“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”

Life Of Pi – Yann Martel.

“The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be.”

— Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

Sing it, Sistah!

My January.

Most Of You Were Naked, But Some Of You Were Light.

When you've fallen on the highway
and you're lying in the rain,
and they ask you how you're doing
of course you'll say you can't complain --
If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

My Life In A Picture.

Blind, Deaf & Dumb With Learning Disabilities.

The mind is a scary thing, and being in one all of the time everyday of every week can make you incredibly blind and misled by your own prejudices and kinks most of the time. Its such a shame to see people who’ve started out on the right track then have been driven insane by their own egos or insecurities. It makes you wanna knock on their skull just to see if there’s still anybody in there. What’s even more scary is that no matter how hard you try to make them see the truth, there is a time when you’ll inevitably need to resign and arrive at the very logical conclusion of how maybe, just maybe, they’ve gone batshit insane.

 

Grandpa is not impressed.

 

People are beyond saving, in fact, saving is a concept that is spawn out of mere wishful thinking, for after all, how do you know  you’re not blinded yourself? There is no clear right and wrong that hasn’t been set by man, and what makes you trust mankind so much? History has proven that just because something has been around for long enough doesn’t mean it’s right. Entire regimes that were diligently abided to for decades were, at one point or another, brought down and later looked upon as major trespasses on the rights of the entire humanity. What’s the point of investing any real hope in something as incredibly variable as human nature? More stable and reliable things have been trusted and only proved to disappoint. It doesn’t seem like fair game to me.

Pause.

Of A Begrudging Minion.

I don’t know what possessed me to open up a blank post and start writing, for I have nothing to say. I don’t think that should be an issue though because after all, this is a blog, who reads those?

 

I still haven’t hit the book fair, or collected the last paycheck from the job I recently quit. I have to say, I was rather bothered by the unceremonious reply to the e-mail I sent  informing them that I quit. I had to send three of those for them to notice I’m gone. God knows it wasn’t for lack of hard work on my part, but then again I’m reluctant to see it’s for lack of organization on their part without having my head tell me to stop staging egotistical airbags for the crash. But then again what was I really expecting? That they’d beg a freshman with no credentials to stay at all costs, seducing me with an undeserved raise? I guess I’ve still got some rough edges to sand away. Oh Egypt, where application e-mails’ only replies are delivery notification failures. I’m yet to find one job where hard work is not repaid with frustration and disproportionate workload for little to no pay. I want to tell myself that it’ll change once I’m no longer an undergraduate, but who am I kidding? This country ladles disappointments quite generously and wouldn’t take no for an answer even if your belly’s full to the brim. Where are my manners? Ladle on, I’ll stuff myself some more.

 

 

On a happier note, I’ve found my meditation spot and ultimate happy place, and it’s the balcony in the waiting room of my dad’s clinic. Unsurprisingly enough, it’s the only place where I can just sit there, thinking of everything and nothing, and feeling good about it for no reason at all. Maybe it’s an aura-related thing, I don’t know. Frasier has also been yet another of those no-brainers that have helped me relax over the last few days, I’ve found that it supplies the civil conversation that this country lacks.

 

I’m in such a fowl mood, something my uncle used to say springs to mind. He’d sit there looking at my drudging at my homework and remind me - to my adamant dismay - that I’ll miss this when I’m out of school. He’d say “At least now you know your hard work is going somewhere, and have the luxury of knowing where it’s going too. You don’t get that in real life. Out there, the only confirmation you get is hope that you were smart enough not to point your work off a cliff.” Of course at the time it was mindless babble that I never quite registered, but now it makes a whole lot of sense that I can’t accommodate in my current state. Uncle, if you’re reading this, YOU WERE RIGHT! Gloat on.

 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go watch Frasier and master the art of homemade Oreo shakes.

The Secret To Life, The Universe, And Everything.

Why This Perfectly Normal Morning Is Odd.

This is an odd morning, on more than one occasion. For instance, I just sympathized with a mosquito. Let me explain, mosquitoes don’t quite go out that much in winter, you can think of them as your average senile neighbour who never managed to pick up the paper after November. This particular mosquito lazily hovered by in the middle of January. I didn’t have the heart to shoo it because I couldn’t help but think that maybe that mosquito’s family didn’t care that much about him anymore, how they wanted to send him to an old people’s home and he took it too much to heart that he fought and regained his freedom only to be left homeless in this awful weather. I’m sure the chill down his spine isn’t triggered by freedom as much as it is by frostbite. Poor mosquito.

 

Knowing me, you’d see it was only a matter of time before I’d eventually

get into anime, and truly that time has come. Although, I cannot for the life of me understand how the hell anime has not been ruthlessly attacked by feminists. I mean they tore Shakespeare a new one for putting females in vulnerable positions and then you watch anime and all you get are airheads, inferior creatures and babbling ingénues and they’re like ‘oh okay then, cool’? It just doesn’t make sense! Also, Japanese metal is disturbing, and I mean a whole new level of disturbing. Which reminds me, Japanese anime is not above killing protagonists and it is not unusual to fall in love with an anime character. It is quite natural, I suppose, one of the many loopholes of being a sapiosexual is the fact that you will fall for anything that radiates an air of intelligence even if in fact it were a thing, or you know, if it were a thing that doesn’t actually exist.

 

 

I’m oh so very glad TV shows exist because we wouldn’t have been able to afford that much therapy with my college education. Another reason why this is an odd morning is that I'm inexplicably craving steak and a glass of dry red wine. At least now I can see why philosophers have died trying to figure out what women want. However, I'm in a good mood today, because when you've been in a bad mood for long enough it bypasses 90 degrees and approaches 180 then you're cool again. Although I have to admit, my reaction to the birds wasn’t quite as mild as they show it on TV; I had the urge to shoot each and every one of these feathered kooks in the face with a bazooka. I’m not a morning person, not one bit.

 

I’ve been having a little bit of an identity crisis lately, so much that I have a feeling that if I ever go to a fortuneteller, she'll just look into the crystal ball & see a future full of anime, coffee & books. They say the middle child gets the best of both worlds, well I'm an only child, I get all worlds and the dimensions squeezed in between..but that’s not always good news. Besides, why should I have an identity crisis and you don’t? Hm? Google 'askew', regain faith in less than 2 seconds. You're welcome. Now type illuminati backwards dot com and lose faith again.

 

Have a great day.

As For Planning..

Roz: Ever heard of Lupe Velez?
Frasier: Who?
Roz: Lupe Velez, the movie star in the '30s. Well, her career hit the skids, so she decided she'd make one final stab at immortality. She figured if she couldn't be remembered for her movies, she'd be remembered for the way she died. And all Lupe wanted was to be remembered. So, she plans this lavish suicide - flowers, candles, silk sheets, white satin gown, full hair and makeup, the works. She takes the overdose of pills, lays on the bed, and imagines how beautiful she's going to look on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. Unfortunately, the pills don't sit well with the enchilada combo plate she sadly chose as her last meal. She stumbles to the bathroom, trips and goes head-first into the toilet, and that's how they found her.
Frasier: Is there a reason you're telling me this story?
Roz: Yes. Even though things may not happen like we planned, they can work out anyway.
Frasier: Remind me again how it worked for Lupe, last seen with her head in the toilet.
Roz: All she wanted was to be remembered. Will you ever forget that story?

The Best Birthday Gift, Ever.

Subways Run On Hope.

I don’t like being a grown up, I don’t. I’ve been getting a whiff of what the real life is like out there and all I’ve seen has been hope-sucking. If growing up is about knowing how to diss people and calling it pragmatism, or how to be a heartless bastard and calling it professionalism, or about lying and calling it sociable behaviour then I’m not sure I want to be part of it. Too bad nobody asked me to sign the dotted line before handing me the life-sized fine line-choked contract. What’s scaring me is that I’m taking part of it, that I’m not minding it, that I’m not feeling things like I used to anymore. I now know better than to appreciate things because I automatically see the ulterior motive in flashing lights. I don’t feel love towards people because my head has automatically run a statistics scan and decided the profit margin isn’t worth investing in. I see people changing to the worst and my automatic reaction is not worrying about them, but blaming myself for taking the precious time to see that in the first place. I don’t care about people because my head knows that nobody gives a shit and there’s no changing that, so there’s no point in caring for them. I’m no longer pissed when someone’s rude or flippant because I never expected any better. It’s been like that for so many things, so many gestures have been soaked dry and I can’t blame the empty gestures on anything but the growing up process. I’m changing into a heartless asshole and the world not only doesn’t seem to mind it, but calls it normal human behaviour. Not even I seem to mind it.

 

 

Something happened on the subway today; I was caught in a death stare with an infant. There’s something about starting contests with babies, and it’s not the odd fact that they hardly blink – it’s true, they blink every 5 minutes and I think that’s alien – it’s the fact that while I was looking into her eyes, it wasn’t an empty stare. It was the stare of someone who knew everything there is to knew, the stare of a Jedi, a misplaced demigod who got lost in our dimension and doesn’t feel the need to speak his wisdom out of knowing that nothing they’ll say will make a difference, it was the stare of someone who was seeing into your soul. If there’s any truth to the whole ‘I know what you did last summer’ line, the guy who made the horror movie had probably just had a baby.

 

There’s so much to see if you’re willing to look, like for instance that baby on the subway, his parents were an interesting sight. The father was the mother and the mother was the father. Despite the fact that they were a regular lower-middle-class couple whose sex life ends at the point of conception, the typical stereotype didn’t apply for these two. The father was holding the baby like it’s precious, being extremely cautious with the applied pressure and taking care of every spit and groan the child was making, going heavy on the PDA and incredibly unaware of his surroundings or anything that is not directly baby-related. The mother on the other hand, which I personally believe should have been appreciating her family more concerning the state of other families in the same social faction, was staring blankly ahead, taking calls, fixing her clothes and getting obviously pissed that she had to close the window on her own and not have her husband close it for her since he didn’t seem to hear her when she asked him even though she was sitting right next to him, all because he was indulged in the baby’s spit ball formation talents. He didn’t notice that the worker standing next to them spent the entire ride trying to look down his wife’s shirt and looking into her bag and phone screen, and he didn’t notice when it was time to get off at their stop, which I assume should have been routine behaviour by now. While I was marveling at the father’s ape-like tendencies and mother’s short-of-being-human tendencies, the baby tried to suck on her woolen-gloved thumb, didn’t like the taste of it and started crying. What happened afterwards is the interesting part, despite the fact that she had a bag full of baby stuff, or that’s what I thought, she settled on giving the baby a plastic bag to play with – despite the choking hazard, 101 for parenting really – and got a picture on her phone and shoved it into the baby’s face – despite the fact that babies thinking abilities do not bypass those of a spoon’s, and even if they did and technology failed to record it, they are scientifically proven to have the memory of a challenged goldfish. I didn’t know what I should be pissed about, their incompetence, their lack of care, their sub-par intelligence, their failure to evolve from primates, their ignorance of basic hygiene precautions that started with the father kissing the baby’s face although her immunity is still weak and ended up almost killing her three times by being cretins, their immaturity or their nonchalance, but I did manage to sum it all to this: Just because you can fuck, doesn’t mean you should be allowed to have kids. Japan was right.

 

Another interesting subway specimen was a lady, for lack of a better word, who managed to shout at everyone for no less than 30 minutes about politics – which she was incredibly ignorant of, as well as anything else that involved the world, and by world I mean anything outside her kitchen – then faked a leg pain, hijacked a seat from a student, talked to herself for 10 minutes announcing her domestic problems, then proceeded to shout at everyone just to let them know of her badass ability to take their seats or let them keep it, according to her impulsive whims at the time. The scene was surreal, almost like it came out of a low-budget Khaleeji musical, and it viciously consumed what little hope I had left concerning the humanity of the Egyptian majority. I realized I was detached from life just by being born into a good life, and then I realized that was probably the case of most people out there, and couldn’t see a way out other than communication, which means there is no way out because she didn’t seem to register the whole communication concept like we do. I was reluctant to type we, since it’s impossible to group people into like-minded factions in the Egyptian community – yet another thing that I found out today. I don’t remember wishing I get out of this shitdump a lot of times, but what I do remember is this: The few times that I did, I was using public transportation.

 

I need a source of hope, one that I can register at this newfound state of grownup being that doesn’t seem to be willing to absorb as much as spit flat out.

Of Dem Shuffling Digits.

Well, 20’s been taking me by the storm. Ever since I turned 20, grown up problems have been coming up that I’m supposed to know how to handle. I don’t know about other 20 noobs but I gotta say, this shit wasn’t in our textbooks. Most of the time, it feels like somebody shoved onesie-wearing kid me in a corporate office while the kid screamed ‘you’re making a mistaaaaaaaaaake!’, leaving me to feel like this most of the time:

 

 

Other times, this has been my reaction to any sort of sudden change that accompanied the growing up process:

 

 

However, I’m not exactly complaining, at least not yet anyway. I've managed to balance three jobs with freshman year so far, they used to be five but turns out I lost my cape when my speech capabilities afforded a little more than goo goo ga ga-s.. It’s true that I haven’t quite figured out how to fit in the whole sleeping and squeezing out a dookie in the process, but I’m getting there.

 

There’s this trending hashtag on twitter called 2012 Highlights, and I couldn’t help but take part of that universal update of thinking up your clean slate on the rubble grounds of your old slate’s smithereens that happens every year around December. I’d be lying if I said 2012 has been free sailing for me, but then again none of the changes, albeit important, were exactly accompanied by flashing billboards. As I sit here trying to think of how 2012 has redefined life as I know it, I can’t quite ignore the urge to punch an innocent kitten in the face as I force-feed it another puppy’s, otherwise ingrown, tail.

 

So here’s the message people, it’s never good to look back on things and expect some sort of life-changing revelation to kick you in the mental nuts; it doesn’t work that way for several reasons. For instance, nobody really cares about your problems unless you’re a handsome guy in a late-night, low-budget Hollywood indie movie at worst, and another one of those includes the fact that even if you were, the director would be too busy trying to get him laid with a hot part-timer and side-track the audience from the actual problem at hand rather than giving the script wright the little extra job of, you know, trying to solve some of life’s mysteries in his torn down basement office.

 

What’s good however, even though I’m positive I’ve said this before on here, is seeing life for what it really is; the second longest running show after cats that people take way too seriously. I mean, look at it this way, if the few of us who actually tend to make life interesting with their nonchalant view on things and non-existing sense of shame died out with the turn of the new year, what would be left to wake up to in the morning other than, well, a joke-free umpteenth time run of the second longest running show after cats?

 

As I sit here, I’m struck by my complacent composure about this whole new year thing. For once in my life, I’m not getting the urge o make a far-fetched new year’s resolutions list because again, for once in my life, I feel that things are going by as planned, even though there was no plan in the first place. I’m not known for possessing that certain glimpse into the future talent so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing just yet. What I can tell you is this, I have a good feeling about this..whatever it is. There’s nothing I’d rather have differently and I think that’s nice. Or at least a nice template to work with.

 

I’m happy.

My Life In A Picture.

“I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It -- with the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done, and I could also be dead.”
― Woody Allen

Early Christmas Cheer.

A Round Number.

How do I feel now that I’ll be 20 in ten days?

 

Like this. Pretty much.

 

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast.  They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement.  Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

- Kurt Vonnegut.

Let’s Doogie.

‎

I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hoppa  you don't stop  the rockin’ to the bang bang boogie said up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat.

Hope.

The Highlight Of My Day.

I saw this walking home today from yet another variation of my not-sure-wheres. This owner re-defined what it means to pimp a ride. Come to think of it, getting lost is turning into one of my favourite pass-time activities. Here’s to the little things.

 

Reported Missing On Accounts Of Audaciously Sleeping.

Today has just started, as far as I'm concerned, and it got off to quite an edgy start. You see, apparently, I'm such a hardcore insomniac that when I actually fell asleep, people thought I was dead.

 

 

I woke up midway into the body search that was orchestrated by a caring soul a continent away. When it comes to social and cellphone networks, those were covered, and I believe if I'd woken up a couple of hours later, I would have found people in the apartment checking my pulse. I won’t be lying if I said that every insomniac cell in me felt so guilty that they curled up into a snowball and rolled down to crush me on the greatest guilt trip I’ve felt since my touch phone accidentally dialed my mother 71 times having her inevitably think that I was kidnapped and was subliminally trying to SOS.

 

Mistake me not, I’m incredibly touched by the efforts. It just strikes me as rather sad that the whole ‘maybe she’s sleeping’ option wasn’t, after all, an option. A friend suggests that I may want to consider sleeping more often just to get people used to the practice fire drills. Well, I guess if you walk around butt naked, you’ll get owned by anyone who wears pants.

 

I have an interesting life, no doubt about that.

 

You know what else I think is interesting? When they asked astrophysicist Adam Riess how it felt like to win the Nobel prize, he said ‘Well, you get called by Swedish sounding people, and unless you ordered some furniture from IKEA then it pretty much means you’ve won the Nobel prize.’

 

I’ve come into the recent conclusion that most things in life are interchangeable, like for instance you can do away with all the meditation tapes if you tune in to late night radio stations halfway across the universe quipping their way out of creativity’s possible reach, and how pizza delivery boys do a better job than most suicide hotlines, you know, just until the middle east comes out of the dark cave into the light ages and actually offer that service, and last but not least, who the hell needs to call coffee coffee when you can call it java? I mean come on, ‘IIIIIIIT’S JAVA MAAN! SWOOSHING IN ONCE MORE TO SAVE THE DAY!’, ‘Aw man, I’m running low on java.’, ‘Hello there sweet cheeks, want a java refill?’ Java infuses action, in all its contexts, into everything! Can you see the possibilities?

 

I got lost again today. I took the wrong bus home, except this time I knew it was the wrong bus before I got on it but it still sounded like a good idea to get anywhere populated and then worry about whether the populated area is right or not. The bus drivers helped, as usual, and it occurred to me that, considering my rate, they’ve sort of illegally adopted me. Chivalry ain’t dead yet. The bus was so heavily decorated that it almost felt like I got a free ride into the haunted house, and coincidentally, the chick fate sat me next to reminded me vaguely of the Christmas spirit, strictly fashion-wise. If anyone gets visited by the ghost of Christmas past, it should vaguely resemble this scenario.

 

I’ve been walking home from all sorts of no-idea-wheres lately, and the walk is always relaxing. I owe the use of this adjective to my, sometimes, inexistent survival instinct, considering the country’s going batshit crazy and what not. Let me put it that way, did you know that 73% of the planet is invisible, and 25% of it is dark matter as well, we don’t know what the hell that is either. We’re kind of the frosting on a cake whose filling is yet to be identified. The comforting part is that we have names for everything. What applies to astrophysics should apply to a parliament-free, judiciary-abandoned, constitution-less country such as this one. My latent canine abilities manage to get me home eventually. I also owe the adjective to the hopeful run-in with a street bookseller who actually reads his own books. Out of all the people I’ve had a random conversation with, that know-it-all hidden from the mainstream society under the pile of dusty outdated books he reads before he sells, was without doubt the most touching. It is true that hope comes in all forms.

Of Chum Chum, Mostly.

I can’t get myself to start working quite yet. I have a midterm tomorrow and my brain’s tanning on an imaginary beach somewhere. I’m not worried, and that’s a good thing, or I choose to believe it’s a good thing. I found out that you can take a vacation without going anywhere, and I just spent three whole days with JD, Turk, Carla and Elliot, re-watching Scrubs and feeling grateful for my goldfish memory that obliterated the plot turns even though I watched the entire 9 seasons three times before. Oh and I found my soul mate, his name is JD and he’s a fictional character who talks to himself in a medical comedy that stopped airing. Yeah.

 

I’d like to introduce you all to Chum chum. Chum chum is my baby cactus. I think Chum chum is a lot like people, prickly on the outside and mushy on the inside, so in a sense I have a pet human subconscious. And no, Chum chum is my baby and I don’t care what you think, because let me tell you the truth about pregnancy: You’re gonna pee, poo, fart and puke in front of at least 10 strangers who will be staring at your vagina for no less than 40 hours of labor that ranks higher than being burned alive on the pain scale. You’re welcome.

 

 

You’d think somebody would tell women about that little con before  they get knocked up, but no. Life is funny that way, like for instance how you’ve always known that boobs are the answer to everything but only Femen had the guts to use it, for the first time, to women and the whole world’s advantage and you find yourself making the conclusion all over again and regretting why you never patented it. Or maybe how you invest your allowance in a Cheese sandwich griller and find out that it’s probably the best investment you’ve made in a while because happiness is two parts cheese. Another thing I found funny was how celebrated Licia Ronzulli's photos are, and how women all over the world consider her an empowering model for all working moms, when in fact, if she had been a veiled woman in our parliament, she’d be called incompetent and attacked on every level for bringing her baby to work. Admit it, it’s true. She wouldn’t have been as empowering and she would have been perceived as the living epitome of third world countries. It makes you think just how much can be different if you looked pretty and had a foreign passport.

 

Oh, and I recently found out that ants don’t accept sugar offerings, and I’m blaming their paranoia on you, vicious humans. Bad humans!

My Thanksgiving List.

• I’m grateful for my dad, who has always been there for me even when he needed someone to be there for him, and for always having faith in me even when I didn’t offer the same luxury for myself. He taught me everything I know and he’s part of all that I am today, and it’s because of his altruism and sense of righteousness that I have a hero better than all the crap they sell in Disney fairytales. My Kryptonite and the source of my strength, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t amount to anything.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see the hilarity in misfortunes, for gallows humour has gotten more people by than history dares to admit.
• I’m grateful for coffee that has always been there for me, regardless of how good or bad the day may turn out to be.
• I’m grateful for the little things and my ability to see them wherever I turn, as little as funny online series or a good book, they fuel me when I most need it and they never bail.
• I’m grateful for my ability to forgive, and how it comes naturally to me to not hold a grudge. Even though most of the time I may have to not let people know it because it’s for the best, it’s a blessing not to have it in me to hate someone, no matter how much people may perceive it as weakness, I regard it as true strength not to let things stick on you, eat away at you and eventually change you.
• I’m grateful for all the assholes I met in life, for they taught me how to handle things the way people do in the real world, how to hold myself out there, how to be one when I need to and more importantly, how to recognize them from the head start and know better than to let them into my life.
• I’m grateful for all the friends I have, or had and lost, for they left me with some good memories that have substance, albeit bittersweet, and remind of me of the choices I have to make everyday.
• I’m grateful for all the bad choices I made, for they taught me how to be  responsible for the consequences, they made me aware of the existence of consequences, and gave me enough ammunition to recognize the good choices and make them more often, and handle the bad ones more competently.
• I’m grateful for good conversations whenever and however they may come or have come, for they’re the stuff of life.
• I’m grateful for my sense of conscience, and the fact that I now realize that goodness is a choice you make everyday and never quite turns into a habit.
• I’m grateful for my head, for despite all the nights it tortures me and all the days it beats me up, it has never let me down and never shut up no matter how little I listen to it.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see through people, I now know better than to let its little hints go unnoticed.
• I’m grateful for honesty, and the fact that truth hurts. I’m glad it does because it keeps me grounded and shows me everyday how succumbing to delusion is the easy way out, but never the right way and never an option.
• I’m grateful for how I turned my life around, for no matter how much it may have hurt, I now know that I chose the right path.
• I’m grateful for my utter inability to give up on things. My lack of acceptance changes things when other people give up on it.
• I’m grateful for work, it is the only straight line in life’s loopy parabola.
• I’m grateful for how I always blame myself when things go wrong, for even when it’s not true it helps me become a better person, and now I see that it’s not such a bad thing because ego has always been the one thing that had people hit a plateau and go down from there without realizing it.
• I’m grateful for piano, and the fact that now  I know there’s one at UNI and the music room is available everyday from 9 – 11.
• I’m grateful for all the temporary friendships that got me by, I now know better than to depend on another person for comfort when it’s better to turn to yourself for consolation.
• I’m grateful for change, it has kept the engines running despite all the gritted teeth grinding in complaint.
• I’m grateful for my grandma, for she shows me how age has nothing to do with having fun.
• I’m grateful for my family, they give me examples to look up to that are actually in my life, and they show me that you have the choice not to let life change you no matter what it may throw at you.
• I’m grateful for being eccentric, it has kept things interesting and it’s a blessing to know that I’m not caught up in the all singing, all dancing crap of the world as much as everyone else, it gives me a chance to step back and watch the act, and helps me decide on things that people wouldn’t give a second thought.
• I’m grateful for the internet, for it made knowledge easy to come by.
• I’m grateful for the chances I was given and the opportunities I had, they made me work to be better even though at the time I only thought they served as a reminder of all the things I’m yet to learn.
• I’m grateful for late night walks with my dad, they keep me grounded and they remind me that the world never stops turning for anybody.
• I’m grateful for all the good people I have in my life, you give me hope because it’s never easy to stay good when everyone around you is an asshole.
• I’m grateful for Kurt Vonnegut, you’ve left enough literary heritage to keep me occupied for now.
• I’m grateful for Jazz, Blues, Neo-Soul and Rap. It’s true that you haven’t managed to eradicate all sadness in the world, but you’ve managed to push all that is melancholy in one corner of the room and make it more habitable.
• I’m grateful for never losing my ability to care about someone, no matter how many reasons I was given to know better.
• I’m grateful for being impulsive, it’s given me the initiative gusto to jump into things that people wouldn’t dare to consider, and made life a hell of a lot more fun.
• I’m grateful for all the stupid things I’ve done, they’ve given me great stories to tell the grandkids and amuse me when I’m old and frail.
• I’m grateful for all the things that didn’t work out the way I wanted or expected them to, they made way for better things to come and taught me to do without a lot of things that others are wrapped up around.
• I’m grateful for logic and my sense of skepticism about the givens of life, for they have taught to me to look for hope objectively and not turn into another brainwashed idiot prancing his way off a cliff. It has made me not settle for less even when more was nowhere to be seen by actually working on making that happen rather than waiting and wishing.
• I’m grateful for my balls, even though they got me into a lot of trouble, I wouldn’t have had it any different.
• I’m grateful for all the shitty people I have in my life, you show me everyday who I never want to turn into and are a constant reminder that I’m making the right choice and that the shit that I have to go through because of it is worth it.
• I’m grateful for detachment and my belated reactions when shit hits the fan, they’ve given me the chance to think of a solution when everybody else is panicking.
• I’m grateful for the mess in life, it reminds me every day that importance is an assigned value, that nothing is a given, and that people have more control over their life than they care to admit just by the way they choose to handle things.
• I’m grateful for my insomnia, it has added hours to the day and gave me a chance to learn more and get more things done.
• I’m grateful for being content with my life, and being happy more often than not. It’s a lot more than many others were offered.
• I’m grateful that the answer to life, the universe and everything is not available, for if it were, people wouldn’t have a reason to live.