Southpaw Jones

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

Hello and happy Monday to you. Congratulations to Chris & Julie, my girlfriend Maggie’s brother and brand new sister-in-law! I spent the wedding weekend in Houston, and everything came off beautifully. I met one-hundred-forty-seven people. I told them that I love Austin, it’s been a wet summer, and I don’t really understand my day job. They asked me what my “real name” is.

The smoothness of the event became all the more impressive when I considered this: All extended families [especially my own] are freakish, self-preserving organisms. It’s amazing to me that every wedding doesn’t break down into tribal warfare with faces decorated in cake icing war paint, candlestick spears, and broken wine bottle stabbers. Someone should write that screenplay: “Uncle Roy has been spying for the Groom’s side! He’s getting ice on the 5th floor. Attack via the service elevator!”

Anyways, we did stay in a very nice hotel, and though I enjoy visiting the world of the rich, I certainly can’t imagine staying there for too long. When strange hands move grabbingly toward my luggage, I instinctively slap them. Really hard. (My bad, Raul.) The time in a fancy hotel and the homeless dudes right outside got me thinking…

It sucks to be very poor, and it sucks to be very rich! For many of the same reasons!

Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Problems Shared by the Very Rich and Very Poor

• You have to figure out what you’re going to do with yourself all day. You don’t have a proper job, and the wide open spectrum of possible activities can be overwhelming. Hitchhike to Denver? Play racquetball with Jacques?

• You are isolated and paranoid, and you can’t understand why.

• No one likes you or trusts you, and you can’t understand why.

• Someone drives you around, while you passively sit in the back seat.

• You never know who is going to touch your stuff and take your money. At the shelter, at the Y, at the Four Seasons, the song remains the same.

• You have to wear uncomfortable, strange clothes that you would never pick out for yourself.

• You drink too much wine.

• One of your family or friends is always on the news, accused of some awful crime.

• Your spouse is very disappointed in you.

• All your friends are eccentric chatterboxes.

• Politicians lie to everyone, but especially you.

• You have to eat odd, risky foods. You don’t know where it came from, and some of it might kill you.

• You constantly wish you had more money.

So, you see, it’s nice to be in the middle. Real nice. Enjoy it as much as you can on this Monday morning.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

William next invented a system according to which everybody had to belong to someone else, and everybody else to the King. This was called the Feutile System…
1066 and All That, by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

Rhyme Thyme!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

A lacy thigh band that dies for the sake of principle.
Highlight here for answer: [garter martyr]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 9th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

Thank you, come again!
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