Chicken Nuggets

Thank you all for your comments on the previous post. Now, it's not every day I can come up with something like that, so instead of trying to top the previous post I will just give you a meaningless story:

In London, my roommate had a friend stay over for a while. He was from a small Kibbutz and I was from Tel-Aviv, the big city, which meant we had nothing in common. Long story short, he finished my chicken nuggets. Not a big deal, unless you go down to the kitchen craving chicken nuggets only to find an empty box in the trash. So obviously, I did what anyone else would have done in my situation: I wrote a note saying, “You’re not in the Kibbutz anymore. Over here we don’t share our food.” Then, of course, I took out the empty box from the trash and with a large kitchen knife stuck the empty box with the note to his door. Obviously.

A minute later he comes home and sees a piece of trash and a note stuck to his door by a big horror-movie knife. And he looks at me and I’m ready for a fight, but he shrugs and hands me a family-size box of chicken nuggets he just bought at the supermarket.

It’s been a while but God help me, I still have a long way to go. At least I’m vegetarian now.

So What's New in My Life?

It’s funny how you live your life and go with the flow or sometimes actively pursue goals as if you know what's good and bad, and you move from one place to another and buy things and leave things behind, and you love and you hate and you attach a meaning to everything, and you go to school and learn to think only to find out you know nothing, and you smoke and you quit and you smoke and you quit and you smoke, and you grow a beard then shave it, and even a mustache for a while, just for fun, and you get slightly older each day, funny how that works, and the pieces of the puzzle, and pardon the cliche, start coming together only to form a greater unknown.

And now you're in your mid-30s thinking you've established something. You’re married and you have that house, and you have the doggies and more books than you’ll ever read (but not in a pretentious way, you’re simply a slow reader), and finally a stable job and you have the closest thing you’ve ever had to a schedule, and you sit back and relax and think you’re finally in control.

But you never really know when something amazing is going to happen.

Thank You, Sister. (And Thanks, Mr. Chukwu Odikpo).

First, a big thank you to my sister for making the blog header you see above. Nothing I write could even come close to the beauty of this picture.

And as long as I'm thanking people and feel too overwhelmed to write anything original, here's a cut-and-paste from a gem that somehow filtered through my spam folder. I'm rich!

Dear frined,

I'm happy to inform you about my success in getting the fund transferred under the cooperation of the new partner from Pakistan . Presently i'm in Pakistan for investment projects with my own share of the total sum. meanwhile,i didn't forget your past efforts and attempts to assist me in transferring those funds despite that it failed us some how.

Now contact my secretary in Cotonou, Republic of Benin,his name is Mr. chukwu odikpo and his email address is chukwuodikpo7@yahoo.com and ask him to send you the total $1.500,000.00 which i kept for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter. and instruct him where to send the amount to you. i appreciated your efforts to assist despite that you later disappointed me.

so feel free and get in touched with my secretary Mr. odikpo Please do let me know immediately you receive it so that we can share the joy after all the sufferness at that time. in the moment, i am very busy here because of the investment projects which me and the new partner are having at hand, finally, remember that I had forwarded instruction to the secretary on your behalf to receive that money,so feel free to get in touch with Mr.chukwu odikpo and he will send the amount to you without any delay. contact this email address is chukwuodikpo7@yahoo.com try to go their and collect your money ok,

Regards

BARISTER MATTHEW

Wait, does that mean email addresses for chukwuodikpo1 through 6 were already taken?

Joe Jackson + William Shatner

I thought I'll post a video of Joe Jackson. After all, has anyone influenced the way I view the world more than Joe Jackson with "Is She Really Going Out with Him"? Has anyone understood my teenage frustration more than Joe Jackson with "Different for Girls"? Has anyone come up with a better album than Look Sharp?

So I did a video search for Joe Jackson and in the end went for this one. It's just so weird. It has the potential to be a disaster but despite William Shatner's maternity dress, his bad dance moves, and his glances to the lyrics sheet this is a lot of fun.

In fact, on third viewing it's actually pretty great.

Tony Blair's Legacy - A PostGlobal Comment

Wrote a comment on PostGlobal. It's on the main page for now, which is pretty cool, I suppose:

I was living in London when Blair became Prime Minister. I remember the May Day celebrations that year. Finally, we all thought, finally we have one of us in charge. He was a man of the people, talking about labor rights, and about prosperity for all, and about education, education, education--meaning a reform of the public school system to ensure England would be again a world-leader. This was not to be achieved through colonialism and violent control over other countries' resources, but by looking after England's own resources: the future generation of scientists and thinkers, brought up by the public school system.

Then he put his son in a private school, and his moment was gone. He was no longer a man of the people, but one of the "Them" young people hated so much and overwhelmingly voted off power. He smiled his way into power, courting us all with the image of reform, but in the end we didn't matter at all.

His son went to a private school and England's children went to Iraq. That will be Blair's legacy. He rose up to power due to hatred of corrupt government only to redefine corruption. He gave us hope that our children were special, and then he sent them to die.

A Life-Changing Moment

On my twenty-third birthday, five months after I left the army and six months before I was supposed to start University, I received two postcards in the mail. One was from a friend on a trip to India, the other from a friend who moved to London, both telling me I had to join them. I remember holding the two postcards, one in each hand, rereading them and trying to make up my mind.

One postcard described sitting on top of mountains in India watching the sun rise, feeling lonely and complete. The other friend wrote about insane parties and new friends and about a band he had started and about being a part of the London music scene.

A month later I moved to London. I went to the parties and met the new friends. I learned to play bass guitar and joined the band. I dyed my hair purple. I found myself in the first ever “Reclaim the Streets” demonstration, and just before the police came, left to get my ears pierced. I called my parents and told them I wasn't coming back. I went to Glastonbury Festival and saw the sun rise over the green hills. I fell in and out of love. Moving further from the city and forced to commute, I started reading on the Tube. On a trip to Amsterdam, sitting alone in a coffee shop, I wrote my first short story. I danced in a cage in Heaven club, and made out with drunk girls in Camden Town. I found out things. I sat in a room and listened to Mogway and Beethoven and stared at a world map, watching the oceans move slowly with the music until morning came and the world stood still. I met my American Honey and here I am in Baltimore.

What if I chose differently? And maybe even if I had chosen to go to India rather than London I would still be sitting here, with my Honey sleeping upstairs, struggling in her sleep to stretch her legs because Buddy and Ginger are so goddamn needy. Maybe I didn’t have a life changing moment on my twenty-third birthday because no matter what, I would have been sitting here at this exact same spot, writing this exact same sentence.

The Forum

A friend of mine did the Forum. Maybe it has other names in different countries but it’s the same thing: You go there and admit you’re afraid of people and then you discover you are merely a part of a whole and that everyone is fragile and that you should confront your childhood fears instead of ignoring them, and then you call everyone you’ve ever feared and hated (which means everyone you've ever known) and you tell them, “I forgive you.”

So pretty soon people started to get really annoyed by her forgiving them.

But her life got much better. Facing the world with no fears, she started a business, got a divorce (she later called her husband to tell him she forgave him), rented a place by herself, quit smoking, and exercised.

These things don’t usually last, and soon she was back to her old all-too-human self. When you’re a part of a religion it’s easier to adhere to certain guidelines, but when you’ve just learned something and then you're thrown into the world, all it takes is that one experience you didn't prepare for, and you go back to what you know and trust, fearing people and keeping your feelings inside.

I think at one point in my life, after I was fired from my job and started reading The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, I was also on my way to come to terms with the world, but shit happens and before I knew it I was getting angry at people for stupid stuff and getting offended because I lost the little humility I had gained after getting fired. Like Flannery O’Connor said, we could all have been good people if there was someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives.

It’s not easy, living right. Or maybe it’s the easiest thing in the world.