Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about a raccoon, summer, and Newfound Mass.

What's up you guys? Today's entry might not be the most original, but it's sure to warm your heart and maybe, just maybe, produce a tear or two from even the coldest, darkest of souls (like mine).

And if that's not enough of a caution, I suppose I should warn you that the following image might be a little graphic and/or unsettling.

Yes, I know what it looks like, and yes, it's very sad if that's the direction your mind wants to take you with this picture. But that's not what I'm gonna talk about.

Last week, a Toronto radio station posted a pic on Facebook of a dead raccoon outside its downtown studio. Not a big deal if you don't think wildlife animals roaming city streets isn't a big thing. Because I have pretty much no life and summer days can be pretty slow, I got to bear witness to a true saga unfolding in real time throughout the course of the day.

Animal Control was notified...and then...nothing. 102.1 FM   stayed on top of the situation, updating everyone through Facebook and Twitter on the poor dead animal's status. All day long, he baked on a concrete slab waiting for his proper clean-up (there's a sentence I never thought I'd write).

Eventually, a city council member joined in on the Tweet parade, injecting a bit of urgency and humor into what was unfolding as a heartbreaking tale of a raccoon taken before his time. And in the wait for authorities, the good people of Toronto stepped up and did the right thing...the humane thing.

They memorialized him.

I wish I was making this up...but really, even the most adept storytellers would struggle trying to come up with something so unbelievable. True and sad, yet funny, given the outpouring of the community and their support of this fallen creature. You can follow the entire story here, as it's been broken down by Buzzfeed  . In my opinion, the councilman (Norm Kelly) is the real hero of the day...congrats good sir! You've just earned yourself another Twitter follower!

And let's not forget about the kind souls who launched a fundraising campaign to hopefully ensure a proper burial. For all the shit Buffalonians like to give Canadians when they come into town for the weekends to take over our malls and trash our parking lots, you've done a wonderful service to humanity that all mankind can be proud of.

But the story doesn't end there, my friends...just the other day, not only was the occurrence of his untimely demise noted with an on-site headstone, but Conrad (as he has been dubbed) was also named the unofficial mascot of the 2015 Pan-Am Games  .

Nothin' like a feel-good story to start off your weekend, huh?

"I was reading a blog outside WDC (shhh don't tell) and the author was talking about how to address summer slumps with blogging. Some of her suggestions were okay but others don't apply to us at all. Then I got to thinking...many of you have been blogging for a while now. Do you have any suggestions to keep our blogging on track? I know some of you are not in summer right now but you probably have the same fatal attraction with real life...as those of us here in the states. Help! What works for you?"

I skimmed through the list   Lyn's a Witchy Woman 's link provided, and I agree that most of it doesn't apply to us. I don't wanna quite say it's garbage, but most of the suggestions are rather pointless...at least to me they are. And I'm no expert on blogging, despite what you might've heard, so I don't know that I have any fail-safe tips to add that you wouldn't already know.

Blogging suffers when it's nice out for the same reason football in Los Angeles hasn't always been a tremendous draw (considering that L.A. is one of the largest television markets)...there's simply too many other alternatives, and lots of better things to do.

Consider today...here in Cortland it's a gorgeous, sunny day, with temps in the mid-70's. I should be outside, working on tanning my 25% Italian skin. But let's not talk about me and my factors for staying inside (like my aversion to people pretty much constantly, or that I can no longer run up and down a basketball court). Personally, my options are limited, and writing this will likely be the bulk of my entertainment for the day. But you...you have choices! And who wouldn't take rockin' a dope pair of swim trunks just 'cuz you can over sweatin' balls in a hot room?

I guess you could do a few things to alter/enhance your discipline...maybe take your laptop or tablet outside if your wireless internet lets you, and if it doesn't, it wouldn't hurt you to exercise your fingers by actually physically writing down on paper what you want to say in your blog. Unless you're like me and your handwriting's deteriorated to the point where deciphering it is harder than breaking into an ATM...maybe then just copy the prompts you want to use down and start composing an entry offline (just don't try to save it unless you know for certain your browser will retain the input...thank you, gods of Google Chrome).

You could also force or shame yourself into making more time, while neglecting all the real-life responsibilities you have like gardening, parenting, or basic housework. That works for me because I don't have a garden or kids, and I live in a very small area which isn't hard for a halfway decent person to keep clean. And if you join groups on WDC, you'll have the inbox reminders burrowing a little space in the back of your head that whisper "You should write something today...in your blog, even." Again, I don't have to worry about that because I kinda pretty much already do what I damn well please.

So maybe I'm not the most shining example of advice-giving. I never said I was, but if you ever need to know anything, don't hesitate to come to me for helpful tips I almost always never seem to put into practice for myself.

"Tell us about a book or a song that you've connected with on a deep level. What was about it that affected you so much?"

Since I'm already going for all the low-hanging fruit with today's prompts, you should probably have guessed that I'll be opting for "song" in this portion of today's shit-flinging of words against your internet's walls (but if you must know, I've already decided that if I ever have a son, he'll be named Holden after the main character of The Catcher In The Rye and not Norbert IV).

I woke up this morning at an ungodly 6:30am, which is very unusual for me, but that grief for lost sleep was tempered by my joy for this prompt. I immediately picked out two songs I love and would've been interested in using now, but then I realized my emotional connections to them aren't as severe as what I'm about to musically break you with. And therein lies the difference...you loving a song isn't the same as the song loving you so much that it forces memories upon you and owns you and shreds your soul into splinters each time you hear it.

I'm the kind of person that attaches lots of memories to their respective songs...but only a few songs can break me down and turn my stoic charm into a near-blubbering mass of emotion in skin form the way "A New Found Interest In Massachusetts" by The Get Up Kids does.

Here's a brief history of me biographically: I basically grew up on Oldies and Hip Hop, fell into the Grunge trap of the nineties, and progressed from there into all the early, non-commercial Emo. When I lived with my boy DMFM at The Ruckushouse, he kept talking about TGUK and how I should check them out, so I did...bought a couple cds, listened once or twice, wasn't impressed, and figured I'd just die a happy Radiohead death.

But something moved me to relisten to those Get Up Kids discs again...I don't know what, but it likely could've been drunken heartbreak. And I fell in love- I swooned- over those songs. They opened me up to knowing that I wasn't the only lovelorn douchebag out there. And that was another arrow in my sensitivity quiver. I saw love and relationships in an entirely new light...I became capable of expressing broken heartedness not through the popular Nu-Metal of the era, but with the aid of intensely sad, almost poetic lyricism. Couple that with eventually falling way too hard for a girl who lived entirely too far away (Florida can seem impossible when you've never really traveled far), and channeling emotions into the songs you listen to all the time doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world at that point.

Enter this song, please and thank you. Once this beautiful girl and I came to our senses and before it became obvious that our long history of phone calls and love letters wasn't gonna amount to anything more, the original version (not the cheesy, emotion-void piano remake) grew to define us. There was a period of a couple of years where I couldn't listen to it...it was too much for me to bear inside. You shouldn't punish yourself over someone that way, as I figured out too late after the fact. But it's still a great song...underappreciated by the masses, and loved collectively by the hardcore Emo kids of the old school for its sentimentality.

And that noise you hear around the 1:34 mark...that's the sound of your heart ripping out of your chest in longing and admiration of that special someone. I doubt the lost heart intended ever thinks of me when she hears this song now, but I'll always associate it with her.

"These bridges and boundaries are bringing me closer to you."
Lyrics.  

I don't do a whole lot of grocery shopping, because I only have to feed one mouth, but if I can't meet this guy then someday I wanna shop at the store he works at  , because he's a genius (and so very helpful!). He's almost as cool as Shane from Walmart  .

Ok, well, I thought I had more to add today, but now I'm an emotional, rememberative mess and it looks like I've done enough here. I'm still not going outside, because now it looks like it might rain, and that means maybe I'll catch up on the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  entries I've been conveniently avoiding judging all week (and I was doing so well on keeping up with them too this time around). Oh, me. Anyway, peace, I'd do anything for you, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!