The Human Stain

So we did the Halloween Pub Crawl. Lots of drinking. After nights like that, I'm always amazed when I wake up with all of the things I started the night with.

Phone. Keys. Wallet. Jacket. Cooler. Cowboy hat. All that shit.

Portyed hard, got it good and turnt. And I held on to all of my stuff. The thing I wanted the most, though, that wasn't mine to begin with- I  lost it. Let me explain:


At the end of the night, I found a parrot on the ground. A pirate's parrot, no doubt. Fake, but it was fucking gorgeous. The plumage, the eyes, the quality of construction- I was in love. Tucked it into my jacket. It barely fit, but it fit. I was too stoked for words. It was going in a bookcase in my bedroom and it was really gonnna tie the room together.

I call it a night, and I start walking. I walk fast- big strides.

Caught up with a crowd. In said crowd were two dudes, and they were jawing. Shit-talking. Well, one was, anyway. He was the aggressor, and he was obviously a prick.

"You just better leave it alone, dog. 'Cause tonight ain't your night. For real, you don't wanna see me go there."

Shit like that. On and on and fucking on. You could tell he was a reader.

I decided I was gonna bump into him. Not dead-on, just give him some shoulder. So I do. Caught him with the shoulder, knocked him off kilter a bit.

 He turned to see whodunnit, and I'm standing there- and he didn't say shit. Not a word. Just turned back around and kept going. Stopped him from bad-mouthing the other guy for about three seconds. But then he was back on him.

So I start walking again, and I'm laughing about it. Walking and giggling. Didn't notice until I was practically home- I had lost the fucking parrot. It could only have happened when I bumped into that dude.

Karma, I guess. Shouldn't have done that, so I didn't get to keep my new pet. If I could go back, I would do it differently. I felt kinda cool for about thirty seconds. The parrot would've lasted a lot longer than that. Definitely wasn't worth losing that bird.

At Both Ends

Kim baked brownies. My friends sang happy birthday to me. I wished to make it to seventy. Then I tried to blow out the candle- but I didn't get it on the first go.

Guess seventy isn't gonna happen. That's okay. Fifty would be nice.

Supernaut

"We sold our sole for rock n' roll."

Through and Through

There's this quote that I really enjoy, from John Waters. I've told most everyone I know, but I wanted to type it out anyway. Set in in visual stone.

He says, "If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!"

Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

-HST 

"Contrary to what I'd expected, my father did not gloat and my mother did not yell. They were too worried. Both their boys were way off the playground, and nothing they had done had fixed things. After a while, Dad slapped his knees and said we ought to hit the road. He led the way with my suitcase, while mom trailed a step behind. At the bottom of the front steps, Dad suddenly dropped my luggage, turned around, and grabbed Mom by the arms. Because she was still on the steps, they stood at eye level, looking at each other intently. Then they began to shake their heads and cry. My mother sank into my father and they kissed for what seemed a very long time. I had thought that Millie and Nathan Berg hated each other."

When I read that paragraph for the first time, it jogged a memory. I probably re-read it eight or ten times that night, sometimes reading it and other times not really seeing it because I was focusing on that memory. 

Life has, for me, and so far- been impossibly fair. The mercies heaped upon me and mine- too numerous to mention. I'll try one day. 

  But there has been a time or two when, while performing some action, in some place, I've had some thoughts- and among them:

What's happening right now is very big.

My doing this is going to change things. 

These changes may be for the better, or they may not. 

After this, things will never be able to go back to the way they were.

I have to be okay with that, or I'm not gonna make it.

One viewer- A Mr. Dionne from California, who likely didn't consider himself part of the "lower strata"- fired off an angry, rambling letter, complaining haughtily that 'the most disciplined attention I could give [The Cube] was a belch from the grave of Marcus Aurelius, occasioned, I might add, by the dead weight of its own dust caving in on itself.'

 Two weeks later came Jim's one-sentence response:

           Dear Mr. Dionne:

                    What the fuck are you talking about?

                                                      Yours truly, 

                                                                   JIM HENSON