h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...on a damn-near full moon night. And it was MAHVELOUS! There's times it's just plain good to be alive, and this was one of them.

After a horrible, bitchy, vile month at work I kicked off my weekend with a friend at Pusser's. Imagine.... an ocean view with the moonlight dancing through the clouds and leaving brilliant sparkling patches on the water, the ripple of the waterfalls surrounding us, the balmy breeze rustling through the palm fronds and kissing the ache from our bodies, seriously divine rum drinks, island spiced shrimp and chicken wings (slurrrrrrrp), and a calypso band playing 'The Girl From Ipanema' in the background. Ahhhhhhhhh.... aura fluffed already!

And then we took a walkabout to Evangeline's... a chunk of N'awlin's on the Fort Lauderdale beach. The bar and the stained glass were imported from New Orleans, were built during the Civil War. They just don't make glass like that any more. Had a jazz/blues band with a leetle tiny girl singer who sang from deep inside her pelvis somewhere. Totally primal, totally awesome. The bassist played a rhythm and melody at the same time in a way I've never even conceived of before. The bartenders were a floorshow. Juggling bottles, mixing layered drinks, bellowing great balls of 151-inspired fire. Marvin did something that could be euphamistically termed dancing that made your heart fly out of your barstool and jitterbug with the aurora borealis. They even had Arbita Turo Dog (which I've been looking for since 1994.) And it was GOOD!

Life's waxing full again, in the tiny moments that matter. Mustn't forget... it's all out there. And it's there to be tasted and sniffed and caressed.

I read something recently that disturbed me. Someone feels every bit of pain and hurt and injustice, from now and the past and the future. And he treasures that, in a way I don't quite understand, while being on a mission to annihilate those things from the world. I understand that in one sense it's a noble thing to disallow oneself to feel any pleasure in the world while others are in pain. On the other hand, to perpetrate the misery on a personal level and deny the potential joy of daily life strikes me as somehow contradictory if you want to alleviate those big painful issues.

*sigh*

Perhaps I'm too frivoluos. Maybe there's something I'm just not getting. But I still think that the more people delight in the moments of their lives, and the more they interact with others in a way which defies the... discomfort? disillusion? angst? of being human, the better the world can be, overall.

Can people who embrace misery spread peace and goodwill? I dunno.