You Can Jump Into the Fire

Alex Carnevale's lovely post over at This Recording got me thinking about the past decade. I came into the 2000s at 19, going on 20. I left them at 30. In college, I had a cell phone, but only because my mom gave me one before I went away to school. A cell phone meant that, even if I was kidnapped and raped and thrown in a ditch (her worst case scenario), I could call and let her know. Now, there are too many ways to let people know you're possibly a headless corpse wandering I-95. Such is progress. We adapt.

I graduated college eight months after 9/11. The "Iraq" war started right when I got my first job at a newspaper. I moved to Austin the day after Bush was re-elected. It's strange, all these milemarkers in life measured against the horrible things that rode in the backseat with us.

Are you perpetually afraid you're going to lose your wallet? I am. When you grab for it and it's gone, that sinking feeling in your gut is a powerful feeling. This decade had a lot to do with adapting, as well as balancing a foggy daydream of youthful invincibility with waking, walking terror.

A do-over, Carnevale asks. I learned a lot in my 20s, and made bad decisions and mistakes and told out-and-out lies to get out of things, like the people that run our country do. I also had a really fun time and met some of my best friends. In the past decade, music, for the most part, got really bad again, which means the ten-teens can only get better. Well, historically.

Whew. Let's bring the lights back up. Please enjoy this video of a cat whose crazy owner forces it to eat with a fork. Yes, the Internet is a vortex and we will reach the end soon.