I ran out today and bought 2 gallons of milk cheap at Osco, along with a bag of vanilla scented pipe tobacco. I still have this old corn cob pipe that one of my friends had purchased years earlier on a whim, only set him back $4 and he soon grew tired of it and left it in my posession. I may look a little country fried puffing on it, but I'm certainly not gonna blow $35 on a more proper looking pipe, so fuck you. 
At least not at the present time.
Anyway, I was puffing on it outside on my tiny apartment porch and finishing up Kurt Vonnegut's new book "A Man Without A Country" which is an incredibly smashing read. Fans of his have probably already read it, and if you haven't I suggest you at least borrow it from a local library, cause it's wonderful. Anyway, I think I'll share an excerpt form the book that I found really inspiring. Listen:
"There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity-- the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, 'Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.'
When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "You're a man now." So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.
Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can't be a man unless he'd gone to war.
But, I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'
So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
After reading that I sat there in the battered, weathered old easy chair that had come to me by a friend and I realized that while I may not be quite where I pictured myself to be, in a career befitting my college diploma, I was certainly feeling good, and it was nice. So I uttered that phrase, and felt good about my current situation. I know it's gonna change.
You're all in for the ride too. Enjoy it.
At least not at the present time.
Anyway, I was puffing on it outside on my tiny apartment porch and finishing up Kurt Vonnegut's new book "A Man Without A Country" which is an incredibly smashing read. Fans of his have probably already read it, and if you haven't I suggest you at least borrow it from a local library, cause it's wonderful. Anyway, I think I'll share an excerpt form the book that I found really inspiring. Listen:
"There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity-- the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, 'Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.'
When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "You're a man now." So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.
Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can't be a man unless he'd gone to war.
But, I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'
So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
After reading that I sat there in the battered, weathered old easy chair that had come to me by a friend and I realized that while I may not be quite where I pictured myself to be, in a career befitting my college diploma, I was certainly feeling good, and it was nice. So I uttered that phrase, and felt good about my current situation. I know it's gonna change.
You're all in for the ride too. Enjoy it.