and uplifted me. and depressed me. and inspired me.

i wanna be able to write the way birds fly, and how babies put one of their feet in their mouth

and gnaw on it for a while. all dirty from the subway floor they just crawled on.

when i kiss a girl i want there to be a spark, some magic, electricity. its weird how thats not always the case.

when i drive i want the car to be an extension of my heart. i want the machine to lurch when im entering the freeway, i want it to coast when im texting a friend, and i want it to destroy shady drivers who dont use their blinkers but obviously want nothing more than to drift over to my lane and loiter at inappropriately tedious “speeds”.

my television is perfect. its the only reason i want renters insurance. not because its expensive, but because i love it so and rarely can you get insurance for a broken heart.

it has seven inputs. and the picture on every one of them is crystal clear. the speakers are better than any cheapass surround system, but whats best is the Sleep button works allowing me to drift off into slumber as it illuminates my boudoir with background noise so i can distract my mind long enough to pass out.

and still im confused.

youd think after all this time certain truths would be evident, signs would appear, warnings would blare, or patterns would develop that would help one understand the present enough so as to accurately predict the future.

im so confused right now i barely know what day it is. my doctor left a message for me reminding me of my annual physical, yet when i crosschecked my iphone it wasnt in the calendar, and lets not even begin with the xbi.

if you watch football closely you’ll know that the reason successful quarterbacks like brett favre win is because not only do they know the routes that all the receivers are running, but the receivers actually run those routes. why? because if they dont, brett favre will personally kick their ass.

i want to be that person.

because when the receivers run those routes, even if its a full on blitz with mere seconds on the clock, brett favre will ship that package with no excuses. for there are no excuses.

there are those who are committed, and those who got dressed up for nothing.

as a cub fan, my quota of losses has been exceeded. there is no room for any more in any aspect of my life.

on many levels this is not what i expected or wanted at this stage in my life. however on other levels i cannot even begin to thank the man upstairs for all that i have and all that i get to do. thus the confusion.

going bald was no big thing, and yet having a spare tire – mortifying. but not enough to actually join a gym, or use the free equipment at work. am i insane?

ive seen people on hallucinogens repeatedly ask those of us who were sober “im going crazy, right?” and finally we had to say if you keep saying that then you will go crazy.

to which they only reply with, “oh so i AM on the path to insanity?”

i dont like people who dont provide a link in their Tweets when theyre describing good journalism.

i dont like when restaurants or customer service reps or traffic patterns act as if this is the first time that this has ever happened. shouldnt we know how to remove a fender bender from the freeway in minutes by now? shouldnt customer service people pretty much know how to identify and solve the Problem of the Day by the second hour of their shift? and by 1pm shouldnt you know what the soup of the day is?

i know this is the busblog, but ive bought a few new cars in my day. but never from a salesman who utters the hackneyed phrase of “lets go in my office and let me crunch the numbers”.

no. you sell about 10 different types of vehicles. you know how much they cost. you know how much the monthly payment will be. you even know how much commission you will be making on it. the numbers have been crunched weeks ago, and if they are a surprise to you then youre too inexperienced to take my tens of thousands of dollars.

im going to point at a car, you tell me what im going to have to pay each month or this motivated customer will peace out.

all i wanna do is write. all i wanna do is help people write. and for some reason i think i have to lead by example, because my hero pete rose did.

he was my hero even before he got confused.

i first knew i wanted to be around news when i was interviewing the chancellor of my college. the nexus, our paper, had been highly critical of her, and, in my opinion, borderline unfair. likewise, the mostly ignored alterna-student paper (our so-called competition) had been completely unfair and borderline juvenile with her. and once i had been fired, and yes, banned from the school paper 🙂 i said to the chancellor “just like you, i too have been shunned by the nexus. let me interview you for that ridiculous throwaway and reveal things that no one would bother to ask because theyre so obsessed with the imagined and salacious.”

because the best part of that interview was when she confessed that she always thought that if she did a good enough job, that petty politics between she and the staff and she and the paper and she and the world would disappear. that success erases all the tedium while it stymies the minutia. but she realized she was wrong. that you had to address and appease all warring fronts else they will overtake even your best laid plans.

likewise pete rose figured he could be as ignorant and cocky and wild as he pleased, how could they stop the man with the most hits in baseball from entering the hall of fame, since the mere act of striking a professionally hurled round ball with a round batting surface is the most difficult task in all of sport. let alone hitting them where they aint.

pete, babs, ftc, sonny… life aint fair.

so then how do you hit a moving target?

you adjust.

and the minute you think youve got it figured out,

expect a flood of confusion.

its what you were asking for.