Wow, everyone.

I didn't mean that post to be some kind of plaintive cry for attention (although, on rereading, it does kinda sound that way - sorry). 

I think it's the weather that's crushing my spirit more than anything. In some misguided spirit of optimism and hope. the bedroom windows are open (with the storms still closed - we're not dumb or anything) so with the nighttime temps hovering around the freezing mark, it got damned cold in the middle of the night.

Another futile attempt to shake the wintry blues (from an email to some pals):

So I bit the bullet and bought a new car stereo yesterday.

You guys may recall that I don't very much enjoy investing lots of
scratch into my car stereo - remember the tape deck in the old Escort
that I needed to insert the earpiece from a broken pair of sunglasses to
make the tape sound marginally okay? - so I was pretty amazed that I
laid about $200 for this new one. I am primarily buying it so I have a
good input mode for my iPod.

As I pulled out of the Best Buy, the buyers' remorse set in. Why am I
getting rid of my perfectly CD deck when I'm probably not going to be
able to afford to be in a moving car for any length of time (and really
can't take off on long drives what with my family and all)?

But it's nothing I can put my stubby frozen finger on, whatever's bugging me. Would it help me if I could?

Hey ain't it strange how some things never change
Ain't it strange how nothing stays the same?
You were thinkin' I was distressed about some universe oppressed
But I was just depressed about my last pinball game
(© Soul Asylum, "Never Really Been")

...there I was, workin' like hell to get the wheat in when something got caught in the thresher.

Cursing, I climbed out of the air-conditioned cab of my tractor, spilling the dregs of my coffee on my coveralls and the seat as I did and hopped down to find the culprit.

I looked in the blades of the thresher and there it was: a goddamned corn seed sign had blown over the county highway from someone else's field - probably the good-for-nothing Jokinens - and landed in my wheat, waiting to gum up my thresher.

Cursing some more, I grabbed it with both hands and tugged it free.

At just that moment, I remembered that I had left the tractor running. I was sure I had taken it out of gear, though.

Later, after I woke up in the hospital and saw the clean, white bandages covering the stumps at the end of my arms where my hands used to be, I realized I hadn't.

-----

Yeah, you're right. That didn't really happen. For some reason, though, that was always my first worry when a correspondence (this is back in the old days, kids, before the magic of email) ebbed silent.

Don't worry, that hasn't happened to me. I still have all of my limbs and I've not been dragged away from my computer to struggle vainly to keep my family safe and fed (no more than usual, anyway). 

I've just been grappling with the same sort of ennui that my close personal friend SP seems to have as well.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the spring we've longed for is taking its sweet fucking time getting here - lows are projected to be near freezing tonight, with a chance of the S-word - or maybe its the fact that things in the outside world are seeming to be turning to shit even faster right now.

I dunno, but I've been bitching to myself that all of my pals seem to be observing radio silence right now, when I feel like I need them most.

Then I realized, as my old friend Rodney taught me (among innumerable other nuggets of pearly wisdom), 'Telephone works two ways, man'.

Comments work better now.

Can you all try?

Thanks

I am pleased to announce that the tyrannical despot who once ruled this vast cyber wasteland has been - errr - reassigned, and that, once again, the glorious masses will be able to participate in a democratic discussion of the issues at hand.

(Or, the comments should be working now. Play nice.)