Reasons Why

That is a title of phenomenal inanity, but maybe I'll unearth in this process a reason for having titled this thus.

It's so damn gloopy that I spent 15 minutes, tops, outside today. For the unfathomable plodding remainder (cloudy days in Maine can't help but plod), I peeled wallpaper. We will be moving soon (although I definitely want to have secured sustainable work first)―most likely to Montpelier, Vermont.

Given that looming, which causes my ears to get hot and my pulse to quicken (because I tend to see myself as a mutated miscreant that's unwelcome everywhere), we've set about trying to optimize our home for alternate occupancy. So, I'm peeling wallpaper, which would be fine if it weren't a mainstay of the walls in EVERY ROOM. But I kinda dig it, in its way, as it is both meditative and methodical.

But then, the boys take to conducting themselves in uncharacteristically age-appropriate ways (i.e., causing each other injury and/or committing some grave material injustice), or the phone rings (although I can't read the display on my phone since a toddler's fit of pique damaged it), or something plucked from the hat full of factors in a way that might seem arbitrary, but in fact, is expertly calibrated to derail most doings.

I've got it!

Reasons Why Authoring a Short Blog Post Is Preferable to Authoring a Long Blog Post:

* I don't fall asleep.
* I don't forget about it.
* It's open-ended.
* It can be more frequent.

By the way, there's a book out, and there's a link to it: excuse me.


And, just to be that way, here's "Bite My Knee": yikes

Birthday Surgery

Hi. It's the morning here, so good morning!

It has been said that at least two things would be or have been addressed by this point. For starters, I have been promising to detail the workings of the Birthday Surgeon. Well, dig what follows, please.

Alright. Everybody knows that we age. In fact, we've done it with every sentence that we've read (please note that I am trying to make this worth your aging while). See? But how it happens visibly is a different creature indeed. One might think that it's nature or whatever, but I know different. It's the BIRTHDAY SURGEON.

So, this brings us to something else entirely. The Birthday Surgeon (I say that like there's one, but I imagine that they're an entire subspecies). At some point around your birthday (and this is the "official" reason that it's impossible to change your own birthday convincingly), the Birthday Surgeon will appear during your slumber or coma or what have you, and work his or her (although I think that the self-identify largely as male, which figures) deleterious magic at your expense.

And the difference... well, it shows! Bit by bit, you are transformed into an incontinent, immobile version of your former self!

For instance, do you ever wonder where that effed-up, 3-inch, wiry, almost-pubic hair on your chin appeared overnight? The Birthday Surgeon bestowed it unto you.

Have you inexplicably just gained several pounds without any obvious cause? They were a collective gift to you from the Birthday Surgeon.

Forget something? You know, like everything? Well the Birthday Surgeon knows Neuroscience, that's for cure, and he is only too happy to apply his skills in this way.

For those among you that might be thinking, "This is pablum, Benb. Sheer, unquantifiable mythology," I counter, with way more dignity than any of us deserve, that I have actually obtained photographic evidence. This dates from the eve of my 24th birthday, 3/26/2002:

How the Birthday Surgeon found me at R. Stevie Moore's house in Bloomfield, NJ is beyond me, but I gotta go now. More soon, I swear.