Rants, thoughts, and pretty stuff

youngstero:

“And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex.

He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise.

His principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

- Kurt Vonnegut in A Man Without A Country, 2005

I think I might actually just start doing this - completely relate to what Uncle Alex is getting at.  R.I.P dude, thanks for the insight!

screenshotsofdespair:

via James

Story of my life

so i’m here in vermont for the duration of the march break, staying with my grandmother on my mom’s side.  when we were driving down here i kept on remembering back to previous march breaks that we’ve been down here and how i was always so eager to get out of the house (or just like away from her period) and when i was thinking about it i couldn’t really figure out why.  then we get here and everything comes flooding back.  the conversations my mom and her mom have are just so ludicrous and seemingly angrily toned even though i know they aren’t that’s just the way they talk.  but seriously, to say it reminds me of something right out of a victorian era transcript isn’t really giving it enough justice..it’s like this constant bickering and it’s somewhere between annoying and just plain frustrating to listen to, like i wish i could just say “guys just listen to yourselves you sound completely ridiculous like i’m not sure whether you’re trying to set an impression on me or whether this is the way you always talk but jeezus christ grow up and learn the art of knowing when to concede so that you don’t end up with arguments every 5 minutes over the most trivial things” but then i would get yelled at and stuff so i just don’t bother.  the only things stopping me from going mad is a) my grandmother’s common-law.  he’s really cool, his grandson(s?) (i think they’re grandsons? it’s complicated..) are wayyyy into competitive sailing, like one won CORK opti white last year which is intense! like, midfleet opti white was a good finish for me back when i sailed optis. and he always cracks jokes (which although the rest of the household doesn’t find them at all amusing i find them hilarious) and he owns a porsche carrera that he says he’s going to take me out on this week (super excited! he drives really fast too, gonna be so much fun).  he’s like a granddad to me, which is cool considering i barely got to meet one of my actual granddads and the other i was fairly acquainted with but that was it…so yeah i love hanging around with this guy.

apart from all that, yeah it’s a pretty mediocre place..obviously everything (like all the furniture and appliances and stuff) are a good blast from the past - like you walk in the house and between the drably decorated, muted-coloured rooms and the tone of voice of the people there you feel like you just walked backwards through about 130 years of history…

and they’ve got dogs too. i don’t mind dogs, like i’m not scared of them or anything but i really much prefer cats over dogs.  but these dogs really love and beg for attention (too much for me anyway): they’ll like put their front paws up on my lap if i’m sitting in a chair and my grandmother always gets mad at me if i physically take their paws off and put them back on the ground so i try my best to point at the ground and say down but it doesn’t work that well.  relevant: i’m also horrible at verbally getting them to sit and lie down when compared to my mom (she’s a vet - she has practice) and her mom (well, they’re her pets).  they do have a cat and she’s absolutely adorable but the dogs scare her so she hides upstairs most of the time.  it’s always been a rare treat for me to see her when i’m staying here :P

oh and hey that reminds me.  like as much as my grandmother/mother/even sister (to some extent) do the whole arguing-over-trifles thing i can always tell they have a really good bond.  up until last year, my sister and i used to sleep in two twins which were in one room, then my mom and dad slept on the queen in another room.  last year, my grandmother wasn’t there and my dad didn’t come so i slept on the queen (woo) and my mom slept on the twins with my sister.  this year my grandmother’s actually here, so my mom gets the queen all to herself and my sister either like pushed the twins together or is just sleeping on one i dunno.  so obviously that begs the question of “where am i sleeping?”……….yeah…i’m sleeping in the barn.  the f***ing barn.  i’m not kidding.  that’s where i’m typing this from right now (can’t even reach the wifi signal, guess i’ll post later).  before you get the wrong impression i’m not sleeping on haybales or anything, like the place is finished up here (my best guess is it’s my grandmother’s old art studio) but it’s ratty as hell.  it deffo hasn’t been cleaned for a good 6-8mo, like there’s cobwebs and dead flies everywhere and there’s stuff just scattered everywhere on the floor.  it’s kinda gross.  i wish i had my camera here so i could take some photos here and show what this place looks like.  i guess i can take a shot with my webcam and attach it to the bottom of this post.  there’s not even a proper bed in here, i get this half-assed roll-out chair-bed thing and it’s got stains on it and it’s disgusting like it’s actually horrifying. it’s about twice as bad as a cot..so yeah when i got here my grandmother gave me a couple sheets and a scuzzy pillow and was all “you’re up in the barn, there’s a pull-out bed up there and a stove you can light to keep yourself warm” 

ajldfjklmweimlsmv anyway.

so yeah we had dinner and that was bearable (well, even that’s debatable) and i went out to the barn.  i got outside though and i looked up and saw the stars, man it’s a beautiful night out tonight.  i just sorta like stood there leaning against the barn looking up at the stars and just taking in the day (night) and thinking about the past couple months.  that was the best part of today, hands down.  like i actually want to go back out there right now and just stargaze for a while (the whole night).  

when i was out there two other things really popped into my head - the first one was that i really need to find my glasses or like get some new ones because all the stars were fuzzy..that was a comparatively short-sighted thought (haw haw haw…)  the other thought was really what kept me out there for a while.  i was looking up at the stars (we’re even more so in the middle of nowhere than the forest i live in back at home here so we can see like twice the amount of stars) and it made me realize how way back in the older days it would’ve been quite easy for someone to look up at the stars and just think that it’s all a big backdrop on a stage or something.  like when i was looking out there right now it felt like the stars were candles or painted on little dots that were maybe 500 feet from where i was standing; perhaps if i had a really long ladder or something i’d be able to reach up and grab one.  and furthering the point i made earlier about back in the olden days, out there i thought to myself “yeah i could totally see how people could believe that there were heavens above that backdrop that would perhaps house more important people and stuff”.  now this probably seems like a really closed-minded thing to say (or at least think) because now that i think about it, that could easily come across as me really snubbing those who do believe in higher powers, but hey sometimes that’s just the way i think.  religiously, i’m somewhere between atheist and agnostic (which arguably could mean i’m simply agnostic and refusing to admit it) even though i’ve been raised by a very christian mother (who was, in turn, raised by a very VERY christian mother, and i’m sure the chain continued way back into the centuries), so yeah you can see where my viewpoint is coming from.

hey i feel a lot better now than i did when i started just randomly writing stuff down in this post today, that’s good.  it’s like, almost 11pm here and i want to get up early so i can hit the slopes - or try to, we’ll see how much my knee and the skis i’m borrowing from my dad (some jackass stole mine from the hill 2 weeks ago) will cooperate.  i think i’ve finally found a) a use for my tumblr account and b) an outlet for venting stress through the most coherent means possible and pretending like someone’s going to take the time to actually read through all this junk.  time to go make music or something and then go to bed.  i hope this doesn’t break tumblr’s word/character count limit because if it does then i’ll have to break it into 2/3/4/more segments which will make me very sad and much more reluctant to use tumblr as an outlet for my stunning literary creativity and prose.  i’m not being sarcastic at all.  of course not.  why would you think that? hey i just noticed i didn’t use any emoticons in this whole shmozzle.  interesting.

yeah okay i’m done.  above is a pic from what i was talking about earlier.  this is one of the cleaner parts of the room too.

mcguganator:

joshishollywood:

My hand does a thing too

i can’t do it with my pinkie, only with my thumb. it still freaks people out, though

also since i’m not mark this doesn’t apply to him cos he’s SUPER LAME OMG SO LAME

(Source: badcgijosh)