If you're Dean, I guess that makes me Rory. And I'd rather we both be Lorelei.

I cannot begin to imagine it.

 Being faced with such choices.

 Being faced with such a year.

 I barely made it through mine and, let's be frank, comparatively I've had it easy. And I understand, I do, where all the silence comes from. The purpose of it. The need for it, even. But the growth and/or revelations borne of that silence, necessary and important as they may be, do not make it any less lonely or less strange. I understand that our friendship --in it's current state-- is sort of unapproachably overwrought with complexity. A knot too quarrelous and confounding to even begin to untie. But. Here I am, anyway. Planting the seeds of understanding. Of readiness. I look forward to the day we will be able to have our first honest conversation about it. Neither of us hiding behind silence or poetry, respectively. And our first honest conversation not only with each other, but with ourselves.

 If you want to know the truth, there is some level on which we both had to kind of know it was a fantasy. A shared delusion. This sort of thing never ends well. Honestly we're lucky that in the end we didn't hurt anyone but ourselves. And we'll get over it. We got to live, however briefly, in a world with a different history and a more perfect tomorrow. And I loved it. I will cherish it always, our days of future past. All of the wonderful possibilities we shared in our imaginings. At best, at the very best, it was an alternate reality idyll. At worst, I still got a magnificently strange cat.

 I know that you have made your choices, as I have made mine. And I recognize that maybe you might have had some different choices to make if I had made mine differently. If I had truly moved home. And the character I was sort of being maybe might have. An undeniable element of this whole thing was the sort of fast forward timeslip you were shunted into the day you said your vows, and the missing conclusion to your early twenties. The age of heedless folly and capricious romance. And I believe it was, in some sense, a reclamation or a completion of these lost years that led to our brief but precious days. One last halcyon phosphorous flame, but to cauterize rather than to kindle. And so our characters, our lost-past alternate-timeline selves, may have been able to run off into this ideal and optimistic new life together. But I didn't move home and you didn't move out. Because we're old enough to know better. To make the adult decisions. To honor our responsibilities and our commitments and the other trappings of the cages we have placed ourselves in for safety and sanity and survival. But we got --just for a little while-- to be free of them. It was foolish and it was selfish and it was pretending towards a fiction. But a fiction made no less magical by that admission.

 It was what it was and we had what we had. And the decisions we have made and the worlds we have chosen to live in dictate that it must now be over for all time. And even within the bounds of that understanding, I will still cherish it always. But cherish it for what it was. All that being said, though preciousness immeasurable, it was not the weightless happiness of our passions that bolstered me during my father's sickness, with struggling with living so far away, with my various heartbreaks and tragedies and all my minute and dismissible bothers. It was the immovable pillar that is, has been, and will ever be our friendship. Romantic love is a flash in the proverbial pan compared to the strength that we have been to one another over the last decade. And I cannot lose that. I will not. There simply aren't that many people I like well enough to maintain a friendship with for ten years. I can count on fewer fingers those who make that list. You are one of my closest, important, and most cherished friends.

 The truth is that I can probably go on living without you in my life.  But no sane person would ever want to, and I refuse to accept it as even a possibility. I mean it's also technically possible to live your entire life without ever eating a pizza, but I would argue that it pretty severely diminishes the experience of living.

So come on. I'm ready whenever you are. Let's work out how to be Gilmore Girls again.

 I Love you.

the rosebush of nostalgia

The rosebush of nostalgia does tangle, cut and choke.
And every bloom just out of reach.

There are few things that can pull you as music does. Can pull you to a person, a place, a time, a version of yourself. Who you were and how. To fill you with the same gnarled up emotions and self doubt and wishes for amorous entanglements. A human history told in mixtape.

And this is a version of you with no armour. There is nothing to protect you. This mixtape is a cross section of your soul laid bare, for all it's rings to be read.

What do you do when someone hands you that very mix? This delicate reconstruction of themselves. Quiet and careful and pure and talented and beautiful and really proud of all of it, but nervous about showing it, because no one has ever seen it all before?

You fucking love it, is what you do.

Because you have no choice. You let yourself be pulled under by it because it is so perfect and so clear and so honest that you can't help yourself. And that person becomes a part of you. As much as them making that tape is about you, listening to it is about THEM. You are sewn into their nostalgia, their soundtrack, even as they are adding notes to yours. A quilt of heartbeats. The thing that bypasses word or touch or even the songs themselves and just send pure emotional content into you. Into your sun; into the star around which the rest of you orbits. Into your nucleus.

And that gives you something. It gives you a bond with that person deeper than friendship or love or respect. It is a shared history. Twin hearts. A slice of the soul in a jar, and gifted to you.

An Open Letter to Marvel Comics

Dear Marvel Comics:

Recently, it has come to my attention that Jack Kirby's heirs have been denied any share of copyright on all the Marvel characters and properties he co-created over the years. This is not only an affront to the legacy of a comics legend, long denied his due, despite an abundant wealth of respect in the industry, it is also a blatant slap in the face of the archetypes of heroism that are your bread and butter.

I understand this is legal stuff. I understand this is a money thing, and it is for the judges and the lawyers to decide what is law and what is not. Just because Marvel has the legal right to deny Kirby's heirs a share of the copyright of his works does not mean that you morally SHOULD. What would Steve Rogers do? Or Scott Summers? Or even Jack's Marvel alter-ego, the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing?

They would do what is morally right. Not legally, that has been settled in a court of law by those best equipped to decide it. The right thing to do is to allow the family to retain a share of Jack's creations. For the memory of the man. For the legacy. I understand that a boycott of your products from a few fervent fans is not even going to slow the cogs of what is now a multimedia empire. But I implore you, as a fan and a reader of Marvel comics since the age of six, show us some of the heroics that grace the pages of your books. Until you do, those books -those heroes- will not line my shelves.

And I will miss these books. I will miss seeing Captain America during it's theatrical run. I will miss my monthly Amazon order of all the sweet premiere editions I have been buying since I switched from issues to trades. I will miss the upgraded Ultimate edition of Marvel VS Capcom 3. But all of these things will be waiting for me to come back to as soon as you take a stand and do the right thing.

I honestly hope you do. I hope you see this as a chance to give back not only to Jack, but to all the creators who were taken advantage of under the copyright act of 1909 and the statutes of their "work-for-hire" contracts. I love all the Marvel characters I grew up with, the ones Jack had a hand in creating and the ones he did not. I love the writers and artists that have been taking them to new heights over the course of the last five to ten years. And I would call on all the writers and artists, the publishers and editors of Marvel to also take a stand. I know these are not your decisions. I know it's the financiers and the copyrighters and the investors that are ultimately those who decide these matters. But creators have all the power and the clout that Kirby and his peers once dreamed of. I hope that you will use it, and appeal to the money men to wield their "great power" responsibly.

Hopefully Yours,
Alec Burris

my steve rogers

All words ring false and hollow in the face of tragedy. And yet they are all I have to give.

My great friend Joey lost his mother, today. To idiocy. To idiocy and rage and selfishness and self-loathing. And it disgusts me. It pains me. It sickens me. And I dread to think of how it tears at him.

And I am awed. I am awed by his courage and strength. I am awed by the support and the rallying cries and the creativity of the friends that surround him and rush to his side. A wave of good faith that barely begins to illustrate what a great guy he is. And I hope that this loss does not curdle or darken his oversized heart. He's a goddamn hero. He's the most courageous dude I have ever met, and it fills me with pride to know him, and near to bursting that I am able to count him among my friends.

And I did not know much of his mother, who died trying to save her own mother, today. (Her mother -Joey's grandmother- is now safe and well) But I knew her to be kind and caring. And funny. And the kind of woman who would give her own life to save someone else. The kind of woman who raised a son who would do the same. For his family, of course, but really for anyone. And I know it must seem I am idealizing, in the face of this too-close-to-home blowback of gun violence, but I'm not. Joey Breeding is, as anyone who has ever met him will tell you, simply the best dude living. Loyal to his friends and to music and to his beliefs, supportive to all artistry and brotherhood. I know I'm getting a little hallmark-y, but somehow HE does it with the blue-collar, business-as-usual nonchalance of a young Clint Eastwood.

"Yes, I will hold open these doors and help these old ladies with their groceries. Not to show off, or for some great reward, but because this is how we should all live."

And that is where I want to show him that his mom still is. Inside of him and all of his accidental kindnesses. In his hope and his strength. In his humor and his determination. She could only have been the greatest woman, to bestow on him all of these gifts.

I wish that I had more to give. More than my words and my support. Some sort of shelter against the storm he is now facing, rather than the paltry life vest meant simply to keep him afloat. But I am one of many life vests for him to cling to, and his own will and hope lash them together to form a raft, and he navigates it with his heart and with his honor. And if I can help him, even in part, to make it -whole- to safe harbor, it would be MY honor, and my greatest pride, to have done so.

The world is better for having Joey in it.

the decemberists: the king is dead - instantly judgmental record review

So based on only the first 2 tracks, I would say that the Decemberists have reached that saturation point, where the songs are thematically and lyrically redundant to prior albums and the instrumentalization just becomes increasingly "accessible." (Even a couple guitar hooks are ones I have heard them use before.) There is a difference between having a signature style and just recycling the parts of you that were great. There's only so much reprocessing that can be done before you go from recycled to biodegradable to atomically unstable.

Way to go, folk-rock Weezer. At least you made more than 2 albums before you started eating your own tail.

I remember being blown away by the Billy Liar single. Which I bought on a whim at a Media Play, based entirely on the sweet cover. I remember the anti-folk instruments with his reedy, overinvolved house-of-cards lyrical constructs, and voraciously hunting down everything of theirs I could get my hands on, and constantly being astounded by his storytelling prowess. Catchy and fascinating and nostalgic and moderately educational. Maybe I'm just being a snooty music nerd (only the first two albums are really good, y'know?) but I defy you to listen to "the King is Dead" stacked up against, say, "Picaresque" and tell me a) that the band is the same, and b) that (conversely) you can't hear lyrical and musical redundancies. I think that sentence may implode from it's own convoluted double-negativism, but my point remains.

(At this point in the review I'm 7 tracks in, so if my ire continues to escalate, bear with me.)

Sounds different -more "accessible" (read: sellout), but what they keep is just more of the same rather than part of the whole. It is pretty catchy and overall enjoyable, but it only sounds -to me- enough like the Decemberists of yore to make me want to listen to one of their real albums.

some dreams

so i just slept for like 13 hours.
and i don't know if it was the length of sleep, or just that i knew i had the day off today so nothing else was in my head, or that the last thing i did before falling asleep was read patton oswalt's new book, but i had one of those infinite dreams? you know, the one's where your entire sleep is one continuous story?
and, apparently, we all dream every night we just can't remember sometimes, bla bla bla, but i NEVER remember my dreams. so not only was this an awesome dream, but i actually remember significant portions of it. here are a few gems:
I was traveling with a girl - i'm not going to say who, because by the end of it she had been like 5 different girls. but, you know. girl. dream. dreamgirl. and we check in to a hotel, and the room is a suite. and the room is a pirate-themed suite (i'm pretty sure the girl and i were not dating at this point, because there were two bedrooms, but that could have just been my mind illustrating how huge the suite was) and also INSIDE THE SUITE was a super funtimes gameroom which, by dream logic, was the inside of a toys r us. on their giant entertainment center/product display thing were: the complete transformers dvd set -inside an optimus prime head, and a new ninja turtles toy called pop-ups, which i played with for like 15 minutes, which had a turtle with hyper-elongated extremities, but the legs were spring-loaded so that you could put them in a wacky pose and then make them -you got it- pop-up. my extensive product testing revealed that the arms were posable at the elbow and wrist, but that they could also be collapsed into the shell, and that the legs were posable at the knee, because when the leg retracted the shin collapsed into the thigh, where the spring mechanism was. also, if you twisted the foot when collapsed, it would lock the leg. LATER IN THE DREAM i was thinking about the pop-ups REMEMBERING them from previously and knowing it was in a dream, but not knowing i was still in the same dream, and thinking how their heads should collapse into the shell, too, to make them easier to store and travel with.

so the next scene i remember, i think i was dating the girl, now? and we're in a class, together, apparently. and we're on some mission, or expedition, or something, and she has all of these plastic file cases on wheels and i have a cooler for some reason, and we're in this room and we're talking about the class and how i keep missing it and how does it work, coming back? how do i keep up and i say oh well i never really know what's going on, since i've missed so much at this point, so it's all pretty much the same to me. not understanding the 9th class is pretty much the same as not understanding the 3rd class, and how i'm probably just going to drop it, and then -in the dream- i start to panic and freak out because i CAN'T REMEMBER any of my other classes, so i assume i must be failing them, too. and i open the window to start stacking up her rolling wheel things on the train tracks we're going to be walking along, and i say wait, are we already checked in? we're here to stay, right, for the night? and she says um, no but yes. because i'm thinking rolling these plastic file things along the train tracks is going to be a pain in the ass and we should just empty the cooler into the mini fridge and bring THAT along the train tracks, because it will be easier over the railroad ties. then i start looking around the room and THAT's when i remember that we're not in a hotel this time, but in some friend's house, i don't know him, probably she does, but we're meeting the other members of our group here and it's for some school project or something, and i'm looking around at this guy's apartment (suddenly her no but yeah response makes retroactive sense) and he has a vintage ninja turtle (this one is mike) and it makes me remember the raph pop-up at toys r us earlier and how his head should collapse into his shell. and then the other 2 members of our group or team or geological survey or whatever it is arrive and they start to get settled in. girl is very concerned the one easygoing guy has forgotten the books and he's like "relax, they're right here" and pats his bag. and other guy is going down the hall to get drinks (apparently there is still a soda machine left over from when i imagined it was a hotel. also somehow i know that when he says going to get drinks he is referring to the soda machine and not anything else) and the easygoing guy says he doesn't know, whatever. and i say cherry coke, and if they don't have it dr. pepper and if they don't have that orange soda. and then i clarify that's easygoing guy's order, other guy. we (girl and i) already have drinks. presumably from the cooler i was lugging around. apparently easygoing guy and i are such good friends that i know his soda preferences inside and out. after other guy leaves to get sodas, easygoing guy is unloading his backpack and talking about how his printer wasn't working when he went to print out his stuff so check it out, he brought along a whole printer, which as he's pulling it out of the bag, is an ancient dot matrix printer, to go with his ms dos computer he is also pulling out of his bag and i ask why didn't you just store it on a flash drive and print it out at a staples or kinkos near here. you could have googled it before you left and stopped on the way here. and he says oh yeah.

the end

go fish

My friends are children. And, like, 90% of my life? I'm a child, too. I'm the biggest child. I define my entire existance with comic book metaphors. And that's who I am. Most of the time I spend as an adult, I am pretending. And I have hollowed out this life where that's all i need to do. Be a man child most of the time and when it's time to put on a tie and talk in the grown-up voice, I put on that mask and then when the bell rings I run home and throw the mask and tie on the floor. The thing is, as much as it scares the shit out of me, sometimes it's nice to be an adult. A whole person. Because I will always have the heart of a knight errant and the brain made of crayons, but being an adult who is made of those things instead of a little boy inside a man-suit? It's kind of nice.

I have a new boss. Well, a new interim boss, since my last boss quit. And he's a little more organized and by-the-book business. And, strangely, I kind of like it. I mean I'm running around trying to clean up my shiz, and to get on his level and file all my paperwork in binders and such and sort out all the piles and whatnot. But in the transition, I have some more responsibilities. Nothing I haven't done in some capacity, before, but it's a bunch of stuff I have done from time to time that is now mine. It belongs to me. And maybe this is just because I haven't fallen behind, yet, but I find myself sort of glad of the challenge/rising to the occasion. Which is weird, for me. Because most of my time I spend in shorts, shooting lasers at the old crik to scare up some frogs I kin race. Pew Pew! Or hiding under a rock ignoring the state of the world and being annoyed by politics and/or sports. Or just with my nose buried in a comic/book. All I'm saying is, sometimes, when I come home I find myself putting the man-suit away on it's hanger gently, and with a touch of reverence. It's getting so it doesn't always feel like pretending. Until I am in the presence of some real suity-suit business dudes and then I feel like a fraud. But not a phony, is what I'm getting at. I can survive as a grown-up for multiple hours and do so without being a FAKE. I try to remind myself that most people don't know what they're doing, either. That they're winging it just as much as I am and making it up as they go along.

Then I remember they went to college.

So, anyway. My friends are children. Well, my Delaware friends. And as much as I enjoy their company, they're sort of an embarrassment, by and large. I had my little brother down for the holidays, and I was somewhat ashamed to bring him around with them, because they're so dreadfully immature. God forbid I ever date another girl and have to introduce her to these rapscallions, because it didn't work out so well with the last girl I dated. To whom my friends were simply a separate thing which she wanted no part of.

And I like them, my friend-babies. I really do, or we would not be friends, but I do wish that they would show some signs of progress. Some evolutionary indicator. Any confirmation that they have the capacity for growth. As scary as the growing pains are for me, I feel better when I find others that are wrestling with the same troubles I am, about figuring out how to be a full fledged human. It's nice to know I'm not the only one without a manual. And I'd like to see them get there, too. I would like us to still be friends when we all grow up. But I would also like some grown up friends I can go to museums and plays and such with, and not have to worry about them getting ice-cream drips on the paintings. I'm still going to want to stop at the comic store on the way home, but come on. It's on the WAY. We're passing RIGHT BY IT anyway...

my dinner tonight was pieces of cheddar cheese with slices of turkey that I ate while standing up in the kitchen. So classy. No wonder all my friends are so adult and refined.

pan-dimensional wormhole

I used to imagine that when i went to sleep, a version of myself from another universe could gain control of my body and run about committing acts of derring-do, and that was why i was always tired when i woke up. Really it was probably because i was working 2 jobs with an hour of driving between them and averaging 5 hours of sleep a night. But still. That idea, the idea of someone being able to fold in to our reality via dream-scape, is one i still cherish. How i would like to use it, myself. Pulled away -through the quagmire of unconsciousness- to be the savior of some parallel earth with rem sleep save points. A different world every night/nap. According to science, the parallel earths we create with each string-theory decision aren't one onion layer away, they're on the other side of the cosmos. but in a universe of infinite possibility, there must somewhere be another earth, another you, who simply gets tails in coin flips. or has red hair. one less sibling. one more. scarred by tragedy. raised in privilege. each alteration another fibre in the fabric of time. Those decisions that fail to effect the universe at large simply flare out into time loops of chronology and are then stitched back in to the fabric of the unstoppable narrative. each alternate, light years apart and awash in the ebb of dark matter, ever expanding. Not that we'll ever see them. Even if we were able to develop the means to travel at light speed (more on this later) or beyond, the infinity of the universe will push them away from us faster than we could imagine. because somewhere on one of those parallel earths, another scientist has developed another means of instant transport (atomic teleportation/re-integration, ion bean conversion, psychic telescope, gravity distortion), they speed towards us as we speed towards them and each galaxy expands to accommodate it's inhabitants. the size and the scope of their unconscious ambition driving it forward in an infinite stampede.

ok, "light-speed" travel. this is the concept of traveling at a speed identical to the speed of a beam of light. this does not in any manner intone that light itself would be traveled upon or traveled through. should we develop, as suggested above, a transport utilizing the manipulation of gravity to the end of relative time manipulation, a starship traveling over the course of eons could, with the proper adjustments, appear to it's occupants to be traveling at the speed of light. the objective "time" of the ship moving through space would not change, but the time for the crew would be accelerated. or decelerated. depending on your perspective. It is in such a way that interstellar travel could be pursued within one generation of life, but not one generation of humanity. for the earth from which that humanity hails exists in the same time as the space through which the ship must travel. Still. There's your sci-fi suspended animation. localized gravity manipulation slowing time to a hairs breadth of stopping. I'm not saying that this is the only method by which to travel at light speed. But we had Einstein. one of our parallel earths may have had a breakthrough in the successful reintegration of separated atoms instead of the theory of relativity. Our earth has this. This is what we have to work with. maybe i just read too many comic books, but i can see the idea. i'm just not smart enough for the mechanics.

Speaking of genius i don't understand how we are not using, let's talk about wireless energy. tesla, ok? tesla could transmit energy without wires or cables. and how long ago was that? why am i still plugging in my playstation controller? why can i drive through a speedpass gate but not a tesla recharge gate in my electric car? I'm not asking for warp points or energizing beams (though, seriously, where is that tech?) and it seems like remote access technology is going to supersede physical transportation for the development of our particular technarchy, and people will just be beaming their instructions instead of their selves. live-streaming life.

we are upon the internet. we proliferate. we multiply. we have made rubiks cube personalities that will be reconstructed by the future, for posterity. for their museums, there will be immersive ai that adapts to the hollow shell trail we leave upon the world wide webs. robot children will be able to ask us how our civilization died, and we will be able to tell them. tweet update your facebook via tumblr tube that the apocalypse has come. robot uprising. natural disaster. biblical reckoning. biological terror. evolutionary dead end. overreaching ambition. nuclear holocaust. improperly harmonized infinity gate implosion. reinflated by a sea of code when nothing but programming remains. this is the legacy we will leave when our other-earth counterparts discover the ruins of our civilization. when the black matter becomes an ingrown toenail and they flee, through our galaxy, searching for the microverse.

minds:blown? or are these just the rantings of a sleep-deprived child?

a fine tradition

There is an archetype in the American zeitgeist of the repentant man. About dudes who only realize their potential or appreciate what they have after they have lost it, or done some ignorant-ass shit to throw it away. Cheating on your wife does not make you a better husband. I don't care if it makes you realize what you stand to lose, or even if you realize that trollop you were being unfaithful with is dumber than a sack of hammers. You shouldn't have had to fuck up in the first place. And this epiphaniac change of heart new leaf turnaround should not make your fuckups forgivable. Not to mention how insulting and demeaning it is to women. Would you forgive your spouses indiscretion, Mr. American Ideal? No. you would assume she was an untrustworthy floozie. so why is forgiveness expected for you, sir? why do you get all the second chances? because only after hitting bottom did you find jesus? what of we who make no atonements? What of we men who don't need to hit rock bottom because we never chose to go down the crack rocks fun slide? What of we who don't need to be unfaithful to commit to our relationships? where is our standard held? our American myth? no. we are milquetoasts, afraid of living. boring and predictable. not enough lip-curling rock-and-roll cowboy to garner a legend with some goddamn scruples. Our American archetype? nice guys finish last.
maybe it's not an American construct. Maybe it's just a male directive to act like a piece of shit and then pretend you're a better person for it. know what makes you a better person? being one. not some lesson learned, and not the apology after the fact.

small press expo 2010

so spx was amazing this year. a lot more talent than in previous years, at least the years i attended. a significant decrease in kids who's mommies told them they could do it, or were too punk rock to learn how to draw. and an older crowd, too, it seemed. of creators, anyway. and cute girls aplenty. soooo many cute girls.
3 things have happened that make me, like, on the motherfucking prowl. for ladies.

1) there were an infinity of cute girls at the con. exhibitors, artists and attendees. and, like, some were super fit and basically TOO hot, but many were attractively desirable in an attainable way. I was not, in this scenario, assisted by my habit of becoming a fancy talker when i get nervous. that's pretty off-putting, apparently. i should just walk around with word bubbles when i want to say things. somehow it seems so much more erudite and less pretentious to be a fancy talker in text form.
2) richard is ALL ABOUT his girlfriend. not in a creepy way or anything, so don't misread me, but he is in love with her to the razor's edge of obsession. i could see his soul being pulled back to connecticut like a ghost's compass. and as admirable as i find this beautious relationship, as the single friend i felt like the third wheel when the second wheel wasn't even around. if they were a motorcycle, i would be the sidecar. and this trip the motorcycle was doing a wheelie the whole time. which is to say awkward and precarious for the sidecar. in a way it was lonelier than being a real third wheel because at least then i would have couple-y fun with the boths of them.
3) my interaction with kate beaton (who i now officially have a celebrity crush on) was not, as my pure intellect continues to remind me, flirtatious (although she was probably the one person with whom my nervous fancy talking was not a detriment) but it could be vaguely construed as, if not flirting, certainly flattering. so i feel like a fancy gentleman, now. moderately.

so. dating. i'm trying to get into that. what are girls? ffffft. seeking: comic books girls who like toys/videogames and music made by robots or humans in robot suits. or dinosaurs in robot suits. or robots in dinosaur suits. or robot dinosaurs. or skeletons. or cowboys. any combination of those elements, really. fat otakus and poets need not apply. french speaking a plus, but only because i want to practice for my life on the run in quebec and/or talk shit on people in the next booth without being understood. french scholars/french literature enthusiasts also stay home. i am not prepared to deal with that strange blend of malaise and endless, penetrating intellectualism. see also: michael chabon's mysteries of pittsburgh and c.d. payne's youth in revolt.

there was a time, before delaware, when i dated. oh, i dated plenty. and i know to some degree it's that i'm an antisocial hermit. and it probably doesn't help that i got oldfat (a smidge) or that all my friends, here, are a minimum of 5 years younger than me. but i don't remember where, exactly, in connecticut i had access to so many more social scenarios. it is a puzzlement. anyway. back on the horse; me.

i still want nothing to do with adulthood. comic books, musics, toys, games and movies are all i want. this is probably not helping in the long-term relationship department. but i'm not going to lie to you. these are the things i care about. i don't care about landscaping or wardrobe ensembles or returns on investments. i care about honor and humanity and free chai and driving with the windows down. i care about what sort of sweet nerf arsenal i will be providing my theoretical (and increasing unlikely) kids with, but have no desire to begin squirreling away money for their theoretical college fund. being a grown up does not agree with me. in one way that makes me want kids so that i have an excuse to do fun childish things (the zoo!), but in another way i don't want them because i fear my inability to override my peter pan complex and provide properly for them.

peter pan LOVES nerf!