a great character, one of my favorites, if only because he overcomes so much to find happiness and purpose. Putting aside psychological hyperbole, he’s clearly a damaged boy. A broken boy with a bleak past, an uncertain future, and a lot of demons. The potentially beautiful thing is that real little kids with fucked up lives can read these books and relate to Harry. Maybe find some strength in his perseverance. Maybe not feel so alone. That’s got to be worth something, doesn’t it?

I saw this all the time when I worked in the children’s department at the Giant Evil Bookstore. There were a few regular customers who gravitated toward damaged characters or stories with underdog heroes. Often they were the kids with the sad eyes. I had one little guy who used to come in all the time. He was very tiny and always came in alone, usually paid for his books mostly with change. Smart as hell, reading way above his age level. Loved Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and The Graveyard Book and The Mysterious Benedict Society. One day I found him his book, told him to enjoy it, gave him a great big smile and patted him on the head. And he flinched. Almost broke my heart, you guys. Those are the kids who get something more than entertainment out of books.

Fuck, I can’t remember that kid’s name. That’s going to drive me crazy now.

I understand retreating into books. My family’s amazing. There wasn’t even a hint of anything coming anywhere close to abuse in my house. But I was socially awkward and extremely lonely at school. I read every book I could get my hands on. They were my friends. They were my adventures. I understand that I don’t have a leg to stand on to compare myself to kids with real issues. That’s not my point, nor is it my intention. I’m just saying that the right book could save a kid’s sanity, right? Help them see that they can get through whatever happens to them. Make them learn to stand up for themselves. Escapism is important. Fantasy is important. Reading about a kid with family problems, or a lonely kid, a kid like them, whatever their deal may be, can mean so much.

Anyway, I’d like to apologize to the world for being an insensitive jerk. And I apologize for being quick to jump on my soapbox. I’m not good with people. Clearly. That’s why I stick with books. They don’t get their feelings hurt when I act like an ass.

“And it makes me wonder…”

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It was a gorgeous day, sometime in the summer of 1997, and I was riding through the woods in a red convertible Jensen-Healey with my friend David. I said, “Hey, I really like this song. Who is this?” At which point he calmly pulled over, turned off the engine, and started lecturing (screaming) at me. Which I totally deserved. Because it was Stairway to Heaven.

I know, right?

I was fourteen! It was the 90s! I should’ve known Stairway. Or at least have heard it. Especially considering that my parents had every Led Zeppelin album on vinyl sitting in my living room. Guess I just hadn’t worked my way through the catalogue of awesome records yet. I got through Queen and Howlin’ Wolf and stopped, maybe? Anyway. David made me a mix tape (that’s right, I said tape!) with Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and a bunch of other classic stuff on it. He filled in the gaps in my rock canon knowledge, and I taught him about Nine Inch Nails, industrial, and electronica. And we talked music for the next sixteen years, among other things. I still have that tape somewhere, I just don’t have a tape player anymore. (Which is kind of a drag, isn’t it? How many mix tapes have been abandoned in the past decade or so? How much love is just sitting around in boxes collecting dust?)

So that tape started a kind of cascade, right? An avalanche of music stuff and life stuff. I firmly believe that some things are put on your path for a reason. (Even if they come along with, weirdly, a cute boy in a hot sports car. That doesn’t happen too often, let me tell you.) I became obsessed with classic rock, abruptly ending my goth phase and starting my pot-smoking/tie-dyed-shirt-wearing/Kerouac-reading phase. Maybe that all would’ve happened eventually on its own, but at least this way I had a badass soundtrack. The Doors, Hendrix, Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Who, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and, most importantly, Led motherfucking Zeppelin.

Oh, Led Zeppelin. How I adore them so. And it’s been forty-four years since the first album came out, so I’m not going to waste your time telling you how awesome they are. You live in the world. You know how awesome they are. I do not need to plug Led Zeppelin. But I’ve been listening to them a lot the past couple of weeks and they’ve been on my mind so I want to talk about them. So there. And I should probably go ahead and tell you that if you don’t share my stance on Led Zeppelin being the greatest rock band ever, I respect your opinion. But bringing extra special snark to the blog comments table (and/or just telling me that I’m wrong) does not strengthen your argument. You know who you are.

Led Zeppelin received the Kennedy Center Honor in December, along with David Letterman, Buddy Guy, and Dustin Hoffman. All greats in their fields, obviously. In tribute, a bunch of artists performed their songs. That’s got to be nerve-wracking. I’ll say the Lenny Kravitz was alright (no worse than any of his other songs), and Kid Rock just needed to sober up and sit down. But, luckily, Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart nailed it (nay – they fucking slaughtered it!) with their version of Stairway. And that gentleman on the drums? That’s Jason Bonham, son of John Bonham. He may never be as great as his dad, but no one else deserved to be playing that song on that stage. Amazing. It made Robert Plant cry, which, in turn, makes me cry every time I watch it. I’m such a sap.

Go ahead. Watch it again.

I always thought that song needed a gospel choir. Seriously, I did.

So after that show happened, I may have gotten sucked down a Led Zeppelin/YouTube rabbit hole. I think humans are hibernating mammals. This is not a widely accepted theory. However, I will submit as evidence that every winter I want to curl up with a book and a blankie and listen to the same five albums over and over and just eat chicken pot pie until spring comes. And this time I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin albums constantly. (In my nest. With my chicken pot pie. It’s like heaven, except it can’t be because snow exists.) Also watching old concert footage of them. And documentaries. And I might have ordered a couple of biographies about them that haven’t shown up in the mail yet.

Yes, this seems obsessive. It happens. But for good reason. Their music never fails to melt my face. There’s pure blues in there. There are notes that shouldn’t be possible. There’s mandolin right alongside blistering electric guitar. There’s drumming that makes you appreciate madness. There’s sex and drugs and hunger and loss and love and death. There’s even fucking Hobbit stuff in there. A lot of it. Somehow Robert Plant makes Hobbit references sound very British and literary and deeply poetic and just a touch sexy. Not nerdy at all. I’d call that a superpower. But it might be the accent.

(Later, with caveats and addendums)

I spent about a week trying to find a way to end this blog post. There’s really no good way to do it. And I finally figured out that, while the Kennedy Center Honors make the subject convenient and topical, it wasn’t Led Zeppelin that I was trying to write about at all. Basically everything above just amounts to me saying, “I’ve always tended to geek out over music. Led Zeppelin = good.” And that’s boring.

Is it okay that it’s boring? I don’t know. My goal here has been to tell you about new and exciting things that I’ve run across in my efforts to try to be more well-rounded in my newly-minted digital paradigm. It’s been a year and I can’t say that I’ve plumbed all those depths yet, but I definitely feel like my writing is suffering for trying to maintain a sense of wonder about it all. It’s getting a little disheartening, frankly.

And I realized that with writing even this boring nonsense, as with all art, once you get past the surface, past the shiny colors or the new medium, all that’s left is the artist. It’s been creeping in. I’ve talked about myself more lately than I ever did in the posts a year ago or even six months ago. That’s a little scary. But good scary, right? Can I talk about what makes me mad? Or sad? Or terrified? Is it safe? Is it good? Is it art? Does it matter? Does talking about the best rock band ever change anything? No. It’s a drop in a bucket, a ripple in a pond. Is it going to make you run out and buy a Led Zeppelin album? Probably not, if only because they’ve been around long enough that by now if you were going to like them at all you already would. They’re not new and exciting, but they’re important. And more than that, they’re important to me.

So I took a little while and stepped away from this post and when I came back I saw that what I really wanted to write about was that long-ago mix tape from my friend. That makes me cringe. It’s just a tape. But it isn’t. And writing about why it’s so important to me seems self-indulgent and silly. Something worthy of conversation, but not necessarily of expository ramblings. But then, who’s to decide what’s “worthy”? (The voice in my head is saying, “I am, motherfuckers.” I have to fight her because clearly that’s just crazy talk.) As much as I don’t like to go on and on about myself it seems inevitable. It seems right. It seems, oddly enough, relevant. How the hell did that happen?

I know it sounds stupid, but there’s no way for me to thank David enough for making me that tape. Because of the aftermath of the thing, more than for the actual thing. First of all, you have to understand that I grew up in a place that exists about ten years behind the rest of the normal human timeline. So when I received that tape, our town was about where the everyone else in America was in the mid-1980s, feathered hair and all. A mix tape was hard work. And it meant a lot. I may technically be too young to appreciate the “Love is a mix tape” philosophy á la High Fidelity, but I’m damn close in practice.

Because of that tape, I learned about classic rock in the obsessive way that I learn about anything. I just swam in it for as long as possible, making it a part of everything that I did or thought or was at the time. That’s a fucked up way to live a life. Doesn’t make it wrong, though. And becoming well-versed in Led Zeppelin changed me in two very important ways. (I can’t believe I’m about to write this, you guys. Bear with me.)

1 – The Husband is a drummer, and he learned to play the drums by wearing out many a Led Zeppelin cd. (You know when they skip that fucks them up, right? Try playing drums next to a mid-90s boombox.) One of the first conversations we had, that wasn’t about me getting bumped out of a Magic tournament, was about how awesome Led Zeppelin is. We bonded over it. We dated. We got married. Our favorite song to sing together is Fool in the Rain. We actually take walks in the rain because of it. How dear and how precious are those moments.

2 – I learned enough about classic rock to be able to talk about it with my father. In the last year of his life, we talked about music constantly. He was a blues guitarist. We’d stay up all night discussing who was the better drummer, Ginger Baker or Mitch Mitchell. We’d go through albums and talk about why this note was best at this key change or that register wrong for that singer. We bonded over it. He died. But I’ve got all those lengthy conversations. And they’re not going anywhere. How dear and precious were those moments, as well.

I wonder if David realizes what he did with that tape. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him. (Sorry, buddy. But at least I asked your permission before telling that opening story. Hugs!) He’s one of a very few friends who knew my dad before he died. They had the same birthday. And they talked about music, too. Funny, at the time I thought it was weird that my dad knew that much about Led Zeppelin. And The Husband was the best man in David’s wedding. Everything comes full circle, somehow, with that. Maybe it’s just in my head. Probably.

So, yeah. Now I’m feeling all raw in the nerves. Maybe we’re starting a new phase here on the blog. Maybe not. I really don’t know. But I’m sorry I got all squidgy on you without fair warning. I didn’t expect it, either. But you’ve gotta write what wants written or it’ll drive you crazy. That particular hamster wheel is a bitch.

Is it always going to be weird?

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I got to come home for Christmas this year. I didn’t think we’d be able to, but my in-laws (correction: my awesome, awesome in-laws) bought us plane tickets so we could make it out to the east coast. I haven’t been home in almost two years. And it’s weird.

Why is it weird? It shouldn’t be. I know this town like the back of my hand, right? I lived here for thirteen years. As much as I hated growing up here it is, undeniably, home. This juxtaposition of comfort and anxiety kind of bugs me out. I feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder a little. Waiting for someone to recognize me or want to talk to me or, horror of horrors, reminisce about high school. Do they all have collective amnesia? Why does no one remember how they didn’t want to talk to me in high school? It’s like the one grocery store in town exists in some kind of awful sorcery bubble. Whatever. It’s fine. All angst is forgiven. But just because we’re all thirty now doesn’t mean that we have anything in common and I sure as shit don’t want to talk about sixteen-year-old me. She was kind of an asshole.

The town itself hasn’t changed much. Small southern towns don’t really do stunning transformations, barring some natural disaster or major financial revitalization. A couple of things have moved around. Some buildings are gone. Some have been renovated. There’s a new crosswalk on Main Street. Apparently the gymnasium of my elementary school recently caved in (twenty years too late for that little piece of serendipity). It’s like when you have a friend who you see every day and then you don’t see them for a long time, and suddenly you can see how drastically they’ve changed. Whereas before you wouldn’t have noticed because the weight gain or the weird hair seemed gradual, right? I don’t know. It’s a small town just like any other small town. But this one is mine. And that’s weird.

Again: why is it weird? I don’t fucking know, you guys. That’s the point. There’s this cultural assumption that coming home should be easy, especially at the holidays. You get to see your family and sit on familiar furniture and eat your mom’s cooking and tell stories and laugh and bask in the glow of comfort. And all of that is true, I suppose, about this particular trip (except that I’m eating my mother-in-law’s cooking so there’s way more deep frying involved and it is fan-fucking-tastic). But there’s an undercurrent of weirdness that I can’t quite pin down. An almost undetectable hum of anxiety. Maybe that’s just operant conditioning. I’m here therefore I’m anxious. Is that why I’m freaked out by being here as opposed to somewhere else? I don’t feel this way when I go other places that are familiar. But I never lived anywhere else for as long, either. I only grew up here. I only got my metaphorical battle scars here.

Another point that’s worth mentioning: I don’t really have a place that’s mine here anymore. My in-laws’ house is comfortable and familiar and I spent a lot of time here when I was younger, but this isn’t the house I grew up in. That house got sold several years ago and I can’t go back to it. There’s a lovely family living there now, fixing it up, raising kids, farming the land, doing right by the place. But it will never be my house again. It will never be the place I get to go for Christmas. That particular warm fuzzy does not exist for me. I could drive there with my eyes closed (and have, actually, with assistance – don’t tell my mother), but I can’t turn down the driveway anymore. I can’t walk the trail through the woods where I spent most of my childhood. I can’t take my maybe someday future kids to the river where I learned to fish. I can’t go sit and have a beer in the sunshine under the tree where we planted my dad’s ashes. This is all sounding really bucolic and sappy, isn’t it? A weird contradiction from my bitching about living here? It’s true. My childhood was a study in contradictions. But that’s a long story.

Don’t get me wrong. My in-laws and that whole side of the family are amazing people. I want to make it very clear that I love them and I’m always welcome here. Also, my sister is here, so I’m always able to hang out at her house. The other day she told me that she’s glad I’m comfortable enough to take a nap on her couch. Made me want to cry a little. So sweet, my little sister. And I have friends here who always make me welcome, unconditionally and without hesitation. They’re family, too. Their homes are my home, in their own way. I think that’s really what makes home home, more than a specific house or any set of particular places. When I’m with any of these people, that anxious hum goes away for a while. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what I fail to remember when I get all tense thinking about coming home. That the hum can be alleviated, the anxiety made into a less formidable opponent.

Anyway. I didn’t mean to go off on a sentimental rant about the nature of home and family. But I guess it’s at the forefront of my thinking this time of year. It’s tough, being so isolated from friends and family like I am in California. Those people you want to hug when something good happens, or who you know wouldn’t care if you showed up on their doorstep sobbing at two in the morning? Those are the people who make it hard to live three thousand miles away. They’re what the “away” refers to (that sentence doesn’t technically work – my grammar seems to abandon me whenever I talk about this emotional stuff, please forgive me for that). I should probably try my best to absorb as many comfy home feely things as I can while I’m here, store them up. Here in the south, those feels seem to disguise themselves in the form of about eight kinds of fudge, which one must eat constantly to appease the gods of Christmas Fat. We’ll be back to nerdy things next week, I promise. Stay warm. Stay snuggly. Have a happy New Year.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, little consumer…

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Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I know a lot of you Americans won’t read this when I post it because of the holiday. It’s cool. Maybe this is the week I finally gain an international following. Non-holiday-related greetings, hypothetical comrades from far-off lands! Thanksgiving is one of my two favorite holidays. The other is the Fourth of July. Because stuffing ourselves senseless and blowing shit up are two of the great American traditions, and I just like to do my part to keep them alive, you know? Plus I really enjoy both of those activities so, bonus. Score.

Anyway. Go eat some turkey (or whatever fake turkey food-like product you enjoy as a vegetarian option). Sneak an extra special holiday scrap to the dog. Take a nap. Give thanks for the things that make your life worth living. Watch the parade. Hug your mom. Make some nieces and nephews giggle. Eat pie. Rinse and repeat.

Now. When all that’s over, that’s where I come in. Because I want to talk about Black Friday. Have you seen that Facebook meme that says “Because only in America would we trample each other to death for sales, one day after giving thanks for what we already have”? True story, that. Ironic and sad. And I won’t go into all the over-commercialization of Christmas, and the corporate scumfuckery that turned “Black Friday” from a boring accountant’s term into a self-indulgent, materialistic, made-up holiday in and of itself. But I could. Makes me a little ill, though. I’d rather skip it. Let’s skip it. Shall we reminisce instead?

At the Giant Evil Bookstore, we went to full holiday mode on November first. A different interpretation of that sentence: on one of the worst hangover callout days of the year, the company began its annual ritualistic two-month torture of us minions. Changing every single display in the store, so much overstock you couldn’t move around in the back room, weird shifts, training and working with new seasonal employees who don’t know what they’re doing, scheduling nightmares, bad weather, turning the heat up high enough to roast us all alive, and overtime (which is good money, but too much overtime and you would get a written warning from the company – that’s fucked up, right? It’s not just me?). Oh, and a blackout on being able to ask for time off. So no holiday travels to see my family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Good times, let me tell you. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about the holidays from working retail. Hopefully someday that will go away.

Meanwhile, let’s all make a pact, right here and now, to try and be nice to retail minions this holiday season. These people work their asses off every day, even more so at this time of year, and they get paid very little for it. As I’ve said before, your horrible shopping crisis is just one of many that they’ll go through in any given shift. They may not know the answer to your question, but there is always someone available who they can ask. If the item you want is not in stock, they’ll do their best to get you what you need or at least come close. If you’re shopping at the last minute and you’re in a hurry, know that this person, too, has eight thousand things they need to be doing at that moment. And on top of that, they probably need to go pee and get a cup of coffee and maybe eat something at some point today. Everyone has bad days. Computers will fail. Credit cards will be declined. Special orders will fail to show up. The things you buy will break or malfunction. Cashiers really do need management’s approval to do certain things. None of these is that retail minion’s fault. And, most importantly, the person standing in front of you is not the whole company. They’re just trying to do their job under pretty heinous circumstances, like you would at your job. Which, by the way, is no better than theirs. Just because someone works behind a counter or sticks things on shelves for a living doesn’t mean that they’re dumber than you or less of a person than you. Maybe they’ve got two other jobs and a bunch of kids who are running wild while they’re out of school and probably won’t get the expensive presents they want. Maybe they’ve got a final exam this afternoon or a paper due tomorrow. Maybe they just got chewed out by their boss for being late because they couldn’t find a parking spot either and had to walk half a mile in the snow to get to work. Maybe they just had three horrible asshole customers in a row right before you and they’re trying not to cry. So be patient. Be kind. Be understanding. Maybe cultivate a bit of holiday cheer, yeah?

A couple of tips to make this easier on you: Don’t shop when you’re in a hurry. Your agro does not make anything go faster. Carry cash. If your check or your credit card won’t go through, it makes everyone’s lives easier if you can just hand over cash instead. The cashier and the people behind you in line will thank you. Be nice while you’re standing in line. You’re all in this together, and communal bitching doesn’t help the line move. Put things back where you got them. Half of a retail minion’s job is cleaning up after people. They’re there putting stuff away for two hours after the store closes. And if they can’t find the thing you want because it’s not where it’s supposed to be, that’s probably because someone else decided they didn’t want it and just set it down in some random place. Do not snark at someone because they told you “Happy Holidays” instead of your particular holiday of choice. This is not this person’s personal religious or political stance. It’s company policy put in place to avoid offending customers, and it’s designed to be inclusive, not exclusive. Keep your receipts or get gift receipts so the horror of January returns is easier on everyone. Tip your gift wrapper. Tip your barista. Tip the hell out of your bartender.

Or, skip the whole thing altogether. A couple of years ago I imposed Homemade Christmas on my family. Because I’d rather get one present that someone put a lot of love and effort into than a stack of corporate-funded shit that I don’t need or want and that some little brown kid got paid ten cents a year to make. That kid doesn’t get awesome Christmas presents, does he? No, because he has to work. (And maybe doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway, so the point is kind of moot, but you see where I’m going.) So, Homemade Christmas rocks. If it’s the thought that counts, I like to know that my family knows I put real thought into something. Or buy local. Those little businesses need your money so much more than giant corporations do. And those are the people you know, who are a part of your community. You go to church with them, or your kids go to school together. You should support each other. Or buy used items. Things like books and movies are no less awesome just because they came from the thrift store, and that locally-owned thrift store probably needs your money. Or donate to charity in each other’s names. Do your research and pick a good one (here’s my vote), but use that money to actually help someone out who needs it rather than lining the pockets of some rich toy-maker asshole who probably doesn’t need another yacht. Or do something creative like buying a Christmas dinner for a poor family who doesn’t get to expect a feast as a matter of course. Maybe go take some firewood to the little old lady who lives down the road. Fix your neighbor’s broken-down car. Pay off someone’s medical bills or start a secret bank account for a kid who wants to go to college. And really, we should do these things year-round, shouldn’t we? But we put aside our money and our goodwill and save it up for this time of year. That makes me kind of sad. I’m not religious, but that feels a bit like bad karma.

So, yeah. Enjoy your turkey and your pumpkin pie. Really enjoy it. Be thankful for it. Say, “Thank you, turkey, for giving your little bird life so I can eat the best sandwiches ever for a week.” Be thankful for this world we live in, the dirt under your feet and the sky above your head. Be thankful for your family and the eons of time and genetics that stacked up just right so you could all be in a warm room together while it’s cold outside, enjoying each other’s company. Or if you’re spending Thanksgiving with friends (as I am), be thankful that the universe put these people on your path so you could love them. They’re family, too. Continue to be thankful tomorrow, while you’re shopping (or not). As we get closer to Christmas, remember that it’s not about the hassle, it’s about shared experience, and keep being thankful. When New Year’s rolls around, be thankful that you got this past year to live and breathe. Be thankful the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that…

Sometimes life gets in the way

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I’ve had a rough week, y’all. Ok, that’s not entirely true. I’ve had a rough summer. But this week in particular I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around anything.

And that’s the epic tale of how we ended up having no blog written at ten in the morning on blog day.

I tried to come up with a funny story I could tell, or a witty way to call myself out on my blogging ineptitude, but frankly I’ve got nothing. Besides about eighty things that I need to get done that I just…haven’t done.

Those of you who know me may be starting to get worried at this point. I assure you, I’m fine. Please don’t call the psych ward. Or my mother.

It’s just that in a bigger-picture sense, the dishes don’t fucking matter. Finding that thing that stinks in my fridge doesn’t fucking matter. Picking tomatoes or finishing any number of started-and-then-ignored projects or taking a shower – they don’t fucking matter. And I’d like to think that that attitude could motivate me to do something that does matter. Could I cure AIDS babies or end world hunger? Probably not. But I could do my part, right?

And then I feel very disconnected from the world. Living out here, there’s no outlet for altruistic action. Besides giving money, which will probably be misused, and which I seem to be chronically lacking anyway, so what’s the point in even thinking about it?

See? This is a vicious cycle. “Nothing matters. So do something that matters. But I can’t do anything that matters. So what’s the point in doing anything at all?” And we’re back to square one. With the extra added bonus of now being forced to think about all the people who have super shitty lives and who I’m not helping with all my I-could-be-doing-something-constructive time. Square one is a monument to defeatism and negativity, I have to say. And it seems to be full of dirty dishes. I hate square one. I want to burn it to the ground.

“Well, buck up, little buddy. Things aren’t that bad.” Fuck you, patronizing voice in my head. I know things aren’t that bad. My life is fantastic. It’s the world inside my skull that’s the problem. (Clearly. I mean, I’m having a hypothetical internal dialogue with myself and typing it out so I can post it on the internet. There is something fundamentally wrong with this situation.)

Anyway.

I’m sorry for being a downer. I don’t mean to bum you guys out. I just wanted to explain myself for not being on top of my game this week. I’m sure I’ll have something fun to talk about next time (Buckaroo Banzai, anyone? Mars Curiosity Rover? The extra-hilarious t-shirt I just got that says “Blogging Nerd: Because I Said So”?). Meanwhile, you should all watch this. It’s my current motivation. Sort of. A little. I’m going to go do the dishes.

Aurora.

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Fair warning: as you can probably tell from the title, this isn’t going to be as funny a post as I’d usually go for. We live in a world where serious shit happens and I can’t get by with just talking about books and movies and my stupid feelings about them all the time. Just so you know.

We all heard about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado this past week. It’s hideous. I don’t want to talk about it because it makes me feel sick. But I think I should talk about it precisely because it makes me feel sick.

Here’s the thing: Batman is a big deal. The newest of the Nolan movies is a huge deal. But only because it’s American media hype. This gun-toting bullshit has nothing to do with Batman. And I won’t give wackadoo shooter guy the satisfaction of discussing his connection with an iconic superhero. I just won’t. Fans are fans, whatever they’re fans of, and really all that means is groups of innocent people in one place at one time. Happens every day.

As a side note, the other thing I’m not going to discuss is my view on gun laws, so if you leave something in the comments and it doesn’t make it through please don’t be offended. This is hardly the time or the place for politics. Feel free to send me an email and I’ll get back to you, but I don’t want to talk about it here.

But I do want to talk about crazy.

I’m a child of the Columbine generation. In April of 1999 I was a junior in high school. It’s really strange to talk about this in such a timeline kind of way, but those couple of years between the school shootings of the late 1990′s and the complete global madness of 9/11 were, frankly, a tremendously fucked up period of history to have to live through. It was fear before there was fear on such a blown-out scale. And it was limited to a very specific group. High school kids went to school every day terrified while everyone else got to walk around mostly unaffected (at least that was how it seemed to me and all my friends and classmates). Before we all talked about “terrorism” like it was a normal state of being. Before that word lost its meaning. Like the plan was to grow a whole group of adults who were already afraid for their lives. That’s a bit of a conspiracy theory thing to say. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work, right?

Unless you were in that situation, though, you don’t really know what that was like, spending every single day petrified that someone would freak out in a classroom and blow you up. Or worse. Out of nowhere. Someone you’d known your whole life, someone you’d never expect. Which was especially scary for me because I’m from a small country town where coming to school straight from going hunting at sunrise wasn’t uncommon. Until Columbine, it was totally legal to come to school with a gun in your car if you had a hunting license. I’m sure it’s still like that in a lot of remote places. I don’t have a fundamental problem with guns. They’re a useful tool in the hands of people who know what they’re doing. But there’s a time and a place. And I was taught the hard way (although, admittedly, not the hardest way) that school is not the place. Sorry, I don’t mean to go on and on about a completely unrelated tragedy.

So now I’m having horrible flashbacks. Perhaps because those two words “Colorado” and “shooting” are in the same sentence again. A conditioned response, maybe, I don’t know. But that’s out of my control.

What pisses me off is that this crazy jackass dragged everyone else in that theater into his delusion. I understand crazy. Believe me, I’ve been at the bottom of several different crazy barrels, other peoples’ and my own. I get it. Reality sways, occasionally. I understand fully how people can…what? Get lost, maybe. Or forget. I’m not saying I sympathize, just for the record. I understand that some folks need serious help to keep their shit together, but that impulse to hurt people is totally beyond me. It just doesn’t seem fair when people pull others down with them when they’re drowning like that.

But it doesn’t surprise me that Americans tend to go on shooting rampages, honestly. Think about the way that we’re desensitized in our culture. We’ve accepted violence. We see death all the time and it seems painless. We shoot people in video games and they just disappear. Tv shows are full of rape and murder and death and home invasions and people beating the shit out of each other – all of which is way more graphic than the news. But censors are more concerned with seeing a nipple onscreen than someone’s guts all spilled out. And I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t mind a bit of blood and guts and gore in my movies/games/books/tv/etc. But I have the mental acuity (now, at 30, probably not so much during my more formative years) to deal with it as a fiction, as a tool to move the story forward. It probably helps that my mother is a trauma nurse (full disclosure: a badass trauma nurse) and brought home real-world horror stories all the time. You get used to it. But that’s just it: we shouldn’t get used to it. Unless you’re a cop or a fireman or a nurse or a doctor or a coroner or whatever, there’s no reason to be so cut off from how horrible these things are. Isn’t it a fucked up symptom of our media-fed culture that we can rationalize actual violence as just something that happens to someone else somewhere else, as long as we see it on a screen? The media treats war like infotainment and death like statistics. They’ve got no problem showing us starving babies in another country and then immediately following those horrendous images with a multi-million-dollar commercial for some overpriced restaurant whose food could probably kill us all. We shouldn’t be so ok with that juxtaposition, that hypocrisy.

I guess my point here, if I really have one besides just using this as a ranty outlet, is that we shouldn’t give this guy in Colorado a spot in our minds, in our history, in our hearts. Let’s remember the victims, the injured and the dead, the people who were just trying to have a night out like we all need occasionally because our lives are shit because we live in America and consuming something makes us feel happy for a minute. They were just people. It was just a movie. And they died. It’s tragic. It’s tremendously sad. The ripples that go out into the world from that event are incalculable.

But we can’t let fear take over. Take just a second, just one, and maybe think about those things that you do in your everyday little life that you don’t ever fathom could ever, ever hurt you. You go to the bank. You get a cup of coffee. You go to the grocery store. You go to the movies. At any given moment any of us could get shot or blown up or whatever. We’re vulnerable all the time to someone else’s crazy. And that’s not our fault. And that’s not society’s fault. And that’s not even necessarily a crazy guy’s fault. Shit, I could get eaten by a bear walking through my backyard, you know? Sad, ridiculous, fucked up things happen all the time. Don’t let those things that might maybe someday happen and that can’t possibly be predicted make you cower. Don’t let the possible make you hide away from the definite. Because trite as it may sound, life is fucking short. Do what you love. Live to the fullest. Tell the people you love that you love them. Smile. Laugh. Spread joy and love and light. Be good to each other. That’s all we can do. To do any less than that is a waste of time, a wasted opportunity, something lost forever that we can’t get back and might regret. And what a shame it is to regret, my friends. What a complete shame. Don’t let the bad guys win.

Always carry a towel.

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I love the British. For oh-so-very many reasons. They gave us ruff collars, the Black Plague, Doctor Who, an assortment of foods which are both bland and disgusting, right-hand drive cars, Australia, the Rolling Stones, Eddie Izzard, a weird appreciation for giant black umbrellas, The Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, rugby, cricket, Alan Moore, Alan Rickman, Harry Potter, Mary Poppins, David Beckham, Hugh Laurie, and (probably most importantly) the original group of Puritanical zealots who came over and systematically eradicated the indigenous population of this continent upon which we bastardized democracy and built this great nation. Or something. Although actually I’m pretty sure that most of those people were Dutch. History schmistory.

So why do I bring up the Brits? It rather goes without saying that they’re literary badasses. And, bonus, no translator needed. But after reading a hundred million books by English speakers of all flavors I’ve got to confess that the Brits are still my favorite. (Of the modern authors. Let’s leave all that boring, period, Jane Austen crap out of this.) Because they’re just so…British. They’re polite and self-deprecating with a fucked-up sense of humor and an inimitable dry wit. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “inimitable” in earnest before. Hmm.)

See? If I just start out with the ridiculous rant you guys don’t have to read all the way to the end.

Ok, ok. But still. Point is…I really really really want to gush about my very favorite book and I needed an in. Alright? You’ve outed me as a hack with no good opening paragraph. Happy?

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is truly a masterpiece of scifi. And I say that not only as a completely biased Adams fan, but also as something of a self-made connoisseur of scifi. So, if you haven’t read it, here’s a little Hitchhiker’s Guide 101: Normal dude (Arthur Dent) gets caught up in some crazy galaxy-hopping adventures after the Earth gets demolished to make room for a bypass and he finds out that his best friend is an alien. It’s “weird shit happening to normal people” on a cosmic scale. With tons of fun aliens (two-headed alcoholic President of the Galaxy being probably the least interesting) and spaceships (unpredictable space/time/reality hopper that can read your mind but can’t make a cup of tea – comes with depressed robot for all your moody butler needs) and planets (up to and including a planet that’s a replica of Earth but also really a computer run by mice in order to find out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. How awesome is that?). Of course that’s just the first book. It’s been called a “trilogy” since the beginning, but there are five books in the series. Six, if you count the Eoin Colfer epilogue that came out in 2009 (it’s awful, don’t even bother). Also there are a few related snippets in Adams’ posthumous collection, but I don’t know if those are necessarily considered canonical.

I suppose it may be one of those “you had to be there” sorts of things that’s hard to talk about to people who haven’t read it, but easy to blab about with people who have. Fun, but maybe a little pointless. When I talk about it I frequently find myself preaching to the choir. Which is unfortunate. The awesomeness of this book is just mind-blowing. There’s a scifi convention in which we suspend all disbelief and get transported completely (pardon the pun) to another world. There’s usually very little that’s relatable, you know? Few books that have a toe in our world, in our reality, as we know it (that’s what makes it scifi and not just fi). And Hitchhiker’s Guide is all about upsetting that convention. Sort of. Turning it around on us, maybe, is more accurate. Arthur Dent is the last survivor from our planet, so he embodies everything we love about it and becomes the only thing we have to cling to. Walking nostalgia, this guy. (Did you know that “nostalgia” means “agony for the home”? There’s something really beautiful about that.) So Dent makes us appreciate the human experience. It’s the “us vs. them” thing, but he’s the only “us.” Like the opposite of Stranger in a Strange Land. And I appreciate that, as someone who’s never really felt at home anywhere. There’s still comfort in knowing that we all have our place in the universe. That we can find one, even if it’s not the obvious or the expected one.

I guess I have a really big, important soft spot in my heart for these books because they are so different. And so fucking funny. “Laugh out loud funny” is one of the things that, if I see it on a book jacket, will make me put the book back on the shelf. Seriously. I’m kind of a blurb snob. But in this case it’s true. That unreasonably wry British kind of hilarity. I think part of the reason it’s so funny is because it started out its weird little life as a radio play. The banter was actually banter at one point. I don’t know. The dialogue just reads differently than other dialogue. When I first read the series (in high school, maybe? Or college? I’m not sure) I don’t think that I’d ever laughed out loud while reading. Seriously. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? For me, at least, it’s rare that a book will make me laugh so hard I have to keep it down so I don’t wake up my housemates. I chuckle. I smile. But I hardly ever laugh. Maybe that’s just because I read so many books about heavy scifi stuff – galactic takeovers and government conspiracies and epic laser battles. Not a lot of giggles there. Hitchhiker’s Guide is so terribly funny that even now when I reread it (which I do about once a year), knowing full well what’s coming, I still have to put the book down and laugh and laugh and laugh. The only other author that makes me laugh like that is Terry Pratchett, but I still find myself comparing his books to Adams’ books. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, I guess.

Besides writing my all-time favorite scifi series, he wrote some other great stuff. The Dirk Gently books are an awesome send-up/homage to pulp detective fiction. He was a rabid, old-school Whovian and wrote a bunch of episodes during the Tom Baker years. He did a lot of environmental conservation stuff in the UK. Check out his book Last Chance to See, about the trip he took around the world to try to find endangered species. After Adams died, the BBC also made a documentary series about it with his buddy Stephen Fry (as a point of interest, does it seem like Stephen Fry knows bloody everyone? He pops up in the strangest social circles).

Adams was an interesting guy. I wish he hadn’t died at such a young age. Heart attacks are like that, though. At least he got to make us all laugh before he went. And I’m consistently baffled by the way he tied absolutely everything together. Each time I read it I find a new connection. Everything, every little detail, it all means something. Everything’s a part of a system. We are all cogs in a machine. That’s astounding, isn’t it? To know that you’re a piece of something, tiny but not insignificant. It’s a great way to look at life. And laugh.