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Thursday, September 11, 2003

Regrets...
I've had a few.
But then again,
Too few to mention!
--"My Way",
written by Paul Anka
When I hear that song, I think of Frank Sinatra, and sometimes Elvis or Sid Vicious -- all of whom have been known to perform, in their own unique manner, that wonderful song. Wonderful because -- though I don't always enjoy hearing it, I've heard it so much -- the song is a wonderful personal anthem. That's something we all need: a personal anthem. A song that praises our individuality; a mark of devotion to oneself. After all, they say you're going to have a helluva time loving anyone else unless you've first learned to love yourself, right?

This is not to replace your love for your God, or your spouse, or your family. I'm simply saying that we all need to give ourselves a bit more self-love at this time of year. (No, not that type of self-love !) Too many of us beat up on ourselves throughout the year, and then nearly destroy ourselves at year's end. No wonder there are so many suicides during the Holidays; the messages bombarding us are to Buy Buy Buy and to Give Give Give -- but what if you have nothing to give but love? If you have a dearth of that good stuff, then you'll have a bitch of a time spreading it around to your neighbors.

So be good to yourself, whether you're Christian, Pagan, Wiccan, Athiest, Hindu, Islamic, Mormon, Podcastin, or otherwise. Don't take the pills, they won't do you or anyone else any good; you'll simply miss out on the Next Big Thing (which may turn out to be Your Next Big Thing). Just do things your own way, singing that little hymn as you do so:
For what is a man,
What has he got?
If not himself,
Then he has naught.
To say the things,
He truly feels,
And not the words,
Of one who kneels.
The record shows,
I took the blows
And did it my way!

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Tom's right. We are complacent, here in Los Angeles. In fact, to live in the state of California is to live in a state of complacency, in some sense - oblivious of the impending Earthquake, the Doomsday Device, the Day That California Will Separate From North America And Disappear In The Abyss Of The Pacific.

Yet I won't consider myself complacent. As a whole, we are complacent - but not as individuals. I've lived in Los Angeles all my 34 years, and though I persist in living here (perhaps irrationally), I'm still more than conscious of the fragility of our circumstance. I'm faced with it every day - the alarms that wake me are buses or sirens or medevac, the air that I breath is odorous, the water I drink is always filtered. I see evacuations during blackouts or bombthreats or depictions of L.A. horror on 24; I know firsthand that Santa Monica is, as Shearer calls it, home of the homeless.

Yet most of us angelenos are well aware of all this, and have accepted our circumstance. We have found comfort in numbers, and together entrenched in our doom, we are complacent - only as a tribe, a family composed of individual malcontents choosing to collectively perceive the landscape through rose-tinted sunglasses. We, individually, live in the backstreets and gutters; together, in Disneylandia.
posted by Harold  9/13/2005 11:13:00 PM
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I once posted, in this space (this right column), the following:

If I had friends they would be listed here

That particular bit o' text, that silly and idiotic phrase, was repeated a dozen or two dozen or so times and was intended to be temporary. I had been working on a project -- a new layout for this blog -- and had intended for that text to be placeholder content. That is, the text was supposed to temporarily replace the content that had previously occupied this column (which was a list of links to friends -- that is, other blogs and web sites I linked to). I didn't know what content I was going to place into that (this) space, so I placed a bunch of duplicate phrases here as a placeholder so that I would remember to fill in this space again later.

At the same time, I thought I was being cute with the heading:

NEW & IMPROVED FRIENDS!

The fact remains: I still don't know what content to put here, in this column. Links again? Pictures? Video? Audio? Ads? Oh, hell no! It hasn't come to me yet, but I'm sure it will eventually, and when it does it'll come quick and (as usual) with consequences.