To Des or anyone else offended by the previous entry:

Nothing in this entry was directed at you. I’m sorry you were offended or took it personally.

I was simply voicing my opinion in regards to what Alison had written with an example that applies to a situation I see frequently among young adults: first-time large animal owners (whether this be large dog breeds, horses, sheep, cows, etc.) often have a difficult time handling and caring for their animals, in MY experience. This is probably because large animals are in general more difficult to care for than smaller ones.

I have no idea whether you (the reader) qualify as either a first-time large animal owner, or if your dog(s) (animal/whatever) qualifies as a large animal.

In either case, I was certainly not calling into question you ability to care for your own animals.

I was just trying to raise some awareness about a few issues I believe are often glossed over because they are always “someone else’s problem”.

I do very much appreciate your mention of Court Appointed Special Advocates (or other advocacy groups that people may/could have mentioned). That’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping people would think about when they read this.

Doing some catch-up internet reading after my extended weekend at home, I came across this provocative entry on dogs and homelessness and american culture in general.
Now normally I find myself rather sympathetic to the things Alison writes about, but this passage near the end bothered me:

this outlook is mostly an american thing; in other cultures they’d say, “well, it’s just a dog,” and they’d be right. we americans have so many resources to spare that we can take care of ourselves, our children, and a boatload of domesticated animals to boot, while other countries are filled with people who lack the resources even for themselves.

I find this kind of idea, although common, to be a bit too simplistic. I know quite a few “americans” who consider dogs as dogs and nothing more – this kind of anthrocentrism is common to many countries, and I would argue, is a product of a very specific kind of worldview which the states inherited from Europe. I think Alison is being a bit too generous here in believing that all americans care for their animals (or family for that matter) in such a way that they are always provided for. One trip down to the pound or a foster home proves otherwise.

I do believe many americans “spoil” their domestic animals, but I don’t think this always benefits the pet in question. Often, I think people are more likely to spoil a pet because it makes them appear to be a good care-taker and therefore the pet really functions as kind of a bizarre self-esteem booster. I’m not trying to argue against good animal healthcare, I just think there’s more to that story than many people choose to believe.
As someone who’s been around large and small animals for my entire life, I’ve found there’s an obvious difference between the compassionate and realistic animal owner and the pet store prima donna. In college, this is painfully, sometimes cruelly, obvious (If you really loved animals, why would you buy a dog the size of a small horse and keep him locked up in a two-room apartment for 10 hours a day?)

Finally, I hate the idea that it’s always “other countries” where people lack the resources to live a sustainable life. True, there are many places in the world where getting by is difficult, but contrary to what many seem to believe, one of those places is AMERICA!
It really bothers me that everyday I walk through free speech alley to hear people petition for the welfare of groups in other countries they have never been and know very little about, while so many people suffer right here at home.
Literally, homeless men and women walk right past these very same “crusaders for human rights” and they do nothing.
There are huge populations of homeless folks, people in the penal system, kids in the foster care system, who have a very limited, very difficult future (if they have one at all). Yet when do you hear people fighting for these groups?
Sure, it’s great that you would like me to petition people to stop killing one another in Darfur, but how about all the people who need help, who I could actually help with my hands and mind and not with a piece of paper, who live right here in Louisiana?

I certainly don’t have all the answers, and I’m picking on Alison a bit much here, but her post really got me thinking about some of this stuff.

Comments or solutions to these problems will be generously accepted.

you can sign papers all day, but that won’t stop the great bureaucracy that is the LSU administration from hindering your success. How am i still not officially in the School of Engineering?

Welcome to Loser School University, where we make sure you never graduate!

I’m wondering if it is possible to make more noise than my upstairs neighbors manage to do almost nightly. Maybe if I installed a bowling alley in the living room and held a space shuttle launch on the patio. I think that would about cover it.
It really sounds like they are playing a rough game of “skeletons in the dark” every night around ten (which is when my morning-centric self enjoys going to bed). I suppose it’s probably some law of physics that some where, somehow, some apartment dweller is thinking about this exact same problem.

Like Des, I’ve been thinking about the holidays lately. Normally, I get all reflective and sentimental around this time of year, but I’ve had no such feelings recently. I quite like All Souls Day on November 1 as a matter of fact, but other than that – no real excitement about the holiday season yet.

As I get older, I feel like I have less to say and more to wonder about. Sometimes I just feel struck into silence at how complex the world really is. It can be awkward when you’re trying to talk to someone and suddenly you just can’t articulate what you want to say because there really are no words to describe how things are. It’s in those moments that I really value my oldest friends who can often sense what it is I’m getting at without ever hearing a word. Sometimes, it even happens with people I don’t know well at all.
I’ve been wondering lately if there is some fundamental essence about me, some “jon-ness” that once you know, you’ll always kind of understand no matter how much I change. Every now and then I meet someone from the dim and distant who seems to connect with me on a very personal level, despite how much time has changed things between us.
I’m not sure why, but this kind of thing bothers me. Maybe I have a resistance to being understood properly. Maybe I want to believe that some part of me is secret, that I’m not totally translucent.
Perhaps some people are just very perceptive.
In any case, it’s not something that happens often, so I tend to wonder about these special folks with their sixth sense. If they can be so good at making this connection, how is that some people always seem disconnected from one another no matter what?

You all know those sayings. Waste not, Want not. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A stitch in time saves nine. Make hay while the sun shines. Red sky at night, Sailor’s delight.

Et Cetera.

You hear it for the first time, and you think to yourself, What in the world is that supposed to mean, and all you can do is sort of infer its meaning from the context. When in Rome. Well, Julie brought this up last weekend, and i replied: “You know what they say, Jules: A dime won’t let the dozen fall…”, which i totally made up on the spot, and it means nothing.

You should make some up, and insert one into the tail end of a conversation. The best part is when you say them like they were real. So it became the speech fad du jour around the Comeaux apartment.

Here are a few i made up in less than 2 minutes.
Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it was quite appropriate today when, as I was leaving, my mother asked David, “So how was your twenty-four hours?”. That’s basically the life of a big city dwelling college student, life measured out in increments of hours. Really, it’s so depressing.
I thought about this as I sat in my car for two hours today on the interstate waiting for the traffic to clear so I could get back to Baton Rouge. I thought about it again as I slopped through the rain and puddles on the way to the library to get some work done before mid-terms week begins. Gloomy rainy wet weather which matched my mood.

Taking tests at mid semester always reminds me that there is so much more to life than school and tests and work and having to check your watch constantly to stay on schedule with your own life. For example, when I go out camping, I never have to check my watch – I think it’s one of the major reasons I enjoy camping so much. Life has a rhythm that I can enjoy out there, it’s not something that’s forced and it’s not something that requires constant attention. Because you don’t have to focus so much energy on just getting by, you are free to enjoy yourself, the people you are with, and your surroundings. I also feel this way when I got home, I guess because everything there is so familiar and so relaxed.

I’m tired of measuring my life out by the hour. I guess previously it wasn’t so bad because I always had another person to share with. Now, despite all my wonderful friends and family, I feel profoundly lonely. It’s not an unbearable feeling, not even an omnipresent feeling, but when it’s around it’s uncomfortable.
I’m not one to complain about things I can’t fix, but this is something that seems to be part of my life situation at the moment. With such an uncertain immediate future ahead of me, I just don’t see the point in attempting to establish a serious commitment with another person. Maybe I’ll be gone in six months, maybe I won’t. I just don’t want to drag some else into a situation that is already difficult, even for me!
As a corollary to that, I find myself meeting people who are just appalled and dismayed at my apparent lack of life ambition. What are your dreams they ask? My current answer it that I’d like to be a teacher, have a small farm and play music in my spare time – or at least some combination of those three things. By their reaction, you’d swear I just mentioned the three worst professions of all time: teacher, farmer, musician.
It’s like just because I don’t *want* to be a doctor, CEO, or engineer there must be something wrong with me. I just don’t understand.
It’s strange that people tell you to pursue what you love, but then constantly doubt your ability to do anything with or about the things you care about. Maybe I’m just talking to the wrong people.

Part of the problem with being an adult is that everyone expects you to handle things that they would have never even dreamt of putting off on you if/when you were a kid. I’ve come to find that this is becoming a small, but significant problem with my immediate family.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to think of my parents less as the super-beings who are part and parcel of my life, to just regular people who are moving through their own lives the best that they can. Learning about their life histories (together and separately), I realized that they had all kinds of complex issues, problems, whatever you want to call them that really have had nothing to do with raising me as a kid. These were just things that I “missed” as a child because, well, I was busy doing my own growing up.
Nowadays though, I can look back and see how my parents have changed since I was young and how I’ve changed as well. And now we have a different relationship, one thats much more egalitarian – but also more distant, more impersonal in some ways, perhaps because now I’m “just another adult” in some way.
All this is fine and good except for the fact that I am increasingly becoming what I feel like is the “middle-ground” for my family. Everyone can tell me everything about everyone else because I’ve always been rather neutral and quiet. However, some things I just don’t want to know about. It’s very very stressful to hear one family member complain about another and then have to talk to that same person at a later time. In many ways, I now feel that I am everything, and at the same time, nothing, to everyone. When I have family talk, I feel like everyone has an agenda in speaking to me. Especially now that I’m currently the only one living away from the house.
So I’m still a brother and a son, but I’m increasingly becoming a mediator and a friend and another “individual” who gets to hear all kinds of problems that I really cannot deal with. I can take them on, but I cannot offer any help, can’t give any advice, can’t propose any realistic solutions – all I can do is try and deal with the fact that I have all these roles to play, all these shoes to fill, and most days, I can only wear one pair at a time.

Just because I never do things like this:

My 21 Firsts:

1. Who was your first prom date?
SNE, my first and only. Junior Prom was such a fantastic experience that I decided senior prom could never top it, so I skipped. a decision i probably should regret, but don’t.

2. Who was your first roommate?
My sister. She was pretty much awesome (no offense ben!). we loved our kitty. less so the dog.

3. What alcoholic beverage did you first drink?
Old Milwaukee at the age of 7 via my grandparents.

4. What was your first job?
Mowing grass for neighbors circa 12/13 years old (?)

5. What was your first car?
Mazda Protégé. aka The Silver Bullet.

6. When did you go to your first funeral?
Too hard to say here, I’ve been to quite a few. No doubt I had attended one before age 4.

7. First Kiss?
So many kinds of first kisses. First ACTUAL kiss was HB at age 11/12 (?). First REAL kiss was TS, eighth grade behind the bleachers of the Cathedral Carmel Basketball Gym. We were caught by my gym coach and yelled at. I didn’t go to school the next day because I thought I was going to be burned at the stake. real kisses are terrifying. First TRUE kiss would be KW at age 15/16 (? – Katie would have to fact-check me here on dates). That kiss, despite others since, remains my favorite.

8. Who was your first grade teacher?
Mrs. Slattery at Cathedral Carmel. but i could be totally wrong on the name.

9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?
Eighth grade field trip to Washington D.C. Take-off was sweet, landing less so.

10. When you snuck out of your house for the first time, who was it with?
Probably around 7 or 8 with Brian Hanna my best buddy from down the street, but I snuck out for real with Alicia Picou my freshman year in high school to go “get up to no good”. Basically what Alicia and I always do.

11. Who was your first best friend and are you still friends with them?
BH. Nope, he moved to New Jersey.

12. Where was your first sleepover?
i have no idea. Probably RA/JN/BC’s house. we were all good buds (me and bradley still are) back in the day.

13. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
Sister or Momsy.

14. Whose wedding were you in the first time?
If i say David’s, does it count?

15. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Open my eyes. Seriously – turn on the coffee pot.

16. What was the first concert you ever went to?
Festival International since birth.

17. First tattoo or piercing?
Sadly, nothing. i like the idea of tattoos better than actual tattoos. miami ink is a cool show. last year my mom told me i should pierce my ears. thanks mom.

18. First celebrity crush?
I don’t know any celebrities.

19. First crush?
JC (? – no relation to Bradley btw)

20. First TRUE love?
Every girlfriend since age 13.

21. First time you smoked a cigarette?
seventh grade for two seconds. not for me.

Inspired by Rami!

you know, for a second there, i thought that autumn was actually settling in. A couple cold fronts and some stark blue sky were so deceiving. i was even beginning to feel the seasonal change tickle my brain, inspiring a poetic response. but those delicate thoughts were quickly steamed out in the obnoxious sauna of summer weather. some unknown jet stream seemed to forget that the earth just entered october. nice going, guys. hopefully jon and dem are going camping somewhere that actually feels like Fall, for their sake.

coming later than hoped, pictures from the Keys, from back when it was cool to be hot.