Hard to believe it, but it's been five years today.

Anyone who's a long-time reader knows the story. It was a very cold January Saturday morning when the phone rang. It woke both Sal and me up and we just looked at each other. Our phone doesn't ring early on Saturday. I braced myself for what I knew was coming. I dialed *69 to find out the number that had just called, and it was Mom and Dad's number. And I pretty much knew. Why else would they call so early on a Saturday morning? I steeled myself, got myself as ready as I could to make the call, and finally did it. Mom said two words. "He's gone."

Five years. He would have been thirty this year. In a couple of weeks, in fact. It kind of puts a pall on the whole middle of winter. I have to admit that with my birthday stuck smack in the middle between the date he passed and the date of his birth, I don't enjoy birthdays too much anymore.

I intend to enjoy this one though. For one thing, I'm alive, and after the long November and December, I feel blessed to say that. I'm going to be 36. Nothing special about being 36, I suppose, but it'll be significant to me. This disease took my brother and caused me to not really be able to be happy around my birthday for the past few years, and now it's come after me, but I'm not going to let it take my joy anymore. Sal and I are going to have dinner at the Olive Garden, and I'm going to eat until I feel like puking, and probably keep going after that. I'm going to eat, drink, be merry, and live. Too many times over the past few years, I've thought about Jamie and Dad, and how they're gone, and I've railed against God and religion and those people who tried to justify the things that have happened, and I'm not going there anymore. There just isn't time for the negative.

There were times in the past when I thought, "Wow, Jamie's the toughest person I ever knew, and he couldn't beat cancer. How in the world will I ever handle it if it gets to me?" I thought about that a lot. Once I was diagnosed though, I just immediately told myself, "Tommy, you can do this." I tried not to really think about what happened with Jamie. In fact, when I relay information to Mom, and she tells a very similar story about Jamie, I get unnerved momentarily, but then I tell myself, "No, this is different. These are two different fights. I'm fighting my own battle. I'm climbing my own hill." I know it sounds stupid, but I just can't concentrate on the similarities, because if I took them to the logical conclusion, I'd meet the same fate he did. And I'm determined not to do that.

Dad's passing did a lot to eclipse Jamie in terms of how much I thought about him. I know that sounds terrible, but isn't that how it happens? Dad's death was more recent. That, and it's just different. I don't think you can fairly compare the loss of a sibling with the loss of a parent. They just aren't the same at all.

I still think about Jay a lot. I wonder what the thirty-year-old version of him would be like. If he and Joy would still be together. If they'd have kids or not. It's really hard to picture anything like that because he's pretty much crystallized as the person I knew. More to the point, when I think about Jamie, I really think more of the hellcat that he was in his late teens and early twenties. I think more of the tough little kid he was in his preschool years and grade school years. I think of the kid who cut class, and drank Ciscos while eating sausage biscuits from Hardee's before sharing a blunt with a couple of friends...and not getting sick afterwards. I know it sounds like I'm glorifying this sort of behavior, and maybe I am, but that's what I remember. He was vibrant and funny and just plain fun to be around. He was never Tommy's younger brother. No, I was always Jamie's older brother. And I didn't mind that at all. Jamie had the personality, the magnetism that made so many people like him. I could never handle that. But it sure was fun to watch.

We miss you, Jay.

I'd been intending to get back here sooner with another update, but as is the case with intentions, good, bad or otherwise, they don't always get addressed. I'd also planned on starting back to writing here at least semi-regularly just to get back in the habit of writing again. Heaven knows I have the time.

I had to refer back to my last entry so I'd know exactly how much information I needed to relay in this entry. Has it really been five weeks since I posted? Time flies.

Sally is halfway done with her chemotherapy treatments. She's handling it reasonably well. She lost her hair but it has started to grow back in significantly. She got her wig from the Hope Circle people, but she wasn't very pleased with it and hasn't worn it at all. Instead she's worn the head scarves that my good LJ buddy warmheartcold's wife made for her. And they look great.

She goes back for round four of treatment on Monday. Right now she's doing good. She hits her low point in the chemo cycle seven to ten days after the end of a round, and comes out of it a few days later. Her white counts bottom out and she's just incredibly fatigued for a couple of days, but it seems as though she's adjusting to it. I'm very proud of how she's handled all of this.

Another side effect of all of this is that Sally, already borderline diabetic before all of this started, is now, for all intents and purposes, a diabetic. The steroids that they give her at the outset of her treatments spike her sugar into the stratosphere (it's been over 500 on occasion...my understanding is that's very bad). She now takes sugar pills and insulin when the situation warrants. But she's handling that well too. She stays on top of it, and hasn't had any episodes like I've seen diabetics have.

As for me, I got my chemo pump taken off on the sixth of January, and finished up the radiation treatments on the eleventh. It was pretty cool in that the nurses and radiation techs gave me a diploma for graduating radiation. It certified me as "one tough cookie," which cracked me up. My radiation techs and nurses were just great through the whole ordeal. The radiation wasn't that much fun, and for at least the first three weeks, just left me absolutely worn out. And the chemo didn't help.

Somehow, my appetite returned right after Christmas, and even though I was still undergoing treatment, my energy level improved vastly. The chemo made everything just taste terrible for a couple of weeks, and I just didn't want to eat anything. Between the first of November and the end of December, I lost twenty pounds. I'm trying to get that back, plus a few more pounds I lost over those months just before I was diagnosed. I don't know if it will be too difficult. I'm eating like a horse now, and my doctors have told me to just have at it, that if I'm hungry, just keep eating. Not a problem, because I swear I cannot get full these days. At all.

The only problems since have been with my bloodwork. I became extremely anemic during all of this, and while it has improved (thanks to two transfusions and several Procrit shots), I'm still not in the normal range where my hemoglobin and other red cell counts need to be. I'd been steadily improving, but this week, my numbers slipped and I had to get another Procrit shot. Also, I apparently have a potassium deficiency, which might explain my ridiculous craving for bananas over the past month.

I got a call from my surgeon's office on Tuesday telling me that I was tentatively set for surgery on February 11th. I don't mind saying how nervous I am about this, but I am glad that at least there's a date set, and soon, they're going to cut this thing out of me. After that, it'll be a few weeks of recuperation, and then they'll likely put me back on chemo, only this time it'll probably be stronger, since I won't have radiation. I don't doubt my hair will come out then. It thinned considerably on the low-dose chemo I took via the pump. At least I'm hoping that the chemo caused it and I'm not hitting that point where it was going to fall out anyway. We'll find out eventually I guess.

Anyway, that's about it. I know it sounds messed up to say it, but other than the cancer, I feel fine. No, really, I feel really good these days. The only thing is that I still hit the wall in the late afternoon or early evening and end up taking a nap for about an hour or so. It's nice to have energy and appetite again after feeling like death warmed over for most of December. You just would never believe you could feel so exhausted until you go through something like that. The five to ten steps from my sofa to the front door would seem like a marathon sometimes. That's no exaggeration. So right now, I'm just enjoying feeling relatively well. It's a nice feeling.

For those friends who follow me over on Facebook, this is all old news, but there are a few of my LJ buddies who don't have me befriended on Facebook, and this entry is primarily to keep them in the loop and let them know what's going on.

I'd intended to do this update here a lot sooner, but things happen, I guess.

Sally started her chemotherapy several weeks ago. She's on a regimen where she gets three days of treatment, followed by two weeks of nothing, and then three days of treatment, and so on. Her second round of treatment starts on Monday.

She's handling it fairly well, except for the hair loss. It was slow at first, but over the past few days, it has picked up in intensity. She's cut it short, and plans on shaving it sometime this weekend. She's asked me to do it. I've told her I will do it, and I will, though I certainly hate the idea of it.

At the clinic where we get our chemo treatments, there's a place that provides wigs, hats, and other head apparel for chemo patients at no charge. We stopped in there last week so Sally could order a wig. The woman running the place was extremely friendly and sympathetic (and understandably so, as she's a cancer survivor herself). She was shocked to find out we'd both been diagnosed, and in the same week on top of that. She quipped, "That's taking togetherness a little too far," which provided a much-needed laugh for everyone. Sally picked out a couple of knitted caps as well. The woman (whose name I cannot remember to save my life) asked if I'd be losing my hair. I told her that I was supposed to expect it to thin out a bit, and she told me to pick out a couple of hats for myself. She also gave us these rings to wear on a chain that were embossed with the words "Hope Circle," which is the name of the store, but also a reminder that there's always hope. And on top of that, there were afghans lying around all over the store. The woman explained that, like the hats, the afghans were knitted by volunteers who did this free of charge and donated them to be used by cancer patients. She told both of us to look around and pick one out that we liked. A black-and-red checkerboard patterned afghan spoke to me and said, "Pick me," and I did. Sally got a pretty greenish one that reminded me of the afghans my grandmother used to make. I love my afghan. It's perfect to snuggle up in while reading the paper and sipping on some hot cocoa.

Sally's cough has gotten somewhat better, and I'm hoping that's because the chemo is shrinking the nodules and alleviating the swelling in the lymph nodes around her bronchial passages. She's in really good spirits. She has her bad days, but that's expected. She has acquired an immense faith in God since this all started, and I know that has made a lot of difference in how she's doing.

After much dithering, my doctors finally formulated a game plan. Dr. Jones, the surgeon, won out, insisting that surgery before the chemo and radiation was unnecessary, and that those treatments should start first, to be followed by the surgery after the mass had been sufficiently reduced. I started both treatments a couple of Thursdays ago. Before that though, I had a port implanted in my chest for the chemo treatments. The reason for this is that they're giving me a type of chemo that isn't extremely intense and is very slow release, necessitating me wearing a pump that administers the chemo 24 hours a day. The fun part of this is trying to keep the area where the port is installed dry while I wash my hair (the port is located right below the collarbone). Additionally, I haven't been able to take showers since it was put in, and as much as I enjoy soaking in the tub while taking a bath, I really miss my showers.

The pump gives me the drug in small increments. So small, in fact, that 84 mL takes an entire week to run out. I go back every seven days to have the pump replaced with a new one. Also, I have lab work done, so they can find out how my red and white counts are, and all of that good stuff.

My radiation treatments are five days a week, for five weeks. Mercifully, the sessions themselves are incredibly brief, lasting 15 to 20 minutes at the most. I go in, lie down on my stomach on a narrow table. They prop up my legs and have a nice place to rest my head. They have to pull my pants down about halfway down my behind so they can use these marks they drew on there (which they call tattoos, but to me look more like the crop circles that kept popping up in England a few years ago). It's so much fun to have my rear just out there in the breeze.

Since my head is nestled in the headrest the whole time, I don't see a thing. I just hear the whirring and whizzing and buzzing of the equipment as it does its thing. Lately, I've gotten adjusted enough to the uncomfortable table that I actually doze off during the procedure. So the sessions themselves are no problem.

There are side effects though. I'm pretty rundown most of the time. I do things around the house in short bursts, and I try to drink plenty of liquids to stay hydrated.

I guess the worst part was just adjusting to it all from a mental standpoint. The first two days of treatment were very rough on me emotionally and mentally. As I lay there on the table in the radiation room, it really dawned on me. I'm sick. I'm a cancer patient. Having the pump for the chemo attached to me a few hours later only reinforced this. Suddenly, I felt a lot less confident and self-assured than I did when we were first diagnosed. Suddenly, I was sitting there, praying (yes, praying) and saying, "God, I can't do this. I can't do this. Not me. Not on my own."

I felt a lot better after that. I've prayed a lot since then. Sally and I have both made it part of our daily routines. It's given me a peace of mind that is much needed in times like these.

Meanwhile, everyone around us - family, friends, internet buddies - has been wonderful to us through this ordeal. Our co-workers have raised over $1200 for us so far, with several benefits and fundraisers in the works. Those same co-workers are buying Katie's Christmas presents as well, as there's a list Katie made that's making the rounds at work. In addition to that, at least one LJ buddy took care of part of Katie's Christmas list as well. The elementary staff at Katie's school sent home a letter asking if they could "adopt" Katie for Christmas, and buy her clothes and other essentials. They asked for all of her sizes, and on top of that, had a spot for her to list any toys or games she might want. This is all incredible. When we were both diagnosed, I wondered how in the world we'd make it through this time of the year without any significant income. Thankfully, everyone has been so generous. Plus, after much delay, our short-term disability finally kicked in, and we're getting weekly checks for that.

Sally's dad and his wife have driven us to treatments and her dad has told us to not buy any firewood this year, that he and Sal's brother would come down and cut firewood for us all winter long (we have tons of trees lying on the ground behind our house, courtesy of last winter's ice storm, just waiting to be sliced up). They call everyday to check on us and offer to pick up things for us when they're in town.

My family has been cool as well. Nearly all of them have popped up on Facebook now and keep tabs on Sal and me. Mom says she's sending a package soon with a bunch of stuff, including more presents for Katie, who clearly is making out like a bandit this year. Mom has been helpful in that, having been through this with Jamie, she knows a few things, and has given me some advice on how to deal with different side effects and whatnot. The radiation and chemo have thoroughly killed my sense of taste and my appetite. Mom said Jamie had problems with that, even though he just had chemo and no radiation. She suggested different foods and things I could try that aren't as affected by the treatment. She said Jamie drank a lot of those Boost and Ensure drinks. I decided I'd give them a try, and got the vanilla flavor of the Wal-Mart brand Ensure knockoff. I was pleasantly surprised that it tasted...well, good. Meats seem to be the most adversely affected in terms of me being able to taste them, which is depressing. I find that fruits and vegetables still hold up well. Also, on Sal's suggestion, I decided to try out some baby foods. She'd read somewhere that some chemo and radiation patients resort to eating baby foods when everything else just doesn't hit the spot. So far, I've stuck to the fruity stuff, like pears, peaches, apples, bananas, and whatnot. I've also hit the deserts too, like the Hawaiian Delight and Tutti Frutti. Katie found the idea of her dad sitting there in the living room chowing down on baby food to be pretty amusing. I look at it this way. You've gotta do what you've gotta do.

Anyway, that's the story from here. Unless they alter the script, I've got 18 more radiation sessions, after which they'll take a look at the mass, and likely do surgery to remove it. After that, I suspect they'll go to a stronger chemo to more aggressively attack the spots on the liver, and to get any lymph nodes that may have been affected in the area where the tumor is. Sally will continue with her chemotherapy. I've read where her particular cancer can be treated with radiation, which makes me wonder why they haven't employed that as well. But I guess that's why I'm not a doctor.

I just want to thank everyone who reads this, and says a little prayer, or offers an encouraging word or two. I want to thank all those who have helped out, in big ways and small. It's made dealing with this whole thing a whole lot easier.

I'm back.

A lot has happened over the past four months. Most of you who read the journal regularly are in the know on this, but there are a couple at least who aren't, so I guess I have a story to tell.

I hadn't intended to just up and quit the journal. It just kind of happened. Around mid-summer, things just started to spiral downward. Sally and I were both constantly battling minor ailments, and I couldn't eat, sleep, or get motivated to do much of anything. The journal ended up a sacrifice simply because I'd come to my writing and just decide I didn't feel like doing it. I haven't written anything of any significance since the first of August or so, when I pretty much lost the scent on the plot of the would-be novel on which I was working. I'd get off work and pretty much just try desperately to get some sleep, which never seemed to come. I was just perpetually worn-out. I put it off on third shift finally getting the best of me, and started making plans to move to first as soon as we could get our second vehicle on the road.

Sally's had a long history of bronchial issues and asthma and whatnot, and those became more and more pronounced as we headed into fall. By the end of October, Sally's breathing was severely compromised, and she'd gone to the doctor several times just to get steroid shots for some relief. This culminated with the doctor finally admitting her to the hospital the day before Halloween.

She was in the hospital until the following Thursday. During her time there, she received a CAT scan, where they discovered nodules on her lungs. A needle biopsy was performed to remove a sample of one of the nodules, which subsequently led to her left lung collapsing. She had a catheter inserted for about a day to get the lung to reinflate and stay that way.

Pathology was suspicious of the nodules but couldn't make a definitive ruling so they sent them off, presumably to either Memphis or Little Rock.

Last Friday, Sally was told she has lung cancer. It's inoperable, not curable, but treatable with chemotherapy, and possibly radiation, though they intend to go with the chemo for the time being.

This was devastating, coming three days on the heels of the news I got.

As I said, I was pretty much run-down all late summer and autumn. I didn't really realize how bad it had gotten until I got out of the hospital after they'd done some treating me. The decline was so gradual that I really didn't put two and two together and think that something was seriously amiss. I didn't have some of the main symptoms that scream the diagnosis I eventually got. Everything could be put off on something else. I lost a bit of weight. Fine. But I wasn't eating. My back hurt a little more than usual. Fine. The workload had built to its largest point in several years, and I was paying the price for having layoff the majority of the spring and early summer. I was pale. Fine. I never got out in the sun because I work 3rd shift. I couldn't explain the rapid pulse after minimal physical activity or the elevated blood pressure. I went to a doctor about those two things, and he suggested that it was anxiety and prescribed me an antidepressant. This actually went well for a few weeks. My mood was actually better, and the heart rate and blood pressure actually stayed under control. There was just one problem.

The main side effect of this drug was dizziness, and I had it in spades. It culminated in me falling out at work. I was working and all of a sudden, the room just felt like it was spinning at a million miles an hour. I made it to the breakroom to sit down, but when the supervisors and my wife tried to get me to the office, I blacked out, and was out for probably thirty seconds. Sally took me home, as I declined to go to the emergency room, insisting it was the meds. I quit taking them immediately. The dizziness stopped and hasn't returned.

I started to notice there were tasks at work that I used to do with ease that I really had to labor at to get done, and it was mildly disconcerting, because I figured that people would assume that normally hard-working Tommy had just gotten world-class lazy all of a sudden.

There were two episodes that ultimately led me to the emergency room.

The first occurred on a Thursday morning, the last day that Sally was in the hospital. Work had ended but we had a meeting after work to hear our plant manager inform us of our prospects for the immediate future, and for our HR director to outline the enrollment process for insurance for 2010.

In the middle of the meeting, I suddenly felt violently ill. I got up and ran to the bathroom, where I gave up lunch to the porcelain pot. I felt extremely cold, I was shaking, and I couldn't catch my breath. I sat there in the bathroom, hoping it might pass. By the end of the meeting it had started to subside, and I emerged from the bathroom in time to meet my supervisors, who had a very worried look on their face. They asked if I was all right, and I said I wasn't sure. I got over to the hospital where Sal was, thinking on the way that if I didn't get any better, I may as well have myself admitted. But the symptoms subsided after I took a couple of Tylenol, so Sal and I went home that day.

The next night at work, we were commencing production on the latest issue of a magazine whose title denotes a stone that rolls. Nights when RS start up are always "hurry up and wait." The operators have the machines ready to make magazines long before the pages come off the press, but that's the way it has to be because we have strict deadlines in terms of getting RS shipped out. On other jobs, the operator gets all his pages out there, and then sets up the machine. Because of deadlines, the operator doesn't have that luxury on RS. The machine has to be ready when the stock comes over from press.

The time this happens varies. If it was a slow news week, or the issue is a slimmer one, it can be as early as 1:00 AM. If there's some late-breaking story (Michael Jackson's death, for instance), it can be as late as 4:30 or so. Those of us in the less labor-intensive jobs that are more integral to the running of the machine are generally free to mill about and do whatever we please. I'm not ashamed to admit that that night, I sat at the table by my work area, and did crossword puzzles while I ate my Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Toaster from Sonic. Those sandwiches absolutely are the bomb. If we go to Sonic, I eat them no matter the time of day. But I digress.

Around 3:30, our designated lunchtime, I started feeling spectacularly bad. Chills, shakes, and extreme shortness of breath. I went to the bathroom, sat down on the floor, and just tried to get my breath, to just get everything to slow down. It didn't work. At the end of lunch, I headed back to the machine, and instructed my operator to get ahold of the supervisors. They also got the shift first responders over there. They had me lie on my back, and try to drink some water. They asked a ton of questions, which was frustrating because I was trying to catch my breath and would just about have it under control, and then I'd talk and be gasping again.

They called an ambulance, and my wife. I was taken to NEA Baptist, the same hospital my wife had gotten out of the day before.

I was diagnosed as anemic in the extreme, and they prepped me for a transfusion. I was put on oxygen, and the doctors began investigating as to how a 35-year-old man becomes anemic. They eventually focused on the likelihood that the missing blood was disappearing via the intestines. I hadn't had any overt bleeding, or any pain to speak of in that general area, but that isn't necessarily the be-all, end-all.

After I had some blood in me and had gotten the benefits of some oxygen, I felt a hundred times better. One of the doctors (who was from South Carolina) and I were carrying on, dissing each other's state. When I asked him what was wrong with S.C.'s roads, he remarked about tobacco and how if North Carolina ever changes its license plate, it can just put a pack of cigarettes on there. He was cool.

They admitted me to the hospital, got me into a room, and later that morning, did a CAT scan. And they found a mass in the lower part of the colon. A colonoscopy and biopsy followed on Tuesday after several delays which led to me going 72 miserable hours without solid food. The diagnosis came back "strongly indicative of adenocarcinoma." That doesn't sound definitive, but the subsequent PET scan confirmed it, along with a spot on the liver.

My immediate reaction was, "Okay, now what are we going to do to beat this? Let's get going." I was never shellshocked or crestfallen or anything like that. I guess realistically, I knew it was a strong possibility and steeled myself for the possibility. But I also just decided I wasn't going to mope or let myself get down about this. I have this problem. We're going to attempt to alleviate it. I told Sally she had to be positive as well, that we were going to beat this, that everyone in our circle had to be on the same page, to absolutely believe that this cancer was going down. We had to be positive, for ourselves, and for Katie.

All of this would have been fine to handle (well, maybe not "fine" but you know what I mean) if Sally hadn't gotten her diagnosis later that week. I felt like I'd gotten kicked in the chest when I heard it. But we redoubled our efforts to maintain a sunny, positive outlook, and that's where we are at this point. While we know that there's always the chance things don't work out, and acknowledge that, we don't let it be the primary focus. The focus is on the fact that we can do this. Mind over matter. The only way around it is through it. So here we go.

Since the diagnoses, Sally has had another CAT scan and a consult with her gynecologist to see if this cancer possibly started in the cervix (it's inconclusive so far), and she has her first chemo treatment on Friday. My doctors are still in the middle of trying to formulate the battle plan. The location of the mass prevents them from just going in and cutting it out without it being shrunk first, which will be done with a combo of radiation and chemo. Thing is, radiation tends to make these things swell at the outset, and the radiation and chemo doctors are concerned that I might get blocked off, and want the surgeon to basically unhook me, put in a colostomy bag, and then after I heal up, they can go full bore with the treatment. The surgeon seems to think that surgery is unnecessary and wants the other docs to start their treatment first, and if complications arise, he'll step in and do the surgery. I was supposed to find out their verdict today, but the surgeon was in surgery all day and never had a powwow with the radiation and chemo doctors. So I wait again. Which is frustrating. I'm ready to get on with this. It's absolutely going to suck, but we may as well just get to it. Time's a-wastin'.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough, but I felt like I needed to come here and discuss this. Thanks to everybody for the thoughts and prayers and generosity, and just everything during this time. It means a whole lot.

I'd intended to do better with this. Really.

Over the last week of June, I wrote several things that were intended for consumption here, but when I'd go to type them up and post them, I realized, "Hey, this sucks. No, this really, really sucks." Dull, boring, lifeless entries about uninteresting subject matter. So I junked the entries and just figured, hey, if it happens, it'll happen.

Then, during the 4th of July weekend, a new inspiration struck. Actually, it's sort of an old inspiration, but that's neither here nor there. I decided to take some old characters from stories I wrote several several years ago and try a new approach, one that might actually work this time. I started with just a general vague idea of where I was going, because I've come to find that even when I have these great ideas for stories, if it has too much of a set-in-stone plot to it, I just can't execute it. It feels like I'm playing connect-the-dots instead of writing. I like indirection better, just flailing about for a bit until something sparks and I know where the story's supposed to go. I'd abandoned that approach for way too long and decided to pick it back up.

The idea started as kind of a homage, a tribute to my grandmother and my father, and just a slice-of-life from my days growing up in north central North Carolina. I decided that I wanted to capture those days, those scenes, those people and places, every bit as well as Stephen King utilizes Maine in his books or as John Grisham described life in eastern Craighead County in A Painted House. Other than that, I didn't have a real plot point, or any sort of guiding idea. I just figured I'd put these characters in motion and something would happen.

The other day, about 50 notebook pages (25 front-and-back sheet) into the story, I finally figured out what the big idea was, what would be the central conflict of the story, and immediately felt a lot better about this, that I wasn't pursuing some dead end here. I'm now at the top of page 64, which isn't too bad for eleven days work. And the writing has been fun. Most days, I've gotten my customary five pages (my goal for each day, it works out to roughly a thousand words or so) pretty easily. Only a couple of days was it tough, and I actually took one whole day off entirely.

It goes without saying that this is pretty much my all-consuming writing project right now, so any updates here will probably be confined to updates on the writing itself, and not any actual full-blown entries. Nothing much of consequence to say anyway.

The journal has been a bit melancholy lately. On the heavy side, you might say. I'm going to alleviate that today with an entry no one will care about.

I'm bringing the ol' "Give Me Twenty" feature out of the mothballs. Twenty songs, one artist or common theme. Since I've been in a Stones mood lately, we're going to sample my twenty favorite Rolling Stones songs.

As far as a Stones Vs. Beatles argument, there is no argument. The Beatles were four musicians who recorded together occasionally. The Stones ARE a band. No comparison. That's not suggesting I like one any more than the other. I just don't get the comparisons, or why the Stones felt so compelled to emulate the Beatles during the Sixties.

Before we get to the list, a few songs that fell short.

"Bitch," from Sticky Fingers, was the last song I cut to get to twenty. Love those horns. Shame we didn't have room. The other final four out were "She's So Cold" (from Emotional Rescue), "Hang Fire" (from Tattoo You), "19th Nervous Breakdown" (non-album single), and "As Tears Go By" (from December's Children).

A couple you won't see here are "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." I don't get the appeal of either of these songs, particularly the latter, which is lauded by more than a few people as the best rock song of all time. Really? That song? With that scrawny-ass riff? That was enough for people back then, huh?

On with the list...

1. "Paint It, Black" (1966)
(from Aftermath)
The first time I definitely remember hearing this was when Jamie and I watched Tour Of Duty on Saturday nights when we were kids. It's pretty much always been my favorite Stones song. I love the driving beat of it, and Mick's vocal is excellent. Compared with the stuff I was listening to in the mid-eighties, this song was...well, rocking. The sitar at the beginning is fine and all, but unnecessary. Once the Beatles started doing the Eastern thing and incorporating sitars and Eastern tunings in their music, every British band around (the Stones, the Yardbirds, etc.) jumped aboard the bandwagon. Still an excellent tune.

2. "Start Me Up" (1981)
(from Tattoo You)
Hard to believe this song started out its existence as a reggae tune. The band worked it over for years to no one's satisfaction before a more rocking version surfaced during the recording of Tattoo You. Honestly, this is probably the definitive Stones song. Watts and Wyman laying down that beat while Woody and Richards trade off licks over top and Mick sings lines like "You make a dead man come." Classic.

3. "Far Away Eyes" (1978)
(from Some Girls)
The Stones did a few country numbers, but none as earnest or nearly as cool as this one. Mick way overdoes the vocal delivery on the verses, but that's okay because that's the intended effect. The lyrics are amusing, and the chorus is tailor-made for belting along with, probably more so if you're drunk, though I wouldn't know. Great pedal steel guitar playing on the track as well.

4. "Beast Of Burden" (1978)
(from Some Girls)
If you had to buy one non-greatest hits Stones album, I'd suggest Some Girls. There isn't a dud song on it. This song is killer all the way around. The guitar playing, particularly the interplay between Wood and Richards through the song, is excellent. I love that stutter-stop rhythm of the guitar at the beginning, too. The rhythm lopes along, and Jagger gives a damned fine vocal performance, even the falsetto parts.

5. "Tumbling Dice" (1972)
(from Exile On Main Street)
Exile has gotten a reputation, particularly among critics, as a classic album and one of the Stones finest, and that's fine, even if I don't entirely get it. "Shine A Light" and "Loving Cup" are okay, and so's "Happy," but there's only one classic song on this album, and it's "Tumbling Dice." Everybody's in fine form here. The band just rocks out all the way through while Jagger sings his ass off, and then has a dueling call-and-response with what Lou Reed would call the "colored girls" singing on the track at the end. Moreover, the tension never lets up at all on this song, anywhere. It just keeps on building and building. Nice.

6. "Play With Fire" (1965)
(from Out Of Our Heads)
Mick's vocal is the whole draw here. That isn't selling the song short though. It's a great performance. Hard not to get drawn in when he reaches the chorus and intones, "Don't play with me cuz you're playing with fire." Never has a man who is generally fairly fey-acting come across as someone not to be trifled with like Jagger does here.

7. "Almost Hear You Sigh" (1989)
(from Steel Wheels)
Steel Wheels represented a return to form, and an end to a nearly decade-long feud between Jagger and Richards, which resulted in some crappy albums in the Eighties. Steel Wheels was good, and this song was great. Rhythmically and musically in spots, it reminds me of "Beast Of Burden." The guitar tone is fairly similar in both songs as well, as is the basic riff. "Almost Hear You Sigh" is a ballad, and a damned fine one at that. Jagger's vocals are great, and I dig the flamenco-sounding acoustic guitar solo in the middle too.

8. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (1969)
(from Let It Bleed)
From the sitar on "Paint It, Black" to the entire Their Satanic Majesties Request album, one got the feeling the Stones were constantly insecure about any comparisons with the Beatles. This song is another example of that, I feel. It's clearly an attempt at something grandiose on a scale of the stuff the Beatles were putting out in the late Sixties. The Stones never needed to ape the Beatles though. They were the frickin' Stones! Great song here, even if it sounds like Mick is trying to will himself to be Bob Dylan in spots. The lyrics are all obtuse, but that doesn't matter. Once it hits the break near the end when the beat picks up, the choir is going full-force, Ian Stewart is hammering away on the piano, and all hell is breaking loose, who cares?

9. "Mixed Emotions" (1989)
(from Steel Wheels)
"Button your lip, baby/Button your coat." So begins "Mixed Emotions," the song that brought the Stones back to relevance in 1989. Great great tune. The lyrics are fun, very positive, and life-affirming. Musically, the song isn't remarkable, but it's remarkably catchy. It's the type of straightforward rock song the Stones excel at. For all their attempts at grandiosity, they've never been better than when they just let Charlie drop a propulsive 4/4, got some killer riffs out of Keith, and Mick had the good sense to just sing and stay out of the way.

10. "Salt Of The Earth" (1968)
(from Beggar's Banquet)
This is one of the very first Stones songs I ever remember hearing, when I was a little kid. Loved it. I love it when they let Keith sing, even if he is an unremarkable singer. After a shaky first verse, Keith hands over the vocal to Mick. As one of those "hard-working people" out there, I wholeheartedly endorse Mick's sentiment. "Let's drink to the hard-working people. Let's drink to the salt of the earth." I love the guitar sound on this one, and, as they'd do to great effect on "Tumbling Dice," they brought in the black girls for the backing vocals. Never a bad move.

11. "Shattered" (1978)
(from Some Girls)
Mick's backhanded ode to NYC ("Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots"). Mick's vocals are amusing on this one. He sings in a conversational tone about his observations of New York City. The rhythm drives the song along, only taking a break for a brief guitar solo before heading off to the song's end, where Mick's vocals are becoming increasingly unhinged and the band starts backing him with "Sha-doo-bee, shattered, shatterd." Great song.

12. "Sympathy For The Devil" (1968)
(from Beggar's Banquet)
The big difference between the Beatles and the Stones is that the Beatles never would have done a song like this. For many years, the Stones embraced dark, violent, evil themes. This song isn't as sinister as the title might suggest (at least I don't think so). All he was saying is that the devil was present at various turning points in human history. If you buy into the notion (as many religions do) that there is a supreme evil that goes counter to God, and that this Lucifer or Satan or whatever influences people, then what's the big deal? That's all Mick is saying here. I really like the guitar playing on the outro and the piano that runs through the song.

13. "Under My Thumb" (1966)
(from Aftermath)
I don't imagine this song or the next song endeared the Stones to feminist types in the band's early das. Mick disparages the subject of the song as a "squirming dog who's just had her day." Ouch. I like the music on this one, especially the organ and the guitar solo.

14. "Mother's Little Helper" (1966)
(from Aftermath)
Grim song here, a tale about a woman who has to rely on her pills just to make it through the drudgery of the housekeeping and everything else, eventually ending with the protagonist's death at the end (at least that's how I interpret it). I don't know what sort of pill a "mother's little helper" is, but I always picture a video that parodies the Hamburger Helper commercials, only with the talking hand replaced by an anthropomorphic bottle of pills. This is another song with Eastern touches that are mere window-dressing.

15. "High Wire" (1991)
(from Flashpoint)
Flashpoint was a live document of the Stones severely overdone Steel Wheels tour. The arrangements on some of the songs were so overwrought and completely removed from the originals (particularly "Satisfaction"), it's crazy. The saving grace was the inclusion of two studio tracks, "High Wire" and "Sex Drive." I love "High Wire." A vociferous condemnation of how the U.S. builds up dictators and then has to tear them down (this song specifically references Saddam and the first Gulf War). Rocking song. I got into an argument with a co-worker over this song once. The co-worker in question is a huge Stones fan, the biggest drug user I know, and a person who is fairly liberal in many respects, but he'd never abide by anyone disparaging either Bush administration. I've never stopped thinking what an odd juxtaposition of views he holds.

16. "Honky Tonk Women" (1969)
(non-album single, available on most Stones greatest hits packages)
Charlie Watts demonstrates why he's one of the best drummers in the world on this song. He comes out of the gate with the thick beat, heavy on the cowbell. I'm not sure if Mick Taylor or Keith Richards is playing that main riff, but it's a nice one. Mick's lyrics tell some good stories about the sorts of women they'd meet in bars. Classic.

17. "Street Fighting Man" (1968)
(from Beggar's Banquet)
This song all but begged for the sort of incident that would eventually happen at the Stones Altamont show, where a fan would die at the hands of a security force comprised of Hells' Angels, largely compensated with booze, as the band played "Under My Thumb." The lyrics were as provocative as the Stones ever got, speaking literally of "violent revolution" and "fighting in the streets" (the latter actually referencing Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing In The Streets," which Mick, oddly enough, would cover with David Bowie just over fifteen years later). Mick's vocals are raw and the music is spare and angry-sounding itself. After Altamont, the Stones would back away from this type of song entirely.

18. "The Last Time" (1965)
(from Out Of Our Heads)
This song is pretty much about the riff. It just keeps recoiling and refiring all the way through the song, achieving a kind of hypnotic effect. It's not an amazing song, but I enjoy it. Mick's vocals are standard, and though the title says "The Last Time," the words in the chorus seem to imply that Mick's not quite sure it'll be the last time.

19. "Miss You" (1978)
(from Some Girls)
The Stones' foray into disco, and it ain't bad at all. Charlie and Bill put down a pumping rhythm while Keith and Ron play some nice guitar over top. The saxophone solo is what really sets the song off though. Why don't bands use horns anymore? Where are all the horn players? The Stones would try to replicate this (at least to these ears) on their next album with "Emotional Rescue," with lesser results (though there are those who love that song and swear by it).

20. "Little T & A" (1981)
(from Tattoo You)
Because when Keith sings, we all win. Despite the title, the chorus actually has Keith singing "She's my little rock and roller," which is repeated about a hundred times. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. It's not a bad thing either, though Sally made fun of it mercilessly the last time it came on the radio. Standard Stones rocker. Driving rhythm, great riff, and Keith's ugly caterwauling. Can't beat that.


That's all...

I've been through the ringer this week emotionally, and hadn't really realized it until last night when I couldn't find my wallet before work and pretty much had a complete come-apart of the likes that just generally doesn't ever happen to me.

This weekend is going to be a weird one, in a couple of ways. In a way, it marks a transition, or the continuing transition, if you will, through the various stages of grief that we go through after we lose someone. I'd had all of this in the back of my mind for some time, and over the past couple of days, it's just really started to weigh on my mind, meaning it's time to do some venting, and some talking about it.

Let's start with part one of this weird weekend.

Joy is getting remarried on Saturday.

Now, this certainly hasn't been unexpected, and it's not as if I have any sort of qualms with it. I do worry about the state of the union itself, given some of the things I've heard Joy say to her soon-to-be-husband, and some of the things she's said to me as recently as a few weeks ago about my brother. Now, I realize that when you love someone and you lose them, you never truly get over it. I get that. And there's going to be a part of Joy that will always love Jamie, and look back fondly on what they had. Fine. But when she makes a statement like, "I love Josh, but it'll never be like it was with Jamie," how do you respond to that? Sure, no two loves are ever the same, simply because people and circumstances are never the same. I just felt like it was selling her new guy short. Yeah, it'll never be the same. It's going to be different, and therein should lie the fun of it. Old glories are fine for what they are, but instead of trying to relive them, why not try to make some new stories?

I'm hoping that with the wedding finally occurring, she'll be able to make a break of sorts from the past. And if that means diminished contact with all of us, then I'd be willing to accept that. I think the fact that she's pretty much never stopped coming over to Mom's house has made the transition for her that much more difficult. She's constantly seeing Jamie's family, and the house he grew up in, and his pictures on the wall, and all that stuff keeps the memories totally fresh. I've often wondered how Josh has tolerated all of this. You know in the back of his mind, he's got to be wondering when it'll be his time.

Here's hoping that after Saturday, it'll be his time.

Though I made my peace with Joy moving on a long time ago, and told her not long after Jay's passing that whenever she was ready, then she needed to do what she had to do, tomorrow still marks a transition for everybody, really. After tomorrow, Joy won't be my brother's wife. It's no big deal, that designation, but it does mark the end of something. The end of four-and-a-half years of Joy being newly single and widowed. The end of four-and-a-half years of all of us groping to find the proper dynamic for the family with Jamie gone.

Joy, in ways, is starting a new life tomorrow. So many lives don't get to finish their first acts, let alone get a second one. What I would wish for Joy is, while she may struggle with the notion that it'll never be the same, that she and Josh would have more than a scant couple of years of marital bliss before any dark clouds start rolling in. I wish for her the patience to realize that while Josh isn't going to be Jamie, he will be the best Josh he can be, and that she'll give him every opportunity to prove his worth. She's betrayed an impatience and annoyance with him at times that she never would have dared spring on my brother, and while it's troubling, ultimately it'll be something they'll either get through or not get through.

I think this will be good. I think that maybe just maybe, my brother's looking down, and he's feeling a little better about things, that his beloved has someone and isn't going to be alone. I know that he'd be happy for her. I just wish he could still be here so I could be happy for them.

Then there's Sunday. Father's Day.

Dad has been on my mind a lot this week. Earlier this week, Arthur Conley's "Sweet Soul Music" came on the radio and I wanted to cry at thinking about Dad sitting in the driver seat of the Ford Econoline van we used to do our work in, tapping his hand on the steering wheel, belting out the lyrics. "Spotlight on Wilson Pickett now..." When Sally, Katie, and I saw Up earlier this week, and it reached the part where Carl was thumbing through his wife's "Adventure Book" and he saw all the pictures of the two of them together, all I could think of was my old man, and all the adventures he had, and I started crying right there in the theater. I've been a mess this week.

People have told me that the reason for this was that Dad's passing was so much more sudden that Jamie's, and maybe that's true, but Dad's passing has been orders of magnitude tougher to deal with. As much as we feuded and fought during our days, and as much as he infuriated me with so many of the things he did and said, none of that even matters now. It's impossible for me to think about Dad nowadays without seeing that huge, infectious smile he had. It's painful not to be able to dial the numbers and hear Dad's signature "Hey, son," in his typical drawl. It was as central to Dad as Jamie's typical phone greeting, "What's goin' on?" It's silly, trivial, insignificant stuff like that that gets to me the most.

I figure on Sunday, I'll get up during the morning and go out and do a little yardwork and listen to some of Dad's favorite tunes on the MP3 player. It would be a fitting tribute to the man many called Logan. Dad wouldn't have just sat in the house on Father's Day. That wasn't ever his style. So I'll go out there and trim some weeds while Tommy James and the Shondells "Hanky Panky" blares in my ears, and I can think about Dad singing along with James in his octave-and-a-half-too-low singing voice, and find a way to smile.

Thanks for listening to me babble, and thanks for reading.

I've struggled lately with my motivations for writing, both here and in general, and whether I even wanted to continue pursuing and honing my craft. Maybe it's just good old-fashioned doubt fueling these thoughts. When you're stuck in a dead-end job and you don't have any big writing projects you're extremely jazzed about at the moment, these thoughts can and do intrude.

I've never once doubted my abilities. I may not have winning, best-seller story ideas, but in terms of the craft, in terms of style, I have no insecurities. And it's not that my recent writing has given me any reason to despair. I've been happy with the work, even if it has been an end in itself instead of a means to a better end. I started equating the worth of my pursuit with success in a financial or prestige sense, instead of valuing the writing for the love of the craft, and the gratification it has always given me, gratification that nothing or no one should be able to diminish or take away.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed my little sabbatical. But at the same time, if I don't do this, there's always going to be this emptiness gnawing at me. It may not materialize right away, but it inevitably will.

My real motivation for stepping back into the fray today comes courtesy of Stephenie Meyer, author of those Twilight books. Sally and Katie have gotten into them. They love a good vampire yarn. Or even a mediocre one. Sally says the stories are decent but heavily flawed, and the writing is not very good. How not very good? She was reading Eclipse this morning and pointed out a sentence to me, knowing how much it would make me cringe.

The sentence talked about how the pavement "shimmered wetly in the sun." I could only shake my head. That sentence hurt my feelings. Wetly? WETLY?

My 9th and 10th grade English teacher instilled two things in me with regards to writing. One was to avoid the passive tense whenever possible. Two was to avoid the overuse of adverbs. To me, these two things are really symptoms of the same disease. People rely on passive verbs and adverbs because their writing is timid, and they're afraid that they haven't adequately expressed themselves. What do I mean? It's simple.

If Meyer had taken care to explain that something had caused the pavement to become wet (rain, for instance), the she wouldn't need to use such a groan-inducing word like "wetly." Maybe "the wet pavement shimmered in the sun?" And who was the editor who held his pen and didn't strike that word? I wouldn't have been able to slip that by Mrs. Roddy in freshman English. Have our standards fallen that far? Doesn't anyone react that way to bad writing that sticks out like a sore thumb?

I'm not saying I don't use adverbs. They're a necessary part of speech and add flavor to writing when deployed properly and not overused. What bothers me is the use of adverbs that really add nothing to the description, or are put there because the author chose a verb that didn't adequately convey the intended message.

The problem is, somewhere down the line, the adage "show, don't tell" got perverted into meaning that you can't overdo it on description, which leads to flowery, pretentious adverbs popping up all over creation. The sturdy, compact style of a Hemingway got lost somewhere.

I guess that's why I picked up the pen today. If the competent, decent writers of the world put down their pens and step aside, the Stephenie Meyers of the world will continue to flourish and prosper. Actually, with television and the internet dumbing down the language the way they are, I suspect Meyers and her ilk will prosper anyway. But I must persist.

God gave me the desire to write, and a reasonably decent ability to do so. And it would be foolish to just stop doing something I enjoy doing so much.

I may never make it to the mountaintop of publication, or be a huge success. I may get frustrated with that from time to time, wishing I could come up with that one brilliant idea to fuel a novel. But I'll never stop enjoying the thrill of the chase, the pursuit of the topic on the page, and the satisfaction of seeing it all come together. I guess I should thank Meyer for being such a shitty writer, and showing me that I have what it takes to do this, and that it has never been wasted time.

Shortly after I called it quits here, I just decided to go cold turkey, and just put the pen and the notebook down. No real reason for it. I just decided, "You know what? This is all I've ever done, it's all I've ever been. It's time for a break. A real, clean break."

I didn't decide on a time frame for this break, but I figured it would be at month, or at least a couple of weeks. Whatever I could stand, basically. When you've done something with compulsive regularity for over 25 years, habits can be hard to break.

The thing is, it really wasn't like that.

I'd get home from work, and instead of thinking about what I was going to put in the journal, or what I was going to do about all those fiction ideas I had running around, or those stories I was already working on, I'd just sit back, relax, and just do nothing. Or do other things.

It's been interesting and revelatory. Writing has generally been a thing that's always defined me. I'd be the kid you'd see with the notebook pretty much anywhere. My parents would be alternately irritated and mortified when we'd go to someone's house to visit during my teen years, and I'd plop down wherever I sat with my notebook, and start scribbling and being completely antisocial.

The notebook remained a constant over the next couple of decades. It has more or less always accompanied me to work, where co-workers would inevitably ask what I studying in school. This would always lead to me answering, "No, I just like to write," and thinking how weird that must seem to the person asking.

Over the past month, I've had the urge to actually sit down with the notebook and hammer something out maybe twice. Both times, I thought better of it, and just ignored the urge.

I guess I've reached a point in my life where I've accepted, more or less, that I'll never be a Writer (with a capital W). It isn't going to happen. I don't have the time, motivation, or good enough ideas to ever put together a compelling work of fiction. That's not pessimism. That's just the honest truth. As far as my other avenues of writing, I just guess I've gotten to the point where I just don't really care. My entries here were pretty much of the politics, music, or "Help, my family's psychotic!" vein. None of those points-of-view interest me these days. I still love music and politics, but I'm just not interested in writing about them. I have my tastes in music and my views on politics, and all anyone can really add to that is either to say "Amen" or vehemently disagree. I doubt anyone would actually change their mind about the topic at hand. And I can't say I'd care one way or the other if he or she did or didn't. As far as writing about family drama, I'm just not going there anymore. It's tacky, and distasteful, and presents only one side of a story, a side heavily biased towards the author.

I don't know why I bring any of this here.

I did want to thank everyone who chimed in with comments back on the last entry. I did read them. I've been back here, lurking every now and then, and I suspect that may continue. As for a resumption of the journaling, I'm not really sure. I'm leaving the possibility open, though that would count on me actually having something to say. Lately, sitting out in the sun, breathing in the air, vegging out on the couch with my girls, watching movies, or playing XBox with the Katemeister have been infinitely more appealing than writing. Playing Guitar Hero until my wrists cry out in agony, or studying Latin have been my new passions. I hope to add learning how to play a real guitar sometime later this summer.

We let certain habits come to consume us and define us, whether we ultimately like it or not. I've never minded being labeled "the writer." It's something I've always embraced. But the truth is this. I've written more or less continuously for 25 years. And after that, all I really have to show for it is just a lot of fallen trees. I wasted my teen years on crappy lyric poetry. I killed my early twenties on grandiose, crappy "Gee-I-wish-my-life-was-like-this," thinly-veiled autobiographical crap wannabe novels, and the past six years, I've had the journaling thing, which has produced moments where I've thought, "Hey, I can do this." And from a technical standpoint, that certainly is true. But translating it to anything else, anything meaningful, anything lucrative? I just can't see it. I'm destined to dabble. That's my lot. I can either decide it isn't enough, and find enough motivation, enough hours in my day to change that, which isn't likely. Or I can just say, "Hey, it's been fun," and move on to other hobbies, other pursuits. For the first time in my life, I've come to look at writing in general, and really fail to find the reason to continue with it. The buzz of a finishing a nicely written page just doesn't move me right now. And I'm okay with that. Maybe I'll come to fall in love with it all again, and maybe not. But I'm okay either way. I don't feel frustrated or upset that there's no grand idea there, or any motivation to sit down and slog through some paragraphs, hoping to find the spark.

It's actually more of a relief.

I started keeping an online journal six years ago. It was at the Easyjournal site. My sister had talked about online journaling, and had one of her own at some other site. I forget the name of it, but it had "diary" in the name of it. I couldn't use that site. I didn't want what I would be producing to be a "diary." I wanted something more...journal-esque.

I was a lone voice in the wilderness for awhile, until I started acquiring a few readers. After a year or so, those readers (who also had EJ's) all made the exodus over here to Livejournal, and I ended up following. This was early in 2004. I had my first LJ until spring of 2005, when I tore it down and started this one.

It's been pretty fun at times, and not so fun at others. This was a pretty nice forum to have to express my feelings over the passing of my brother and my father, and the support of friends here who read and commented was much appreciated.

I've been inspired by the give-and-take that existed here at LJ. I might gain inspiration from someone's comment, or by another LJer's entry. The past six years has been a fairly ripe period creatively speaking, and the journal has been a huge part of that.

I started keeping my paper journal again earlier this year. Mainly, it was to get myself geared to writing longhand again. I want to get my longhand legs back because when working on a longer work of fiction as I am now, I like to be able to sit down and write on it anywhere, and the notebook has a portability the computer sorely lacks.

In the process of resurrecting the paper journal, I noticed that it helped to improve the quality of the work I brought here. When I started my EJ back in 2003, the majority of my entries were written by hand, usually on breaks at work, or in the mornings sitting out on my front porch step, and then transferred to the computer. Over time, I came to compose a substantial portion of the entries at the computer, and I can do that if I have to, but I much prefer longhand. It just seems to make the writing better.

At the same time, Livejournal seems to be dying, if not completely dead altogether. I'm guessing that Facebook is doing a fair amount of the LJ-killing, but I could be wrong. Whatever the reason, the rapport, the give-and-take, the exchange of ideas and vitality that was here and has been here over the years just seems to have up and died.

The bottom line is that I just don't feel like I'm really gaining much from this exercise anymore. Whenever I've thought about closing shop and walking away before, it was always because I was getting discouraged or frustrated with the writing, and needed to step back. But right now, it isn't that. I'm as satisfied with the writing as I've ever been. I just don't feel that I'm particularly benefitting from taking the time to bring it here. I never got into this to be an attention whore, or to show off the work. I got into this because of the exchange of ideas, the idea that the other journals I read were foils I could work off of, and perhaps inspire along the way as well.

No one is writing anymore though. For the past couple of months, I've come to LJ hoping this might be the day that the writing came back, that my friends page would be stocked with great new entries to read, and insights to chew on for a bit. But it hasn't happened. I don't think it's going to happen.

I even joined some add-me communities with the hope of finding some new reads, but that was fairly fruitless as well. There were a couple of decent reads, but things just really aren't the same.

So for now, I'm done here. Maybe at some point, things will turn around, but my feeling is that online journaling in general is in decline, and LJ has seen its better days. I suspect that many people got into this for the social aspect, an aspect that Facebook almost certainly serves better. That was never my thing though. I got in it for the writing, and to read other people's writing. I miss that.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Twenty years seems like a long time. But really, it's not that long at all. And fourteen years is even more of a blink of an eye than that.

I first met Jessie when I was in the seventh grade, when we both started attending John Graham Middle School. We'd gone to different elementary schools that both fed into John Graham, which was the middle school for the southern part of the county until it was consolidated with Norlina Middle School in the early nineties to create a countywide middle school.

The students were divided into two groups, Core I and Core II, which was just another way of saying "pretty smart" and "not so much." Jessie and I were both in Core I. Together with several others, we ended up forming a close-knit group of friends, which we called The Lunch Crew, since we primarily hung out at the lunchroom table. The main group was Jessie, Bobby, Cosmos, J.D., David, and me. There were other "associate members," but we were the core of the group.

I'd been writing corny rap lyrics for a few months, and had even given myself an MC name, Tommy Chill. When we officially formed our crew, the others coined their own MC names. J.D. had several and I can't remember any of them. Bobby was Bobby Fresh. David became Grand Master D. Cosmos dubbed himself Chillin' G. And Jessie was Jessie Slick. J.D. was the only other white member of the group, but oddly, I got along with him the least of any of them.

I don't know whose idea it was, but we all ended up swearing on a Pre-Algebra book and reciting the oath, "I'm a DJ." Sounds stupid, yes, but we were just a bunch of seventh grade boys.

Our adventures were pretty tame. Basketball in the gym at P.E. on the opposite end of the gym from the jocks, since none of us really had all that much game. Paper football on the lunchroom table. Talking about music, and girls, and things like that. Nothing extraordinary. But we had fun.

Jessie was the quietest of the group, and quiet shy and reserved. He didn't talk a whole lot, but it was usually to put someone in their place with a diss. I can remember bringing my camera to school several days near the end of the school year, trying to get pictures of all my friends. I could never get a picture of Jessie, though. He always managed to turn his head or get a hand up in his face. I couldn't even sneak up on him. He just knew.

Jessie hailed from Parktown, a spot in the road in the southern part of the county. It was much like Heck's Grove, Bobby's little spot in the road, and Grove Hill, my little spot in the road. In fact, we'd jokingly argue over whose 'hood was the best, in much the same way New York rappers would represent their particular borough (Queens, the Bronx, etc.). I always wished that everyone else would have been as into writing rhymes and MC'ing as I was (I actually recorded several lo-fi versions of some of my raps with a tape recorder and my cousin's Casio keyboard), as I had always envisioned the Lunch Crew as a full-on rap group. Many of my rhymes would detail the imaginary adventures of our crew. I guess you could say I needed a life, or a girlfriend, or something.

J.D. flunked grade seven, reducing our crew by one for grade eight. J.D. had always been academically gifted, but he tuned out and eventually started down the road to redneckville. The rest of us continued hanging out. I still wrote my rhymes. Jessie, Bobby, and I even collaborated on a rhyme one day in science class when Mr. Blount gave us some free time. I wish I still had that one, even if it was corny. You could get away with corniness in rap twenty years ago.

The last gasp for the crew was the Florida trip in May of 1988. Cosmos, for some reason, didn't go. His dad was an OB/GYN, so I know money wasn't a factor. The other four of us went, though, and roomed together at the Orlando Inn West. We had a ball. Nightly pizza and pillow fights. Swimming down in the pool, and trying hard not to drool at the sight of Lisa in her peach-colored swimsuit. Then there was the itinerary during the days down there. Disney World, Sea World, Medieval Times, Kennedy Space Center, and Daytona Beach. I remember Jessie and I falling asleep on the tour bus at Kennedy Space Center as we had gone straight there after riding down to Florida all night on the bus and not getting much sleep. Plus, it was hot as hell there, and the air conditioning on the tour bus pretty much knocked us right out.

It was a cool, cool trip.

Once high school started, things changed. It was more racially polarized, and I never saw my old friends all that much. The cafeteria was neatly segregated. I ended up falling in with white friends that I met that had gone to Norlina Middle School, the other middle school before consolidation. I struggled with making friends with these people I'd sort of been thrust in with just because we had a common skin color.

I saw Jessie sparingly. We both had P.E. and Health fifth period, but there were two teachers, and he had one and I had the other. So I didn't see him much at all that last year.

It was a warm spring weekend, much like the one as I write this. Jessie and his cousin were out riding mopeds on a sunny afternoon. Parktown, like Grove Hill and much of the county's outlying places, was largely comprised of gravel roads that wouldn't see pavement until the next decade.

Riding mopeds, or anything, on a dirt road on a dry sunny afternoon creates quite a bit of dust, especially if it hasn't rained in several days.

Jessie and his cousin likely never saw the vehicle that hit them. I heard it was a truck, but I can't say for sure.

I remember walking into Mrs. Roddy's English class first period on Monday morning. I was in a pretty good mood. It was going to be another beautiful spring day.

Ebony was standing there in the classroom, which was in one of the trailers utilized as classrooms until D-wing was completed on the main building two years later. Ebony had a very troubled expression on her face.

"You know Jessie Alston?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I told her. "He's a good friend of mine."

"He's dead," she said. Her voice never wavered. I sat down at my desk, stunned and saddened. I walked around the school all day like that. I'd see people laughing or carrying on and wonder, "How can they smile? How can they laugh?"

I wanted to go to the funeral, but I didn't. I didn't have dress clothes, and I worried about how out of place I'd look as likely the only white person in attendance. I really regret that, not going. It's like I was afraid to claim my grief, afraid to claim my friendship with Jessie.

I never got to express that, share that with the rest of our group, and it's not like my new friends would understand or give a damn. The only time I remember discussing it at all was with one of my new friends, Mark, who shared a couple of classes with Jessie. He seemed to like Jessie well enough, and I remember him saying to me as we walked down C-Hall, "That's terrible about Jessie, ain't it?" All I could muster was, "He was a good friend."

And that was that. Twenty years. I think about what he missed, what he might be like now. And I'm left wondering why a fourteen-year-old kid had to perish on such a beautiful spring afternoon all those years ago.

Sally usually talks with her sister via Yahoo Messenger in the morning during the work week. Mornings are Sal's prime computer time, and Lorri's job apparently is so bereft of actual required tasks that she's able to devote an inordinate amount of time to goofing off on the computer.

The other day, the two of them were discussing Twilight. My understanding is that Twilight is the first in a series of vampire novels, and was turned into a feature film not too long ago, though I could be wrong. I'm nothing if not hopelessly out of the loop where pop culture is concerned. I also understand that women in general seem to have gone batshit crazy over this movie and these books.

Lorri extolled the virtues of the film to Sal, which makes sense, because she's a woman. Sally was kind of cool to the hype, saying she'd rather read the book first. This is because my wife is an intelligent woman who appreciates the written word, and who, while enjoying a good movie as much as the next person, also likes to read.

According to Sal, Lorri's response was a condescending, "See, I don't like reading all that much" like it was a badge of honor and that only geeks read books or something. Sal says that Lorri breaks out the "See" to start off sentences when she's going to talk down to Sal, which Sal says happens quite a bit. I'm not going to say she thinks she's better than Sally. She does. But I didn't say it.

The disdain for reading is all the more amusing when you realize that in some quarters of the family, Sal's sister is regarded as the "brains" of the clan by virtue of her half-decade bid at a local community college, earning a typically two-year associate's degree. I wrote several of her papers.

But Lorri was the baby, and for some reason inspired everyone's belief in a way that Sal never did, never mind that Sal, by any measure, is far more intelligent. Sal has a natural curiosity about a vast spectrum of subjects and interests that I've never seen out of her sister. When Sal initiates a conversation, there's no telling where it's going to go, and I love that. She constantly surprises me and keeps me on my toes. I feel like reading is one of the best ways to stoke that, and I generally try to encourage Katie's reading habit. Luckily, I don't have to do too much. Katie goes through two to three library books a week.

The reading naturally leads to increased curiosity, desire for knowledge, and the asking of questions, which keeps me on my toes. Earlier this week, Katie hopped off the bus, and as we walked up the hill to the house, she asked why helium makes you talk in a "tiny voice" (her words). I didn't know the exact workings of it, so we went in the house, and Googled it. Answer provided, problem solved. And in time, Katie will no doubt learn to search these answers out herself. But the reading, I think, primes the mind to be in that mode. To think, rather than merely just exist.

It depresses me when I go into someone's house and don't see any books. The only books that were around the house when I was a kid were mine, and the World Book Encyclopedias I talked the folks into getting after ogling my Pa-Pa's set of encyclopedias when we'd go over to his house. I was three at the time. I also used to love going to my Nannie's house, because she had books literally everywhere in the house. Bookshelves in the living room, upstairs in both the East Wing and West Wing (as we called the two upstairs rooms), in the hallway upon entering the house, and in her room. I loved the Reader's Digest condensed books, and the vast collection of detective novels she had, also condensed into three stories per book. I don't remember any of the names, except for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I definitely remember that one.

You can walk through Sal's sister's entire house and not stumble onto a book, save for the couple of kiddie books they got for their son, aged one-and-a-half. I just can't fathom that. I love my books. No less than Thomas Jefferson once said, "I cannot live without books." That's a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly.

I just wonder how you foster an attitude of wanting to learn, of having that desire to seek out knowledge, if there aren't any books, if there isn't any reading going on in the house. I read to Katie before she was born, and in general have tried to keep the habit going since then. Lately though, she does more of the reading that I do, as I just enjoy listening to her read. It's like music to my ears. I love watching her decipher the language, acquire more vocabulary, learn bigger and bigger words. It's a big thrill for me, and not because I can go brag about it to family and friends, because I don't do that. It just thrills me that Sal and I have managed to impart to her this gift, this love of language, and the desire to read and learn and know.

I haven't heard Susan Boyle sing, nor am I particularly interested in hearing her sing. Anyone who becomes a star by way of some stupid reality show probably isn't going to be my cup of tea, and if that sounds snobby or close-minded, then so be it.

I have seen her face in pictures on various websites around the internet and read a bit about the hullabaloo surrounding her rise to stardom, and I find it rather amusing, mostly for what it says about us as a society.

Boyle came to fame, as I understand it, with a much-ballyhooed singing performance on a show called Britain's Got Talent. I don't watch television, so I don't know whether it's an exclusively British show, or if it's televised in the States, and if it isn't aired here, why this woman is generating so much buzz on our shores. That's not really my point though.

Boyle is, shall we say charitably, not exactly the textbook definition of attractive. And that, it seems, has been pretty much the reason her performance is the story it is. There seems to be this sense of shock in the things I've read that an unattractive person can have a beautiful voice. In fact, some of the articles betray bewilderment, almost consternation at the idea. These articles have used words to describe Boyle like "dowdy," "frumpy," and "spinster." There's discussion over whether she's ever been kissed, or whether she could do with a makeover, which I guess brings me to my point.

What does any of this have to do with the music?

It's almost like they're saying that only attractive people can sing, but our pop charts are littered with evidence that there are plenty of people who are deemed beautiful by society at large who cannot sing at all. For instance, someone like Britney Spears is completely, 100% image. If this Susan Boyle was blessed with Spears' vocal talent, I wouldn't even be writing this. I can't help but feel this demonstrates how asinine our approach is to music as a society as a whole.

Maybe Britney Spears fans are sincerely taken in by her music. I don't know how that's possible, but I suppose maybe it is. Just hearing her songs on the radio, separated from the persona, the image, and all the hype, all I can hear is dull, rote dance pop sung by a hopelessly inept vocalist. But she has the image.

No doubt someone will decide Susan Boyle needs an image. One besides that of a dowdy, frumpy spinster. But in the end, will it change her vocal talent any at all?

I don't know when we got to the point where record companies felt like they had to sell us an image with the music. Looking all the way back to Elvis and the Beatles, maybe it's always been there. The girls in the audiences at their shows screamed so loud that hearing the music was completely out of the question, so I guess in some respects, the music, ostensibly the whole point of it all, has always been secondary.

I think back to the eighties and the band Heart. Their vocalist, Ann Wilson, started putting on a little weight. She didn't look bad by any means, but it was alarming to record company officials, who wanted her to look like the thin waif she was in the "Barracuda" and "Dog And Butterfly" days. They went to ridiculous lengths to disguise her weight in the video for their song "Alone" from 1987, opting for tons of shots of her sister, guitarist Nancy, while pretty much just showing Ann's face in a super close-up. Thing is, for someone like me, who only heard the song on the radio, and didn't see the video until much later, her weight was irrelevant. Her weight shouldn't be relevant to the sound of the music anyway. When you can sing like Ann did on that song, it shouldn't matter. But record execs wanted to sell Heart as an image, and sexiness was central to that. But I don't want to buy an image, nor is it particularly important to me how sexy Ann and Nancy are. I just want to hear good music.

There are any number of other examples of this sort of thing. The producers who perpetrated the Milli Vanilli fraud seemed to think that they needed to get two braided European clowns to lip-sync their songs to sell them and ended up embroiled in scandal. But at the end of the day, a song like "Girl You Know It's True" is good (yes, I said it) regardless of who sang it. Just put the song out there and trust that I'm sophisticated enough to get it and trust my ears and not have to have some stupid marketing strategy sell the record to me.

Martha Wash was a good enough to sing on C & C Music Factory's hit "Gonna Make You Sweat," but, due to her plus-size figure, wasn't good enough to be in the accompanying video, or even be credited as the vocalist on the track when the album first came out. And anybody with any sense knew that woman in the video wasn't bringing that big voice. Besides, anyone familiar with other dance songs of that time, like "Strike It Up" by Black Box, could tell whose voice it was.

I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that, save the Milli Vanilli reference, every example I've cited here has been female, which says something else about us. While a group like the Fat Boys can be truly larger-than-life, and make eating and being fat central to their image, someone like Britney Spears is called "flabby" after a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards just because she put on a few pounds and isn't a glorified stick figure. So don't ever expect to see a Fat Girls or anything like that. Generally, you'll see people like Queen Latifah or that woman in Wilson Phillips (Carnie perhaps?) feel compelled to struggle endlessly with weight issues that have nothing to do with recording music, which ostensibly is their job.

Shows like American Idol only reinforce this idea of image selling the music. The show produces these cookie-cutter acts whose images and careers are micro-managed to within an inch of their lives. Undoubtedly, once Susan Boyle gets fed into the image machine, you won't recognize her, and she won't recognize herself. But it doesn't change her voice at all. And if takes fixing her hair or wardrobe or eyebrows, or getting her laid to get someone to buy her music, then what's the point? We listen to music with our ears, not our eyes. Right?

The Miss USA pageant was held this past weekend. I didn't realize they still do those things, but I guess they do. Who watches them anyway? The contestant from my birth state, Miss North Carolina, won the contest, but that was hardly the story.

There has been an uproar over the answer Miss California, Carrie Prejean, gave when confronted with a question about gay marriage.

Perez Hilton, himself a gay man, was a judge at the pageant. In the interview portion, he asked Prejean if she thought, now that four states had legalized gay marriage, if the other states should follow suit and do the same.

Prejean answered his question by saying that she grew up believing in the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman and that's how she felt. She could have bowed to political correctness and given the answer Hilton no doubt wanted to hear, but she didn't. Considering she finished as the first runner-up, it's likely that her candidness cost her the tiara.

The episode angered a lot of people. It bothered me too, but not for the reasons many of you might be thinking.

I have no issue with gays getting married. Though people who harp about the sanctity of marriage do so for almost purely religious reasons, the fact of the matter is that marriage is a state-sanctioned institution. I didn't get my marriage license at a church. I got it at a courthouse. Marriages aren't dissolved in churches either, but rather in courthouses as well. If two men or two women want to purchase a license and enter into this contract, I have no qualms with it. Besides, if sanctity of marriage were the real concern here, these folks would push for the end of no-fault divorces and criminalization of adultery, which are arguably two greater threats to the sanctity of marriage than gays are.

Having said all that, I have to admire Prejean for choosing to speak her mind and stand by her beliefs, even as I disagree with them. Especially given that she essentially gave up the title of Miss USA and all that entails for those beliefs.

The condemnations rolled in swiftly enough. Hilton himself called her a "dumb bitch," apologized for that, but then recanted, suggesting that he should have used a different word instead, one that starts with a C and ends with a T and has four letters and that I'm not using here. The Miss California pageant officials condemned Prejean's statements and said that beliefs like hers had no place in the pageant.

And that's where I have my problem.

While it isn't okay for Miss California to offer an honest answer to a question, it's okay for Perez Hilton to use his status as a judge at the pageant to clearly advance an agenda?

Given that Hilton is gay, and almost certainly a resident of California, which is the home of Miss California and the state where Proposition 8 nullified the courts' legalization of gay marriage there, it's certainly no coincidence that Perez asked this question. He almost certainly was looking to advance the cause by having Prejean carry the banner for legalization of same-sex marriage, a banner that would have carried more weight had she subsequently become Miss USA.

And when she didn't fall in line, what did Hilton do? He responded by calling this woman two of the ugliest, most despicable words you can use to address a woman. Prejean answered his question in a calm, civil, rational manner. She didn't use words like "fag" or "queer" in her response. She stood by her opinion, one that is shared by our very liberal president, and pretty much any other mainstream Democratic candidate that has ever run for or held the office of president. And Hilton responded the way he did. But who's calling him out for his misogyny? Anyone? Is there anything remotely politically correct about calling a woman a "dumb bitch?" Why aren't we holding him to the standard we held Don Imus to?

And to the people who have said that statements like Prejean's are uncalled for at these events, I offer this. Shouldn't integrity count for something? Would you have had her lie to create some sort of facade of political correctness? Hilton later said that Prejean should have, and I quote, "left her politics and her religion out because Miss USA represents all Americans." But wasn't the question one with political and religious significance? He meant that she should have left her politics and religion out because it didn't square with his beliefs. And as for Miss USA representing all Americans, well, the majority of Americans, like it or not, are against gay marriage. So by Perez saying that, isn't he validating Prejean's statements?

Besides, if her opinions aren't to be tolerated at these pageants, then why are we allowing questions like Mr. Hilton's to be asked in the first place? Prejean wasn't looking to advance an agenda. Mr. Hilton clearly was.

If Perez Hilton is looking for advocates for his cause, and I'd assume he is, then I'd suggest using better methods than ambushing beauty pageant contestants with loaded questions and then getting catty and calling them names when they don't give you the answers you want to hear.

Let's see. I've been procrastinating on the heavy lifting involving the story ideas I'm working on. There's nothing else in the way of real inspiration, but I feel like I ought to be doing something, so I offer this.

Over at Facebook, there's an application that allows you to make lists of top fives. Top fives of just about anything. It's an incredible time-wasting device.

One of my friends had done his list of top five bassists, which naturally led to me creating mine. Then I decided to come back here, and take it a step further. Instead of five, why not twenty? Because I overdo everything.

I'm not going to start with bassists today. Nah. We're going to start with drummers. The backbeat and backbone of the band. Here are my favorite twenty drummers. Not necessarily the best, though naturally, I think they are.

1. John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)
By any measure I can think of, he's the best. There are so many great performances by him. I love the part where he comes in with absolutely volcanic furor at the end of the guitar solo on "Whole Lotta Love." The drumming on "When The Levee Breaks" is astounding. But the performance of his that I think demonstrates the greatest range of his abilities was on "Stairway To Heaven." The drumming on the middle sections has an almost jazzy feel in spots. It goes without saying that it was impressive that he produced all that racket with a basic drumkit setup. He didn't have a thousand drums spread out in front of him or a double bass. Simple, but powerful.

2. Lars Ulrich (Metallica)
As a sample of his greatness, I'd point to nearly any song on the Ride The Lightning album, but particularly "Fight Fire With Fire," with its relentless double bass. It sounds like Lars had to be literally running in place on the pedals to produce that sound. But it's not just all speed and power. I think his playing on "Enter Sandman" demonstrates a bit of groove, and the drums on mellower songs like "Nothing Else Matters" are adequate but not overpowering.

3. Neil Peart (Rush)
It's a bit of a rarity, but Rush is the rare band where the drummer is the chief lyricist. And Peart writes some profound lyrics. But we're discussing drums here, and he's got that covered. He's an absolute virtuoso on the skins. There are so many examples of his playing that I could cite. I love the drumming and the fills on the outro to "Roll The Bones." His performance on "Subdivisions" is another favorite of mine. Or on "Marathon", where his drumming, along with Geddy Lee's bass, almost seem to mimic the pace of a runner.

4. Dave Lombardo (Slayer)
Yes, the drummers list leans heavily on metal and hard rock bands, but to me, that's where the great drumming is, for the most part. Lombardo is revered as the "godfather of the double bass," a name he came by honestly. Some people might listen to Slayer's music and just hear a bunch of chaotic cacophony, but there's more going on there, particularly with the drums. "Raining Blood" and "Angel Of Death," both from the classic Reign In Blood album, are probably my favorites in terms of Lombardo's drumming, as they encompass the speed and the slower groove-style playing he's capable of.

5. Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
Listening to some of McBrain's drumming on Maiden's work just makes me tired thinking about trying to play like that. Powerful, powerful drumming, but very controlled. Just listen to the drumming during the middle instrumental section of "Where Eagles Dare" for an example. That's probably my favorite of his. His drumming is perfectly suited for Steve Harris's "galloping" bass style, and they play very well together.

6. Bill Ward (Black Sabbath)
Ward was an absolute monster on the early Sabbath albums, especially Paranoid. His playing on every song is an absolute gem, even the stoned bongo sounds of "Planet Caravan." The drumming on "Iron Man" and "War Pigs" is excellent, matching Tony Iommi's riffs in terms of sheer heaviness. His playing on "Children Of The Grave," from the Master of Reality album, is another favorite.

7. Phil Rudd (AC/DC)
Most people would listen to Rudd's drumming, and go, "Big deal." But they would be wrong. Yes, his playing seldom strays beyond keeping a steady 4/4 time, and he rarely resorts to flashy fills, but you come to appreciate what he does when you listen to the albums the band recorded without him (particularly the Simon Wright-drummed albums Fly On The Wall and Blow Up Your Video). He gives the band that feel on the drums, most notably on a song like "You Shook Me All Night Long." Rudd once said, "I'm not suppressing skills. Most drummers are scared to play like this." They shouldn't be.

8. Levon Helm (The Band)
Because anybody who can play drums, play harmonica, and sing at the same time deserves a spot on this list. Plus he's a local guy (Marvell, Arkansas), so he gets props for that, even if he did up and move to Canada. Helm's drumming is fairly straightforward, and not too flashy, but he gets the job done. The best performance I've seen of his was a run-through of "Summertime Blues" he did on the old SCTV TV show. Among his better performances with The Band are "The Weight" and "Up On Cripple Creek."

9. Dave Grohl (Nirvana)
It's kind of sad that one of the world's best drummers has decided he wants to sing and play guitar in a mediocre band (that would be the Foo Fighters). Grohl's drumming on Nevermind was nearly as good as drumming gets. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" wouldn't be nearly as good without his bashing on it. And the performances on the MTV Unplugged In New York album demonstrate that he could play with restraint as well.

10. Phil Collins (Genesis)
Phil's a much better drummer than he is a singer. That's not to say that I don't like his songs. I do. But he's not much of a vocalist. But he can play the drums. As examples, I'd cite "In The Air Tonight" and "Easy Lover" (with Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire). You can even tell where he's involved with other people's songs, because the drums are mixed so prominently (like Frida's "I Know There's Something Going On," which Phil produced and played the drums for).

11. Mike Bordin (Faith No More)
Given that Faith No More had excellent musicians at every spot and a rather unique vocalist, they should have been much bigger than they were. Bordin was on top of his game on the album The Real Thing, which the band is mostly remembered for if they're remembered at all. Bordin helps lay down the thick beat that runs through their big hit "Epic," but for me, his best performance on the album was his absolutely insane drumming on their cover of Sabbath's "War Pigs," a cover that comes close to equaling the original.

12. Meg White (The White Stripes)
I've heard people be critical of Meg's playing, and I don't get that. I find the drumming to be one of the better things about many of the White Stripes songs, particularly a song like "My Doorbell," where Meg is there, just busily beating the shit out of those cymbals.

13. Tico Torres (Bon Jovi)
I think Tico is one of the more underrated drummers out there. He's the best musician in Bon Jovi, and by a wide margin, I think. His drumming is the thing that stands out the most to me on songs like "You Give Love A Bad Name" and "Livin' On A Prayer."

14. Don Henley (The Eagles)
I generally have to give props to anyone that can do two things at once. Especially two things like drumming and singing. Henley didn't play the drums a whole lot when I saw the Eagles in concert, but he did play on several songs, including "Hotel California." As far as specific examples of his playing, I like what he did on "Outlawman" from the Desperado album, and the title track from The Long Run.

15. Steven Adler (Guns N' Roses)
I think it's lost on a lot of people, but one of the main reasons that the Use Your Illusion albums weren't as good as Appetite For Destruction was that Matt Sorum wasn't nearly as good a drummer as Adler was. I remember reading articles where Sorum was praised as being much better, by critics and by the band themselves, but anyone can listen and see that Adler's style fit the band better, actual ability be damned. "Rocket Queen" and "My Michelle" are two fine performances of his. Sadly, Axl ran him out of the band as the first step in his quest to destroy one of the greatest bands in the world.

16. Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones)
Watts isn't flashy or anything, but he's been back there behind the drumkit, keeping the beat for over 45 years. And really, you have to wonder if anyone else could have done it. The Stones have been fairly diverse stylistically, and Watts has covered all the bases. Disco? Got it ("Miss You"). Country? Got it ("Far Away Eyes"). I guess my favorites by him would be "Almost Hear You Sigh," which wouldn't be nearly as good without the drums, and "Start Me Up."

17. Ginger Baker (Cream)
Baker's playing with Cream was absolutely ponderous. I've read that he prefers more of a jazz style of playing, but that certainly wasn't on display when he was playing with Clapton and Jack Bruce. You can pick just about any song from his playing with Cream and pick a winner, particularly "White Room" and "Crossroads."

18. Keith Moon (The Who)
I don't really like The Who, but I have to give Moonie props for being an absolute animal on the drums. Actually, his playing was more restrained than he was generally given credit for. There are two songs he played on that I would rate above all others, "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again."

19. Alex Van Halen (Van Halen)
Brother Eddie generally gets the most love in terms of the instrumentalists in the band, but to me, Alex is a way better drummer than Eddie is a guitar player (simply because I've never understood what the big deal is concerning Eddie's playing). A proper introduction to Alex's playing would include anything on their debut album, an album the band as a whole has never come close to equaling, not even with 1984. Particular examples? I'd go with "I'm The One" and "On Fire."

20. Rick Allen (Def Leppard)
The only reason he really gets on this list is for actually soldiering on and playing as a one-armed man. Because nothing he did pre-Hysteria was all that remarkable.


That's that.

Inspiration had been lacking recently. And it shows.

I say "had" because as of this morning, I have a writing project to sink my teeth into. And I have Sally to thank for it.

We were sitting there on the sofa this morning when Sally told me about an idea she had when she woke up. It was just there, pretty much. I'm not going to get into the details, other than to say it has a vaguely sci-fi bent to it, which is something I've never been able to approach in terms of actually writing in that vein. All I know is that when she began unraveling the idea, I knew that I liked it, and asked her if I could take it and work on it, and expound on it. She said that was fine, that she just gets ideas but could never be motivated to write them. I'm the opposite. I want to write fiction, but generally don't have any inspiration.

This should be fun. I've never started out writing a fiction piece that didn't originate from my own ideas. It'll be interesting to take something that I could have never come up with on my own and work it into something. I don't doubt that I'll have to lean on Sal for some of the finer plot points and the general sci-fi-ness (is that a word? it is now...) of it all. I'm just the words guy. She has the idea of what the sculpture should look like and I've got the hammer and chisel. I've never really done collaborative writing either, so this should be exciting and new.

I sat down this afternoon and wrote out a six-page sketch of what I think would be a pretty decent plot for it. This is extremely rough and vague and subject to change, simply because I've never had a story that unfolded in the manner I expected it to. So naturally, it would be crazy to think the story would adhere to my outline.

Tommy writing science fiction. This is going to be weird, but hopefully rewarding. We'll see, I guess.

Groucho Marx once said he'd never want to belong to any group that would have him as a member. I don't know if he was referring to any group in particular, but I know that the statement could almost certainly apply to Halls Of Fame.

Metallica and Run-D.M.C. were among the inductees into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on Saturday night. It marks the first time that artists that I am a big fan of and listened to during their actual heyday have made the Hall. Run-D.M.C. introduced me to hip-hop, while Metallica opened me up to speed and thrash metal.

I'd say that it's quite an accomplishment for these artists, who both started their careers light years from the mainstream, to make it into the Hall. I'd say that, that is, if I believed that it was much of an accomplishment. And this brings us back to Groucho and the aforementioned quip attributed to him.

There are Halls of Fame in many fields of endeavor, but the ones for sports and entertainment seem to get the most notice. And though one would think that the type of greatness that would be needed to be enshrined in one of these Halls, these clubs that elevate the great above the ordinary, would be fairly objective, the truth is that these shrines are really more like clubs, where personal feelings, politics, and pure subjectivity have a lot more to do with who gets in than actual accomplishments.

Take a look at the Baseball Hall Of Fame. The inductees are chosen by baseball writers, and baseball writers only. Announcers and play-by-play guys, who no doubt see a lot more games, don't get a ballot. And these writers inject highly subjective criteria into the process. This leads to a player like Tony Perez being repeatedly denied induction merely because he played on teams (the Cincinnati Reds "Big Red Machine" teams of the seventies) that already had many inductees. Never mind the fact that if you took him off those teams and put him on another team with the same numbers, he'd be a shoo-in.

If it isn't this sort of logic, it's the notion that a player has to wait a certain period after they're eligible. How does this make sense? A player's stats can't get any better or worse in retirement. So how does a player who isn't worthy on the first ballot suddenly become worthy on the fourth or fifth? Sometimes, it's as simple as a writer saying, "Well, this player didn't get in for three years, and this player isn't as good as that one is, so I'm going to make him wait for five years." Again, this isn't even judging the player on his merits, his actual accomplishments.

Then there's Pete Rose, who is a whole other entry really. Yes, he's an egotistical jackass. Sure, he committed the so-called "cardinal sin" of betting on baseball. Fine. But he has more hits than any player that ever played the game. He broke Ty Cobb's record. Cobb wasn't a model citizen, but he's in the Hall. Baseball has a warped sense of ethics though. Drinking, and being a racist are no big deal, but betting on games gest you a lifetime ban.

Now that the luminaries of the steroid era are reaching the point of eligibility, we'll once again be treated to baseball's warped sense of ethics. Mark McGwire has gotten vote totals so low his first two ballots, it's inconceivable that he'll ever reach Cooperstown. It'll be interesting to see how writers regard Barry Bonds, a guy who's never shown them any love in the first place. He almost certainly would have been a Hall of Famer before his late-career steroid-fueled power surge. McGwire, in spite of his obvious drug use, hit over 500 home runs. I'm not entirely convinced he wouldn't have hit bushels of homers without the help. Anyway, a whole host of other factors complicate things. If you're like me, you absolutely believe that the powers that be (the owners and players union) were complicit in the steroid-fueled Renaissance of the late nineties. Right or wrong, McGwire and Sosa saved baseball, and we all loved it, even if we had to know, logically, that the numbers were becoming so inflated that there had to be cheating going on. But who cared? And why do we pretend to care now? And how will the writers sort out all the players of the era? Can it be assumed that anyone was clean? Will they write off a whole generation of players, or reluctantly let them all in? Who knows?

With Hall of Fames in entertainment, the criteria becomes even more subjective. Take the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, for instance. I don't know what the precise criteria are that the voters consider, if indeed they bother to consider anything. Obviously, if one were being objective, one might consider longevity, album sales, hit songs, innovation, and overall breadth of influence as factors for induction.

Going by these things, some candidates would seem like no-brainers. And yet they aren't. The best example I can think of here is Kiss.

Kiss's recording career has spanned over thirty-five years. They've sold millions of records. They've recorded countless memorable songs. They produced what is arguably the prototype for the power ballad ("Beth"). Their style is one of the seminal influences on dozens of bands that followed, including pretty much the entire hair metal genre. The only real knock that can be made on them is that they weren't really innovators, at least not in the musical sense. But so what? Were the Ramones innovative in any sense whatsoever? Has there been a band, ever, in the history of music that recorded the same song over and over again more than the Ramones? I mean, besides AC/DC?

Regardless of one's personal tastes in music, by any measure, Kiss belong in the Hall of Fame. They certainly aren't my favorite band, nor would I argue what they do is high art. But this isn't about high art, no matter what type of pretentious bullshit might come out of the mouths of some music critics. This is about rock and roll. Kiss are the living, breathing embodiment of that. And yet, it is conceivable that while far lesser luminaries who have sold less records, been about as innovative (or less so), who haven't recorded nearly as long or cast nearly as big a shadow get inducted, Kiss may never see enshrinement.

And yet ultimately, I figure it doesn't bother Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter, or Vinnie Vincent, or Bruce Kulick or any of the other guys who have played with the band. By any measure, Kiss has achieved fame and success on a scale so large that any induction would merely be icing on an already large, thoroughly delicious cake.

Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone and man who holds the keys to the Rock Hall, and his buddies can enshrine every half-assed band or singer that played CBGB's and Max's Kansas City and tout their "importance" and "influence" until Judgement Day, and it won't matter. He can lionize people like Patti Smith and the Talking Heads, groups who are trumped in every significant objective criterion we've already covered, and it doesn't matter. I may sound like I'm slipping into subjectivity here, but I have a salient point. Kiss will always be more important than these others, and it's not necessarily because I happen to like Kiss better, even though that is true. Patti Smith and the Talking Heads tried to make art. Whether they succeeded or not is a matter of taste, and completely irrelevant here. Kiss didn't set out to make any bold artistic statements. They just wanted to rock. In that regard, they are a far better fit for the Rock Hall than damn near any artist I can think of.

The Hall ultimately is just another club though. Subject to the whims of the gatekeepers. And Jann and his buddies have always looked down on a certain class of rock and roll artist. Led Zeppelin, Rush, AC/DC, Kiss. The hair bands, except for maybe Guns N' Roses. Rolling Stone once did a feature on Bon Jovi that spent more space discussing the band's hair than it did their music. They don't take certain musicians seriously. Never have, never will.

The Talking Heads had a minimum of hits (two top forties), produced eight albums, exactly one of which went platinum. Their recording career proper spanned a little over a decade. Not bad, I guess. As far as influence, from the best I can tell, the only people they've influenced are filmmakers, rock critics, and assorted music geeks. But they were enshrined almost immediately. No doubt in small part due to the fact that the rock press adores them.

One might argue that my argument is an appeal to popularity and the wisdom of crowds, and one might say that a look at what passes for pop culture in this country should be an indictment of mass appeal, not an argument for it. And that's fine. But if you can seriously tell me that Kiss's career isn't Hall-worthy while the careers of people like Talking Heads, Patti Smith, John Mellencamp, the Dave Clark Five, or the Sex Pistols are, I don't know what to say to you.

And that's why the Hall doesn't really matter. Bands like the Sex Pistols or the Talking Heads need these critics to confirm their greatness. But Metallica or Kiss? They don't need any stinkin' critics, or any secret club to confer greatness upon them. By recording such truly timeless music, they conferred that greatness upon themselves.

CBS announced on Wednesday that Guiding Light, the longest running show in American history, has been cancelled. Barring some sort of resurrection on a sister cable network or something of that nature, the Light will go out in September.

I don't know if Mom still watches Guiding Light or any of the other shows. She's been watching the CBS soaps for a very long time. In fact, I remember what precipitated her starting keeping up with those shows. Mom had been an ardent fan of the ABC soaps, particularly General Hospital, when I was a little kid. I remember all the hype and hoopla over Luke and Laura's wedding. And then Luke and Laura were suddenly gone, and Mom swore she was done with that show. This was nothing new. I'd heard any number of times how she was disowning a particular soap after a bummer of an event. But she was serious this time. Almost immediately, she was watching The Young And The Restless, Search For Tomorrow, As The World Turns, and Guiding Light. Her mom had favored the CBS shows whenever she actually sat down in the afternoon to watch television, something that didn't happen a lot more than it did.

Even after that, the occasional "death" of a character or some other event would drive Mom to say "I'm not watching (name of show here) anymore." I definitely remember her reacting this way once when Guiding Light ran Reva off for a bit. That always amused me though. Like she wasn't coming back. They always come back. Soap opera actors, besides being hopelessly typecast, are generally BAD ACTORS. You think Susan Lucci's intended career path was to spend forty years playing Erika Kane? I doubt it. Sure, soaps have produced a few genuine actors (Kevin Bacon, James Earl Jones, Meg Ryan), but by and large, soap opera actors are melodramatic hams that should have had their dreams ruthlessly crushed in high school drama class. So when they leave or get "killed" off, it's almost always temporary, because soap opera actors aren't exactly ready for the big screen...or primetime.

Even back in the day, when I was a kid, I watched soaps with a sense of disbelief and marveled at how Mom (or anyone else) could continually watch this crap. The only way I could keep myself amused was to mock the action on the screen (though not nearly as good as the guys on MST3K would do with awful movies years later). This would result in Mom getting irritated, naturally. But even as a kid, the action just seemed nonsensical to the point of absurdity. And it just recycled itself ad nauseum. Everything was completely predictable, down to the predictable cliffhanger on Friday afternoon.

Some of the conventions of soaps are just so unnatural, it's thoroughly distracting to the viewer. Especially if that viewer is me.

What's up with the inevitable monologue characters like to deliver just after another character has exited a conversation? You know what I mean. Nobody does this though! Imagine me being at work, and having my supervisor walk up and deliver some bad news. I wouldn't wait for him to walk away to say, "Just you wait, Curtis. I'll have my revenge. You'll see. I will get my vacation day on Friday." And who turns away from the person they're talking to in the middle of a conversation. Nobody! Yet soap actors constantly do this, turning completely in the opposite direction of the person they're speaking to, into a jarring close-up for dramatic effect. And while we're at it, who talks that much? All anyone does on soaps is talk, unless they're impregnating someone or contracting amnesia, which you'd think was a communicable disease in Soap Opera Land.

And they always do their talking at hospitals. I understand why the physicians might be chatting over coffee at a hospital, but on shows like As The World Turns or Guiding Light, everyone in the whole town would be at the hospital everyday, having coffee and shooting the shit. Why? What business did the barons at Lewis Oil have at Springfield General every damn day? They can't meet at a restaurant or something? And none of the doctors ever seem to have any actual patients or doctoring to do, but rather just sit around and drink coffee with the Lewises or Spauldings or whoever else drops by. Watching soaps, you'd be convinced that all this fraternization and coffee-drinking by socialites at the hospital is why everyone's health insurance premiums are so damned high.

Another disturbing aspect of soaps is how quickly kids age on them, at least on the Bill Bell soaps (The Young And The Restless and The Bold and The Beautiful). Nikki and Victor's kids, I swear, went from kindergarten to college in three years. That's not much of an exaggeration. Their son was born in 1988, and after disappearing for a bit, returned to the show in 1994 as a damned teenager. Rick Forrester on The Bold And The Beautiful is in his late twenties even as he was born several years after the show premiered in 1987. Do they think people don't notice this stuff? I could have used whatever acceleration device they developed to bypass my high school days.

Given all of this, it's amazing any soap has stayed on past a year or two, much less 72 years, as Guiding Light has. I know they've made token progressions over the years, but by and large, they're still recycling the same old plots, and rehashing the same tired themes. The template is fairly set.

There are usually one or more well-to-do families with big corporations. And if there is more than one power family, you can be assured that they are rivals. There's a hospital (with coffee). There are almost always lawyers too, and they're almost inevitably screwing someone that would pose such a conflict of interest that they'd get disbarred anywhere else but Soap Opera Land. And there's usually one woman on there that the writers just decide to shit on perpetually. She might be happy occasionally, but it's always fleeting, and followed by calamities the likes that regularly befell Job. Or Meredith Baxter Birney on those horrible Lifetime movies.

Forgotten kids are a staple as well. As David Sedaris once pointed out, even though it seems impossible, for people in Soap Opera Land, getting pregnant, having a kid, and then subsequently forgetting about the kid's existence completely is not only possible but commonplace.

Going into double digits in marriages happens too. I imagine there are fewer jobs that could keep one busier or pay better than being a divorce attorney in Soap Opera Land.

Cable TV has slowly eroded the soaps' ratings, and they seem to be going the way of the Saturday morning cavalcade of cartoons. NBC only has one soap, ABC has three, and CBS will be down to three after Guiding Light hits the ol' dusty trail, since it's impossible to conceive of CBS attempting to put another soap opera in that time slot. Ratings for other soaps aren't all that robust either.

One day, when soaps are long-extinct dinosaurs in the television tarpits, people not of this era will have to look at them and wonder how in the world such unimaginative, repetitive story lines replete with bad acting and cheesy production values could hold an audience in thrall for so long.

Of course, maybe not. They might be too busy watching the 100th season of American Idol.

Memory is one of those weird things. It's not like I'm an old man or anything, but at 35, I've become a lot more aware of memory. More to the point, I've begun to realize both the superfluous things that I remember, and the superfluous things that have slipped into the fog of forgetfulness.

Lately, I've realized there are things I never knew I'd forgotten until I tried to remember them, if that makes sense. And I realized at that moment that they were gone. And though the things weren't necessarily all that significant, it bothered me that those things were elusive. I couldn't dredge them up no matter how hard I tried. Overall, I think my memory, my sense of recall is pretty good. I don't fear early-onset Alzheimer's or anything, but I still fret that my memory has flaws, holes. That I can't recreate the past perfectly.

What brought all this about was listening to Katie talk about trips to the school library. Unlike back in my day when the library trip was a once-a-week pilgrimage, Katie comes home every couple of days with a different book. I like that. They have an incentive system, where you read books and get points for what you read and successfully test on. If you accumulate the requisite amount of points, you get rewarded. The kids who got their points got to go bowling Friday afternoon. That's pretty cool. I love to see Katie engaged and excited about reading. But I digress.

It was then that I realized that, no matter how I tried, I couldn't remember the name of my librarian at Mariam Boyd. I can remember my librarian at Hawkins (grades 4-6) and in high school, but I can't remember the librarian at Mariam Boyd, or at my junior high for that matter, which is just weird, since that was more recent.

I can see the library at Mariam Boyd. I can see all the shelves of books, including the spots where I got most of mine, on the shelves at the back, furthest from the desk, by the door that exited out in front of Mrs. Talley's first grade class. I can see the green carpet, and I can even see the librarian herself standing in front of the desk, reading to us as we sat on the carpet in front of the desk. She was tall, slender side of medium, and middle-aged, with glasses, and blondish hair. But I can't remember her name. And it's extremely frustrating.

It's the only real gap in my elementary years. I remember every teacher, every teacher's aide. I remember exactly where my classrooms were in relation to everything else in that school. I remember the names of my principal and the secretary (Mr. Sweeney and Mrs. Howard). I remember the lunchlady (Mrs. Cook). It's all there. Except for that one damned name.

Then there are the REALLY meaningless things that occupy space on the ol' hard drive. It's not that I've ever actively sought to remember these things. They just stuck.

For instance, I have an Aunt Dianne. I used to spend lots of time at her house, playing Atari with my cousin Dennis, who was an Atari god. Dianne had a blue Toyota stationwagon during the early eighties, and I've never forgotten the license plate on that car. It was YDB-831. Don't ask me why I remember it. I just do. I remember her phone number during those years when she lived in that big white house out near Embro, a spot in the road between Warrenton and the southern areas of the county. It was 257-4880.

As far as phone numbers go, I also remember my Nannie's phone number, even though she's been gone since 1992. Her number was 257-2361. My Pa-Pa on my Dad's side passed the following year. His number is etched in my brain too. It's 257-3602. Then there's my cousin Angela, who used to live next to Nannie. She moved away from down there in 1988, meaning I haven't had need for that number in my brain for over twenty years. But it's still there. It's 257-1046. None of these numbers will ever be useful again. But they're there. I can't conceive of ever forgetting them.

I can remember pretty much all the math I ever learned in school. All of it that is except for the most recent course I took, oddly enough. I took Calculus in the 12th grade. I made a 95 or better in the class each grading period. As of now, I can't remember a single bit of it. I remember vague terms that have no meaning to me now like derivatives and something called a Chain Rule, but that's all they are. Vague terms with no meaning. If I ever went into a field where math was a necessity, I'd have to start all over and take the course again. You would think the most recent math course I took would still be there. Fresh. But it's not.

Obviously, there must be an emotional aspect to memory. The reason I think Calculus never stuck is that, like nearly everything else my senior year, I had no emotional attachment to it. I'd thoroughly checked out by autumn of my senior year. But for whatever reason, old license plates and telephone numbers obviously carry some sort of emotional resonance.

My writing these days has tended towards old memories, remembrances of things and times past. I think maybe part of that is getting it on the page or the screen while the memories are still somewhat fresh, or before they degrade any further. Obviously, because a lot of the things I've written about lately occurred three decades ago, I can't be completely certain I have brought the memories up intact, without losing details or having details mutate in my memory over the years. I feel fairly certain that when I write about the past that my memories are lucid and the details are accurate, but even I can't be sure. Makes sense. Two different people can be involved in the same experience and yet have completely different recollections of the event when recalling it later. Sure, some of this comes from people just being different and having different minds, viewpoints, and opinions. But some of it has to be the simple process of the memory evolving, mutating. Details get amplified or downplayed, or omitted altogether.

I believe it was in a Chuck Klosterman essay where I came across the notion that one's memory in essence determines the size of one's reality, or one's universe. Klosterman expressed anxiety over the notion that his reality might eventually start contracting. I guess I can relate to that. I fret over the gaps, the holes in the continuum. That librarian's name is never coming back. And the thoroughness of everything else that's in my gray matter isn't going to change that.

Several ideas, and the title for this entry, originated in a piece I wrote in the spring of 2003.

For some time, I've been intrigued by all things apocalyptic, be they belief systems, or literature, or films, or even music. I find the general obsession we as a people have with the end of the world to be fascinating. Even amusing.

It wasn't always that way though. I remember those tense days in the autumn of 1988, when speculation was rampant among many faiths that the world's end was imminent. I recall being fairly spooked by it all, as I was not well-versed in religion or doctrine. Many of my classmates were spooked as well, even the more religious ones who'd presumably have nothing to worry about. One Tuesday morning, my English class was in the library doing research for a paper on ancient Greek playwrights and authors. I'd chosen Aristophanes at the suggestion of my teacher, who figured I'd enjoy his comedies. She was right, and later hipped me to Kurt Vonnegut, who would become a favorite of mine.

As we milled about in the aisles between the shelves of books, I'd occasionally hear someone nervously singing Bobby McFerrin's recent hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy" as if it were some sort of talisman.

Freshman year is tough enough. It's one thing trying to fit in, find your way around a strange new place, and adapt. It's another thing altogether trying to do these things while at the same time worrying that God was going to annihilate the planet any second.

My friend Clarence eased my mind a little bit as we discussed the whole thing before the start of Economics, Legal and Political Systems second period. He told me to come by, and we'd get out the lawn chairs and a cooler of beer, and sit and wait for God to show up.

Over time, I've come to not take any of this too seriously. I guess what ultimately helped were groups like the Heaven's Gate cult, the crazies who followed an elderly couple named Do and Ti, and all dressed in track suits and the lamest Nike sneakers ever made, and prepared to catch a ride on Comet Hale-Bopp. Sure, they were more extreme, but to me, it ends up equalizing it all. I end up wondering why any more credence is given to Christian scholoars who make apocalyptic predictions than to these fringe groups, when at the heart of it, one has just as much hard "evidence" to support their claims as the other does.

I'm more into finding an explanation for why we're the way we are. For all of time, we've had doomsday believers prophesying the end of time. In nearly every civilization, in nearly every time period. Just a decade ago, we were in the throes of the dawn of the millennium, and worries existed over everything from the typical apocalyptic suspects, to the infamous Y2K. The funniest part is that, contrary to what people thought, the new millennium didn't properly start until 2001, being that there was no year zero, and the first millennium started in the year 1, meaning the second started in 1001, and so on.

Now, on the horizon, the date December 21, 2012 holds significance, as it coincides with the "end" of the Mayan calendar. This has led to allegedly sane people propagating all sorts of theories ranging from a general shift in the priorities of mankind to an out-and-out apocalyptic event. I can't understand why people don't make the assumption that, like when our calendar reaches December 31st, we start it over again. But that concept doesn't create hype, or sell books, or tickets to the slew of apocalypse-based movies sure to come between now and then.

But that's not even the main reason we fixate on the end. Or even a particularly pertinent one. Sally suggested that the apocalypse is generally a means of control, of scaring those who don't believe into coming into the fold, or as a means of maintaining a grip on the faithful. I don't doubt that in many respects, that's a big part of the motivation of apocalyptic predictions. When I read Revelation, that's my general impression. If John's vision weren't intended primarily as an exhortation to remain faithful rather than a play-by-play of the end times, then why the personal messages for the seven churches at the start? That, to me, is the key. Revelation is often cited for its mystery, its denseness, and its symbolism, but to me, the key is the tone set in the early part of the book. I think that in this day, it's lost on most the circumstances of Christians of the time period of Revelation's composition. Eleven of the twelve apostles met grisly ends, with only John escaping in exile. Christians were being served up to the lions regularly in Rome. It would have been easy for many to say, "Hey, let's go back to worshipping Jupiter, or being Jewish." Revelation, however vague it is in places, succeeded because it gave Christians something that all of us seem to need in our lives. Yes, it gave Christians hope, but it was something else too.

It provided an end. A sense of resolution. Many would argue that's secondary, but to me, that's the basic reason apocalypticism is so appealing. It provides an ending. It might be disastrous, or blessed, filled with destruction, damnation, or salvation. All that matters is that there's a resolution.

We're just wired that way. We go to a play, and expect to see an Act I, II, and III. We read a book and expect a beginning, middle, and an end. Even in our music, we expect resolution. Schubert may have had an Unfinished Symphony, but in general, there aren't too many unfinished songs. We like closure. Why else would there have been so much hand-wringing after the relative non-ending of the series The Sopranos?

I wonder if it isn't because the notion of infinity is just too much to comprehend. The idea that things could just go on continuously, whether we're here or not. Maybe it even springs from self-importance. Think about what it says about the person who thinks, "Yes, we are the generation of people who are finally going to push God's buttons so that he cancels the human race." That strikes me as pretty arrogant.

The other flaw in religious-based theories and predictions of the apocalypse lies in the concept of time itself. We're forever putting emphasis on particular dates and particular numbers and whatnot, but all of that stuff is man-made. We made the calendars. We created these divisions of time that we've subsequently used to calibrate our predictions. God, such as we've come to view God, operates within the realm of infinity. God's not looking at our calendars, or glancing at a wristwatch as a means to know when to end it all. If that were the case, then it would seem almost as if God were acting according to our whims and suggestions, rather than the other way around.

This isn't to say that I don't acknowledge the very real possibility that it could all end tomorrow. Or today for that matter. But if it did happen, it wouldn't be because of some prediction someone made, be it a preacher, or Nostradamus, or the wacko down the street ringing a bell, holding a sign reading "The End Is Near," and urging everyone to repent.

Personally, though, I have to look at it this way. The world was here before us. I'd have to be pretty naive to assume it wouldn't be here after us.