Oh.  I am full of surprises, my friends.

Anyway, this particular documentary chronicles the life of rapper Tupac Shakur (duh) and his cultural impact on society.  One of the interesting things about this particular documentary was that it featured clips from an interview with Shakur at the tender age of seventeen.  This particular interview forces one to reevaluate the terms “gang banger,” “thug,” and mysogynist as they are applied to the rapper.  Often, according to the perspective of these filmmakers, the lines between reality and representation become blurred.  Even to those who are drawing them.

If you even remotely liked his music, I think you should watch it.  Actually, even if you didn’t like his music, you should watch it.

Not just because I’m a fan, but because Tupac Shakur was a significant contributor to American culture as we have come to understand it in 2010.  And, apparently, the Library of Congress think so as well, or, at least, someone who works there.  On June 23, the National Recording Registry deemed his song “Dear Mama” as “culturally significant” along with several other recordings.

For those of you who have never heard “Dear Mama”… SERIOUSLY?! : (FB users, visit my blog for the video).

For those of you who are completely flabbergasted and appalled by Shakur’s inclusion in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, you should watch the following video  where Michael Eric Dyson expounds on the theology of hip hop and Tupac’s role in its creation (FB readers you know what to do).

Go here if you can’t see the last video.

I wouldn’t qualify this following passage from the movie as a spoiler, but if you’re really sensitive about stuff like that… consider yourself warned.

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now… Your couch, your car, your home….

I was talking to a friend today and in (what I’d like to think is an uncharacteristically exasperated) voice nearly yelled at her, “Why do I have all this stuff… what do I really need this stuff for…”

Why do I need 60 pieces of silverware in my kitchen drawer for only three people?

Why do I need four bathrooms?

Why do I have five sippy cups for one four year old?!!

These sentiments, I know, border on blasphemy in that they probably indicate a lack of gratitude for actually being able to buy that stuff, to have a beautiful place to keep that stuff, and to have been blessed with family who have given us some of this stuff.

That’s not the case.  I am grateful.  Incredibly grateful.

My consternation actually emanates from my not realizing a simple truth much earlier: everything you own will own you to some degree. I know I’m not exactly aged, but I really would have liked to learn this somewhere around my twenties.

I probably could have used the money I spent on flatware alone to buy 52 round trip tickets to France.

Every object exacts a price, and not just the one we paid for it.  The price is paid in maintenance, time and effort.  It is critical, then, to evaluate whether that thing’s ownership of us is actually worth the benefit of having it in our lives.

Does it sustain me?  Is it absolutely necessary?  Is it distracting me from what I believe to be life’s true meaning?

As of this moment, I feel like I’m climbing up Mt. Everest with a backpack full of expensive hair products, four digital clocks and 60 serving dishes.

When I get thirsty, hungry or sick, what good are those things going to do me?

Not much.

I need more room in my backpack.  For my family, for my friends, for God.  Those are the things that sustain me and are consistent with nurturing my soul.  Every ounce of strength devoted to carrying the extraneous is an ounce of strength subtracted from the things that I know in my soul are more important than anything.

Do these things exact a price and do they add weight to my backpack?  Of course.

But the difference between them and the digital clocks is that what they give back is much more precious.

Strength.

To keep moving.  To keep going.  And, sometimes, to rest.

In the end, those things make the backpack feel not quite as heavy.  And those are the only things with which I intend to continue my journey.*

So, I’m wondering.

What’s in your backpack?  Everything you want?  Or more silverware?

*And, no, I am not giving away my patio furniture.  So don’t even ask.   You know who you are.

Obviously, this news was shocking and bizarre.  And, of course, sad.

It was particularly sad for me to read about it because something similar, if not even more horrific, had happened the day before.

There’s a lot of ways a blog post about this incident could pan out.  We could discuss gun control, mental health, a distressed economy or some permutation of them.

But, really, the only thing that keeps playing in my head has to do with how the people who walked into the Gateway Center’s eighth floor had no clue of what an incredibly bad Friday they were about to have.

It’s a pretty trite perspective, I know, but that’s all I can seem to think about.

Being human is so … hard, isn’t it?

Animals and plants have it easy.  Nourishment, shelter and reproduction.  There are no complicated nuances.  Any complications generally arise as the result of our complications bleeding over into their efficient existence.

But us humans?  We’re complicated creatures.

I keep wondering about the two people who have been reported dead.

Who were they?

And, my God, why them?

Why not you?  Or me?

I don’t mean that it should have been me or you, I mean, it could have been me or you.  Easily.

We lock our doors, look both ways before we cross the street, take our vitamins, eat right… and we think that this is going to make a huge difference.  The truth is that it makes only a little difference.

I’m wondering about those two people… reports are preliminary right now, so we don’t know anything about them.

I’ve got these sappy movie scenes playing out in my head.

Like, a pretty, middle aged woman slams the door shut and makes sure she mutters, “Jerk” in earshot before she gets in her car, pointedly refusing to say good bye to her husband after the argument they just had about who was going to take their son to soccer practice… or maybe she got in the car, put the keys in the ignition, sighed deeply and then went back in the house and yelled, “Hey, I’m mad, but I love you, OK?”

Some single twenty something guy stumbles into the kitchen, makes some coffee and then trudges out of the door feeling a slightly numbed despair as he realizes he hates his crap job… or did he jump out of bed and greet the morning with joy and purpose, knowing that whatever he was going to do today was really going to mean something to him?

And, let me get really morbid and ask, what words spin in one’s head as they lay on the floor bleeding to death because of someone else’s complete madness?

“This can’t be happening… is this really happening… I’m not done here…Oh, God, is this really happ…. “

The End?

I would imagine that it would play out that way.  I don’t think in a situation like that most people are evaluating whether they’ve lived a good and meaningful life.  I would imagine you cling to the hope that this is not it.

There has to be more.  Please let there be more.

I don’t know about you, but I’m done living for that last moment as of right now.

It gets bantered about quite a bit, this idea of “When I die, I want to know that my life meant something.”  I figure we spend the majority of our time and energy trying not to die, so I imagine in that moment, I’m going to be too scared to make sense of anything.

The fact is that every single moment in our lives means something.  Every single second, actually, and we consciously choose what each of those seconds mean.

Or whether they don’t mean anything at all.

In the end, we are not who we are in the last moment of our lives.

We are who we are right now.

It’s not “When I die, I want my life to have meant something.”

It’s, “As I live, I’m making this moment mean something.”

Overheard at my house.

“Daddy, I want a Barbie.”

“No.”

“But I love her.”

“N., I don’t like Barbies.”

“IIII like them.”

“Well.  I don’t.  And I’m not buying one for you.”

“But, but, but, I LOVE HER!! I WANT ONE!”

“NO. ”

“BUT, DADDY, NOOOO, I WANT…WHY?!!!!”

“Because…because… Because BARBIE IS NOT A GOOD MUSLIM.”

Not everyone has the ability to recognize genius when they see it.

Pure, unadulterated, deeply disturbing, stomach churning, “Wait, is that HITLER?!” genius.

I, of course, do recognize genius.  Since it’s true that it takes one to know one.

Adam is a gifted writer whose most profound service to mankind lies in helping his readers understand that when it comes to funny… socially acceptable boundaries are for losers.

He is, in many ways, my daily reminder never to take anything too seriously.  And that some people will do anything for a laugh.

Some people might find him offensive.

But before you go judging people, you have to ask yourself, “Do I have my very own church?”

It’s called the Church of Holy Avitableness (COHA).

Having your own church is very cool.  But, I have to admit, COHA has its problems.  It’s, with all due respect, a little amateur.

One thing I know as an adherent of a widely followed world religion is that every successful religious institution needs dogma.

COHA is just waaay too laid back.

You must have something that separates out the ones that aren’t really committed. The ones that, you know, are too smart lazy to be saved.

What COHA needs is a crazy fundamentalist fringe group that will transform it into a force with which to be reckoned.  I propose for obvious reasons that I’m just the person to initiate this.

For those of you who are on the fence about this fundamentalist transformation, I’d like to remind you that fundamentalists enjoy all sorts of benefits: imaginary sway over elections and party politics, an ability to influence rash foreign policy decisions and, of course, an unwavering conviction that they’re always right about everything all of the time.

I ask you, really, who among you does not crave complete certainty about every single thing that has ever happened since the beginning of time even in the face of all forms of logic and reason?

Think of all the time and energy you’ll save by not… thinking.

Incidentally, like every fundamentalist leader on this planet, I really don’t care what Avitable, the founder of this religion, intended at its inception.  This is all about furthering my personal agenda.  Which, of course, duh, is world domination.  Along with being considered moderately witty in this birthday tribute.

Anyway, COHA fundamentalists are in dire need of something to mumble before they strap on a suicide bomb.  Therefore, it is with extreme hubris, a deep sense of arrogance and complete moral certainty that I submit the following and first of the basic dogma of COHA:

“The Avitabilites Prayer”

Oh Avitable, five years from thirty seven,

Adam be thy name.

Thy birthday has come,

May thy thrills be done, on the Internet as it is in the blogosphere.

Give us blog posts as our daily bread,

Condemn our reviled spawn’s trespasses

As we condemn grown men who listen to Avril Lavigne

Continue to bless us with your blatantly ethnocentric assumptions about marriage

As you deliver us numerous doses of evil images that most likely exaggerate your manhood,

Forever ours is the dancing Avitable, full of unicorn love and glory.

For ever and ever.

A Hen.

(Or Chicken.)

Happy birthday, Adam.  You’re funny, irreverent, kind, thoughtful, mostly sensitive and very special.  And not in the short bus kind of way.

If you haven’t already, and if you dare, please be sure to stop by Adam’s place and wish him a happy birthday today.

One more thing:  all of you need to send me three million dollars or there’s going to be an apocalypse next week.  Collectively, of course.  Not each.

Just a heads up.

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