Just Smile All The Time

Laugh at every joke.

And it does work, to a degree-dy, Jeff Tweedy.

I blame my mood on the weather. It is tangible, visible, documentable that as colder weather onsets, so does my despondency. Really, I am uncomfortable all the time and finding it harder and harder to be happy. I carry a basic chill (and with it a tense rigidity that I cannot lose without an opportunity to be really good and warm, maybe even hot and bothered, in the recent past) at all times. I may have made a mistake in moving to Denver. I am not sure it has the climate-al tolerance required by someone with as low a threshold for cold as myself. Who knew it was so cold and snowy in Colorady? Well, I guess hindsight is 20/20.

But really, I would love to say it was my hormones. I wish it was a phase or a day or even a week, but I can feel the strain every day of maintaining my perkiness, of pushing aside the cloudy days and focusing, farsightedly, on the things that make these murky days just as good as others, in other months, in other mindsets. Just dust that frost off, it'll be good as new.

Plaster on my grin. If you tell yourself enough that you are happy, eventually, you'll start to believe it. That's how to fight the loneliness.

And I am not unhappy, let's not be foolish. I am just falling victim to that general malaise coming with losing a suntan, dreading even a minute out of doors, giving gam-bearing for a season or two, fitting (or not fitting) into last year's pants, having to crack the whip on the squatter hippy living at my house who keeps turning our heat up to 70. Excuse me sir, but one month of sleeping space, energy bills, water supply and refrigeration and cooking amenities AT NO COST does not, dear sir, entitle you to ratchet up my heating bill without a second thought. You cold? Get a blanket. Can't fit it on your bike when you travel cross country? Leave it. It's the least contribution to your mooching. Clogging our sink with your Orange County Choppers mustache then buying the Draino to clear it and giving the bathroom as cursory clean barely breaks you even for a week or two.

I am watching that thermostat, buddy. (AND I am watching YOU.)

See? I am an irritable grumpy fuck. But, in fairness, that is totally uncool, Matt, cut it out.

On the brighter side several things will set the tone for an A-ok weekend: free dinner on Friday at my roomie's (the paying one) new restaurant and the Big Lebowski party (one of my very favorite, annually sporadic, completely chaotic, poorly timed, costumed Sunday bowling events, of which there are many, naturally). These should surely be the dose of dopamine that my mood needs this week, that is if I make to the weekend...and through the birthday festivities of one very high-maintenance, generally agitating, heavy drinking friend. And, as a good rule of thumb, most weekend outings with said pal end in a quarrel of varying severity, duration and consequence. So THAT's something to look forward to.

Do I even get to come home for Thanksgiving? I dunno. I am poor, the airlines are poor, the country is poor. That's not a good start.

There is that nagging despondency again. Just feeling like my life isn't as lively as it should be. Missing arm-grabbing, curse-splattered, mean-tender desire and that gripping in my gut. Stepped into the elevator yesterday and it smelled of the cologne of the person who had just stepped out. It gave me shivers, like stepping into the ghost of someone, a lingering scent of... of? I don't know but it sure made me miss something/someone/somewhere/sometime. I am horribly sentimental and nostalgic for something I don't remember or maybe even know. That's what happens in the fall/winter.

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob

Ah, shut your trap, Eva. Turn off your "Sad" iPod playlist. Stop all that bellyachin, you sissy. After all, June is just around the corner.

Listening to: "Most of the Time" - Bob Dylan, then "Drive" - The Cars

(Would someone make me a mix already? I am craving new-to-me, less downer tunes and cannot motivate myself)

If you need to make up some of the intelligence lost by reading this, please spend a moment here: Mad Dog Palin, with my good friend Matt Taibbi.

Please let Obama win, or else give me a huge windfall so that I might flee for a while and live on strangers' couches in Europe and Asia.

I am sorry for even writing this.