...on the fall of the house of usher

well as the mofo had pointed out, we had a death in the family. now i toyed with the idea of funeral blogging but, the bastard just thought it would be just too disrespectful of me to go through with it. the bastard trys not to get too out of sorts at funerals. they are always really surreal expreiences for me. ever since great grandpa's funeral when i was a child, i always found it surreal. you step outside of your body and put a suit on and you talk about how the only time you get to see your relatives is at weddings and funerals. and the sad thing is, it's true. the bastard's family is large. very large. and i don't see the lot of them most of the time. it's mostly my fault but i'll get to that later. i was talking about surrealism. not the magritte kind either. i never really felt like i was ever reall y present at a funeral. that was until the cop was murdered. cops name was paul. he was lah's uncle and he gets his name in here because a murder shouldn't be forgotten. he was murdered by a scumbag named patrick bannon. he gets in because, well you get the picture. anyway suddenly a man i knew, who i saw a week prior at a family party was dead and i never was not in my body at a funeral ever again. now i have to keep my shit together at these things.


the problem with being part of a large family is that they also fight. fight over stupid shit. and the stupid shit in question is this house. the family's house. the sight of many christmases and thanksgivings and easters and it was the sight of the beginning of the end of these kinds of gatherings when grandpa passed away in 2000. now the family's house will be sold and no doubt be bought by some yuppy schmuck who will hang bad art off of it and render it unrecognizable to the family that knew it and breathed life into it since 1978. it'll all be gone soon and with it i feared the family. we'd really become like those who only see each other at weddings and funerals. hell, i have cousins that don't even know me that look at me like a stranger because of my own introversion. i made a promise to myself on this dock. grandpa's dock. the dock that was hauled out every winter and hauled back in every spring (now granted i didn't do the hauling, the upside of introversion is you seem to get out of these things). anyway, knowing what seems like an inevitablity, i told myself that while i was an awful grandson, i would try to make it right. i would try to do better next time. while i'm seriously mulling going to vegas for thanksgiving, i'm going to try and do better than just weddings and funerals. i gotta. when all is said and done, all you have left is your family and while 45 weddings and 45 funerals might seem like alot of family gatherings, i don't want it to be like that.

—the bastard