In the spirit of trying something new, I’ll give this idea a shot.  Bare (your soul) with me and let me know if you liked it.

This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

I am not sure if it’s the changing of seasons, or the new incumbent in the Oval Office, or the economy, but every one’s got the bug.  I think all the hype around ‘change’ this past year got everyone excited, and since ‘changing’ political climates isn’t something that is done overnight (or even over the course of a 4/8 year term), people are looking for immediate change more locally.  I don’t mean in the grab a garbage bag and pick up trash around your neighborhood kind of way. I mean internally.  I know I am. Everything that happens is from now on, and it can be as you want it to be.

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It’s hard to find it when you knew it
When your money’s gone
And you’re drunk as hell

I keep meaning to put more into certain things in my life, and less into others.  And there’s only so many times you can say or hear it until you want to vomit (think the Shania story in I Heart Huckabees), until you have no choice but to sick up on your shoes or to do it. Nothing was missing, it was so obvious all along, but it’s hard to find it when you knew it already. We often don’t see what’s right in front of us.

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you’re un-stacking your load

It’s funny how that works.  Do we resist because it’s a commitment, or do we commit because we look forward to resisting? Another classic case of the chicken and the egg.  Or the me and the shotgun that shot the rooster that the neighbors recently acquired, as it were.  The only thing that has kept it alive this long is the fact that I’ve been up before it on most of the days it decides to create a ruckus.

I’ve twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground

I don’t care how warm you think 62 degrees is, you are wrong.  I know its -10, or 29 and sleeting where you are, but I’m wearing two pairs of socks, pants, a long sleeved shirt and a hoodie and I cant feel my toes.  I have no insulation, the hut walls are made from glorified cardboard, and the windows are small glass slats that don’t close fully.  The wind picks up, and it feels like winter, like I’m standing in a frozen ground waiting to be set ablaze so that I can feel all ten of my toes once more.

There’s a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he’s dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?

I love my friends because they know how to hate me.  I realize that may sound weird, but that’s only because it should.  They taunt me not to feel better about themselves, but so that I feel better about myself.  Don’t try this tactic on your friends, because I’m fairly certain it only works on narcissists. Whatever could it be that makes this work? I’m not sure, but it does.  I guess you can only feel so bad, or be made to feel so bad about something for so long or to a certain point before you sick up on your shoes, or do something different. Your reminder that you refuse to settle. Not because you say so, but because you live so.

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you’re un-stacking your load

Then in a familiar place again, a place where you spend all your time, you find or see something new. Whether it be the downstairs mix-up at Greg’s place, a new friend on Twitter, or a foot-long tear in the sheets in your bed.  As Shiraki would say, ‘the same, but different’.

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization, they are old and tired ideas, and some played out like a Back Street Boys song in the 90’s.  They are persistent however.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? Fuck no.  If it ain’t broke, break it, then build it back up better. I have so much to share, and so little need to share it.  You have so many secrets, and they are safe with me.

Tonight is my last night in the Beach Hut.  Tomorrow I am picking up a U-Haul truck and moving the remaining contents over to the Windward side of the island into my new home (Beach Hut 2.0).  Moving is no big thing for me, as I’ve lived in over a dozen places, at this point it’s a regular enough occurrence in my life that it can be done with relative efficiency and without much stress.

I was recently speaking to a friend who said that it took her at least two years to feel comfortable somewhere and to make it her ‘home’.  It seemed reasonable at the time, but if I’ve lived in over a dozen places in twenty-five years, then I’ve lived in each place an average of less than two years.   By her standards, I’d never have felt comfortable or at ‘home’.  I think I have (since some of those moves were shorter, and others longer), but maybe I haven’t.  Maybe I don’t know what having a ‘home’ feels like.   Maybe I never will.  Maybe I don’t need to, since I can find my way to being comfortable just about anywhere.

Normally before a move, I go through most of my belongings and throw out, sell, donate various goods to cut down on the amount that needs to be moved (since you are going through it anyway and putting it into boxes, might as well get rid of the things you don’t want to bother lugging around).  This move however marks the first in which I didn’t get rid of anything.  I threw out a broken fan, and a $1 plastic inflatable raft (that a visitor bought).  That’s it.

I’ve almost reached the point where I have absolutely nothing that I want to get rid of.  I say almost, because I found myself keeping (and thus packing and moving) things that I know I want to get rid of.  Why did I keep it?  Because I was afraid that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have anything to get rid of once I arrive at my new home.  I think I might be a little scared of what life would be like without anything to get rid of.

There once lived a bohemian homeless Harvard graduate (class of 1911) by the name of Joe Gould who used to frequent the villages of NYC and once said this of himself:

“There’s nothing accidental about me, I’ll tell you what it took to make me what I am today.  It took old Yankee blood, an overwhelming aversion to possessions, four years of Harvard, and twenty-five years of beating the living hell out of my insides with bad hooch and bad food.”

Something tells me Joe Gould and I would have been great friends.

I’ve been back from Fiji for a week now.  I got sick right after I got back (‘Welcome home asshat, we got you this wonderful cough!’), and then I kept saying “I’ll blog tomorrow”, but alas, tomorrow came and blog I did not.  That’s just the way things go, I guess. Such a bullshit saying really.

As a result this post is uneventful and so boring you are probably already asleep again.  I say again, because in all likelihood you are reading this at work in the morning, and you hate your job because it bores you to tears and you look to me for two minutes of salvation and I’m pretty much just peeing on you right now.

This is the shit post to say that there will be a post tomorrow.  I know that’s lame, but it’s breaking my ‘tomorrow’ curse with a recorded commitment to you, the un-reader, and I’m tired, and still a little sick, and I have a final examination tomorrow, and I’m renting a truck the next day to move from beach hut 1.0 to beach hut 2.0, so the last thing I’m going to want to do tomorrow is sit down and spend time writing only one of the millions of things I have to write about. But I’m going to do it because I said I would, and because I kind of love you, all five of you.

Today I took pictures of the house I am buying.  It was being inspected, and everything looks good.  I was sharing this good news with a friend over AIM and it went a little something like this:

Me: that is it
Aimee: oh NICE
Me: yeah
Me: im stoked
Aimee: you should be
Aimee: im proud of you
Me: i’m going to be in heaven
Me: again
Me: like
Me: i am in heaven
Me: already
Me: but now i’ll be at the next level
Me: like the level where only suicide bombers usually get to go
Me: minus the 72 virgins
Me: but plus a 1950s style beach house
Me: and a nice quiet beach nearby
Aimee: hahaha
Aimee: its not so very often that someone actually follows through with something they say they are going to do
Me: thats true
Me: i am a man of action…
Me: and i believe obama is too
Me: which is why ive been a supporter
Me: for a long time
Aimee: you are my obama
Me: hahahaha
Aimee: haha
Me: blog post tonight = coming from this IM convo
Aimee: oh no…

Oh yes.

Many of you have asked me how I got the name for my blog.  Since yesterday the site and half the Internet were down, I couldn’t post it.  Today, here it is:

[18:25] Lynn: i have them email open, i
[18:26] Lynn: ‘ll just forward even though i havent checked it out
[18:26] Me: okay
[18:26] Lynn: youremaail@gmail right?
[18:26] Me: with one a
[18:26] Me: yes
[18:26] Lynn: sans the double a
[18:26] Lynn: ya
[18:26] Me: .com
[18:26] Me: at the end tooo
[18:26] Me: sans the o
[18:26] Me: sans your serif face
[18:26] Lynn: yesyes sans your pants
[18:27] Me: sans your pants
[18:27] Me: !
[18:27] Me: .com
[18:27] Me: what a great domain name
[18:27] Me: or band name
[18:27] Me: or blog name
[18:27] Me: i think its gonna be my blog URL
[18:27] Lynn : sansyourpants ?
[18:27] Me: yes
[18:27] Me: .com
[18:27] Me: do you like it?
[18:27] Lynn: i bet its taken
[18:28] Me: doesnt resolve
[18:28] Lynn: o
[18:28] Lynn: nice
[18:28] Lynn: its pretty catchy
[18:28] Lynn: but could be read as smutty by up tights
[18:28] Lynn: which is maybe funny too
[18:28] Lynn: nerd smut
[18:29] Me: nerd smut
[18:29] Me: from a beach hut!
[18:29] Me: Sans Your Pants.com
[18:29] Me: ‘Nerd smut from a beach hut.’
[18:29] Me: dont tell anyone

A) Thanks Lynn.

B) Secret’s out.

C) What strokes of genius have you had in 4 minutes or less?

Something vicious came over me and I got hungry at lunch time for a feast that no king has ever even known the likes of.  Since I live with me, my fridge has less food then one of those ‘adopt a child from (Insert Destitute African/Asian Country Name Here)’ commercials, so I had to go out for lunch.  I decided it was in my best interest to hit up the International Marketplace which is a few blocks walk from here.  The reason for this decision was three-fold:

1. It’s an outdoor environment, and why live in paradise if you aren’t going to take advantage of the paradise parts at every chance you get?
2. It is a short walk, so if all goes well and after the feast I lose functionality of my legs, it is within crawling distance to the hut.
3. As the name implies the International Marketplace can sell me the entire world to eat, which is fantastic, considering that today my stomach decided that it’s appetite rivaled Galactus’.

Needless to say, this was the best decision I have made in a long time.  Enough happened in my 6 block walk (each way) to fill a 30 page short story.  No one reads books anymore though, so instead I will break up today’s events into several posts which will hopefully continues in a long series of posts inspired by my trips to the Marketplace (I have decided that I will go once a week).

Now that you have some background, let’s get to the good stuff.  I decided to eat Korea today.  All of it, North, South and the DMZ.  It was delicious in a way that only a meal topped off with a large cup of Coca-Cola can be.  I decided to keep the cup of ice for the walk home, and upon sitting down to write this post I noticed that the cup I had been exchanging fluids (and solids) with for the last twenty minutes held wisdom of legendary proportions:

"Expect the Unexpected" - Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, University of Alabama

As you can see this photograph was taken outside the hut, with the cup sitting on my banister.  Coincidentally JUST as I was snapping this photograph, a pretty woman was walking by.  There I was, on one knee, taking a picture of a cup on my banister.  She made a face as if to say “I know you are taking a picture of me, what kind of idiot do you think I must be to believe you are actually taking a picture of a wax-coated paper cup on your banister?”.  I began to feel guilty.  It’s already pretty shitty to be an attractive female walking down the block alone when people (men) cat-call and make comments, but to have them treat you like your some kind of celebrity and be snapping photos of you?

So I hope you read this.  Anyway back to the cup.  If you can’t see in the photograph and didn’t read the caption, the bottom of the cup (on one side) reads:

“Expect the Unexpected”

Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant

University of Alabama

First of all, what?  Second of all, maybe Paul Bryant owns the Yummy chain?  Nope, this Peter Kim guy does. Third of all, maybe the University of Alabama’s sports team shares a mascot with the Yummy chain?  Nope, they are the Crimson Tide. So maybe this coach is just a really profound speaker who came up with a really well known and widely used quote.

Naturally I googled the expression “Expect the unexpected” and this coach’s name was nowhere to be found.  I did find a few people who seemed to think that the host of the big brother show was the originator, which is one of many reasons I love America, but not this coach.  Turns out the furthest back I could find it attributed to anyone was Heraclitus.  He was around a few years before American Football was invented, so I think it’s safe to say that the attribution of the phrase would be better off belonging to him then Paul Bryant (or better yet anyone with two names, cause those old Greek guys only ever had one and they pretty much said everything ever).

It turns out that on the other side of the cup is another quote attributed to Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, and this article over at the Star Bulletin’s website informs us that Peter Kim was in fact a kicker for the University of Alabama back in his hay.  His coach was none other then Paul “Bear” Bryant.  Now if the mascot for Yummy is actually a ‘Bear in Tiger skin’, I’ll let you decide.