Cumulative Review Part 1 — The Crap!

From what I’ve seen, read and talked about with oth­ers, the con­sen­sus is that the first decade of the new mil­len­ni­um, the first decade of actu­al world­ly-aware­ness on my part, sucked. For the most part, I’ve got to agree. Glob­al ter­ror­ism, geno­cide in Africa, two unwinnable wars, Amer­i­cans tor­tur­ing peo­ple, two reces­sions (or eco­nom­ic down­turns, or bub­ble-bursts, or what­ev­er safer word you want to use), and those are just the top 5.

Per­son­al­ly, the new decade has­n’t start­ed out much bet­ter. On New Year’s Eve, Bram was sick. On New Year’s Day I came down with the same thing and lost 7 pounds in 36 hours, prob­a­bly should have gone to the hos­pi­tal, and spent the next 3 days hob­bling about like an old man. Dur­ing this time Deb­bie’s broth­er got what­ev­er it was. And the babysit­ter, and the babysit­ter’s hus­band, and anoth­er kid she watch­es, and that kid’s par­ents.

So Tues­day I feel up to going to work. I put on my dress shirt and lo, a tear in the left elbow. What the hell? What­ev­er. I put on anoth­er dress shirt and lo, a tear in the left elbow. What the fuck? What­ev­er. I put on a sweater and go to work. While walk­ing to the bus stop, I get a call to find out that my uncle’s father died the night before. He was­n’t blood kin, but he might as well have been. 92 years old, a great and good man, a patri­arch of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

So enough of the crap from the last decade.