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In a post from many years ago I introduced you to my then-automobile Tiffany. She served me well, Tiffany did. The massive back seat and trunk held my entire DJ rig, so getting to gigs was a cinch. Together we drove all over America, hitting 46 of the 48 continental states (sorry Florida and South Carolina, I’ll get to you eventually), and D.C. She was even my home for about two years. Unfortunately, in April of this year I had to sell her, in part because her transmission needed rebuilding (to the tune of three grand), but mostly because I was considering a move to New York where I knew I wouldn’t need a car. It made sense to sell her, then buy another car later when I returned to California.

Well, I’ve returned to California, so on Monday I bought… a car. I don’t really have a name for this one. Yet.

Tiffany was a Meadow Green 1957 Chrysler Windsor sedan. The new car is a Hunter Green 1956 Chrysler Windsor wagon. Isn’t that weird? I totally did not set out to find the same car. I was actually thinking of getting a ’60s Chevrolet, or even a ’70s Cadillac or Buick, but when I saw the wagon I instantly realized it was the car for me. Do you know how much stuff I can fit into the back of that thing? Gigs will be soooo easy now!

This car seems to have at least as much pep as Tiffany. Although the engine is a bit smaller (331 cubic inch v. 354), the four-barrel carburetor (Tiffany had but one barrel) seems to compensate, as does the dual exhaust system. As one can see from the prominently displayed “250″ on the rear hatch, this car can produce 250 horsepower. Of the 2700 Windsor wagons built in ’56, only the few that had that carb/ exhaust combo were designated 250s. There are probably very few such cars left, and I’m happy to own one of them.

Besides the features under the hood, the car sports lots of intricate details that modern carmakers eschew in favor of uniformity. The rear window rolls down, there is some plaid paneling inside, and the air vent is super neat, just to name a few. None of those things show up in the pictures below, but if you ever take a ride with me I’ll be sure to show them all to you.

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I rarely write about politics here. In fact, this may be the first time I’ve ever done so, but here I go. I’ve been observing the Wall Street Occupation movement since its inception. Initially, I had high hopes that, even if it didn’t lead to drastic change, it would at the very least demonstrate that the average American is no longer willing to accept the status quo. I didn’t think it would lead to a revolution, or end with the overthrow of the U.S. government, but I hoped it would represent a step in that direction, and would encourage changes to the laws before the citizenry became violent and real revolution became a possibility. Instead, I’ve watched it become co-opted by the Democratic Party, and on the verge of turning into a reelection tool for Barack Obama. Protestors seem to forget that Barack Obama and the Democrats are just as culpable as the Republicans when it comes to what ails America. It’s also worth noting that Wall Street donated more to Obama’s campaign than to John McCain’s, so his support of the Occupy Wall Street Movement is little more than hypocritical gamesmanship. Not that the protestors seem to notice, or care.

The unfortunate part of this is that all of the initial problems that were highlighted by the occupation are valid. A tiny minority controls the vast majority of wealth in America. They garnered that wealth unfairly, by exploiting the rest of us and by buying off the government, and are by and large above the law. They enjoy a standard of living beyond comprehension, while the majority of Americans are struggling to make ends meet.

Not everyone agrees that we have a problem. I firmly believe that nothing I wrote in the above paragraph is even debatable. It is the America I see every day, in my own life and in the lives of nearly everyone I know. I’ve been seeing this problem grow for years. Yet some people, primarily Republicans, refuse to acknowledge it as true. I’ve heard arguments made that since most Americans own cars, or because our standard of living is better than the rest of the world’s, then nothing is amiss. I disagree.

There is vast wealth in America, and yet only a few people have access to it. Jobs are scarce, and workers will take nearly any job they can because something is better than nothing. Employers know this, and they offer the minimal amount of pay or benefits they are required by law to offer, knowing that if a worker quits, another will gladly take his place. When possible, they hire only part-time workers, so as to avoid paying taxes or certain benefits. No matter how much money they acquire, they are not required to give even a penny more to the workers who earn that money for them. That’s the problem. I don’t really care if poor Americans enjoy a better standard of living than middle-class Tunisians. Okay, actually I do care, but in the sense of this argument, I don’t; by which I mean, it’s irrelevant. The standard of living here, though adequate, could be far better if only the laws were not unfairly skewed in favor of the wealthy.

My political beliefs in this matter, as in most, don’t fall in line with any political party I know. I think a fair system is one in which a government exists whose primary role is regulation. Capitalism seems to me to be the best possible system, but left unchecked it ceases to work after a point. Once you have people wealthy enough to buy governmental influence, they become above the law, and things stop working. We’ve hit that point. Organizations that would have gone out of business in a true free market economy were given bailouts by the government. Their insider ties to the government, or to the Federal Reserve System, entitled them to billions of dollars they didn’t deserve, a situation made even worse by the fact that in many cases they were the cause of the crash. Smaller and medium-sized businesses didn’t have that clout, and were left to fail in an economy that was not their making. That is not capitalism as work, that is a predatory plutarchy, and favors only a wealthy, and undeserving, few.

The American political system is unfair to the majority of Americans. A tiny percentage are legally profiting by exploiting the majority. The government’s job is to protect all citizens, not just the wealthy ones. That is what we ought to be protesting, rather than turning this into the same old Republican v. Democrat debate that does nothing but ensure that things remain unchanged. Occupy Wall Street could have been that protest, but sadly, the movement appears to have become nothing more than a left-wing Tea Party movement. Whereas the Tea Party has been hijacked by wealthy right-wingers and religious fundamentalists, the Occupation is becoming the darling of billionaires like George Soros, and millionaires like Michael Moore, none of whom, just like their Tea Party counterparts, have the interests of the common man in mind. It has become just another tool to elect corrupt politicians, in this case Democrats, and further the existence of a corrupt system.

To solve what ails us we need a true reform, and a radical restructuring of the system, not the reelection the same politicians who got us into this mess. Maybe someday a protest movement that represents a true change will gain traction in this country, but this ain’t it. Here’s hoping the next movement will truly be of the people.

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All the talk of late has been speculation as to whether another tech bubble is in the works. If so, there are dozens of venture capitalists running amok, eager to throw money at anyone with an idea for a website. Since I’m not the techie type, I’ll never get my hands on any of that money, but here are some ideas I’ve had of late for terrible web pages. I hereby donate them to anyone who wants them– go ahead and get rich with ‘em if you can. It’s on me.

1. Bad Dating Site– Are you and your significant other constantly fighting? Beating one another? Cheating? This is the site for you! Monitor just how bad it is using our advanced in-site metrics. Share your lack of progress towards happiness with your friends using graphs and counters on your profile page. Proudly display “THIS RELATIONSHIP HAS GONE XXX DAYS WITHOUT AN INFIDELITY” and watch as the number grows each day, or resets to zero when you finally lose the will to resist your secretary’s advances.

2. Fiendbook– Are you embarrassed by your profile pic on the local law enforcement agency’s web page? Imagine Megan’s Law, but with social networking functionality! Interact with other criminals to boost your sphere of influence, and garner new partners-in-crime at the same time. Maybe you’re planning a bank heist and need a getaway driver. A simple search on our page is all you need. Or are you looking for the scoop on potential victims? Which local child is most prone to fall for the “lost puppy” scam, and which will eagerly hop into a windowless van if candy is promised? What area widow is poised to part with her former husband’s vast fortune? Does the owner of that corner market keep a gun behind the register, or can you waltz in with impunity and rob the joint? At last, a site that has the answers you seek.

3. Geolocation for Drug Dealers– If you sell illegal drugs, or merely use them, you will be interested in what we are offering. No longer will you have to stand for hours on the corner peddling heroin to junkies craving crack. Likewise, the days of being forced to smoke angel dust because you couldn’t locate the LSD you sought are over. Dealers can check in using our app on any GPS-enabled mobile phone and list what they have to offer. Users then know exactly where to go for what they need. It’s a win-win. As a built-in security feature, you have to answer the question “are you a police officer?” with a “no” before being allowed to log in.

4. Rate-A-Hooker– We borrowed some functionality from the above drug dealer app to enable prostitutes to check in at the street corner of their choice, but the real winner here is the John. Thanks to crowdsourcing, you no longer have to wonder “how much?” or “is she any good?” That’s right, once you’ve used her, you the user can rate and review her. Was she a five-star experience, or did her service seem lacking? What are her normal working hours? Does she have any diseases? No more guesswork for you, and no more disappointing “dates.” Special log-in section for pimps allows them to offer daily deals, group rates, or whatever specials they’re running, as well as track their hoes and make sure they’re out there earning that money.

5. Puppies2you.com– Everyone loves a puppy! But what’s the one problem with a puppy? That’s right, it grows up to be a dog. No one wants a dog! Puppies are so cute and funny and tiny and fluffy and omg they are just the best. Dogs are just kind of there. Worse, there are so many kinds of dogs, who wants to be stuck with just one breed for a decade or more? Fear not, for puppies2you.com is here to make everything better. Once a user signs up for our service, an adorable puppy is delivered to his or her door. A month later, we return with a new puppy of a different breed, selected by the user, to replace the old puppy. The returned puppy is taken out to our custom-built van, euthanized, and chopped into the new puppy’s first meal. That’s right, we recycle the old, unwanted puppy. We’re a green business! Everyone wins with puppies2you.com!

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Wednesday is my favorite day of the week, because that is the day new comic books hit the shelves. Back when I was a super busy person, whenever possible I made Wednesday my day off, and spent the afternoon drinking coffee and reading comics. Now, even with my life is in its holding pattern, and ample free time on my hands, I still treat Wednesday as a sort of respite from the rest of my life and hunker down with the new issues.

caveat: This blog contains spoilers regarding issues 159 and 160 of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Quick crash course in comics for non-fans: There are two Spider-Mans… Spider-Men? Anyway. The first debuted in 1962, the second, known as Ultimate Spider-Man, in 2000. They are part of separate comic “universes,” and their stories are in no way related. What happens to one in no way affects the other. Lucky for Spider-Man ’62, because today Ultimate Spider-Man died.

Before anyone chimes in that comic book characters seldom stay dead for long, let me point out that unlike in the main continuity, death in the Ultimate line of comic books is final. Many major characters have been killed, including Wolverine, Magneto, Cyclops, Professor X, Daredevil, and Wasp, and none have returned from the dead as characters often do in other comic books. So if Peter Parker is dead, he’s probably staying dead.

Opinions differ, but in my mind Ultimate Spider-Man is not only vastly superior to the longer-running original series, it is hands down my favorite comic book series of all time. The characters seem far more believable than those of any other comic book, and the interactions and stories are as gripping those found in any “real” literature. The Ultimate characters talk and act the way I imagine such people would in real life, and very little seems gratuitous or contrived. And they make hilarious jokes.

As for the story arc and death, as with most of the rest of the series, it was epic and awesome and some other adjectives, too. Seeing Aunt May kill Electro was an unexpected moment of bad-assery, and the final moment, when Peter died knowing that though he failed to save Uncle Ben, he did save his Aunt, well– that was a clever and powerful moment, and the perfect book-ending to his tragic life.

I don’t have a deeper point to this blog. I’m pretty much just writing it because I’m sad. Even though Peter Parker is not a real person, his death affected me rather deeply. For 11 years I’ve read along as Brian Michael Bendis has unfolded his story, so it seems in some ways as if a real person has died. Apparently someone else will put on the costume and assume the identity of Spider-Man, and I hope the comic will continue to be great, but it won’t be the same without Peter Parker.

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I’m five months into my ninth year of blogging. That seems remarkable to me. I began this blog with no idea or expectation that it would last beyond a few entries, but here I am going strong in 2011. Even more remarkably– people read this thing. WordPress tells me that I get about 150,000 hits per year. That isn’t much by the standards of mega-popular web pages, but for an unadvertised site that is little more than a journal of my personal adventures interspersed with blogs about topics that interest me, it seems, to me at least, like a shockingly large number.

I think it’s time to reach out to my readers, and give all of you a chance to participate in an upcoming blog. Yesterday I emailed all my registered subscribers, and today I’m putting this out there for the rest of you. In an upcoming blog, rather than writing about a topic of my choice I am going to answer questions put forth to me by my readers.

Feel free to leave a comment, or email me, with any question or topic that comes to mind (nothing X-rated, please). I’m allowing two weeks to submit questions, so be sure to get them in to me before June 15th. Additionally, if you email, let me know how you want to be identified in the blog, as I plan to write in a question & answer format and give shout-outs to everyone who participates. If you want to remain anonymous, that’s fine, too– just let me know your preference.

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A heart that’s full up like a landfill,
A job that slowly kills you,
Bruises that won’t heal.
You look so tired and unhappy…

I’m at one of those crossroad points in life, and as has often been the case of late, I’ve no idea what to do. This is not an entirely bad thing. The very fact that I feel concerned about this is a good sign– I finally care about myself again. It is with some chagrin that I admit that for nearly six years I didn’t care very much. I was content to be miserable. In fact, I was more than content– I actively looked for ways to increase my misery, first as a radical method of healing, but later as a sort of sorrowful, self-fulfilling prophecy. That finally came to an end in January. I was wandering around Lisbon, as ever pondering my life, when, for a lack of a better way of saying it, I rediscovered my love for life. Shortly thereafter, after brief stops in Paris and Dublin, I returned to America, and bought an umbrella. That last part doesn’t make sense, I know, but to me it was symbolic. It meant that the healing was at last complete.

My friends and family have been unable to understand what I have been doing for the past six years, and I’ve been unable to properly explain it. I still can’t, other than to say that by building a chasm between my old life and my current life, I cured what ailed me, and I again care about my well-being and my future. This is all fine and well, but it presents me with a host of new problems to face. Chief among those problems: I am homeless and unemployed.

That isn’t as bad as it sounds– I’ve been homeless by choice, so now it’s more a matter of choosing a place to live than anything else, though I do need to get on the whole “figure out a job” thing. It turns out that “life’s savings” is not an accurate name, as I don’t think mine will actually last me the rest of my life. I’m going to need to add to it, and sooner rather than later.

Yeah, it’s overwhelming
But what else can we do
Get jobs in offices
And wake up for the morning commute?

For the past two weeks I have been in New York. I sold my business in California, came here with the intention of staying, and have been half-heartedly hunting for an apartment ever since. I may have found one. I am waiting to hear from the landlord, but on Tuesday I applied for an apartment in the somewhat rough and tumble Bushwick section of Brooklyn. The question is– do I want an apartment here, or anywhere? If I get an apartment, then what? I’ll have to pay rent, which means I’ll need to find a job.

Is that really what I want to do with my life? Settle into some semi-shabby but affordable apartment and dive back into the rat race? To what end? Best case I’ll end up with a job that barely supports me, and I’ll live paycheck to paycheck until… until what? The economy and general state of the nation aren’t such that retirement seems like a realistic option. I really worry that if I enter that world, I’ll never escape.

Also– New York? Really? I’ve visited this city more times than I can count, and have already spent more than a year of my life here. I never wanted to live here. Yet here I am. How much do I even want to be here, and how much of it is just a sort of default? The Bay Area has become a stagnant and moribund job zone, unless you’re an engineer, while New York is at least somewhat recession-proof. That’s not say that this city is booming; the entire country is in the doldrums, but there is at least more going on here than most other places at the moment. Though New York isn’t where I’d ideally live, it seems like the place where I have the best shot at finding gainful employment.

I’d say at this point, the odds are about 40% that I’ll stay here in New York, 20% that I’ll take off for Las Vegas and support myself at the poker tables for as long as I can tolerate being in Las Vegas, and 40% that I’ll do… something else. I have no idea what that something is.

Return, return to the person that you were.
And I will do the same,
Cause it’s too hard to belong
To someone who is gone.
My compass spins,
The wilderness remains.

I don’t think I can ever return to the person I once was. I was a hard-working, pleasure-deferring, risk-averse, responsible individual. I had a simple, happy life, and I had chosen an understandable path for myself. Everything was going according to plan. I had that rarest of jobs– one that I loved, which required minimal effort on my part, yet earned me more money than I needed. I sacrificed so much back then– so many opportunities to relax or enjoy myself, and so many years of my life– all to achieve a future that was stolen away from me in the blink of an eye. I’m at last back on track, but everything I worked for is gone, and I know that even if I wanted to be him, the person I once was has been irrevocably lost.

Sometimes I see him across the chasm, and I barely recognize him. I’ve grown into someone different– someone stronger and better equipped to face the realities of the world in which I live. I may not be impervious to the pain life can bring, but I know I’m better shielded against it. All I need do now is choose the path upon which I will discover the next chapter of my life.

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The Beatles did it, but the Smiths never could. Oasis managed, but Radiohead couldn’t quite make it. And last night, Arcade Fire pulled it off– once again, for one of very few times in the rock & roll era, the best band in the world is also the most famous. They did it in a slightly different way, but there is no denying that the world is abuzz with talk of their Grammy victory; everyone is talking about them. Granted, a lot of very dumb-sounding people are whining on Twitter that a bunch of nobodies stole the Grammy from superior talents like Lady GaGa or Eminem, and that makes me very sad and pessimistic about the future of our species, but for the moment Arcade Fire is on top of the world of music. The Grammys gained about 1,000 credibility points last night, and indie music officially ceased to be obscure. Love it or hate it, all those petulant whiners on Twitter are now aware that Arcade Fire exist.

In many ways, this feels like validation. Arcade Fire didn’t just win an award for themselves, they won for all the fans who have cheered on the musical underdogs over the years. They won for Weezer, for Belle and Sebastian and for Camera Obscura, for Franz Ferdinand, Pulp, and The Smiths, for Bright Eyes and for Brian Jonestown Massacre, and for every band who created a timeless, amazing work of art that was ignored in favor of a Taylor Smith, Santana or Celine Dion (or some other purveyor of cookie-cutter color-by-numbers pop music) and whose music was relegated to the backwater realm known as “alternative.”

I was one of the earliest bloggers to write about Arcade Fire (purely by chance I freely admit– I discovered their song Tunnels quite by accident, but was so taken aback by it that I gushed about it in one of my oldest blogs), and I have followed their meteoric ascent with both admiration and astonishment ever since. Their album Funeral may very well be the single greatest album of the rock era. It is certainly the only album that ever left me feeling utterly stunned upon first listen. Even now, six plus years and hundreds of plays later, I still get chills from its lyrical depth and musical highs, and still discover nuances and subtleties I had heretofore missed. Naturally, it was roundly ignored upon release, but that was to be expected. Indie music was still bubbling under the surface then, but by the time Neon Bible was released, one sensed that maybe someday this band really could matter to the rest of the world, if not as much as they do to us, at least to the point where the mention of their name would not bring blank stares from 95% of the people one meets.

Much has changed since 2004. I wrote last December about the gradual progression indie music has made from obscurity to securing a place in the popular culture, and last night’s victory certainly seems like the apex of that journey. Year after year, the best music being made has been coming from the bands lumped in that catch-all category of indie– bands that have about nothing in common other than the fact that their music has no place on pop radio. While the Eminems and Lady GaGas have continued to dominate the airwaves and sales charts, their lead has slipped a little bit. When The Surbubs debuted at #1 on the Billboard U.S. album chart, you could sense a changing of the guard, and last night’s Grammy win only furthers that feeling.

The mainstream will continue to lump everything that isn’t hip hop, pop, or country– what they used to call alternative– under the moniker of indie, but the cracks in the dam can no longer be ignored. Our music is at last breaking through. Some people are upset by this, but not me. To me, it feels like we won. Our music is better than their music, and they finally have to accept it, albeit begrudgingly.

The more exposure and accolades given to creators of great music, the better. Not only does it pave the way for new bands to come along and share their music, it allows the established bands to carry on with their work. It also means more people will turn up at shows, which means more shows for me, and you, to see. Some people grow irate when new fans jump on the bandwagon, but I have always felt the more the merrier. Great music deserves the largest audience possible, and not everyone can be there from day one. And really– imagine if indie music ever really *did* take over. How wonderful would it be to turn on the radio and hear nothing but great music on every station? I know, I know, that day will never come, but one can dream. And thanks to Arcade Fire’s surprising victory last night, reality is just a tiny bit closer to that dream.

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One of the first blogs I ever wrote included a list of my favorite albums of all time. Somehow almost eight years have passed since I compiled that list and posted that blog. I was looking at it yesterday, and I still think it’s a pretty solid list of my favorites. There are probably a handful of albums I’ve discovered since then that I might find a way to include in the list were I to create it today, and a few that I forgot about when creating it, but for the most part that is still my list of favorites; at least those in existence as of May 1, 2003. Many great records have been released since then, and another decade has come to a close (how can that be?!?), so I think it may at last be time to update the list. I realize that 2009 was officially the final year of the previous decade, but the general perception seems to be that 2011 is where the new decade starts, so I’ll go with that. All that really amounts to is that this time around I’m going to be selecting albums from an 11-year-long decade.

This is not an easy endeavor, especially since file-sharing, the iTunes store, music blogs, and massive hard drives have made it possible to acquire prodigious amounts of music. At one point in life, compiling a list of my favorite albums would have entailed me sifting through a stack of whatever records I owned. I’d have been limited by both my budget and the vagaries of the guys stocking the shelves at the local record shops. Now I can download entire discographies in a matter of minutes. I can acquire bootlegs, outtakes, unreleased tracks, demos– nearly anything I want can be mine in a matter of moments without even leaving home (or whatever cafe in which I may be sitting).

While compiling this list, I was shocked at the sheer amount of music I have saved on my hard drive. I have dozens of albums which I’ve never, or barely, played. Time after time I’d hear a song, want it, and end up downloading the entire album just to get it. The size of my music library quickly became overwhelming. There is no real way I can listen to, and absorb, that many albums, so they sit (if one can truly say a collection of digital ones and zeroes can sit), languishing in oblivion, many likely never to be played at all. Perhaps if I’d had the time to listen to all those albums a dozen or so times apiece, some of them would also have ended up included on my list, but since I didn’t, well, they didn’t, either.

Note also that when I previously compiled a list like this, I came up with 13 albums from the ’80s, and 40 from the ’90s– the advent of the file-sharing era. I had to expand to 45 albums and 1 EP this time just to accommodate everything; that fact in itself indicates just how much more music I have access to nowadays (plus the addition of two albums from 2010, a.k.a. year 11). And so I present to you a list of the records I played and enjoyed the most over these past ten, I mean, eleven years:

My 46 Most-Played Records from the Last Decade+1

The White Stripes – De Stijl (2000)

Bright Eyes – Fever and Mirrors (2000)

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside–Out (2000)
Jack Johnson – Brushfire Fairytales (2000)
The Sea and the Cake – Oui (2000)

The Strokes – Is This It? (2001)
Brian Jonestown Massacre – Bravery Repetition Noise (2001)
Against Me – Acoustic EP (2001)

Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)

Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It in People (2002)

Libertines – Up the Bracket (2002)

Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
Belle & Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003)
American Analog Set – Promise of Love (2003)
Camera Obscura – Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003)
Brian Jonestown Massacre – …And This is Our Music (2003)
Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism (2003)
Travis – 12 Memories (2003)
The Coral – Magic and Medicine (2003)
White Stripes – Elephant (2003)
The Aislers Set – How I Learned to Write Backwards (2003)
Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (2004)
The Album Leaf – In a Safe Place (2004)
Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005)
Death Cab for Cutie – Plans (2005)
Richard Hawley – Cole’s Corner (2005)
The Tears – Here Come the Tears (2005)
Sigur Ros – Takk… (2005)
Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis (2006)
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (2006)
Guillemots – Through the Windowpane (2006)
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)
Hot Chip – The Warning (2006)
Ratatat – Classics (2006)
The Fratellis – Costello Music (2007)
Simian Mobile Disco – Attack Decay Sustain Release (2007)
Klaxons – Myths of the Near Future (2007)
Radiohead – In Rainbows (2007)
Department of Eagles – In Ear Park (2008)
Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications (2009)
Franz Ferdinand – Tonight (2009)
The XX – The XX (2009)
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (2010)
Belle & Sebastian – Write About Love (2010)

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I have been remiss in pointing out that I have a second blog of sorts; one in which I draw as well as write, although I use the term “draw” loosely. As I explain in the introduction to the new blog, the drawing journal began more or less as an accident. Earlier last year I bought a sketch book, even though I knew full well that I am a very poor artist. I thought it would be fun to sketch things, even if I couldn’t do a very good job of it. I tried drawing a couple things, realized that I sucked even worse at drawing than I thought, and set the sketch book aside.

In October, I decided (for like the 10th time in life) to start keeping a journal. I was looking for a suitable notebook, and found the sketch book in a pile of stuff on my desk. Without really thinking what I was doing, or why, I half-wrote and half-drew what I had done the previous day. That first journal is here. I drew another one the following day, and the day after that, so so on. Before I knew it, I had filled the entire sketch book.

I had no intention of sharing the journals with anyone, but started showing my best friend Candice. She started a drawing journal of her own, which made it even more fun because now the two of us could sit together and draw in our journals. Over time, word got around about our journals and friends wanted to see them, or have us post excerpts onto their Facebook pages and so forth. Most of all it stayed fun, so I kept doing it.

After beginning my pointless peregrination, I began receiving messages from friends asking me to send them pictures of my recent journals. I did so for awhile, but that became such an effort that I said to heck with it, and started posting them online in a blog of their very own. I still feel it is a rather silly thing, and whenever I look back at old entries I wish I were a better artist, but for whatever reason, people seem to like reading it, and I am happy to share it.

Sadly, while on the road I can’t update it daily– I have to wait until I find a place to affordably scan the drawings, so I’ve been updating in batches– but if you subscribe to the RSS feed you will be informed when new entries are posted. You can do that by bookmarking this page.

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In November, while I was packing my life away, I found an old journal in which I had begun to keep a sort of score for each year of my life. I had a running tally going, with each year earning either a 1 or a 0. If the year in question had been better than the previous year, it earned a point. If it had been worse, it did not.

What with today being the final day of 2010 and all, it seems like the perfect time to share my scores with you. The journal was from many years ago, so I have filled in scores for the subsequent years. I suppose without some sort of commentary, it will be a meaningless set of numbers, so I will try to annotate it in places.

1995 1 (felt officially grown up, was saving money for first time in my life)
1996 0 (terrible 7-month relationship cast damper on year)
1997 1 (was not dating that girl anymore)
1998 1 (life started to fall into place, success in business, met a girl)
1999 1 (things just kept getting better)
2000 1 (fell in love for the first time)
2001 1
2002 1
2003 1 (2001-3 is a big, long blur of contentment)
2004 0 (Mom got sick)
2005 -1 (worst year of entire life, consult prior blogs if need be)
2006 1 (how could it have been worse than ’05? also, pretty good in general– traveled for first time)
2007 0 (transitional crappy year of blah and bad judgement)
2008 1/-1 (started super happy but it all fell apart by the end)
2009 1 (moved from LA to Oakland, made new friends, had best summer of life, threw fabulous parties)
2010 0 (everything fizzled out, ended up homeless, roaming Africa and the Middle East)

My score in life thus far (well, my adult life I guess you could say), is 9 out of a possible 16. That would have been a failing grade in school, but I have a hunch life is graded on a curve, so I don’t feel so bad. Plus, I hope I have at least a few more years left in me to run up the score a bit.

As you can see, I had a long run of good years, followed by some uneven times, and while my recent life has been somewhat lacking in the happiness department, I have a sense that better things are to come. For the first time in six years I feel little sparks of my old self flickering inside of me.

My life has been peppered with so many dreadful events since 2004, and I feel as though I numbly staggered through them without being affected in any meaningful way. It’s as if I stopped caring that bad things were happening to me, and felt no desire to seek good things. I let life wash over me. I bet there is a clearer way to state this, but I find myself unable to do so at the moment. The best way to put it is to say that for nearly six years I have felt extremely detached from the world around me: I could see my life falling apart around me, but had no drive or desire to prevent it from happening.

Now I care again. Of course, my life is an absolute wreck, but at least I want to fix it. I don’t know if I can do so, and I may be doomed, but that is not as important to me right now as the fact that I don’t want to be doomed. Before, ironically, when I still had the means to prevent it, I didn’t care that my life was disintegrating, and even if I now fail at rebuilding it, knowing that I once again want a happy life makes all the difference.

Do I have a New Year’s Resolution? To take active steps to make sure in a year’s time my score for 2011 is +1.