For Your Information

I’m now blogging at Brutish&Short under my real name. Check it out.

And thanks again for reading.

Goodnight, Moon

So.

This is probably my last post on Blogbytom.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve grown a bit tired of sharing my life with you.  There’s always been, for me, a gnawing sense of self-indulgence about the whole Blogbytom project:  I’ve never been entirely comfortable with asserting through the blog–by its very existence–that my observations are worth taking seriously.  They aren’t.  I’m a rather pedestrian critic of my own life, my own biases, and my own inclinations.  And I’m not particularly interesting.  I wrote here because I sometimes felt the need to scream out to the world, if only to hear the sound of my own voice, to prove to myself that I was still alive.  But I’m over it.  I don’t want to settle for that anymore.  And I’m ready to move on.

To whomever has read this myopic journal in the past, and particularly to those who took the time to comment:  I thank you.  You kept me going, and you helped keep me sane.

To those who didn’t read, and didn’t comment:  Go fuck your collective selves.  You were made for each other.

I’m currently in the process of creating a new group blog, one that will be updated daily (!)–an experiment in long-form proto-journalism and pithy one-liners.  It will be anything but self-involved.  It will instead be your go-to guide to understanding the world around you in a brave new Internet age.  It will feature writers I like reading, friends, Romans, and countrymen; and above all, it will be good.  It will certainly be better than this.

(I’ll post one more link directing future Blogbytom traffic to this mysterious new group blog when it’s debuted.)

One more thing.

I apologize too much.  I’m not going to apologize for this.  Especially since I might prove to be full of shit, as I so often am, and come running back to you with flowers and mea culpas.  Instead, I’ll just say Goodbye.  Farewell.  So Long.

And thanks for keeping me company.

Regarding Winter

Josh called me up to see if I still wanted to play pond hockey and I told him that I did, but that I couldn’t find my skates, that my stick needed to be taped, and that I needed half an hour to shower and get my act together.

Skating is not like riding a bike.  Especially since riding a bike doesn’t stress the ankle I permanently ruined in 2007.  Skating is almost entirely about stressing your ankles when you haven’t done it for a while; but I surprised myself and got the hang of it after twenty minutes or so, and Josh and Matt and I skated the mile-or-so length of Longham’s Pond, playing keep-away with Josh’s dog Flint.  Flint:  mangy destroyer of ice hockey pucks, protective mutt, climber of mountains and catcher of frisbees–I salute you.

We made our way back down to where the ice was smoothest to play two-on-one hockey.  Whoever was tasked with defense had Flint on his team, since Flint, as alluded to, really, really, really wanted the puck, and was pretty damned good at getting it.  An additional perk of having Flint on your team:  nobody on offense wanted to skate too close to him, lest we were to chop off his feet with our ice skates.  Flint was an asset, is what I’m saying.  It was nice to have him while I was on defense, anyway.

A puck went off the ice and onto the rocks and I made the mistake of pursuing it.  When I stopped by the frozen shoreline and reached my stick out to shuffle it back onto the pond, the ice broke and I went through it.  I scrambled out of the water and onto the shore.  Lesson learned:  either show the ice the respect it deserves, or don’t play pond hockey.

We stopped playing pond hockey.

***

There was some sort of Snowpocalypse and it snowed a whole bunch in Boston and so Josh, Pat, and I went snowshoeing in the woods.  We were accompanied by Pat’s dog, Maya.  Like all dogs, Maya is somewhat stupid, and like all young dogs, Maya has boundless energy.  So despite the fact that there were two feet of snow on the ground, and that she literally had to hop–like a bunny–in order to move at all, Maya led the way for the first half of our hike.  Hop, hop, hop, in and out of drifts, paths, frozen tundra marshes.  Hop, hop, hop.  Watching her pee was the funniest part, and watching her try to warm up her paws by licking the ice off of them was the second funniest.

We climbed up obscenely steep hills and ran back down them.  We all fell a number of times.  Josh, in particular, took two rather cinematic falls when his snowshoes accidentally caught roots hidden beneath the snow:  whoop! face-first, directly into the ground, then getting back to his feet sporting a shit-eating grin.  Falling really doesn’t hurt in two feet of snow.  Nothing does.  Not even your feelings.

Maya was tired of hopping by the end and she walked in our path, and when we got back to the parking lot a couple of college kids were vainly trying to get their two-wheel-drive Mazda out of a snowed-in parking spot.  We pushed them out.  Note to non-New Englanders, or to no one who has ever driven in inclement weather conditions:  spinning your wheels only gets you stuck-er.  And you should probably carry a shovel in your car.

***

When the sun goes down in the winter, I fool myself into thinking the day is over.  But the day isn’t over.  It’s simply changed its clothes.  The best time to go for a walk is when the sun’s down, anyway–when the sun is down and it’s snowing, to be more specific.  A gentle Arctic hush unfolds over the region.  People stay inside in their snuggies and blankets, cozied up in front of fireplaces, drinking cocoa and watching It’s A Wonderful Life.  You can be truly, magnificently alone in a New England snowstorm.

I would pay for it, if it weren’t already free.

***

 

A Year In Review

Below I’ve compiled what I consider to be (in ten minutes of glancing at the archives–my archives are NOT VERY EXTENSIVE!) the best of the Blogbytom oeuvre this year.  A lot of it comes from the India blog, which makes sense, as I was actually thinking a lot about “life” and “meaning”–and how we attach the latter to the former–when I was abroad.  Now?  Not so much.  Now?  Trying to find a job, and piece together a story (FOR SALE, FOR SALE!) of precisely what the hell happened in the California marijuana scene in the past three months, while taking myself out of it as much as possible.  (HARD TO DO WHEN YOU’RE AN EGOMANIAC!)

Maybe you missed these when they were published, maybe you’re stumbling here for the first time, or maybe you’ve just been waiting to read Blogbytom until I published my first annual Best-Of list, so that you wouldn’t have to wade through all of the dreck I’ve found reason to put up here over the course of the past twelve months.

Without further ado, then:

On Lying

On Haiti

Welcome to Bombay

Going to Mass in Panjim

Goodbye to Goa (And All That)

The Monkey Temple

Shy Up Close

Living and Dying in Varanasi

A Haircut

A Drunken Punch-up (On Being White)

An Imperfect Day (A Haggle Gone Wrong)

The Tea Party (Or, Fifteen Minutes With Sarah Palin…)

The Back Porch

Vignettes (Montreal)

On Lobstering

Vignettes (San Francisco)

Tantric Shadow Puppet Sex (Or, Big Sur)

Coming Into Oregon

Adieu, California

I’m deeply dissatisfied with a lot of this stuff, but it’s my hope that you might not be.  I blog as a first-draft writing exercise, as a way to clear my head, as a means to communicate with the world.  E.M Forster lived by the motto, “Only connect,” which I’ve always considered to be pretty damned unobjectionable.  And it’s true, too, you know?  The implications of “connecting” with other people–connection for its own sake, not with an eye on using connections as a means to an end–are pretty profound.  The more we connect with other people as people, the better equipped we are to recognize our common humanity, our shared dignity, and our fundamental sameness.  In other words, I don’t have much in common with a lot of the people I met this year–from the Northern California hippies to the Muslims of Dongri–but I found it invaluable to hear their experiences, to share my own, to shoot the shit with them, and to learn.  Whether I communicated that learning in this forum is debatable–the onus, after all, was on me.  But I hope that I did.

Anyway.  See you next year.

I’m Glad That I Usually Only Argue About Politics When I’m Drunk These Days, And That I Was Not Drunk

I’m leaving the post office, because I finally i-dotted and t-crossed and signed-sealed-delivered my grad school application–and paid a university that will not accept me into its elite program $60 to tell me as much in a couple of months.  I sent the goddamned packages, or bundles, or whatever, and I can finally just go to sleep and end the stress-induced insomnia that resulted from flying across the country yesterday, having a panic attack of epic proportions in Phoenix during my layover, and generally working myself into a lather about things that are, in general, beyond my control.  After 27 hours of no sleep–and not even a meth binge to excuse it–I am ready to collapse, and I’m looking forward to it.

But of course it’s Arctic windy winter in Boston today, and of course as I’m wrapping my scarf around my face in the lobby, I look out the swinging glass doors to the already depressing sight of barren chalky asphalt and naked gross trees, and what do I see?  What the fuck do I see?  I see a sign that says “LaRouche.”  It is leaning against a fold-up table.  There are two young people manning that table, dancing around in the cold, harassing passers-by like a couple of common idiots, which they are.

But I’ve got those head phones that are kind of big, and they’ve been doing an okay job as little ear muffs, too, over the hat.  I decide for obvious reasons to put them on before I leave the lobby.  I walk out the door and make an elaborate show of bopping my head to the music, but I have to walk past the LaRouche people.  I just have to:  there’s no way around them.  There is one girl and one boy.  She is white and he is black.  They are “boy” and “girl” not because they are actually young, but because they have the political disposition of thirteen year-old emo kids.  They are “white” and “black” because of genetic happenstance.

White girl:  Mouthing something at me, walking alongside.  I try to walk past, but I dunno… I used to get a kick out of arguing with those LaRouche boys and girls, and I’m kind of a glutton for punishment (no more so than when extremely sleep-deprived), and I haven’t seen them in a while.  The LaRouche people:  I’ve missed them.  They were so charmingly batshit and completely ineffectual.  Maybe I have a soft spot for people who tilt at windmills.  Or break Godwin’s Law a thousand times an hour.

Anyway she’s mouthing shit at me, trying to convey that there is a Failure To Communicate at hand.

So I do it, you know.  I pull off my headphones.

“You know who’s going to be hanging from the Christmas tree this year?” she says, a bit too triumphantly.

And I sort of stand there for a second, puzzled, and then say to the white girl, “I thought ornaments hung from Christmas trees, not people.”

And she seems stunned for a second–like she had genuinely never thought about the stupidity of her pitch–but regains her composure and soldiers on.  Because that’s what LaRouche people do, you know.  They soldier the fuck on.

“No, man.  It’s the system who’s going to be hanging from the tree.  The whole system’s coming crashing down.”

But I’m tired, and this girl is clearly an idiot.  I decide I don’t want to do this, after all.  As I turn around to walk away, I say, “It’s a little cold to listen to people proselytize about politics.”  I give a cheery wave.  ”Thanks anyway!”

That is all.

(No, it is not.  Other possible responses to the question:  ”You know who’s going to be hanging from the Christmas tree this year?” include:

“You know who’s got two thumbs and doesn’t give a flying fuck?  This guy!”

“Dead babies?”

“No, but I do know that your hero is a cult leader and that you’re a fanatic?”

&c.)

Love, and other Variables

Today is my last day in Portland, Oregon.  I’m at the Fridge, in a glass room that smells like cigarettes (you’re welcome!), with a kitchen painted yellow and tagged at various times by various residents who have by now mostly abandoned the region.  The living room is littered with beer bottles and utensils.  I am feeling nostalgic for times that never existed, and pining for times that did.

But tomorrow morning I am leaving.

The Fridge, as an institution–as an academy and a brothel and a magnet for malcontents and transients, as a refuge of last resort and as a home, the best home I’ve ever had–I cannot give the last word.  I cede the last word to the last occupants, to those who watch in horror as Brian Barisch finally demolishes the whole damned building, who gape as the beech trees sway under the weight of tumbling old-growth lumber.  It is a sight whose inevitability I cannot deny, no matter how much I dread it.  And so it is to those unfortunate souls that I grant the privilege of writing an obituary.  I’m only here to document a last gasp or two.

And so, what can I tell you?  What can I pretend are lessons and learning experiences?  How can I describe what it feels like to sample one thousand miles of coastline?  How can I draw a conclusion for you, while intentionally omitting conclusions I’ve reached for publications that may actually pay me to conclude?

How can I tie this up with a bow?

Three months ago I got into San Francisco and walked to Kate’s bookstore in the Mission wearing my blazer, cheap Indian knockoff sunglasses, and hauling a fifty pound backpack.  Kate said, “You look ridiculous,” and I replied, “No, I look good.”  Because I did.  Because I was ready and willing, and raring to go, and eager beaver-esque, and so on and so forth.  I was a man on a mission.  I had my heart in the right place.  I was a cat on a hot tin roof.  I was born to do this.

Three months later I am sitting cross-legged on a couch without any socks on, desperately trying to think of what my “Statement of Purpose” for graduate school might be.  I’m cold, I’m dirty, I’m half drunk, and I’ve got two songs stuck in my head.  The first song goes like this:

“There’s nothing out here, nothing out here, nothing out here.”

The second goes like this:

“I’ve got you.  Until you’re gone.”

I’m gone.  I’ll miss you, but there’s nothing out here for me anymore.

 

 

For Lack Of A Better Post (Or, Considering Politics On The Left)

Here’s what I wrote on Facebook after the midterm election results came in:

Speaker John Boehner? As someone who has worked with retarded people, this country is retarded.

Four people liked my status.  I clarified as follows:

Like literally, mentally retarded people: this country is like them. Only less adorable. Jesus.

And then everything went to hell.  As they sometimes do!  Ha!

Chris:  gotta be said tho, the dems did a shit job. also, the reps did an amazing job of turning complete oblivion and lack of coherency/cogency to their advantage.

Kevin: Theres a reason why he won, cause Pelosi is a retard

Haha!  Oh, jesus.  But we’re just getting started…

Chris: it’s true pelosi is a retard, but it’s the retards who put her where she is/was who are the real retards, so to speak.

And here’s the part where my mom comes in!!!  Wait for it…

Cathryn: Excuse me. I think Kevin and Chris are sexists. Did you speak like this when a man was speaker? No. Your type make witches of women and boogie men of black presidents because you’re narrow minded and buy a lot of foolish fear mongering that panders to your prejudices instead of your brains.

All fun and games until someone loses an eye, amirite?

Chris: Really? Yes, as a fairly effeminate half-nigger I’m terrified of negress witches. They might turn our beautiful cracker-based cum-filled doughnut country into a place of measured compassion and intelligence…. actually, I should be combative about this: Yes I speak this way when men are house speaker for goddam sure. What worries me is when people believe in a person because of their physical attributes. White guys liking white guys is old news. Wome liking mama grizzlies is new and foolish and dangerous. Pelosi dropped the ball massively, particularly in that she couldn’t make this shit economy stick to the Republicans, which should have been a no brainer, which is why i comfortably, if coarsely, dub speaker Pelosi a Retard, Axelrod and Rahm, Retards, Obama nigger-Retard-coward. How ya like me now.

This is the part where I chime in.

Tom: Holy fuck. Oh, no.

Then I elaborate, still horrified, but extremely diplomatic-like:

Tom: Or, to be clear: Mom, nothing Kevin or Chris said signaled sexism. Being disappointed with Nancy Pelosis’s leadership in the House is completely independent of her gender, and nothing either of them said suggested otherwise. If Chris called you out, you kind of deserved it. (Still love ya, though Being my mom, and all).

Chris tried to join in the party:

Chris: and i apologize for using the words “nigger,” “negress,” “cum,” “Retard,” “cracker,” and “doughnut.” i got a lil heated. i’m from new england.

Chris: and for saying “how ya like me now.” uncouth. but i still think my points stand. while i agree that it would be nice to have a Lady Speaker, just as it’s nice to have a Black Prez, it would be nicer if she were more competent and he tougher.

And so I’m all like, “Cool.  Facebook drama resolved.  Mom and very dear friend aren’t arguing public policy on my wall anymore.  Hooray!”  Here is the text of my Hooray:

Tom: Nah. Yer hyperbole was warranted. But yer attempt at civility is noted and perhaps rewarded in the afterlife.

Hahahahahahahaaahaaahhhahahahahahahha!!!!!  Naivete, thy name is Facebook.  Chris and my mom were just getting started…

Cathryn: Excuse me. But, when Clinton was president, the Republican strategy was to demonize Hillary because she was a strong women. Of course, Clinton made that strategy a moot point by being a jerk with Monica Lewinsky. (Let’s not mention the Republican hypocrites who had to leave Congress when they had cried “Oh my” about Clinton but then were found to be in the same sexual-dalliance fix) But, I do think that an awful lot of this foolishness about Nancy Pelosi has to do with attacking the Democrats’ policy through the usual prejudice against women. Please tell me what other speaker has had as much bullying? Surely one must realize this is just one person in a position of power and hardly the most powerful person. This is fear-mongering and women-bashing in order to avoid any real discussion of issues. I won’t comment again. You all can use your foul language to continue the argument, which will only reinforce my own, which is that political discussion is short-changed by prejudice and lazy, inflammatory language.

 

To which Chris responded thusly:

My inflammatory language was NOT lazy. I also don’t see how anything I’ve said was “fear-mongering” in the least. Nor do I think that Democratic policy is usually attacked because there are more female dems than r’s in congress. But then you create an apologist tone over what Pelosi’s post and accomplishments were. It’s not “Look at what she,” It’s “Look at what she let them do.” It’s “her” abject failure to pass meaningful healthcare reform, emissions reform, financial reform, etc. There’s neither fear mongering nor woman bashing going on in this silly silly thread. Nor is there prejudice, except maybe against Afrikaaners, cuz I unabashedly don’t like them. But, Mrs. O’Hare, I take offense to your assertion that my language was at all lazy, and I would wonder why you think that your dear son is friends with anybody but nutjob lefty wackos like myself!

To which I responded:

Holy fuck.
Oh God.
What is this monster I’ve created?

Kate pretty much won the thread with this:

As a native of San Francisco, Washington D.C. – yay Eleanor Homes Norton! – and a woman, I’d say that the constituencies of Pelosi and Obama are generally pretty disappointed, at least those of us that retain a belief in the efficacy of national party politics. I’m fairly confident that’s for reasons that have nothing to do with the color or shape of their genitals.

But I will conclude with this, for the purposes of self-edification:

Dear Mom, You’re right when you say that “political discussion is short-changed by prejudice and lazy, inflammatory language.” You’re wrong when you say that Chris is engaging in such discussion. (Though, to be fair, he’s getting closer to it as you egg him on. And to be clear, you are egging him on). Look, both of y’all motherfuckers: We have two fucking years of random Republican investigations into make-pretend-scandals to look forward to. Why don’t we all just get along? I mean, there’s Sarah Palin 2012 to have nightmares about, after all.

Adieu, California

Fisherman’s Wharf is a carnie wasteland.  There aren’t even actual fishermen there anymore.  It’s a bastardized version of Hampton Beach, which itself is a bastardized version of Coney Island.  So there are three degrees of separation, culminating in a strip of shitty little crab stands and idiotic tourists with cameras hanging around their necks, taking pictures of the fucking Golden Gate Bridge, when Hey, Guess What, Idiot Tourist?  There are better views of everything else everywhere else in the city!

Heh.  I’m an idiot tourist.  But I left my camera at home.

No.  I went to Fisherman’s Wharf because JB works some crazy job with big old wooden boats, and character-acting, and twenty-four hour school field trips.  He pretends to be an old salt from the turn of the century.  He gets to make small children–and their parents, should he so choose–swab decks and eat gruel and obey his commands for the night, because it’s “educational” and a “good experience for the children.”  He’s encouraged to behave with as much bravado as he feels like, which he’s good at.  He’s allowed to be a dick to anyone who doesn’t acknowledge his command, which seems to suit him nicely.  And he gets to talk in some sort of accent, which must just be the icing on the cake.  It is the perfect job for JB, in other words. I’m happy for him.

He gets off work at 10 a.m. after his 19-hour shift.  That’s why I’m there.  We’re getting an Irish breakfast at a pub.  Deal of the century alert:  two eggs, two giant slabs of bacon, fantastic fucking hash browns, all the Irish soda bread you can handle, plus–fucking PLUS, people–a stiff sixteen-ounce Bloody Mary.  Final cost per person?  $8.50.  Final cost for me?  $0.00.  JB bought me breakfast.

The strangest thing about this Irish pub:  despite its proximity to the spectacle of the shithole tourist trap that is Fisherman’s Wharf, it does an Irish pub right.  Which is saying something, given the strong… shall we say, “feelings” (of pure and unconstrained loathing) I have for everything else in the vicinity.  It feels like Boston in that pub.  There’s a jukebox with the Pogues on it, Guinness poured with just the right love, pale Celts at the bar at 11 in the morning.  The bartender even had an Irish accent.

***

Kate and I spent an evening walking around the Albany Bulb, a park reclaimed from an extinct landfill’s footprint.  Along the paths there’s graffiti, and found-art sculptures made of rebar, driftwood, old tires, and bike parts.  There’s a whole section of really extravagant ones, mega-sculptures–an Indian Chief, a dragon, both huge, and only two of many there–but for the most part it’s just what people have found and bundled together when they’ve gone to the park to have some beers, or get stoned, or sit on the rocks and look at the Bay and twiddle thumbs.  A lot of it’s amateur sculpture, in other words, and a lot of it’s kind of quaint, in its way.  It speaks to a community spirit of wanting to build something out of nothing, of taking one man’s trash and making it the parkgoers’ treasure, etc etc.  It’s emblematic of an attitude that we should all probably be trying to emulate, or at least one that we commonly claim to think we should be trying to emulate.

But then you wind your way down a path and stumble onto a campsite:  a home, really, with an old mattress for a roof and a tarp for walls.  When you turn around to walk away (sort of abashedly, sort of feeling like an intruder) you step on a syringe.  You do this over and over again (minus the needle, of which you only saw one):  bump into homesteads.  You walk into people’s houses accidentally, because there aren’t supposed to be any fucking houses in a public park.  But, then, the shrubberies are overgrown.  The trees have taken root in the landfill.  Tall grass and big boulders are everywhere.  It’s hard to see where the people live until you’re already on their doorstep.

And so maybe this, too, is emblematic of California.  This Great Ignoring.  This supposition that if we make a park out of a landfill–and, moreover, if we make art with the trash we find there–then we’re allowed to ignore the fact that actual human beings are sleeping on that landfill.  Correction: that they’re living on that landfill.  We’re allowed to believe that the best way we can help is by not helping at all, because “Look at the eccentric artwork, did you know this used to be a landfill and now it’s a park, and oh yes we know about the homeless people but at least they’re living in this fabulous art experiment, things really could be worse.”  Ultimately, we trick ourselves into thinking that if we put a layer of yellow lipstick on a piece of shit it turns into a bar of gold.

Which, in fairness, might make for a few pretty found-art sculptures.  But it fills me with nothing but dread.

Homelessness (Or, The Avenue Of The Giants)

So here I am, and how did that happen exactly?  Two and a half months ago I was getting off of a plane in Oakland.  Ignorant.  Naive.  Young.  Foolish.  I helped Kate paint a bedroom.  I went to Mendocino County.  I lost my mind.

(Sarah is painting her bedroom right now in that very same apartment.  When I’m done here I’ll help her paint, because I used to get $25 an hour for that shit and I’m good at it.  It is perfect symmetry, in other words–with the bedrooms being painted.  This.  It is written.  It is preordained.  These bookends had to happen.  Which is to say, this is all a metaphor for something or other.  For literary critics.  For scholars and disciples and pigeons and roaches.  Definitely roaches.  Most definitely roaches.)

The Hotel Arcata gave us a $25 discount because the police had to be called on our neighbors.  I slept right through the ruckus.  I woke up at six a.m. and the “continental breakfast” turned out to be muffins, stale fruit, watery orange juice, and bad coffee.  The graveyard receptionist hit on me, but because I’m not a homosexual I wasn’t interested.  Josh woke up and we drove south.

The Avenue of the Giants is the old Highway 101.  It weaves in and out of old-growth redwood groves.  It’s slow, but it’s pretty as hell.  Kinda makes you want to chop down a tree.  Or climb a tree.  Or be taller.  Something.  It’s a worthy detour, though, and Josh and I took it because we were bored, because neither one of us has a home, and because we’re suckers for pretty Ansel Adams-type vistas.

I asked a man at a novelty store for directions.  I wanted to tell him how badly I needed to cry.  Fuck it, I wanted to cry into his arms.  But he just told me we were going the right way, and I walked back outside, to the rain and the forest and the fog.  I bit my lip.  I survived.

It’s gotten me this far.

Notes On Being Done With The Shitshow

Where do I begin? 

I can begin with the cowboy hat.  I bought the cowboy hat at the feed store in Willits before I fell asleep in Josh’s car on the way to Arcata.  I bought the cowboy hat because I felt that I’d earned it after two months of camping in the Northern California woods.  I bought the cowboy hat because Goat bought one and I was copying his style, and I bought the cowboy hat because I don’t give a fuck about copying anyone’s style anymore.  Your style is my style.  Let’s all be civil about this, shall we?

And so I am wearing a cowboy hat.  And I look ridiculous.  But I don’t look as ridiculous as you, because you aren’t wearing a cowboy hat.  Which means fuck you.

I’m utterly exhausted.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been so tired.  I’m tired of living out of a backpack.  I’m tired of camping on a hill.  Do you know what?  Do you motherfuckers know?  Here, I’ll tell you:  camping sucks the life out of you.  Camping makes you old and wise.  Camping is as camping does, and camping doesn’t do it for me anymore.

Last night, finishing the last bin, I’m passing around the whiskey:

“We’re fucking done, motherfuckers!”  I cannot convey the excitement I felt, the depth of my love of humanity at that moment.  All I can tell you is that whiskey was passed and drunk, that I made it to bed at 4:30 in the morning, that the deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey worked its magic.  All I can tell you is that the credits to that particular movie rolled, and that no one got any credit for any-damned-thing.

I miss you all like I miss old girlfriends.  And I can’t wait to say Hello again.

Hello.  Hello?