Joy and Sorrow

We had my Aunt Val’s memorial service yesterday. It was really wonderful. We had it at her son’s house. The whole family gathered in his living room, and we all just shared stories and memories of her. It was the most perfect memorial service I’ve ever been to. See, I think that a service should reflect the person you’re (or yr, if you’re a hipster) remembering. I’ve been to so many funerals and memorials, where they have little or nothing to do with the memory of the deceased…and I always leave feeling cheated. But I really didn’t feel that way. All of us, just sitting in the living room, remembering how wonderful she was, and how special she made each person feel…
My mom had asked me if I wanted to say anything, and I told her that I would, but I just didn’t want to say, “Me, too.” So I looked through my bookshelf, trying to find someone else’s words that I could use to express the dichotomy within me: I feel like I should have this debilitating sadness. My Aunt Val was so important to me, that I feel like I shouldn’t be able to do anything but sob and grieve over her loss…but when I think of her, I feel happy, remembering all the cool things we did together, and what a simply amazing woman she was…the only time I’ve felt that crushing sadness was last night. I woke up in the middle of the night, with a start, thinking “Oh my god. Aunt Val is really, truly, gone.” It took me close to 2 hours to fall back asleep.
So I’m looking through my bookshelf, and all I have is Shakespeare (too flowery) and Wilde (not exactly appropriate for a memorial)…then I see, tucked in between my “Tao Te Ching” and my “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, “The Prophet”, by Kahlil Gibran. It belonged to my Aunt Val, and she loaned it to me about 2 years ago. I remembered that it was so important to her, and I looked though it, to see if I could find something that was appropriate…and I did. I read the following, from a chapter entitled “Joy and Sorrow”:

Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

My Aunt Val was my delight.

The late, great, Bill Hicks

Bill Hicks was one of the greatest comedians of all time. He is one of my greatest influences.
Disinfo has this great story about the man they called “the Nietzsche of comedy, the most legitimate social critic of the 1990s: a renegade messiah who tried to make people laugh, but usually ended up pissing them off, or drawing blank stares.”

Saturn Comes Back Around

So the meeting today went very, very well. I really liked the people I met with, and they seemed to really like me back. We talked about lots of different things, and they told me that I’m at the top of their list, when they are working on new projects! I was a little nervous, mostly because I was just excited, but I think I kept my cool…I only rambled a little bit, which was good, and I mostly stayed off my soapbox. 🙂
I am having major problems with my cable modem service, and it looks like it’s going to require a service visit, to my house, to fix it. Problem is, they’re telling me that they can’t get someone out here until the 26th! I’m currently fighting the angry customer fight with them on the phone, but I don’t know what is going to happen. So if nothing changes here for a few days, it’s because I can’t get online to do anything. I should point out that the national-level guys I’ve talked with have all been very cool and helpful, (yay tech support!). It’s the local’s who are being sort of lame.
I know that the soapbox is dead, and it’s all my fault. I was doing some work, which required accessing the database that the soapbox uses, and I borked it up. completely. So I’m working to reset it, and I’ll make sure that Josh makes me a database just for the soapbox, so it won’t happen again. I am truly sorry to everyone who lost messages and stuff.
Thank you all so much for sending the mojo. I really appreciate it. I truly believe that there is something there, when we do things like that…I think that we can do more with our thoughts than we think we can…(“You mean that space, and time, and thought aren’t all as separate as we think?”) < --name that quote, and win a teddy bear!* (more…)

We asked for Mojo Nixon. They said, “He don’t work here!”

Good morning!
Remember the last time I asked for some mojo? Remember all the empty promises I made, about being best friends, and letting you ride in my mom’s car when we went to the museum of Natural History for our next field trip?
Well…the time has come, the walrus said, to make some more empty promises.
I need your mojo, and I need it between 3 and 5 PST today. I’ll even tell you what it’s for this time…”Win Ben Stein’s Money” is produced by Buena Vista Television, and BV saw all my auditions and all my tapes and stuff, and I guess they have decided to give me a chance to be funny, because their VP of development and their Director of development asked to have a “general meeting” with me today. A general meeting is where I go and talk to a casting director, or a director, or producer, or whomever, and we talk about stuff we could do together, and it usually leads to employment. (!) They’ll probably ask me what type of show I think I would like to do, and would be good for. I’m gonna tell them how much I like “The Daily Show”.
Anyway, it’s very exciting, and I’m just a little bit nervous…not because I think I’m gonna suck, but just because it’s such a huge opportunity for me and my family…so if you could spare some mojo, I’ll be your best friend, and you can ride in our car when my mom chaperones on the field trip to the Natural History museum!
Oh, did anyone see the Drew Carey show last night? It was the live, improv version…made me laugh out loud many, many times.

Wow

I am completely humbled, excited, and just a little giddy.
I don’t even know what to say…I was linked by fark, metafilter (they were much nicer this time), plastic (still not nice), and too many Trek sites to list. Chris from Slashdot (among others) emailed me to say congrats…he’d heard the news via the submissions that were flying towards /.
The really, really cool part of all this, I mean, the best part of all, is that the comments out there, for the most part, have been very positive towards me, and when they are negative, they are negative towards Wesley. That I can handle. And I bet you that it wouldn’t be like that if I didn’t have this lame little web site. So, to those of you who have given me a chance to illustrate the difference between him and me, I say “thank you!”
This has been a weird 10 days or so…the universe really likes balance, doesn’t it?