What's crackin', chimplets? Chicklet-chimplets? Chimple-pimples?
I have big news for you today: A retired friend of mine offered me
the use of one of his cars for the month of January, so that I may
commute the 24 miles each way between Hometown and Northward town,
where trucking school is! I have regular access to a motorized vehicle now!
Wasn't that crazy generous of Retired Friend? Cuh-razy generous.
You know what having access to this car means? It means I won't have
to stay in a homeless shelter in Northward town, as I'd expected, and
it means I can still work at the library on nights and weekends to
pay for gas, and I can stay living at my brother's for the next
month, which means I can maintain my access to a daily shower and a
kitchen to cook my foods and a washer and dryer to wash my clothes!
How fucking exciting is that?
I just hope the car starts tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
I say that because it wouldn't start Thursday morning or Friday
morning. It needed a new starter, and it got one on Friday, but now
I'm worried that I'll get into the driver's seat one of these frigid
mornings and the car won't start again, and then I'll miss school,
and then I'll get washed back or I'll fail out or get an "I"
for incomplete coursework. ERMAGERD!
That little speck of car trouble, which Retired Friend paid for and
not me (see: crazy generous), reminded me of why I'd rather just live
in a pedestrian-friendly area and skip car ownership altogether. You
just never know when a car is going to break down and leave you
stranded on the side of a desolate highway during a raging blizzard
on a holiday weekend when no repair shops are open, or leave you
stuck in the middle of a busy intersection all embarrassed because
your decrepit car is the one causing a traffic jam and you can barely
scrape together enough money to cover the towing bill, much less the
huge repair bill.
You guys, I haven't had to deal with car maintenance and repair
issues since 2006. That was the last time someone let me use their
car for a number of weeks. I like driving rental cars and borrowing
other people's cars and such, but the thought of owning a car
makes me want to rock back and forth and suck my thumb, it makes me
so anxious. No matter what anyone tells you, there is no such thing
as a "reliable car." They're all pieces of shit that can
and will break down at any moment.
A lot can go wrong with a bicycle too, or a moped, or any mechanical
form of transportation. The only thing that has never failed me
are my own feet and legs, which is why I prefer walking over anything. When I was a young whippersnapper back in the day, we didn't have a
car because we were always broke, but sometimes when I
needed a ride somewhere, I'd call one of my older siblings, and
they'd either get really irritated and angry and begrudgingly say
yes, or they'd flat out refuse. "What, are your legs broken?"
they'd say. Or, "You've got two legs—use 'em!" So I
grew up doing a LOT of walking and a lot of bicycle riding, through
ice storms and lightning storms and pouring rain and dangerous wind
chills and tornado sirens blaring. I walked to school and back every
day until 8th grade, when I started taking the city bus.
I've always marveled at kids whose parents drove them to and from
school every single day, and I've often fantasized about what it must
be like to have parents who do that. What a nice, cozy, luxurious
feeling that must be! And to have that kind of luxury every day, no less? Wow.
What's really weird is that the kids who had that luxury growing up
don't see what the big deal is. They don't even CARE, and that
fascinates me. Jennifo told me that her parents always gave her a
ride and she never once walked to school, and who do you think was wildly jealous
about that, hmm?
One opinion of mine that hasn't changed a bit since I was 5 is, If
you have a car, you're rich. People who own cars can insist up
and down that they're poor, but there's nothing they can do or say to
make me believe them. If you can walk outside and open a car door
and get inside and go somewhere in that car, not just on one or two
special days per year, but every single day, face it, man—you are
rich. When I see pictures of traffic jams, the first thing I think
is, Wow, look at all those rich people. How did almost everyone
in the US get so fucking rich? It's just obnoxious how so many
people here are rich, and they won't even acknowledge it.
So today when I got into the car that Retired Friend has lent me, it started up, and I got to scrape the frost off the windows, and I filled the tank with gas at a real gas station, and I got a $5 car wash, and I felt really rich. Rich like Robert
Mugabe. Rich like Imelda Marcos. Rich like Snooki.
Anyway, because a lot of major things in my life have been comically
bad over the 8 months, I recently decided to start a gratitude
journal. Have you heard of these? It's a little record that you
keep of things that are going right in your life, things that you're
thankful for. They can be big important things, or mundane everyday
things. I already do this in my head all the time, but I keep
hearing from other people that actually writing all this stuff down
changes your whole attitude and therefore your whole life, and helps
you focus on positivity instead of negativity.
So on Christmas Day I started my gratitude journal in a little blank
book, and so far I've listed 37 things. I definitely listed Retired Friend's car offer, and my friends and family of course. Other than that, though, I
feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to be
happy about. Most of my entries are big-picture items, like how I'm
glad I was born in a developed country that has a decent
infrastructure and which looks down upon female circumcision. Or how
I'm glad I've never been raped or tortured or beaten with a baseball
bat, have never been stabbed or shot, and how I'm not missing any
body parts. Those are all things to be grateful for, to be sure, but
writing them down just reminds me that millions of people don't have
those luxuries, and that life is a violent struggle for any living
organism, and that makes me sad. So the trend has been that I sit
down with my book feeling neutral, and then I list some things to be
glad about, and then I feel sad and guilty and not glad at all. What
the fuck, man?
Then I tried writing down a few materials or services that I'm
thankful for, such as food, clothing, electricity and running water,
a smartphone, and this Netbook that I'm typing on, but that only
reminded me that the reason I can afford these things is because
they're made using non-renewable resources and processes that emit
plumes of greenhouse gases, and assembled by poor people who are
treated like slaves in horrible sweatshops. And that only reminded
me that no matter what we buy or make, where we go, what we do or eat, we're destroying something. And it reminds me of those
religious people who thank their god for blessing them with material
possessions, but who can't answer why god would "bless"
some countries so much and others so little, or why those material
"blessings" are constructed under such filthy and inhumane
conditions by marginalized people, to be consumed by those with wealth and power.
Suffice it to say that my gratitude journal has inspired me to feel not grateful, but pathetic. I feel like I'm looking at a terrible wreck where a car
has been totaled and several people are dead, and I'm the goon
standing there saying, "Well, at least the left rear hubcap was
spared!" I dunno...maybe I'm doing it wrong. Or maybe this
whole gratitude journal idea is just
some stupid pop-psych gimmick and I've fallen for it like a schmuck.
Which, you know...great.
Well, I AM thankful that Christmas is over, and I am thankful for New Year's Eve. Once again I went out with Jennifo,
because we've promised each other we'll always be together on New
Year's Eve no matter what. We originally dreamed big dreams for this
New Year's shindig--Hawaii or Costa Rica or Rio de Janeiro. But since we
both have a serious case of the No Moneys virus, we looked at the
International Directory of Hottest Party Spots, and what was next on
the list after Rio? Milwaukee, Wisconsin, bitches.
I like to be inside where my sequins and tulle are safe and warm.
Observe:
As per tradition, we got our gowns at Goodwill. My blue one was $20,
and Jen's black one was $30, and we found them in less than an hour.
Mine was a much better fit than the one I had last year, so it did
not succumb to the wiles of gravity during the festivities and expose the ol' mams.
Aside from stopping at an Irish bar for dancing and free food, and at
the old Pabst brewery for more free food, Jen and I also attended a
comedy show at a fancy wine bar in downtown Milwaukee. The cover was
only $10, which should have been a red flag.
There were three comedians—and I'm using that word loosely—and a
host. I'm not kidding when I say the host was the funniest of the
lot. Jen and I have attended several comedy shows over the years,
mostly really good ones, but a few bad ones, and I think this one was the
worst we'd ever seen. All three of these turkeys were from
Minneapolis, and apparently they were all friends with each other, so
I'm thinking the wine bar probably threw auditions to the wind and hired these guys using a package-deal coupon,
like "Three Comedians for $5!"
What made them so terrible? Well, for starters, all three of them
took paper notes (!) up to the microphone with them, and after
each joke, they'd turn to the paper to see which joke they were
supposed to tell next. I am not making that up. Like, their fingers
would actually move down the paper searching for the next joke to
tell. If the jokes had been real zingers, I might have forgiven the
lack of memorization and rehearsal, but they were lame and not funny
at all. For instance, the first comedian, who was a woman about mine
and Jen's age, was saying that she told her graduate school advisor
that she wanted to study public policy and comedy. "Yeah,
public policy and comedy," the woman said, nodding her head
slowly. She paused for a moment, waiting for the audience to laugh.
No one did. In fact, the longer she talked, the more sedate the
audience got, and after about 10 minutes of her "jokes," I
was in the mood for a nap. "You are way funnier than that
chick," Jen said to me in a secretive manner.
The second comedian, a male, was just as bad, and the third one, also
a male, was okay, but definitely still an amateur. I don't know if
these three kids were just trying to fill a semester requirement for
comedy school or what, but they kept pointing out that they were
comedians standing at a microphone telling jokes, and I couldn't
understand why. Stand-up works best when the comedian is just
telling a funny story the way a good friend would, using a relaxed,
conversational tone and weaving jokes seamlessly into the
conversation. It doesn't work so great when the comedian stands up there saying, "Hey audience, I'm a comedian, and I'm going to stand up here and tell you some jokes." It's like the difference between how a child tells a
joke and an adult tells a joke. A child will loudly announce, "Hey,
you wanna hear a joke? I'm gonna tell a joke! Are you ready? Okay,
knock knock...blah blah blah...Get it? Do you get my joke? Wasn't
that a funny joke? Okay, I'm gonna tell another joke, and this one's
gonna be REALLY funny!" Whereas an adult will just slip a
little something absurd into an otherwise ordinary sentence, and
because it catches people off guard, it's funny. The teller doesn't
announce that they've just told a joke, because the humor should
speak for itself.
But these three knuckleheads, after each joke of theirs would flop,
they wouldn't transition to the next joke, but they'd say things
like, "Wow, you guys don't like that one? Well, it went over
really well in Minneapolis." Then they'd go back to their paper
list and say (out loud, mind you), "Let's see, I told that
joke, I told that joke, I told that joke...okay, I've
got two jokes left."
That was how I knew that we could leave soon. Okay, he's only got
two jokes left. That's about five minutes, right? Then we can make
like a tree and go somewhere else. Guuhhh...please hurry up. I'm
dying.
And this went on for an hour. I swear each "joke"
was like a tranq dart that made my blood pressure drop lower and
lower. The rest of the audience seemed to be falling into the same
coma, because those comedians had turned a loud and boisterous bar
into a mausoleum. Hardly anyone was laughing.
You know, as someone who is planning on attending comedy school
within the next year, I was kind of reconsidering my openness to
doing stand-up. I mean, what if I get the "crickets" one
day? What if I invent some jokes which seem hilarious to me, and I
smooth them out into a routine, and I try it out on friends and
family and classmates, and they all think it's hysterical, and then I
try it out on a real audience and they don't laugh at all, and then I
go home and cry and hate myself and get drunk to Bonnie Raitt's "I
Can't Make You Love Me"?
Well that'll never happen, you silly—I'm allergic to alcohol!
Hence, the Shirley Temples and root beer.
Hence the rampant tooth decay. Hence the lack of funds for my own
car. Hence the shitty life. Hence the gratitude journal. Hence the
realization that life is inherently shitty and that nothing will ever
get better because life is a cycle of trading one set of problems for
another.
Happy New Year!
Oh, and I also cleaned up that last post a bit. I had published it
when I was in a hurry, and parts of it were kinda sloppy and needed
some kneading and smoothing and palpating. And I added a few more
JOKES! You wanna hear some JOKES? Are you ready for some JOKES?
Get it? Did you get my JOKES? Weren't those some funny JOKES from
my paper list of JOKES? Okay, I've got two jokes left, and they're
REALLY FUNNY!
I'm going straight to hell. I will not pass go, I will not collect $200.
Therefore, I mustache you to pass me some ice.