Addictions Have Changed, People Have Not.

There will be more on this Saturday, but as I was preparing to drag myself to the garage in the sun, Good Morning America was warning against the dangers of watching too much TV and playing too many videos games if you're of the age when you should do the proper thing and breed, then tell your kids not to do too much TV watching or video game playing.

They reminded everyone to "have a vibrant real life."

I'm too bloody tired to formulate a truly snarky response, and that, I think, says everything.

Addictions Have Changed, People Have Not.

Repression...recession...it's all the same thing, man.

On many autumn days, I can be seen doing two things: wearing my insanely green hoodie, and raking leaves. I am a rebellious little punk. No, really.

England has banned people from wearing hoodies and baseball caps inside of stores in case of crime. A requirement to wear unique, bold numbers on all clothing is pending.

I don't hold up well under direct sunlight, as you may know, and I have a few hooded jackets that I wear. The most socially alarming one is of course the black UV-resistant cover-all that I wear during summer. I've been followed by security in Stop & Shop because of my jacket, which becomes really amusing if you know how I look in public and hold the image of me trying to perform "terrars" with a tissue wrapped around the handle of whatever weapon I smuggled in under one mesh armpit of the cover-all while my plummeting blood pressure keeps me from damaging anything more than a few floor tiles.

So my choice in jackets is dangerous, at least in the U.K. and Boston. Closer to home, however, I'm guilty of far worse.

The NY Department of Sanitation wants everyone to put their raked leaves in brown paper bags. This would not be a problem if there was a store in all of the area that carried brown paper leaf bags. Five free bags are available at our local leaf collection center, the location of which is a mystery, even to the Department of Sanitation. Judging by the map, it appears to be floating in the East River. I don't live near the East River, but I've heard it's pretty. The only route to the fabled land of leaf collection involves the Bruckner Expressway. I'm sure it's a delightful road, however I really want to waste gas on something more useful and exciting than five paper bags.

We bought a leaf eater years ago, but we also have respiratory systems, and I think I still have some gum tree leaf dust in my upper right sinus from 1998. This year, though, I think The Puppy came up with an excellent solution to our decaying leaves. She dug us a hole over the summer which expanded to roughly the size of a shallow grave. Not having any bodies to stash this season, we're stuffing the leaves in the hole. Every now and again we turn it, just like compost on TV, and little by little our worm buddies digest us some new soil.

So, New York cannot have my leaves, because I am a hippie gas-saving, hoodie wearing punk with a puppy who can tunnel faster than Roger Bushell on a sugar high. This autumn is gonna rock!

Repression...recession...it's all the same thing, man.

We laugh at your puny blizzards!

A while back, someone broke the glass in our storm door.

The recent weather, as most people in the northeastern US will tell you, is getting cooler. Today I thought I'd pop down to Home Depot to pick up a replacement glass for the door, as well as a replacement storm window for the bathroom, because the one room in the house where most people go bare-assed should not be the one room in the house that is the same temperature as the backyard in the middle of January. The whereabouts of the original storm window for the bathroom are unknown. I believe it--along with seven other storm windows--fell victim to the great decrepitude of our previous shed in 1996.

Home Depot took over every local hardware store. We have one place to go for screws, for paint, for wood, for tools, and for soil, by mere absence of choice. Home Depot decides what local residents need for the maintenance of their homes, and you may already be getting a feeling about what Home Depot feels no one in The Bronx needs.

Two guys who are paid to do things at Home Depot were standing in the door and window department. Mum and I approached, and Mum asked where the storm windows were.

The young men's brows creased. They'd obviously never lived in a world where glass broke. "Storm windows?"

"Replacement glass for storm doors, that you change out with the screens," I elaborated.

"We have storm doors, and replacement windows."

I thanked them for their time and started edging towards the Plexiglas.

"Nyack (22 miles away) carries storm windows," one of the men said.

"Okay," I said. I've learned the world doesn't care about my driving customs.

"Poughkeepsie (71 miles away) has them too," the man called.

"Okay," I called from underneath a pile of cracked Plexiglas. The security-grade Plexiglas is about $75, the price of an entire new door before installation costs. The cheaper Plexiglas is just as bloody heavy, and the sheet that we took home was a good three feet taller than me. We plan to render it into the two storm windows we need--I will of course write about the experience at great length.

The two men in the Home Depot aprons standing in the door and window department obviously did not think Mum and I were alluring enough to offer to carry the Plexiglas to the register. Bah, their loss.

We laugh at your puny blizzards!

Firefighting rule #1: take the children OUT of the house.

Firefighting rule #1: take the children OUT of the house.

I'm not entirely sure how large groups of humans survived as long as they did.

I feel that Fox's So You Think You Can Dance was a deferred success. Yeah, that's right...I said deferred success. You know why? Because the Professional Association of Teachers in Britain has said that telling a student they've failed can put them off learning for life, and want a new word for failure. I just wanted to try the phrase out a few times, see if sounded less frightening after longterm use. It does not. I start envisioning bars full of people telling the bartender, "I'm such a deferred success story."

I got more entertainment out of that story than the bad dancers, however, because Fox didn't highlight the really bad dancers enough. I guess the lawsuits from American Idol have scared them off showcasing the really scary people.

Or many I'm just burnt. I went to the store for potato salad, and I didn't recognize the woman that lives behind us. I said it was because I usually see her from far away and laughed, but the truth is my neighbors--with the exception of the the guy who walks his Jack Russell terrier Alexis--look different every time I see them. It's like when they replaced Frisco on General Hospital, Nan and I watched for one hour and never realized the new guy was supposed to be Frisco. Crazy. I only watched General Hospital during the Luke/Laura saga, really. The whole Aztec treasure arc with Jack Wagner sort of sprang from that, and I never watched anymore after I discovered Inspector Gadget.

There are reasons I don't watch much television anymore, and I think I've outlined many of them here. It's just too sad to look back on. Years from now, I will remember Nancy Grace and laugh. Or cry.

I'm not entirely sure how large groups of humans survived as long as they did.