Stuff a Windsock in it

Looking over the blogs for the last week - indeed, the last month - it seems as though I feel my life is a never-ending struggle. Well, it may be, but it sure must be tedious to read about in post after post. I'd been making a real effort lately to curtail my sad-sack tendencies, left over from my mopey teen years (my teen years officially ended when I turned 28). Meaning, that when someone asks me how I am, I have to fight the urge to just rail off a list of complaints.

Not only have I not been too successful with altering that rather annoying personality tic in real life, I seem to have given it fresh license in these daily Ramblers. So not only has the Subway Rambler been a steady stream of my tiny miseries, it's also been so at windy, blowhardy length.

Bear in mind that I don't subscribe to some hokey self-therapeutic concept that focusing on positive things will eventually cause me to be a more positive person. Bullshit. I'm a miserable fucker, and what's more, I thoroughly enjoy being one. What I'm trying to do is to stop annoying people. Really, you'd think I'd have figured out by the age of 36 that when people - even good friends - ask you how you're doing, they don't really want to know.

And what's more, if every time you're asked that question you sigh, slump your shoulders and break out the world's smallest violin (that you carry around wedged up your ass) and play it for yourself, people are going to think you're just a crazy person. And not the good, entertaining Tiny Tim kind of crazy, either - miniature stringed instruments aside, I won't be playing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Anyone up for a few choruses of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?"

So: somehow, I'll have to not only smiled through gritted teeth and say, "Fine, and you?" when asked, I'll also have to find a way to turn down the angst knob on the Subway Ramble just a hair. Not all the way, mind you - I know full well that there are those who enjoy watching a good train wreck in progress, and I promise not to cut you off cold turkey. But maybe we can mix in other flavors, too.

Speaking of flavors: I found something out tonight - which is good, because an adage I do like to subscribe to is learning something new every day. Did you know that if you cook a tuna steak long enough, it becomes pork? A slight scheduling mistake led me to cook tonight's dinner for about twice as long as I should have. A shame, because it really looked like such nice tuna. The consistency when we finally got to eat it really, no shit - just like pork.

See? Now, was that a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of anecdote? Is there a way to relate the concept of overcooking a tuna steak and make it funny, without making it sound like I'm putting yet another entry in Dave's Ledger of Perpetual Self-Abuse? If there were enough of you out there reading this thing, I'd have some kind of contest to see if someone could rewrite the tuna story in a way that sets-up the points of the story, but instead of making me look like a helpless jackass in the kitchen, render me instead a sexy, roguish hero of the stove, who - ha-HAH! - has a comic misadventure one eve whilst preparing seafood for the lady.

Anyone handing out the lower middle class twit of the year awards?

Anyhow, I'll try not to blow so hard in the future, and thanks for reading. Sorry, no prizes just for that.

D.