Confession: I am a packrat

2010 - 02

Well, okay, I'm kind of a pack rat. When it comes to my books, my comics, my CDs, and anything horror related...yeah, I'll admit it. I hoard.

But then there's The Wife. The Wife's hoarding knows no bounds...I gotta say, she's getting better, but my God, when we were first together (over two decades back now) she put hoarding into a new class. Olympic calibre, she is.

Before our first house purchase, we lived in a two-bedroom apartment. It was a good sized apartment, but still, it was an apartment. We were moving into a three-bedroom house with a basement that was half-finished, half storage. I mean, geez, we'd need to buy more stuff to fill it, right?

Wrong.

We did a lot of purging prior to the move (primarily because we'd moved something like four times in two years and I didn't want to move the same damned boxes for a fifth time), so we should have even had less stuff.

It was a fascinating experience for me, some of that purging, as I had no real experience with a women with a shoe and purse fetish before. When we pulled out all the purses, they literally covered our entire livingroom floor. And the fascinating thing? There were a couple of occasions where I pulled a purse out of a box (sometimes with the price tag still dangling from it, which shows you how much it was actually utilized) only to think, Geez, this looks familiar, then look around until I'd found its clone. Yes, The Wife had purchased so many purses then put them away, that she actually purchased the same damn purse again. As a man, this never fails to flabbergast me.

Don't get me wrong, I do know the power of purchasing duplicates. Hey, I'll think, I really like these jeans. So I'll buy a couple of pair. But purses? Not so much.

But I digress. I was talking about how much space we were going to have in the new house.

I think I could write a scientific paper on how, when you move all your stuff from a smaller living area to a larger living area, it actually expands in size (I'm guessing approximately 10 - 15% larger). When you're trying manouvre it through a doorway, or up a flight of stairs, or into an elevator, it swells in size (again as a rough guess, 25 - 50%) only to come back down to a reasonable size only when you've finally got it past the tight passage.

(As a side note, I could also dispute the fact that articles can gain and lose mass without the side-effect of using or expelling energy. Try resting a couch for a moment only to have it compress your knuckles flat against the wall...see? It gained mass!)

So yeah, we moved into the bigger house, and, while we weren't cramped, we were definitely cozy.

And yes, even though I said we didn't need to buy more stuff to fill those non-existant empty spaces, The Wife went ahead and did it anyway. And because we didn't have extra room, guess what she did?

Put the old stuff in storage. Don't want it, don't want to throw it away.

I love my wife. Really I do.

All You Need is Love?

2010 - 01

John Lennon had it right, but he had it wrong too.

In the past few weeks, I've seen some crazy stuff in the news. Like what? Glad you asked.

1. A minister in England preaching that, while it's still a sin to steal, he does give his followers carte blanche to steal from big business.
2. Jon Gosselin claiming an ex-girlfriend ravaged his apartment while he was away for Christmas. She claims he's looking for more publicity.
3. Tiger Woods. Enough said.
4. The incredible outpouring of love for Michael Jackson.

Okay, yes, the last three are Personalities. Not personalities, but those who are so in the public spotlight that they've earned the capital "P". So let's look at them first, shall we?

Jon and Kate...do they really need any more publicity? They've been in the spotlight for so long, I believe they've come to view it as essential to life. Both have stated they won't air their dirty laundry in public anymore, but on it goes. Why? Because we continue to read it. Let's stop, shall we? Paris Hilton eventually stopped showing up every day in the news, so it can happen with Jon and Kate plus hate. I'm sure of it.

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. What can I say that hasn't been said. Except that, why does any celebrity think they can get away with screwing around? Why does anyone, celebrity or not, think they can screw around and not get caught? So, the Woods empire has suddenly been sullied because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Way to go, dumbass. Good message for your wife and kids.

Michael Jackson. Am I the only one that remembers how, this time last year, that little freak was a running joke? That everyone was disgusted with his child rearing abilities (hanging children over balconies, veiling their faces, etc), his proclivity for hanging around inappropriately with males much younger than him, his million plastic surgeries, his oxygen chamber, his monkey? Why is it when someone dies, suddenly he's canonized as the greatest thing since formerly black, but now white sliced bread? I can't tell you how many people have just recently told me they "no longer" believe he molested any children. Why? Because he's dead now and it's wrong to speak ill of the dead? Not bloody likely. He was a modern day Elvis, only he didn't die on the toilet with a fried banana and peanut butter sandwich in his hand.

We spend so much time building these celebrities, these Personalities up, they become the New Gods. Jon & Kate, Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson. Then, there's the inevitable fall from grace. Almost every celebrity seems to have it. And then we're like hyenas on a fresh corpse, teeth bared, looking for that last scrap, that last shred of Personality we can tear off to bring them back down to the mundane. But in the end, every one of them let their egos and their success get the best of them. They began to believe their own press.

And speaking of God, then there's this minister in England. You're poor, you're downtrodden. It's okay to steal as long as it's from big business, because they just pass the losses on to the rest of us. What kind of holy man says this?

So, like I said, Lennon was partially right. He said, "all you need is love." Love would definitely cure a lot. If Jon & Kate could remember a bit of the love they used to share, and still share, I'm sure, for their children, they would be doing things differently. If Tiger Woods did the same, he may have acted more intelligently. If Michael Jackson had had better parents, he likely may not have been anywhere near as successful, but he'd likely have been a lot less screwed up and probably still be alive.

And if we all cared a little more, we wouldn't have to worry about the poor having to steal from anywhere.

So, yeah, "all you need is love" is a great message, but I'd like to add a little more to that. I'd say it's more like, "all you need is love and common sense". Because with common sense, you know who to love, and how to love them properly.

And that would solve a lot of problems.

New Year's Resolution

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure all over the world, there's a ton of people thinking the same damn thing.

It's a new year, so I'm going to commit to writing my blog more. My daughter's already done it.

But here I am, joining in, saying I'm going to write more blogs. In fact, I'm even thinking of committing to 50 blogs this year. One a week. I can do that. God knows I usually experience something every day and think, I should really blog about this.

So now I'm going to try.

Above this one, you'll see blog number one of 2010 (this one doesn't count).