October 27, 2005

For a little under two years, I was just letting my hair grow. I'd never done anything like it before, and I hated how I looked with short hair, so, you know. Why the hell not?

And oh, it grew. 22 inches. 22 inches of blackness from my cranium. Got me plenty of weird stares in some public places. Got me plenty of shit from the assholes at school. Got me lots of attention from assorted females.

There was no one else like me. I was "the kid with the long hair." Not Anthony, but "long-hair." And its like, "whoa. Notoriety." Rad stuff, I do believe. But I decided that it was time for a change.

Maybe someone else could find a better use for it than me.

I had my eyes on a lot of particular styles. I ended up getting it cut like that one guy from Corpse Bride. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it looks good, I think. I enjoy it.

Its really weird, walking outside, feeling the wind on your neck. Not having to spend a bajillion hours drying your hair. Buckets of shampoo to cleanse it. Tying it up so you don't inhale it while playing DDR. All gone, now. The use of gel to style it is reasonable again. I look a few years younger. I can no longer play Jesus Christ, females, or assorted homeless men in the movies me and my friends make.

The thing that pisses me off about the whole ordeal is that I have my friends and/or acquaintences come up to me, with sad looks on their faces, "oh, it looks good! You may not like it, but I like it!"

WHOA. Rewind!

I was not held at gunpoint to do this shit. I wasn't tired of people making fun of me for it. I donated it to someone. Yeah, sure, I liked my old hair, and yeah, sure, I kindof liked the attention I got for it, but fuck this! I don't have a status quo to live up to. I didn't grow it so I could get recognition for it. I did it cause I think I looked damn awesome with long hair.

(Okay, yeah, I look damn awesome with anything. :))

So yeah. I look like some sort of contributing member of society. I feel so naked and anonymous again. Like I'm in the eighth grade. It is an old, but welcome feeling.

I suppose that is all.

So I go outside yesterday to leave work. I don't see my van. What? I look around this other big white van that's parked in my spot. Surely it's on the other side.

No, it's not.

In fact, my van is not there... at all.

GOD DAMMIT!!!

Well, that was a first for me, my fucking vehicle stolen. I don't have time to write a really long one here, lemme just say that I was a very foul-mouthed man for a while there. The cop that took the report was some kind of moron. His clip-on tie wasn't even clipped on correctly. And the first time he went into the computer system he couldn't find any vehicles registered to me or my wife. WTF? Later he found them. Maybe the idiot forgot to scroll down or something. One of the cops who found my van only a few hours later wasn't any smarter. He called my house looking for "Edward." My wife is like "No, there's no Edward here." "Is it his middle name?" "Er, no." "How 'bout a 2002 Chrysler Voyager?" "Yes, did you find our van?!" Sheesh. None of my names, first, middle, or last, sound or is spelled even remotely like Edward. I gotta tell ya, the dudes over at the St. Louis police department aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

One thing that had me ballistic was that I had three days left working at this company! THREE GODDAMN DAYS. I was working here for six years, not once is a vehicle stolen (plenty of damn license plates and stickers). Then I finally have three days left working at this old warehouse and I'm moving to a job in a much nicer part of town and THEN my vehicle is stolen! Dammit.

Just in case any of you own a Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth vehicle, a few words of warning: they're incredibly easy to steal. The theif easily took a screwdriver, POP! under the lock to get the door open, then shoved it in the unit where you stick your key, POP! yanked that out, then shoved the screwdriver into the shaft and started up the van and left. Probably took him 15 seconds. The cop showed me how he did it. Now I know how to start and turn off a car with a screwdriver. Hey, if I ever want to change professions, I now know how to easily steal certain kinds of cars.

So the assholes who stole my van made off with my baby's car seat and diapers, and my wife's wallet. We had to cancel, like,...everything. Again. (They've stolen her purse from where SHE works twice in the past two years). Including the bank account. What fun. Oh yeah and the van stinks now, they were smoking weed in it. I'm almost positive. And the radio, of course, was on hip hop station - not my cup of tea.

It could have been worse, I suppose. I guess I could have been car-jacked.

Fuckers.

4 years on e2. There are a lot of things I’d like to say about e2 here. I can only find the words for a few of them, and here is only one:

e2 can be transcendent. It can be, illogically, be more than the sum of its parts. And the things that make it so are the things that make you more than the sum of your parts, which you have taken out of yourself and put here.

Please keep doing it.

Of course it’s hard.
It’s what we’re here to do.