The Big Return Post

How do you write the first entry after being gone for three months? How do you write the Big Return Post? I've been living with this fear for the past two weeks since returning home. Yet today's the day. Here I am, at the computer, hands trembling, nipple hair quivering, and I'm typing.

As for the subject of the Big Return Post, I refuse to put that kind of pressure on myself. There will be no central topic of this post. If you wanted a topic so badly, you could have come up with one yourself, instead of sitting there like a little prick expecting me to cater to your every need. Just be happy the title of this entry isn't something annoying, like, "I'm baaaaack!"

Look at this-- less than 100 words into my Big Return Post, and we're already fighting. My B. You just have to understand, it's not easy returning after 3 months.

So what's been happening since last we spoke? I've been to hell and back, that's what. Or maybe it's to heaven and back and heaven's just a lot more intense and horrible than I would have imagined. And I'm not going to expand further. Not now. Later.*

For now, I'm going to limit this post to a bunch of disjointed, mildly entertaining thoughts currently dancing around my head.

--I came back after 9 weeks away and gasped hideously when I saw that my computer was on, and had been on since I left. This was almost as bad as the time I woke up to find the freezer open. Who the hell leaves for the summer and forgets to turn their computer off?

--The news about Pluto is devastating. Absolutely world-shaking. And frankly, I refuse to accept it. There are 7 days in a week, 50 states in the US, and 9 fucking planets in the solar system.

--I had left Winston, my turtle, at a friend's house for the summer, at 2 inches in diameter, and picked him up last week, at 3 inches in diameter. I hate this. Part of the fun with him was the fact that he was miniature. I had always fantasized about having a 1-inch tall person to hang around with and keep in my pocket, who would be exactly like a normal person except he'd be the size of a match. Buying a miniature turtle partially satisfied this lifelong desire. And every month, he's getting less and less miniature. Suddenly, I own this, just, normal turtle. Who the hell wants a normal turtle living in their apartment with them. He's still somewhat miniature, but I don't like where this is going.

(On a related note, I was reunited with my tiny fish as well. I can't believe the little dude's still alive. How does something the size of pen cap live for 8 months? Every day, I keep waking up and assuming he'll be dead, and every morning, there he is, still kicking, swimming around his 3-inch space as if life is damn good. I guess he has plenty to eat, and nothing is trying to eat him, and for a fish, that constitutes the good life. He lives in and breathes his own feces.)

--I can't figure out why you have to sign your name on the back of the credit card. Shouldn't the point of signing a receipt be that if a card is stolen, a disputed claim can be settled by looking at the signature? If the signature is not consistent with all the real ones, the purchase was made by the thief-- if it matches, it was made by the owner of the card. There's no way someone is ever going to guess how someone else signs their name-- unless, of course, the owner's signature is on the back of the idiot card. It should say underneath, "Thieves: make sure to master the above signature before buying products with this stolen card."

That's right, I'm ranting about the little signature on the back of credit cards. And I'm not finished yet.

I understand that the intended purpose of the signature is for a cashier to verify your signature with the official one on the back of the credit card, but 1 out of 20 cashiers actually does that, and even for that rare time when the cashier verifies the signature, what kind of retarded thief would have trouble with a basic forgery. On that note, I thoroughly enjoy the times when I come across that rare cashier who takes their job so seriously that they refuse to give you your card back until they carefully verify the authenticity of the signature. Sitting there, on their little cashier stool, they are the Guardian of the Register, a master detective of sorts-- and they want that to be very clear to you.

--At various points over the past 6 months I've had my camera, iPod, phone, and laptop stolen. At this point, I'm convinced there's something bigger happening here. I'm trying to think back 6 months ago to a time when I stole money from a homeless blind person, or dodged the draft, or lied about my taxes, or something that would have brought this hideous stretch of karma upon me, but I can't. I was in Asia about 6 months ago, but Andrew was there with me and was very adamant that "what happens in Asia stays in Asia," so it can't be anything that happened there. I didn't light the menorah at all last November. That couldn't be it, could it? Is it possible that I'm being fucked with by the Jewish gods? Are there even Jewish gods? That doesn't sound right. I didn't do anything sacrilegious involving sports, like bet against the Patriots in the playoffs or something. I bought my turtle and fish about 6 months ago-- could it possibly be that one-- or both-- of them is cursed? This is intriguing. The thing is, though, even if they are cursed, combined they have about a tenth of a brain, so I doubt any curses associated with them would be very powerful. I can't figure it out. And I'd like to say it's over, but last time I said that my laptop was stolen shortly after. I really needed that laptop. I'll keep you posted.

Cursed or not, I've returned to this silly place. And yet again, while you procrastinate at work, you can hear what I'm thinking while I procrastinate at work (or whatever the hell what I do is called). And now I'm trying to end the Big Return Post, which I'm learning, the hard way, is basically as hard and pressured-filled as starting it. I'm just going to end it by writing this sentence explaining how I'm going to end it.


*Why am I being such a retard right now? Excellent question. It's a combination of the fact that I did actually have a crazy last few months that I won't get into now, last week's Red Sox-Yankees series, the fact that I'm overly exhausted at the moment, and the fact that it is kind of ridiculously hard to post for the first time after 3 months away.