And another thing.

I decided to start reading "The Stand" again. This conclusion was pretty inevitable, given the progression of things. As I've been revisiting this story, I've been reflecting on a certain aspect of it. This is something I've been thinking off and on about lately, but something that I had never thought of before.

The miniseries adaptation is pretty good as far as those things go. There's one aspect that it misses, though, something that's a lot clearer in the book. You don't really get a sense of how young these characters are. Seriously, most of the main characters are pretty young: Larry is 24. Nick is 22. Fran is 21. Harold is 16. They are so young.

Of course, when I first read the book, I was 10, and none of this made any impact on me. It wouldn't have mattered if they were 20 or 30 or 40. They were vastly older than I. It was so vague and distant and in-the-realm-of-fiction that I wouldn't have been surprised to see them do anything at all.

At Christmas this year, my sister's goddaughter (whom I will therefore call my niece), who is nine, proclaimed that I was still cool. This, she said, because, "it's not like [I'm] 27 or anything." The only response I could come up with was "Well. That is very true!" It is! It is indeed not like I'm 27 or anything. So I guess that's something.

It's just that this gives me a profoundly different perspective that I never could have imagined beforehand. I'm now reading about these characters, with less life experience than my own, going about doing these activities and having these things happen to them. They're not even as old as I am! They're so young.

And the weird thing is, there was no solid mark where I began feeling this way. There was no point at which I was able to know that I was on one side and these other people, these young people, were on the other. Actually, here's a good way of putting it. A little while ago, I was reading another book that I also, coincidentally, read for the first time in 1994: "The Vampire Lestat." Yes, I know. Shut up. (This was one of the books I replaced because it was falling apart. I'm not sure why; it wasn't that old. I had picked it up in the airport bookseller's before flying out to Mexico.) Anyway, in the book, Lestat becomes a vampire. Obviously. He is pretty immediately able to embrace the mindset that he is no longer human. He is what he is, and they have all suddenly become They. Nothing that dramatic happened for me.

Of course, Lestat was only 21 when that happened. So he was really young.

Is it St. Stephen's Day already? "'Tis," replied Aunt Helga!

I know that's not the line, but I'm rolling with it.

So, on the day before the day before Christmas (which in my reckoning is actually "the day before Christmas" - don't ask), I was watching most of Stephen King's "The Stand" on the Sci Fi Channel. Which apparently came out in 1994! So that's one mystery solved. I remember I watched it because my sister had read the book and wanted to see the miniseries, but she was going to be out and about. ... Every night. So she wanted me to tape it for her, which I did. It should have only taken four tapes, but I wound up utilizing five, because one tape malfunctioned right in the middle of Part 2, and I had to flounder around and jam in a new one. So my home-made set is missing most of Nadine's breakup message to Larry. It was weird getting to hear it again. I totally don't remember that part! At the end of the miniseries, I bound all the tapes together with masking tape, and decorated it like a box set. I gave it to my sister when she moved out, and I think she lost it.

Then I read the book: unabridged. My sister gave me her copy, which was alarmingly tattered. It was missing both the front and back cover. To this day, I don't know how the story ended, because the top right corner of the very last page is ripped off. Very disappointing! Even though I'm pretty sure I got the gist. One of these days, I will have to get a new copy of that book. I have a few books that are in various states of disrepair and lacking in a handful of pages that I am endeavoring to replace. This is both good and bad. Good because I can, you know, actually read the books if I want to without fear that they will fall apart, but bad because I ... don't like the new editions. I feel the need to explain my having the books, even if no one sees me read them. I used to have a much older version! Don't think I just got this recently! I mean! I did, but ... oh the hell with it.

Anyway, in "The Stand" there is a plague that kills 99.4% of the population. That sounds like it would be pretty much everyone, but if such a thing were to happen now, where the global human population is hovering somewhere around 7 billion, that would still leave some 42 million people milling about. For reference, this was about the size of the world's population about 5 thousand years ago, perhaps when the Greeks were beginning to get their shit together.

There's no point to this observation. Just a "... Huh." moment I felt like sharing with the internet.

This seems like a good time to bum people out.

I was mentioning to Pat, after my post about my grandfather, that I had hoped, with my next post, to write about a topic of great social and political import. (Not about the state of my automotive ownership, not unless a certain manufacturer starts producing hybrids.) Anyway, as you can probably tell already, I didn't do that, as I was occupied with other extremely important matters.

So, what would I like to talk about? Well, as I'm sure you know, for a while now there has been bad shit going on in the country of Sudan. That's right, Darfur. I'm not exactly sure what my point in posting this will be, or why I feel compelled to talk about it. The bottom line is this: The situation in Darfur fucks me up. I know I haven't mentioned this before. I haven't actually mentioned this to anyone at all. I don't do a lot of talking about things like this, even though, truth be told, I think about them frequently.

I've always been a bit fascinated with the African continent. After all, that's where the monkeys come from. But even before I was interested in monkeys, I knew that I had a greater interest than your average citizen of the Western Hemisphere. When I was in [insert year of school here, because I can't remember], I took one of three classes that took me by complete surprise, both with how much they taught me and how much they influenced me. This class was called Anthropology of Africa. (The other two were Geology And Human Evolution and Storytelling.) It was a cultural anthropology course, which may explain why I didn't have too much enthusiasm going in. (I tend to be more interested in dead people's clay pots and, of course, monkeys, than I am in ethnographies.) On the first day of class, we were immediately quizzed and challenged to write down the names of all the African countries we knew. Glancing around at my peers, it seemed that most of them were coming up with about 5-10. Maybe for some a few more. I got all but three: Seychelles, Comoros, and Lesotho. (The first two because I forgot their names, and the last because I, um, forgot it existed. Sorry Lesotho! Blame Swaziland!) Yes, I was a total teacher's pet.

But, you know, going in, all I had were names, things I had picked up from maps. A few details here and there, but that was largely it. Coming out, I was able to converse on pretty much any issue facing the whole of the continent from the time of colonization up to the present.

We didn't talk about Sudan. I'm not even sure if we knew it was happening at that time, though it was definitely happening. What we did talk about was Rwanda, and the genocide that took place there in 1994. Learning about this devastated me. Watching the news footage devastated me. Listening to the stories of the survivors devastated me. Watching President Clinton intone "Never Again" in front of the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum as a real live genocide was being committed devastated me. Knowing that the whole thing was basically ignored, devastated me.

It also allowed me to engage in fantasies about What I Would Have Done. Now, obviously, I was around when this was going on. But I was 10. That's as acceptable excuse as any. And of course, the American media gave it hardly any coverage, and I wasn't socially aware enough to seek out information on my own. I was 10. There's that. Then there's also, as you may have gathered, the uniquely personal events that made 1994 so devastating. Seriously, I don't remember much of what happened that year. There are periods of nothingness as if I had blacked out for months. So, I give myself a pass for this time. But if that were going on now? Why, surely I would be doing something. I'm not sure what exactly, but it would be impressively noble. It would be commendable. If it were, I would be.

And of course, it is. And I'm not. I'm doing nothing. I say that I am doing nothing. I have done some things. I have given hundreds of dollars to various humanitarian efforts. I have written to my elected officials and the United Nations impassioned missives on the need to do something. I support Amnesty International, who do the most. I haven't actually left my house. I have a hard time thinking that I've done anything but sit around and blink dully. Because that's all I have done. That's all it's amounted to. I have not done anything commendable. I have not done anything that would make a difference. Most of the time, I try not to think about this. I try not to think about the fact that I'm not thinking about it.

What's worse than devastated?

Best news ever?

You decide.

HOLY CRAP.

It turns out that my eyebrows have been crooked. For at least the last several years.

I fixed them! Don't worry! They are duly symmetrical now. But holy crap.

Again with this?

Today is my grandfather's birthday. (There are many Sagittarii in my family.) He would have been 99, but he died 10 years ago. When I was little, I always used to ask him what he wanted to do for his 100th birthday. He was old, you see. He laughed and said he wasn't going to worry about it unless it seemed imminent.

So, I'm 24 now, right? Or, as my grandfather would say, I'm in my 25th year. A few weeks ago, I found some things out about my grandfather: 1. His first name. 2. He served in the army.

Let's get back to that first one. I always thought my grandfather's name was Gerard. Turns out it's Thomas. Gerard was his middle name, and when he started school, he decided he liked it better, and went by such. According to some letters I found, his friends called him Gerry. I'm mildly freaked out by this news. (Do you see? Do you see how going by your middle name screws with people? Do you see?) Of course, when I think about it, it doesn't exactly break a pattern. You see, I didn't learn that my grandfather's name was Gerard until I was about ... oh, maybe 7? You see, up until then, I thought his name was Bud.

Apparently, it's the thing in Irish families to call a young man Bud, or Buddy, or some variant thereof. My grandfather was nothing if not Irish. Unless it was a Catholic, but that's the same thing. Or a Democrat. Anyway, he was Bud to his sisters and to his mother. I have no idea when or how I picked this up as a wee thing: my grandmother never called him that, nor did his children or my sisters. Somehow, though, he was my Grandpa Bud.

I also call my sister Bud. That's a completely different story, which, surprisingly, has nothing to do with my grandfather. At least I don't think. My sister loved my grandfather to pieces, and he loved her likewise. We've determined that this may or may not have something to do with the fact that she looks exactly, eerily like his mother. We have a picture of his mother, or rather, my sister does. We've got several people convinced that it actually is my sister, and that she went down the shore and had one of those Olde Timey pictures taken. Not the case.

When my grandfather got pneumonia, my sister went to see him every day. She was the one who told him, when the holidays were over, that it was alright for him to go. She was the last one of us to see him alive. It is entirely fitting that she is now Bud.

Of course, she calls me Bud, too.

My next arbitrary milestone is at 35.

I hope I have all my shit together by then, because I don't think I have one lined up for after that.

Please take this opportunity to celebrate me. I'll wait.