Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about royalty, merlot, and the Xmas Bop.

"A second Royal Baby will soon be joining the Windsors in England. Would you rather be an heir to the throne or an off the hook sibling?"

What's up y'all? Just a major snowstorm blowin' through Central New York, that's all...it's nothing though compared to what my friends and family back home in Buffalo got a couple weeks back. Did you guys hear about that? My old neighborhood in Lancaster got 84 inches- 84!!- between Tuesday and Friday of that week. Everything was shut down...drug stores, thruways and highways, Walmart, you name it, and there was no way you were getting to it. Like my doctor said last week as we were talking about it, "Why do even live here?", and he's right. But as much as I hate winter and snow and cold, most years it doesn't destroy things like hurricanes and tornadoes (emphasis on "most years"). But anyway...I'm gonna hit a few prompts in case you're snowed in, and if you're not, I'm gonna hit 'em anyway.

Luckily, the BLOG CITY prompt today is easy...I'd rather be the "off the hook sibling" all the way. Now see, when I was younger, maybe I woulda had a different answer. I definitely would've wanted to be king, because who wouldn't if they had the chance? But with my luck something would happen and I'd default myself outta position, or the king would outlive me (a morbid possibility, I know), and I'd have to hear the "Sorry, but you're not our guy" song and dance again. Which sucks.

Naw man, I'll take being the sibling because while there's an outside shot of maybe taking the throne, it's highly unlikely...and therefore I don't have to worry about all the responsibilities that the king has, but with a lot of the perks. You can't tell me a non-throne sitting prince doesn't at least have a bank card and some kind of allowance! He probably gets some special treatment! You know most kings and queens are like "Here son, we know you're not gonna be king anytime soon , so why don't you and your buddies fly off to the Caribbean for the weekend, on us? But don't tell your brother." It's only fair, right? One gets to choose the hottest wife he wants, fly over the world and have fancy tea parties with dignitaries, and live in some ridiculous castle estate thing or whatever; the other gets to basically do the same thing and party like a rock star, and if he gets busted dancing at a bar with some bimbos and he's not wearing a shirt, nobody gives a shit after half a day.

Of course, this viewpoint is filtered through an American's lens. Or just my lenses, which could stand for a good cleaning.

"Write about Winter Nights. Write a story, poem, rant, or complaint about Winter Nights."

Now, when I see the word "rant", especially when associated with the word "winter", that's my cue to go apeshit about something not necessarily related to either topics...but I'm gonna take this in a different direction. When I initially read the prompt my mind immediately went to a poem I'd written back in January of 1999...and I was like "no, I'm not gonna dig through my notebooks to find it, I'm too tired and lazy" but then I was like "well, I can't just tell people about it and how it was once an item here on WDC but I deleted it for the port space so maybe I should at least try", and thankfully, because I have such an anal-retentive ordering and filing system, it took me longer to move the shit off the bins my notebooks are in than it did to actually find the right notebook. I'm so ridiculous.

Anyway, from January 11th, 1999, here's a poem about being on your own during the winter...ya know when you're young and you've got your own place and all your bros are like "Dude, we're gonna hang out here all the time!!" and then it snows really bad and you really wanna have someone over just to chill with but no one wants to 'cuz it's all crappy out and you can't see and the driving is treacherous? I was stuck home by myself with no one to talk to but a bottle of wine, and this poem happened (but I left out the part about going to the local hot dog place down the street from me once the snow let up because for some reason wine drunk = Texas Hots  ...oh who am I kidding? I spent plenty of nights after 2, 3, or 4am at Louie's back in the day ).

Merlot

On a winter's eve of silence
what beckons more than friends do
or winds that bring the softest snow
than a chilled spirit not unlike mine,
yet apparently more favorable to the palate.
While it is true it wants me more than I am wanted
I do not come without baggage.
I care about myself,
and what I think and what I know
but to indulge in its bitterness and fruit-laced delight
is to know what a few of life's finer things are like.
The mind will not miss
what the body is owed;
so I spend my time creating
a path so carelessly roamed.
It is a lost era,
these few weeks,
and I am in debt to myself some pleasure.
The cold outside
and that of those around me
has shut me in again.
What is left but to make the most of it, I ask.
My temple of thought becomes overrun with mystique
as my insides fill with the liquid I know too well
but fail to understand its reasoning.
If I remember a better time
it will not be now,
not alone.
Not when I can ask more of it than I should know
instead of just becoming the feeling.
All of my senses have briefly awakened
at a simultaneous moment
as the aura of what is to be arouses me.
One more time down the road is all I ask,
so maybe
I can never go home.
And someday
I'll be able to enjoy life
just a little more.

Yup, that's it. Pretty terrible, right? If I were writing it today it would sound a lot different, fo' sho'...but that's from back when I thought I could actually be a poet, and be all sensitive and use big words and whatever . Only took about another year or so for me to start getting away from depressing poetry to angry, maniacal, quasi-intelligent rants and think-pieces. Now don't ask me to go through my vaults again for awhile .

** Image ID #2014892 Unavailable **

This is the part I know the people over at the "12 Days of "Christmas""  have been waiting for...all I can say is that I prefer non-traditional and non-religious Christmas music over the classics (not saying I don't enjoy the classics; just, if I had to choose one over the other...). Face it...everywhere you go right now it's the same 15-20 songs in rotation because they're safe and festive and either involve the true meaning of Christmas (the birth of Jesus) or the true meaning of Christmas (Santa, presents, and retail hell). If I wanted to hear them I'd leave the house more often (but that goes against my religion of avoiding as many stupid people as possible). And this song in particular? No reason, other than I love T. Rex...so here's "Christmas Bop".

"Get out your silk jeans and your space shoes.
´Cause I've got some sweet, wild, devastating news. yeah. (T.Rexmas)"
Lyrics.  

So some of y'all know that once I take my meds, I'm done for the evening. If I'm holding conversations with anyone, I politely say goodnight, go on Hulu to watch some late-night TV or to my European pirated websites to watch ESPN or TSN as I dose off into a pharmaceutical sleep. And here's reason #293 about why I don't respond to emails or messages once I've considered crossing over (that's what I refer to it as) for the night: I woke up this morning knowing I'd checked a few emails last night during commercials, but I failed to move my laptop to a safe place before I actually fell asleep (I think; I'm not really sure because when I woke up it was normally where I put it)...I opened it up and WDC was magnified to 150%, so it was like looking at the Reader's Digest version of WDC for the blind. And I have no effin' clue how I did it, but it's annoying as all get-out, mainly because I'm not blind (yet...my vision sucks, but that's another story for another day). Try it. Change your monitor settings for 15 minutes and do what you would normally do on the internet. Sucks, don't it? But here's the real funny part...once I restored it back to normal, I felt like I had to sit about six inches closer to my laptop because everything seemed that small. The whole "eyes overcompensating" thing is worse than the original Ambien/Doxepin "who knows what's going on" fiasco.

Ladies and gentlemen, in case you missed hearing about the snowstorm in Buffalo a few weeks back I mentioned earlier in this entry, please enjoy these 24 pictures of how insane Buffalo's Snowvember Storm was  .

How about a list? Here's some stuff you might not have known about the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer   special, in honor of its 50th anniversary.

Ok, well, I think I've covered just about everything...hope y'all are stayin' warm and safe. Peace, gonna dance 'til we drop, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!