First things first, I owe an apology to all my loyal readers for not updating for so long.  Actually, that’s a lie.  My loyal readers are my mother and my sister, both of whom I have seen a lot over the past weeks.  Since I’ve actually seen them, it’s like whenever we were talking I was blogging orally and in person, so really it’s my unloyal/sporadic readers I have to apologize to.

Sorry, non-readers.  I sorta let you down, and you would have known it, had you looked.  Weird.

Anyhow, let’s play catchup.  I last blogged about Kurt Vonnegut’s death.  The Onion AV Club had a neat collection of quotes  here, but it omitted one of my favorites, I believe from Slapshot.  I forget the quote exactly, but in a PBS interview, he summed it up pretty well again.  Here’s the link to a transcript of the interview, but here’s the important part:

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What can we say to younger people who have their whole lives ahead of them?
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, you are human beings. Resourceful. Form a little society of your own. And, hang out with them. Get a gang.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You’re preaching getting into gangs?
KURT VONNEGUT: Yes. Well, look, it’s–
DAVID BRANCACCIO: A good gang.
KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I don’t mean to intimidate you, but I have a master’s degree in anthropology.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: I’m intimidated.
KURT VONNEGUT: From the University of Chicago– as did Saul Bellow, incidentally. But anyway, one thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they’re tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.  So yes, I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.

Despite how frustrating it might be to Mr. Vonnegut, I hope he’s in heaven now playing a lyre and floating around.

Back to the catchup part of this post,  about a week and a half ago, my brother and I drove down to Houston to help paint my sister’s house.   Just the upstairs part, but that was still pretty substantial.  Two bedrooms, a bath, and a hallway/”baby’s room”, all including the ceilings.  The brother’s a real deal painter, but I carried most of my own weight, and I provided the transportation down there.  We also took his dog, Gnarly, that has a crush on his “cousin” Moxie, like George Michael and Maeby.  So we painted for a week, hung out with my folks, and drove a total of ~2500 miles.  My parents had a super fun party at their house last Saturday.  The house was looking awesome.  Not 2508Frank awesome, but you know, they did the best they could with what they have.   So that’s the catchup.  Now I’m going to post something political.