Why Did I Do It? WHY?!

Here's the list again:
[x] put check in the mail
[x] pick up packages from post office (hopefully avoid surly lady who was rude to me last time >.<)
[o] buy printer paper and ink
[o] print off at least one copy of Found and see if I'm up for editing it
[/] balance all the money records, which includes moving the messy pile of receipts and things from the right side of my desk to the folders they belong in
[o] discuss the last few presents with Ryan once he arrives home
[o] call Dad while rest of house is raiding, because it has been TOO DAMNED LONG since we had a successful phone call
[o] attempt to wrap some of the presents we already have...may need Ryan's help for this >.<

The first one was easy, of course--open mail box, place envelope inside, move "Outgoing" post-it from inside to outside of box, close and lock it. The second was...harder. The third didn't happen for much the same reason the second was difficult.

I'm a dumb today. I thought I could just run out to the Post Office and Best Buy on the first day of the last weekend before Christmas.

The Post Office. And Best Buy.

WHERE WAS MY BRAIN.

I hit the PO right around noon-thirty, and left without even parking...because there was nowhere to park. The tiny station nearest my house, where our packages live if we miss them being delivered, has maybe fifteen spots. And every single one was taken, with a line of cars waiting for the next available one. I missed my chance for one, circled around to maybe get back in line, and realized there was no way anyone was going to let me in.

So I left to go to Best Buy. I figured it might not be so bad, I wasn't shopping for fancy items like phones or iPods or games or even movies, I just wanted some paper and ink.

The place was packed, and the line...just thinking about it now makes me shudder. I walked in, looked at the line, turned and walked out. Just...it wasn't going to happen.

By this time it was past one, so I tried the Post Office again and was elated to see that it was back to normal...well, more or less, it is still the holiday season. But there was a spot--more than one, even!--and the line wasn't out the door, so I'm glad for that. I'm also glad that, although Madame Postal Worker was indeed working, I was lucky enough to not have to go to her line to pick up my packages. I can't promise that I would have been able to not remind her of our last interaction and point out that I in no way deserved the attitude she gave me and rant rant rant okay I'm done.

Two packages! From mothers! Woo!

I opened the one from mine since I knew Mom had also stuck in a book I had asked her to send along. Three prettily wrapped presents now sit on a side table, waiting patiently. I can't wait! Eee!

Anyway...because the paper and printer ink were not procured today, I won't be printing or pondering my...novel. If the traffic remains as bad as it was today (I didn't even mention the driving, did I? That's because the entire entry would be nothing but cuss words and all-caps and there might be a broken keyboard at the end of it), the whole thing may have to wait until after the holidays. And, if that's the case, I may just have to start on the next story, because it is ITCHING to get out of my fingers at this point.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have to put my papers in order, and then I may spend the rest of the afternoon until Ryan gets home either starting on the new story or playing WoW or reading or...oh, I'll find something.

Dude. The Hell.

Why must public servants be cranky? Why?

I went to the post office today to pick up two packages that I had been expecting. I found a postcard in the mailbox yesterday saying there was no one home when they were dropped off, where to find them, when they'd be available, etc etc.

I waited patiently in line, handed over the postcard, and took the packages. I was told that I didn't need to sign for them. Honestly curious and surprised, I asked: "Then why weren't they left at my door?"

"Well," replied Madame Postal Worker, "We have this whole security and sanctity thing we have to follow."

...

Because I have this deep-rooted nature to assume the best in people, I thought that maybe she had mistaken my question for one incredulous and complaining, instead of honest and curious. So I followed up with, "It's just that I've had other packages left at my door before..."

"Different carriers. We do get days off once in a while."

...

"Have a nice day..."
"Uh-huh."

And, thus dismissed, I left.

What. The. Hell.

The rest of the day was pretty good--packages! books! presents! mostly good people at work! Job not being an annoying pest the entire shift!--but that worker's inner insistence that I was being rude enough to deserve such an attitude has been prickling at me the rest of the day.

And this is why I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, not be cranky at them, and even smile or compliment them--because sometimes the smallest interaction can affect someone's entire day.

Grrr...

Letting The Beetle Out.

About a month ago, I was eating dinner with my Dad, and I mentioned the music I had been listening to lately. I have this thing where I'll make a CD, either of one artist or a mix, and then listen to it over and over and over again. I'm one of those people who can do that without eventually hating the song.

I mentioned a few of the artists I had on this CD, and my Dad smirked.

"Earnest," he said. "Earnest, earnest, earnest."

He didn't make it sounds bad so much as...cute. As if these singers were children who are trying so hard to be real musicians, isn't that precious?

I get what he's saying--almost every song by these artists does have this earnest, urgent note to them. These songs have a message, this message is important, it is the most important message in the history of the world, we are the first people to sing about this message, and, by God, you will hear it and you will be moved. This attitude is great, until you've continued it for more than, say, one whole album, or three songs per album. Then it just feels...false. Not like the artist doesn't mean it--they do, don't you ever doubt it! But they mean it too much, to the point where it stops to mean anything to anyone else.

Ever since that smirk, there's been a beetle in the back of my mind, buzzing about earnest. After a few weeks of this, I've decided on something:

We need earnest.

I don't mean the global "we", the "we" of the whole world ("The citizens of all nations need to hear this so they can understand their mistakes!"). I mean my "we". We, the generation that straddles Generation X and Generation Z--those born in the 1980's but raised in the 1990's and 2000's.

I tend to think that we were raised in one of the most cynical decades in living memory. The business- and money-focused attitude of the 80's was still present, but the realization that this capitalist way of life could not be sustained was beginning to set in with all the tenderness of an elephant settling on an hollowed egg shell. Just listen to the music of the 1990's--Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Offspring. Their lyrics span from subtle cynicism to blatant bitterness. Our country experienced The Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton's scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and many other events that divided and scarred the country in numerous ways.

And that was just the 1990's. For me, ages 4 to 14.

Even from the very beginning, the 2000's have been a hard decade. They've been hard on everyone, but imagine coming of age in them. The past 9 years have brought upon three highly publicized and controversial elections, and a war that has divided the country in a way that we haven't approached since the Civil War. We experienced the attacks on September 11, which are to many of my generation what Pearl Harbor was to our grandparents, what JFK's assassination was to our parents. Our economy has crashed, and millions have gone from a safe, middle-class lifestyle to poverty, losing their jobs, their insurance, their homes, the lives they had become accustomed and attached to.

If any other teenagers and children had parents even vaguely similar to mine, they grew up listening to rants and rambles, yelling and crying. We grew up with hands being thrown in the air and eyes being rolled with disgust and hopelessness. We grew up hearing things like "What is this world coming to?" and "I can't believe this is happening," or even "What are we going to do?"

Every generation grows up with the combined hope and threat that they will be in charge someday. They will be the ones to take the reigns, clean up the mess, change the course of civilization, and so on and so forth. Growing up hearing that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, being told in the same breath that "this will all be yours someday"...that's quite a bundle to be handed.

So it any wonder that we've been drawn to music that has our voice, our worries, our hopes, our frustration? Songs like the all-star cover of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, American Idiot, The Lovers Are Losing, and Land of Confusion?. Songs with lyrics like "We're the new face of failure/Prettier and younger, by not any better of", and "Burning down the capitols/Wisest of the animals" and "People can no longer cover their eyes"?

Yes, the singers are earnest. Because we need earnest. We need hopeful. We need angry, we need dedicated, we need pissed off.

Every generation thinks it has it worse off than the one before, that it has better reason to be pissed off than the one before, that the previous ones will never understand what it is we're going through. To a degree, every generation is right.

Our grandparents were handed the Depression and World War II, bread lines and a military draft.
Our parents were handed Vietnam and its aftermath, Nixon and his lies.
We are handed the Iraq war, the aftermath of September 11, the bill for the environmental spending of the previous decades.

Every generation is given a country that is broken and needs to be made whole. And each time the country is handed down, like a quilt made by a forgotten ancestor, it is a little more threadbare, a little more stained, a little harder to patch up.

My generation currently has the ragged ends of yet another unwinnable war started by the previous controversial president, the worse economic recession in 20 years, an overburdened environment in danger of giving at any moment, state-by-state fights for basic human rights, and a political tug-of-war over our health insurance.

We need our own versions of Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, The Clash, Bruce Springsteen--you want to tell me that they didn't want to move the world? That they didn't have a message that you are going to hear and by God learn from?

We need our songs filled with anger, frustration, worry, and hope. We need those voices articulating the feelings that we can not, made more poignant in ways that only music can accomplish. We need those emotions out where everyone can hear them.

We need earnest.