Welcome to Part Two. Here is a link to Part One if you care.
At various points, I have done brainstorming exercises where I list possible topics and then pick the one I like best to write at that time. The problem is that it’s easy to get a backlog quickly. I want to clear up some of these by just writing about them to the extent that I can, whether it makes for an entire blog post or not.
I spoke a long while back about trying to organize my stuff, which is an extension of the topic in the last part. One thing I’ve noticed about life is that if you don’t constantly organize your life, it quickly gets out of control. Think about how quickly your home will get cluttered if you don’t constantly do quick picking up chores. Think about how quickly it will get dirty if you don’t frequently do advanced cleaning chores. It’s the same with your money. An occasional, little money mistake won’t hurt you too bad, but many little money mistakes will. We all know that it’s easier to eat 3,500 calories more than you’re supposed to each week than it is to eat 3,500 calories less. And To Do Lists just get bigger and bigger if you don’t complete items and cross them off.
If I don’t constantly organize my computer files, it gets out of hand very fast. I’m constantly moving my files around to improve the organization. I have a file that is nine pages long that I can basically get rid of by going through it in these posts and discussing them a bit. Some I’ve not written about, and some I have.
Starting from the top and working down, we have a section entitled: Current Top Five (and New Ideas). The idea was to pick five topics that I most wanted to discuss each day, but only after brainstorming ten new ideas and adding them to the five picks from the day before. This was repeated each day. The idea was that I would always write the idea that most interested me each day.
The first idea on the list was as follows; note that the numbers will be sporadic as we go on signifying where they were on a previous list when they were moved off the list of fifteen:
[1. The Convention
I’m looking at a number of future events as writing ideas, which I guess is both good and not so good, but at least I’ll have the thought in wait for after we go.]
I did write about the convention. This indicates that I had not yet gotten around to revising my list after doing so. You can find my writings about the convention here, here, and here. You can find Nathan’s writings about the convention here, here, and here.
The next idea on the list was:
[2. How I’ve Stopped Caring about American Idol This Year
Sure, I plan to finish watching it and I’m curious who will win, but right now I think that the Top 3 is made up of one of the best vocalists in the competition, one of the worst, and one of the most limited. Last year, when we got to Top 4, I was looking at the four people still in the competition thinking that any one of them could win and I would be ok with it. This year, only two were ok with me, and one of them was eliminated.]
I did write about this too. The post is here.
The next idea on the list was:
[3. The Trouble with Smokers
We all know the tale about why the In Search for Food sketch had Hominy and a wine cooler, but I was thinking about an incident when I was 18 where my grandma felt she was entitled as my elder to light her cigarette in my apartment, and the irrational arguments that ensued. Plus I could examine the decades prior where ashtrays were part of the interior decoration scheme, and how now (brown cow) even bars in some cities don’t allow smoking. While I don’t mind coming home smelling almost as good as when I left, I’m not sure I agree with smoking ban in bars.]
Now we have a topic (or more) that I didn’t already write about. And I get to talk shit about my family. Yea!
First of all, we probably don’t all know about the hominy and the wine cooler. We’re probably not even sure why I capitalized hominy above. The reason I said we were all familiar is because I was posting my topic ideas to the newsgroup that includes me, Nathan, Miguel, and a few other people. The idea was that maybe they would read the topics I was considering, and it would spark ideas for them to write about.
My brother, my sister, and I lived with my mom at one point, and she was out of money. She would get paid the next day, but she rationalized that rather than buying us food, she needed to buy two packs of cigarettes. Her rationale was that our school lunches (and I think breakfasts) were free or reduced cost. My brother and sister had eaten that day, and would eat the next day. Since I refused to go to school, I had not, and would not. I was pissed.
My mom told me that I would just have to go to school the next day. I told her that she would need to fucking stop smoking so that she wouldn’t choose bullshit over her kids. She told me that no one was starving and that we would have food after she got paid the next day. So I hid her cigarettes from her. Fucking bitch. I say that with a smile as I write this, because my mom can’t be judged by the occasional bad she may have done in her life, since most of what she has done has been good. But as for that day, fucking bitch.
And now she was messing with a son of a bitch, by linear logic, and she was not happy. I refused to give her cigarettes back until she could afford to buy me something to eat. And it got physically violent. And I taunted her rather maliciously, “See what your fucking habit does to you, you fucking junkie. You would never hit your kids, and yet you are. Fucking bitch. Get me some fucking food.” By the way, I was the best behaved of me, my brother, and my sister. Those two were horrible. Not really. They were boring.
Needless to say, I wasn’t too impressed with my mom that day, but in telling you this, I’m not really trying to put my mom in a bad light. We all make mistakes. This was just a bad one. What I’m trying to illustrate is that my mom was not really my mom that day. She was an addict. Addicts don’t typically act rationally, no matter what the addiction is.
I eventually got tired of the argument and just gave her the cigarettes, explaining that I would not be going to school the next day, and that she could think of her child at home starving every time she smoked a cigarette. Literally, the only two things that were in the house that were edible were a can of white hominy, and a wine cooler that the landlord left in the refrigerator when he came over to do some work on the house one day. That was my lunch, except that I couldn’t manage to eat the hominy beyond a few bites. I drank the wine cooler. I’m not a drinker in the respect that I’ve never been drunk, but I will occasionally have one alcoholic beverage if it tastes good. By occasionally, I mean that the last one was in the 1990s sometime. I typically will take a sip for taste, which doesn’t count as having a drink. And after I sip about 100 different drinks I’m fucking wasted. Not really.
We’ll go ahead and stop here for this post (so I can go get wasted) (not really) and I will continue my discussion about my troubles with smokers over the years, as well as some other thoughts on smoking, in the next part.