The Lost Boys

I haven't mentioned how the Lost Boys have moved in across the street because frankly it's not all that interesting, but the house used to be occupied by a retired dentist and his wife, who apparently sold the house quietly and moved away. There was never a for-sale sign, only a yard sale...and then they were gone. I never even saw a moving truck. Now there are apparently 14-25 teenage boys living there with no parental supervision. In reality, it's a single dad and a few sons, I'm told, but there are people coming in and out constantly, so much so that if I put a camera in my window, it'd be a blurry constant stream of cars coming and going (they're coming and going right now, in fact. I'm not kidding when I say it almost never stops). There's never less than 4 cars in the driveway, and there's almost never at least a few kids in the driveway doing something that makes noise - honking horns, setting off fireworks, yelling, fixing cars or boats...I miss the dentist and his wife. *sigh*. I never see adults. Ever. Hey, Lost Boys, you have 1.) a front yard you could use, 2.) a back yard, and 3.) a house you can actually go INSIDE. The beach is across the street. It's nice. Could you do any of these things? Must all activity take place in the driveway?

This morning I noticed that there were things falling from the roof of my house and the cats were freaked out. Later I saw one of the Lost Boys outside across the street with a gun, some kind of rifle, shooting rounds. I thought, "there is no WAY he's actually shooting at this house, right? I mean, they can't be that stupid..." but tonight I was outside on my porch and lo and behold there are lots of little bright red pellets. Nice.

What. The. Fuck?

I need the Lost Boys to 1.) shut the fuck up, 2.) not damage my car, 3.) stop freaking out the cats, 4.) go inside their damn house. Jesus. Maybe Peter Pan and Wendy are in there and she could make them a sandwich or something. A sandwich with sedatives. Now I really do sound like the crabby old "you kids get off my lawn!" lady, but you gotta admit the porch (my porch) covered with little pellets they shot over here while I sat right here is a bit over the top!

Oh, they're firing up another car. Gotta keep up the flow...

no more "Louie"

So, I was unable to get my "promotional" Comcast package extended, though I did try, and had to go down to the still-being-gouged-but-now-with-only-a-handful-of-channels package. This package includes: religious channels (wow, lots of them), shopping channels, sports channels, Spanish channels (things I will never watch), network channels, and a few things I might watch. So it's pretty bare-bones. I had a lower tier package before (no premium channels) but now it's just crap. There's one thing that I am actually legit upset that I can no longer watch, though. Everything else I can deal with (even the loss of "Conan" - no more TBS, MTV, or other basic channels). But the new season of "Louie" started, and I no longer have FX. I'm not sure if the episodes will be available online, but so far the first one isn't. I think this show is one of the best shows on TV, and I was really looking forward to the new season. I'd feel better about this downgrade if I were saving substantial money, but I'm only paying slightly less (if that) for exponentially less channels. I've read several things about how to ditch cable and get everything online and via other routes, but haven't been able to find a good solution for me without buying some other equipment, and even that wouldn't quite work. I am mad that Comcast would not work with me on this one, even though, as they pointed out, I've been a customer since 2004. Even more annoyed that their monopoly in this area means I have very few other options. And Louie...I miss you!

http://jezebel.com/5815172/a-little-girls-lesson-in-fairness-courtesy-of-louis-ck

UPDATE: After some serious searching, I found it online. Suck it, Comcast! http://blendseries.com/tv/louie/

not brag material

I'm annoyed with the children. Not actual children, but some of the people I know in their 20s, of which there are many. Yes, it's inherent of people in their 20s to be willfully ignorant and sometimes ridiculous (and to not listen to their elders - ha ha), but there seems to be a trend among many of them to 1.) never sleep and 2.) brag about never sleeping (mostly on Twitter). It goes kind of like this:

• I didn't sleep again last night. 
• I am badass because I didn't sleep
• I am getting shit DONE because I don't sleep
• How badass am I because I don't sleep?
• Did I mention I don't sleep?
• Yes, I think not sleeping is a positive thing!
• Wait, has it been a few minutes since I mentioned that I don't sleep? Well, in that case...I don't sleep!
• I have insomnia! (That's cool, right?)

Ok, insomnia? Is not something you fucking BRAG about. It's something you see a doctor about. And yeah, when you're 23, you think living on 2 hours of sleep a night and working constantly is the coolest shit. When you're 35 and you look 55, it won't be so cool. Study after study shows how living on a constant sleep deficit robs one both mentally and physically, so if you can't appeal to their future mental acuity, you'd think they'd care about their future hotness. But apparently not. It's too abstract. And there are adults who do this too, brag about how they don't sleep, or struggle with ongoing insomnia and assume that it's a lifelong thing without trying to find a solution. Seems SO strange to me.

I know my reaction is strong because I was bullied by my father into believing that anyone who slept past 5am was "lazy". Turns out that he was going to bed at 8 or 9 where everyone else decidedly was not, so it all evened out. But he never got that. And also, people need different amounts of sleep to function optimally. My friend W, one of the smartest, most efficient people I know, absolutely needs 9 hours a night. And he's unapologetic about it. People who say they only need 4 hours or less, however, are almost certainly lying (or lying to themselves). In actuality, those "super-sleepers" comprise like 1-2% of the population. The rest of us need at least 6-8+ hours to function properly.

Just as you don’t hear about people who drink, smoke, and eat poorly living to the ripe old age of 100 very often, you don’t hear about too many people who live like vampires and escape the ravages of that lifestyle. Those who claim they “get by” on very little sleep are likely fooling themselves, but their bodies won’t fool them for too long.  Eventually, that lack of sleep will show up somewhere in the way they look or feel (or both).  And ultimately, their health will suffer. -this article

Sleeping less, consistently, is withdrawing from a sleep bank that you WILL eventually have to pay for. And you may pay in premature aging. Hope that's worth it. Or memory loss. Weight gain? Ooo, heart attack. How's that sound? Oh, it's not happening now, so I guess it's not happening. Whatev.

pow

This is one of those things that keeps floating in and out of my consciousness. Better write it down before it floats away again. I did a lot of theater when I was younger, at a very good community theater where a lot of people went on to professional careers. I was in a production of "Fiddler on the Roof" when I was 12, and one of my older "sisters" was a local TV personality. Around that time, she got a gig on a TV game show type thing called "33 POW" (33 was the channel). A search for it brings up a soon-to-be-archived Facebook page, and not much else. You could call up and yell "pow!" into the phone and somehow obliterate dudes in a video game via your voice. You could win things. I was supporting my friend and I didn't do very well. I remember it actually didn't work very well. But I thought it was cool that she had this job. I didn't do anything embarrassing or silly (though the game was inherently silly), though I committed the mortal sin of being me. So I played the game, won nothing, and thought that was the end of it. But of course it wasn't.

When I got on the bus the next day, everyone screamed "POW!" at me, relentlessly, and not good naturedly. And that continued for quite a while. Days? Weeks? Months? I don't remember. I just remember that this show became a nightmare to me, another thing that people used to torture me.

In so many ways, for so many reasons, I wish I could go back and re-do my childhood now, with adults more aware of how kids are different, and (hopefully) with kids more tolerant, with hairstylists who know how to cut curly hair and how to style it and with products to deal with it (none of which existed, and which radically affected my life, negatively). I'm also, I gotta say, sad that all this technology wasn't around when I was a kid. I think it really would have helped me in myriad ways. Can also be a minefield too, yes, what with cyberbullying, but I think it would more have been to my advantage. The kids that have it now are lucky. I saw an ad for the iPad the other day, and even though these kinds of things are a part of my daily life, and nothing really new, I found myself crying. How fucking COOL are these things? If we could tell the kid versions of us what's in store, we would never have believed it. I guess in a way that game show was a precursor to those types of things. Woulda been nice if it could have just stayed a nice memory.

turning survival into glory

It's not like he doesn't have his own shit. You would too if you grew up like he did, with a volatile and unstable combination of (parents on) serious drugs and neglect and abuse, and somehow emerged out of that using defiance and anger and sheer determination. And channeled all of that into an intensive and perhaps calculated decision to do whatever he did the very best he could do it, which, it turned out, was often very very good. Whatever that thing may have been. Not competing with others, but only with himself. Concentrate on controlling what you could control and what you could understand, because the things that you couldn't - like dependable parenting - they simply weren't going to be. It's really a brilliant coping mechanism. How we process and react to these things, I'm convinced, has all to do with our temperament and brain chemistry firstly, and our determination second. But we must have the first - that gritty survivalist instinct borne inherent to our individual biochemistry - to have the second. And not everyone does. And that is NOT a judgment. Not at all, because I suspect that I'm in the second category.

If he were mine, I'd be thinking all the time about what he was accomplishing vs. what I was, and I would always fall short, I fear. I'm thinking that NOW, and we're not together. I'm sure his financial life is always in order; I'm sure that his bed is always made; if he had pets...well, he doesn't. I suspect they're considered too messy; he's a brilliant (music) theorist at a level that I can only imagine being; I always thought I had good intonation; now I have serious doubts; he must always make time to exercise; he must have a structured daily routine; I bet his shower's cleaner than mine; he certainly barely sleeps...

As I've been writing this, my knotted stomach has turned to me in tears, because...because of all he was put through, because of all he accomplished despite that, because he's still unerringly polite and astoundingly talented, reliable, much admired, and so beautiful, and because I can't have someone like that (nor tell him how I feel lest I creep him out), because the closest I'll get is "friend zone", because I'm desirable to noone, because I'm back to watching attractive, vibrant people hook up and having to pretend it doesn't bother me, and realizing that I may (I changed that from the word "will" just for the tiniest bit of hope that I really don't feel) never again be part of that. Just like the playground, taking notes from the girls to the boys and back again, but clear that I was neither. Just a messenger, an observer, that noone knows is aching for what they have, comfort, touch, things that seem so elusive. I feel much more hopeful for him. That said, I don't think we'll speak again. I don't see why we would. He now knows that "more important" people are impressed with him, and I don't think I have the drive to continue to push myself into his orbit, so I'll just fall out of it, I fear.

I'm UP

Sure, would have liked to have slept more than a few hours, but I understand how very very important it is that a landscaping company start their JET ENGINE LOUD multiple leaf blowers at a house across the street so that that particular yard stays competitively, flawlessly primped. My lack of sleep is your pristine patch of green, neighbor! Happy to do it for ya!!

[I went over and told the guys that it’s too early to be making that much noise. And not happily. They actually stopped. I’m sure the noise will be roaring back very soon, or will be replaced by the industrial tree limb mulching, something that’s gone on almost daily for weeks, and also produces insane amounts of noise. But the sheer level of sound was astounding. Am I seriously the only one bothered by this stuff?]