POP Goes the World!

No, i'm not referring to our potential imminent death if Dipshit Bush proceeds with his plan to let the United Arab Emirates take over our ports. Instead, I'm merely singing over and over the deliciously catchy Men Without Hats song from '88 that was just on VH1 Classics. But don't ya love how I deftly meshed together both pressing topics? That song is one of the last 45s I bought. Ahhh, 45s. I still have a turntable, ya know. Too bad literally all of my records seem to skip...unless I just need a new needle. Does anyone under the age of 20 know what a needle is? But I digress, as usual. So yet again, I'm staggered beyond human belief by the lack of precautions taking place more than four years since Sept. 11, 2001. There's about 10 different ways northeast Jersey could be flattened in an instant. Comforting. But yet again, it's far too late (3:15am) for me to go into complete rant mode. I gotta read Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." I think i'd enjoy it...perversely. It's all about death and loss. I read an interview tonight with her where she says during the entire first year after her husband died, the calendar was of paramount importance to her...every day, she'd obsess over what her husband was doing the year before. She also felt like something awful could happen at any moment...being hit by a taxi, for instance. Both of these things I totally related to...bizarre in and of itself, but more so in that, knock on wood, no one super close to me has died recently. But people "close enough" have. I've obsessed over death for years. My attention to dates and the passage of time...again, all related to my acute awareness of how fragile "it" all is. How it can be snuffed out in an instant. Every time I enter the Lincoln Tunnel, I pray to God (or, um, whoever) I make it to the other side. And yet, there's so much I still don't do that I should, feeling this way. Ah, human contradictions. But i'm trying. So what WOULD I/you do if I/you knew I/you had only one month to live? Isn't that how everyone SHOULD lead their life? HAHAHA, GOD, this is ONE RIOTIOUS entry! Hmm, how can I end this on a frivolous, profane note? Actually, I just saw a JEFFERSONS with the wonderful Mother Jefferson in it, almost getting married. This reminded me of my own grandmother and her late-in-life "gentleman friend." They never got married. I'm not even sure to this day if they were a couple. They met through church. Christ, so fucking Waltons, but they did. She basically, as I recall, was hired to cook his meals after his first wife died. I don't even know if money was exchanged. I should look into these details, further perplexing my parents as to what the fuck's going through my mind, and why, at any given moment. All I know is that, eventually, they seemed like a couple. And my favorite story is when they took my brother and I to Arby's and thought you had to get into separate lines for the burgers, fries, and drinks. Wildly alarmed at the potential time about to be wasted, I set them straight quick. Amusing memory. I must've been 12 or 13. Heavy sigh...on all counts. But that's not frivolous or profane. This melancholy quipster doesn't have it in me tonight, i guess.