I'm Gonna Shout It Till They Cut Out My Tongue

I made my way back to Northside Diner, the underworld of my hometown, this morning.

This time I brought a friend to the secrecy of it all, a good friend from high school, Allie.  We met at 8.

"8 o' clock?! That early?  Do you have plans for the rest of the day?"

 It's in pink because she is a girl.  And I said to her, "No, but I like getting up early for breakfast or it doesn't feel like breakfast!"

That was in normal color because I'm a boy.

So it was agreed, and I flopped like a landed fish out of bed ten minutes till 8 AM.  Hit the restroom, pet the dogs and use an annoying voice to greet them this morning, and then put on my shoes and fly out the door.  I make it to Northside Diner at 8 sharp, and she isn't there yet.  Girls...can't live with em, can't cook and clean without em.

Well she was only 1 minute late so it isn't a huge deal.  She found me in the back corner, one booth past the one I sat in for the experience that prompted my previous post about the underworld.  She heads over as I am receiving coffee from the waitress.  We take about ten minutes to order because we're too busy trying to catch up at first glance that we haven't even looked at the menu.  Or I haven't anyway.  The first time the waitress comes back for our order, I haven't even touched a menu.

If you're a true fan of me, you'll know that I ordered 'Two in the Nest' at my last visit to Northside.  I order it again, and Allie gets "Short Chicks', which is eggs, toast, and a short stack of pancakes.  If you're wondering if the blog post gets any better than talking about what was ordered, the answer is no.  Nothing cool happens, so you could just go now.  Go read a dictionary, or go cut your nails, or go pee your name on a wall.  All are exponentially more intense than the remainder of this post.

If you're still here, I applaud your lack of desire to be entertained.

Anyhow, we got to chatting about all sorts of stuff over the course of nearly three hours.  And I think the thought that has stuck with me the most is that of how I define age.  I believe it is erroneous to measure someone's age in years, but rather their inability to hope or dream anymore.  I know people my age, in years, who are old men already.

Allow me to explain.  Running in the same vein of my past posts, I will dip into hippie terms like "The System", "The Man", and "Spontaneous Cerebral Re-Unification".  That last one isn't really a hippie term, just kind of a made up word I use to describe hippies and that whole "Enlightenment via Drugs" thing.  Anyhow, on to the complaints about "The Man"!

"The System" is hard to beat, and easy to join.  By "The System", I mean society in general and the views it has of the world.  Main parameters of thought that "The System" operates within include, but are not limited to: "Things can not be changed", "Money will give you what you want", "If you can't succeed alone, you won't succeed at all", and etc.  The one that I mainly want to focus on is "Things can not be changed."  I think this is the biggest of them all because once you accept that nothing can be changed, you can accept every other societal norm of America.

Using the societal norm that I learned in public school, about how I should arrange my thoughts, I have surmised my thesis.  Ahem.

"Age is not a count of how many years one has.  Age is one of two things, either young or old, and whether you are one or the other is decided by the presence or absence of hope."

When you give up because fighting "The System" is harder than joining it, you have aged.  You are old.  And as soon as you join it, you begin saying things like "Politics will never change.  They're all about money and it's no use anymore", or "The environment has been screwed for centuries", or "Every man/woman is the same", or "Money can get someone out of anything".

Now, some of those points may not be totally untrue.  But as an individual recites them with dreary eyes and shaking head, the meaning behind the words shouts "...And it can't ever be changed!"

It's the most disheartening to see my uncles and aunts talk about how "The System" is the only way, yadda yadda, but they spent their entire youths fighting it.  When did they lose, or should I say, when did they choose to lose?

Carl and Ellie, still dreaming and hoping.

Carl devoid of hope.

I may become just like them.  I may fall in line with the rest of the drones, plug into the mainframe of "The System" and offer my small contribution to the hive mind setup.  Granted, some small acceptances of "The System" are acceptable to me.  If a situation arises where one needs money to support others, resigning one's dreams for a certain job to take that which is presented is a good choice.  But signing yourself away because humming along with the masses is easy, and maintaining your own melody is just too hard to focus on with all the dissonance, that is what it means to become old.

Like I said, I may become and old man in a year or two.  I would like to think that this isn't the case, but I'm not naieve enough to think that I am beyond surrender to "The System".  Countless flower children and activists of the sixties and seventies resigned to the norm, and they stand out as one of the most crusading generations of American history.  I may too fall into an exhausted acceptance of the system.

But I'm young now, my tongue is sharp, and my senses keen.  As a young'un, I'm going to stand as one who says that things can be changed.  They shush me frequently, but I shout louder.  And if I wasn't shouting louder in response to every person that raised a pointer finger across their pursed lips with an intense glare, it would be a big step towards becoming an old man.

I Ain't No Fool, And I Don't Take What I Don't Want

Is there any limit to what we won't eat on Thanksgiving?

That question is half-serious, because I am curious to find out if there is any limit. 

Thanksgiving is becoming gay.  Not in like "I like other holidays" sort of gay, but in the "I am stupid" sort of gay.  It has lost it's appeal.  Food?  We have a holiday about food?  It's good but come on, everything else has a purpose.  Christmas, whether or not PC America admits it, is about Jesus being born.  Easter, whether or not PC America admits it, is about Jesus being dead and resurrected.  Halloween, whether or not PC America admits it, is about candy and not whorish self-expression.  Sweetest Day, whether or not PC America admits it, is about...what the heck is Sweetest Day about anyhow?  The only good it ever did me was spending a crap ton of money on a date because it was a special day.  It's like an amateur's Valentine's Day, and it sounds like it's a day dedicated to the Swiss.  Sweetest Day is also gay, along with Thanksgiving.

And I'll tell you why it's gay.  Come on children, grab a spot on the floor by the fireplace, and I'll tell you why Thanksgiving is so gay.  What's that Timmy?  What's gay mean?  Ask your daddy.  Anyhow, moving on.

I gathered with my family at my grandparents this year, like every year. And like every year, no one was really thankful.  A cousin griped, one of my uncles, the know-it-all, whined about how everything in life is a dang conspiracy to keep people like him down (which is an attitude only a chronic victim could have), we all prayed the cookie-cutter prayer we always pray.

 

"Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, the Lord of Liquor and Nicotine. Amen"

That Jesus fits my family well.  And that prayer is such a joke.  In Catholic school, before and after every meal, we raced to finish that prayer like a priest raced to pull up his pants when the altar boy's parents came to pick him up from his office.

If that offends you, that sucks.  Anyhow, the prayer is begun and ended with the ritualistic "In the name of the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit", with a matching sign language game.  Now I know where rappers get the idea to make up dances for their songs, Catholic prayers.  It makes everyone want to listen to the song even if it sucks.  My little cousin sits across the island counter and does it all with a vacant look in his eyes, and doesn't understand any of it, but he does it because the weight of the family's disapproval is more than he can bear.  Bring it on I say, I used to bench near my body weight.

I don't finish all of my food because I am full.  On my way to scrape it, the people around me who call me family but have a history of thinking me to be a lost sheep with dirty fur, ask me things like "You aren't going to finish that?" or "That's all you're eating?", as if to say more concisely, "Aren't you thankful you impetuous little bastard?"  I prepare for the spiel about starving children in Africa.  It never comes, but I offer my rebuttal anyway.  I pose my train of thought: "I find it more a disservice to said starving children to eat things that I don't even want than it is to let it go to waste.  They can't even eat what they do want because it isn't there, and I would have the nerve to eat stuff I don't want but eat anyway just because the alternative is a trash bin and I'm too greedy to see it fall into a bag, out of my control?  I doubt starving children would enjoy seeing me stuff my face with food I was not enthusiastic about because I wasn't hungry anymore."

I am sure this child would love to watch me stuff my face with food I don't want because my belly is so full that it is the size of his torso by now.

I didn't say all of that, but much of it.  They look at me in mild confusion, because to them, thankfulness is the act of consumption.  I'm so thankful, om nom nom.  They should call Thanksgiving "America Day" because the whole thing is so superfluously consumerist and aristocratic.  I think when I have a family I may have to start celebrating it every other year, because maybe that is the reason people come to my grandma's house annually on this date and complain about who was not acting her age at the workplace, or the prick who cut them off in traffic, or the slutty girl who took their boyfriend.  I left early, and the only person who seemed to think I was leaving anything special was my Mom, but she gets like that for every family function period, so I doubt she even really feels like it's about anything real.

     And tonight I went to my grandma's house on my dad's side of the family, and it wasn't nearly as bad, but some elements of what makes Thanksgiving gay existed.  My whiny cousin of immeasurable negativism was griping about how there was no cheesy broccoli rice, even though it was given to my grandma, and all she had to do was heat it up.  She implies with this statement that my grandma is a stupid old person who couldn't follow instructions, and just threw the broccoli out, almost like "Well shucks, it's cold.  Later Mr. Cheesy Broccoli Rice."  My stepsister joined in, but was more silly about it.  I said aloud, "Man, let's focus on everything we don't have for Thanksgiving."  The cousin continued on griping, repeating exactly what she said about how all she had to do...and I repeated exactly what I said.  Let's just focus on everything we don't have for thanksgiving.  She grimaced as if I forgot that she likes to only piss and moan and never to accept that God places some things that are good around us.  Later that night, her whiny mom griped about her whiny daughter and all the problems that exist in her relationship and why she hates whiny cousin's whiny boyfriend.

For crying out loud.  Thanksgiving doesn't get any simpler in it's literal meaning.  Give thanks.  For anything.  I'm thankful for a crap-ton of stuff.  That's the second time I've said crap-ton in one post, I better chill with that one.  But really, a poo-load of stuff.  Friends, the sun, food, family, girls and their inherent beauty (both inner and outer), that God cares that I exist while many do not, that a world exists where if I want to, I can cut and run.  I'm thankful that I can go buy something to eat within ten minutes of feeling hungry, though some places exist where children murder each other with their bare, frail hands for the equivalent of a saltine cracker.  I'm thankful that gravity and the atmosphere work like they do.  I'm thankful that I can type and have hands, can speak and have a mind.  I'm thankful that cars go, dogs bark, kisses taste sweet, and rejection tastes bitter.  Those are all in no arranged order by the way.

Stuff that you look at or think about and feel wonder or amazement, that's what you are thankful for.

So what are you thankful for?  Not just the givens, like friends and family, but real stuff, real stuff that is worth taking some time to think about.  Don't even tell anyone, unless you realize one of your hidden gratitudes is to someone, just keep it in your head and use it to remind you of life being beautiful even when you have to dress it up in pounds of makeup to make it presentable. 

Hello Old Friend

  WARNING! TIME TRAVEL MAY BE HARMFUL TO THE CROTCH!  

If there is anyone out there, anyone listening, anyone reading, do me a favor.

     Pick an old friend you were once close to and re-connect with them.  People talk about time travel as if it doesn't exist.  I've not read a single book by Stephen Hawking or built a single machine worth anything, but I discovered time travel tonight talking to an old friend. 

     What about time travel to the future, you may ask?  Connect with a new friend.  We are all each others' futures.

No One Here...But Me and God

     I have come to an odd state of mind lately.  Talking to a friend from home about college, I nearly subconsciously divulged that I would love to sell my belongings, buy a van and food, and travel America helping people.  Every broken down car, hitchhiker, beggar, what have you.  Before I realized it, I was fired up and excited about what I wasn't even making preparations to do. 

     Hold the phone, you (and society) say.  What about being respectable?  What about college?  If not a prerequisite for a career, it's at least a prerequisite for social acceptance.  The friends I've shared my desire with seem to raise the eyebrows to the ceiling, wondering if it would be rude to laugh at my idea.  The bottom line is that I feel like being where I am is a lame idea.  As my good buddy Brad Kinnison said, "It feels kind of silly to be Christians in a Christian school with other Christians talking about what it means to be a Christian."  What he is getting at is this:  We can talk, or do.  The time we spend here feeling good and faithful could be spent making a difference that goes beyond having a fun time meeting new people in college or working towards a career we may not understand the appeal of.  God doesn't call people to discuss and debate, he just calls them to do.  I feel like, if God could offer his view on the topic verbally to us in conversation, he would say "Well, you can either talk about what should be done...or just do it.  No wasted time, no arguments, just action and change."

     The prophet Jeremiah is approximated by historians to be the age of 19 when he began his minsitry.  I am 19.  Society was probably telling him he needed to work in an apprenticeship or start building a flock and finding a wife.  Society is telling me I need to build credentials and a career and find a wife out of one of the many lovely women at Olivet Nazarene University.  No sarcasm in that last bit, by the way.  God told Jeremiah, "No, no.  Forget all that.  Is your faith about ME, or society?  And I know it sounds crazy and dangerous, but I will protect you."  God is asking me via the world I view around me and how I view it, "Is your faith about ME, or about this, which society and especially the Christian community try to tell you is about me?"  While I've hit that note, I'll expound.  When did it become the Christian thing to do to go to college?  I feel like if I told my parents I want to be a nomadic philanthropist (except without the years of college and expensive artwork in my house), they would think that I was running from God's call to me to be responsible, they would view me as an angel fallen from my potential, an angel who decided to sin because he didn't want to conform.  Like I can't serve Him without a college degree.  Ultimately, do I want to serve myself and society with this life, or Him?

                                    Who should I help?

    People often say they want to serve God, but then take their situation and just modify it a tiny bit to appear as service.  I do believe that we can serve God wherever we are, but too many people use their own plans and those of society as excuses to not go do something radical for God.  "I would love to do that, but, I have math homework."  God gives less that zero craps about math.  It's not a sin to not do homework or feel like college isn't for you.  Society says so, using one hand against their cheek like half of a megaphone, and using the other to try and shove God into the box known as "Societal Norms and Procedures", but I believe it is not.

     A side note, if it weren't for me feeling like I'm chatting with God right now, I wouldn't be blogging.  No one reads my posts anymore.  In the words of a song me and the band I'm in wrote, "No one here, but me and God."

     Anyhow, that's where I'm at right now.  Wanting to be more than society says is acceptable.  The real kicker is that I can't just leave and be God's worker.  I can, but I know I'll flake out.  The urge to fly the coop is not that strong yet.  There's always talk of a revolution long before someone has the guts to incite rebellion.

     It is awfully romantic to think of this as a rebellion.  The important thing to keep in mind is that I am a rebel with a cause.

That's The Way It Should Be, Like A Leaf Is To A Tree, So Fine.

     Only God, me, my mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparents, and a few friends from college know why on God's green earth, I, Evan Lane, would be awake at 5 AM.  I mean to get up, not because I hadn't gone to bed.  For those of you who don't know, it's nothing sinister as my narrative implies.  But as it stood, I was awake.  4:30 AM to be exact.  I grab Ted Dekker's Thr3e and read through to the end, I only had about 50 pages left.  I recommend it, great twists and a suspenseful story.  A bit lame in the slang he uses at times, but that's okay.  I move on to Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts and read about 6 pages.  I am inspired by his tale of leaving everything to go on a trip to just live.  I fling myself out of bed, get dressed, and am about to fish through the cupboards for some breakfast when I remember Dunkin Donuts.  America runs on Dunkin you know.  I can understand why, their croissant breakfast sandwiches are to die for.  Or to run for.  Whatever.

     I was fresh out of cash so I decide to stop at the ATM before heading to Dunkin Donuts.  I planned to get a breakfast sandwich, coffee, and come back home to sit down and plot out a trip out West.  To the romance of the untamed world, roadside kingdoms, deserted oases, nature preserves unmatched in beauty, somber views of ghost towns that brought both sadness and happiness because like a friend who has watched a friend suffer in their last moments of life, it is known that while we wish they were still here, their presence would be dilapidated, forced, difficult.  This was my plan.  As it were, it was not God's plan.  Right across from the ATM sits a retro diner, Northside Diner.  I hadn't eaten there in ages and decided to go eat there rather than Dunkin Donuts.  The croissant sandwiches could be eaten anywhere at anytime.  I was only home on sparse occasions, and only awake in time for Northside breakfast on even sparser occasion.  I contemplate going home to get a book or newspaper to read.  I decide that I could use the time to soak in the cool atmosphere and just think.  It was one of the better decisions I'd made in awhile.

     I walk in the door to see six old men spread throughout the cafe, some in groups, some by themselves.  Those that sit alone sit far enough away to not intrude, but close enough to be able to commune and share stories when the time called for a recital.  They see me, and all seem to wonder who told the young guy that there is a life that can be lived before 12 PM.  I settle in to a booth near the back.  The seat is uncomfortable and I think about switching booths or sides but decide that I can bear the imperfection.  Further, I must bear it if I want the charm of this place.  It isn't that the place isn't a good establishment.  Only some traits are a bit ramshackle.  The food is not one of these traits, nor is the Wurlitzer jukebox that runs in perfect condition, nor are the framed hit records from different years joined by the original score sheets showing the top 30 hits from that day in that year.  If I was alone I would walk around and read each one, but it seemed that in that situation, not too many men would appreciate my jacket dropping dog hair into their coffee or eggs while I crane to read which song by Dion and the Belmonts or Diana Ross and The Supremes held the top spot.

     A nice woman comes to my table, "Coffee?"  "Yes, please.  Thank you."  I reach for a cream and two sugars.  It tastes delicious, and I peruse the menu.  Looking past Abbot and Costello, scanning just above Frank Sinatra's head, and glancing next to Elvis to realize he's on the lunch page, flip back to to the breakfast section.  Abbot and Costello suggest "Two in the Nest" a hearty dish of two eggs, potatoes and toast as you order them, and corned beef hash.  Coming in close second and third are "Two Chicks Went To Idaho", the same as "Two in the Nest" but without corned beef hash, and "Stacked Chicks", the same but with biscuits and gravy underneath it all.  I place my order and sit back soaking in the charm that our world has forgotten.  I know we haven't forgotten, and that we forcefully repressed the old.  I just prefer to think that we wouldn't forsake something so cool, so warming, on purpose.  I begin to find myself listening to the stories that surround me.

      Gripes about the nature of women, tall tales of when is best to go fishing, how crops are going, dramatic lovers who had a gunfight (I found this hilarious, shame on me), war stories of a personal medical nature (though I know some of them had real war stories too), and other assorted limericks and melodramas worked their way through the room around me.  I smiled with each, and wonder if any of them saw the weird young guy who was not only awake but sat with a queer smirk on his face while they had their day.  I was an intruder, it was clear that everyone else had undergone the necessary hours and initiations to be included as a regular.  Nonetheless, I enjoy my time as an alien.  I come in peace.  I merely enjoy observation.  I don't have any tubes or probes or cameras or forceps.  With my ears and eyes I dissect the little world inside Northside Diner, scraping away the years these men showed in their beard and sagging faces.  I see them with sweethearts, pals, Letterman's jackets.  The Wurlitzer doesn't sit quietly as it does now.  I prod around with my visual tweezers and it begins to rudely play an Elvis tune.  Upon the use of a magnifying glass, the waitress is wearing a long skirt and hair in a mature pony tail.  She wears signature 50's glasses, walks with a dignified kindness, and makes this little place her mission.  People laugh and eat and don't ever consider the fact that they will one day be what I see now.  They are young for eons, and never do they say never.  They are fighters, builders, formers of the world we know now, blazers of the trail the youth of today are straying from with machetes in hand, slicing away the vegetation of society that says "You don't walk here!  The trail is that way!  Ow!"  In a peculiar way, they are following the trail of the people they are wandering from because the past generation did the same thing, as did the one before it.  A generation cannot be called a generation of its own if it doesn't stray and head into certain doom like the past generation did.

     I realize that across the restaurant is a man named Steve DePung.  I don't know how to spell his name but this is how it is said.  Steve taught me how to shake hands.  My mom's side of the family is large and somewhat of a dynasty in my hometown.  I met Steve at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) when some family function rented it out.  I was introduced to hi by my older cousin Mark.  Mark is a Marine, and Steve is a Marine.  I look up to Mark and Mark looks up to Steve and therefore, I look up to Steve.  I shake his hand, saying hello meekly.  His large white beard and stern frame make me shy away from eye contact and a firm grip.  He shakes my limp fish of a hand and stops.  Like a lumberjack he bellows "Hell no!  That isn't how you shake a hand.  You look the man straight in the eye, let him know you're his equal.  Firm grip.  Yeah just like that."  He walked away seeming a bit flustered, unsure of if we will survive the coming decades if youth like me are going to be at the helm.  Later that same night I met another man through my cousin Mark, and put Steve's lesson into practice.  The man seems intrigued and says, "Now that's a handshake.  You're going to be one helluva man someday."  I don't remember his name.  I think it's funny that we remember those who compliment us greatly less than we do those who chastise and teach us something that we didn't know before.  I'm glad this is the case though.

    This is the underworld of my hometown.  Boisterous youth doing pot and having sex behind their parents' back think they are the underworld.  But they're not.  The underworld is something that is forgotten, invigorating, and flagged by the rest of society as wrong.  The six men and few women working this Diner are the underworld.  I am pleased to be able to be a part of it all, if only for a few minutes.  I'm there for a half hour maybe, probably less.  As Steve gets up to leave, I follow him to the register.  After he pays he tells a man a story and in his passion almost bumps into me backwards.  He doesn't notice and I happily move aside a bit.  The man he is talking to notices and grins at me but Steve doesn't turn around.  I pay my bill, 9 dollars.  I pay with a twenty and leave the waitress the rest.  She strikes me as the waitress who cares for each customer as her own kin, and like many mothers, receives far less than she gives.  I know I can't rectify this with a ten dollar tip, but mothers scarcely want more than the occasional show of generosity.  They ought to desire more, but they're mothers and that's why they behave that way.

     I stand awkwardly and wait for Steve to say his goodbyes and follow him out.  Clear of the others, I say "Steve?"  He turns slowly and surely, and I say "Evan Lane."  I shake his hand firm and look him dead in the eye.  "You taught me how to shake hands like this."  He looks a bit puzzled and then laughs.  He doesn't remember me yet, but I'll bet he frequently corrects those who shake hands as though they are sickly.  I continue, "We met at a Ruge family function at the VFW, you know Mark Strudas obviously.  He's my older cousin, he introduced us.  I shook your hand like I was terrified and looked down and you pounced to correct me.  'Hell no!  That's not how you shake hands!  You shake it firm, look 'em dead in the eye.'"  He lets out a big cackle like only an old jolly man with more stories and scars than most other people can.  "I remember that!  Shoot, that was a while back."  I say, "You know, a lot of people have given me advice but none of it has ever been so clear and helpful as the advice you gave me that day.  He lets out a quick breath in a 'hmmm' shape, and says he was glad I told him that.  I go on, "I'm a freshman in college and I'm surprised how many grown men don't know how to shake hands.  There's obviously a lot more to a person than a handshake, but there is a lot that can be told and a lot in our perception of a man from a handshake."  He agrees.  He goes on about how he works with boy scouts at the VFW sometimes still, and I've not the slightest clue where this topic comes from.  Old people do this though, and I appreciate the awkwardness of the moment.  We chat a bit more, and I thank him again.  I  get in my car and leave behind this underworld of smiles and laughter and old friends that exists right beneath the nose of the world that says grimaces and sneers are the new way to go.

     I arrive home and my head swims with inspiration for what I'm writing right now.  I remember, and will for a long time, this trip to the underworld that warmed me inside and reminded me that there's not only a life to be lived before 12 PM, but that it is wholly superior to the life after noon.

They're All Off Without You, Having Fun

Seriously.

     Goodbye son!  Enjoy college!  We'll be here, don't worry.  Not doing anything fun and leaving you out or anything like that.  There is that one cruise in the Caribbean though, but it's only like 5 days long.  All sorts of food and beautiful weather and destinations.  No worries.  The people are really personable and the activities are really intriguing.  Nothing you'd be into.

     I wish I could tell you that was another one of my fictitious rambles, but it was totally true.  In different words, sure, but totally true.

     It's a nice day, I wake up early, grab some coffee, watch some videos online, creep some potential soulmates on facebook, weep a bit, and then get ready to go.  Go where, one might ask?  To take my parents to the airport, and then to go back to college.  My parental units will be enjoying their week on a cruise ship.  I will be enjoying my week in a dorm that smells like old buttery garlic pizza dipping sauce, wishing I understood the appeal of the double-bass and screaming duet that is unabashedly blaring its way out of my roommates iPod docking station.

I hear he does lovely needlepoint work.

    It's not all that bad.  I'll make it through.  But not with sea turtles or tropical islands or free steak buffets.  

     I feel like I need another picture here.  Does google do searches for "funny but random pictures" that actually return stuff that people above the age of 14 will find humorous?  Ha, look at me asking you.  Why not just ask google myself?  Relationships are so much harder with a go-between.

This is the first one that google returned.  I'm slightly humored, but mostly just annoyed that the taker of this photo, presumably the homeowner, thinks the dog should care about renovation and maintenance of the building shown above.  Let him do his thing.  He's a dog.  Shouldn't you be angry that politicians don't want to come over and fix your holes in the wall for you?

That's better.  He makes house calls I hear, especially since elections are approaching again.

Been a Long Time, Been a Long Time, Been a Long Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely Time

It's been forever since I've posted here!  I've been rather occupied with college and the accompanying social conundrums (think "pizza or burgers" and "sleep or hang out").  Blogging is something I do miss dearly and would like to re-commit to soon.  But for now this is just a "Wow, it's been forever since we've talked.  See ya."

See ya.