I paid my car off in April. Do you know how nice it is not to have car payments? So the Universe blessed my good fortune by hurling a truck at me this week and destroying my little, completely-paid-for, all-mine car. My insurance company gave me a check and said I’m supposed to replace my Honda with a comparable one. The “catch” is nobody takes care of their cars as well as I do. There isn’t a Honda that is “just like mine” for sale anywhere. I bought a newer one that cost me an additional ten thousand dollars. Alas, I’m making car payments again. Thank you Universe– I’m at least blessed that nobody was injured in the wreck.

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
Quotation from Jack Handey

Bart, with $10,000, we’d be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like… love!
Quotation from Homer Simpson

A reader left a comment here yesterday: “Yeah, yeah. Let’s shower each other with compliments. You scratch my back, I will scratch yours. All are happy. I’m fed up with the over-sugarness in the photo-blogosphere. “Brilliant!”, “Incredible!”, “Great!” … blah.”
Having grown up in a negative household, I prefer having my back scratched. Too much sugar is preferable to sourness and the occasional bitter taste that life insists on feeding us. But, dear reader, I appreciate the honest comment. Thanks!

They loved my friend Adam
But he always got caught.
Man, that kid made fucking up look cool.
Aren’t we all so cool now? No.
Lyrics from Something Corporate, Cavanaugh Park

Actually, I did receive a generous donation (Thanks Sara!). Now all I need is an agent, a patron or a corporate sponsor. Or a sugar daddy cookie.

I stood almost motionless on a box in harvard square, painted white, relinquishing my fate and income to the goodwill and honor of the passers-by. I spent years gradually building up a tolerance to the inbuilt shame that society puts on laying your hat/tipjar on the ground and asking the public to support your art…
Quotation from Amanda Palmer, Dresden Dolls

Yesterday wasn’t a good day. I misjudged a step, fell down and broke my thumb. When I got home from the emergency room, my sister called to tell me Aunt Lucille died. Sometimes, there isn’t any choice but to accept whatever happens.

Well why do the hands of time
So easily unwind?
Some lessons we learn the hard way.
Some lessons don’t come easy and
That’s the price we have to pay.
Song by Melody Gardot, Some Lessons

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, and even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
Quotation from Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram (It’s the opening paragraph of the book)