Augusten’s Blog

Years ago, I had an Invention Dream. In the dream, I was in an airplane approaching Japan. The runway was a small island, man-made, off the coast of Japan itself. I remember looking out the window and seeing the glittering, broken-glass lights of Japan far below and then this very tiny island, with an even smaller runway.

The plane landed on a runway conveyer belt -exactly like you see at every supermarket, except scaled to such a size it could accommodate a landing jet. The plane touched down on the conveyer belt and the belt slowly began to decrease in speed, while the plane remained stationary, wheels spinning at a couple of hundred miles an hour. Until, at last, the runway slowed and brought the plane to a stop. The airport terminal was right there.

When I woke up I thought, somebody should build this. It’s the perfect airport for places where there’s no space. Couldn’t somebody build a conveyer belt large and strong enough to handle a plane?

So that was my first invention –a conveyer belt on a manmade island for landing planes.

But now I have another. I read somewhere that it is the ice caps on either end of our planet that are responsible for reflecting back much of the sun’s heat. And without these ice caps, when they melt, we’ll overheat.

So I was thinking, why can’t somebody invent little organic micro-mirrors –imagine little reflective beads, or marbles, that float on the surface of the sea –in great number- and act as ice –reflecting solar energy back into space.

The little micro-mirrors would need to be harmless to sea life and the environment. So, couldn’t they be made of something biodegradable? Something that eventually melts away into harmless amino acids or something?

Imagine if somebody could invent these little micro-mirrors and then we could dump them by the trillions into the seas at the poles. If we had enough of them, wouldn’t they act just like ice? It seems like they would. But I am a fool and don’t know anything about anything, so maybe it’s impossible to create a little micro-mirror. But it seems like the perfect solution. They’d have to be very light weight, so boats or creatures could just swim right through them. Almost like foam peanuts, except mirrors. And they’d have to tend to cling together so they wouldn’t all disperse throughout the oceans of the world. They would need to coagulate, or rather somehow cling together –like a layer of algae on the surface of a pond.

Anyway, these are my two inventions. The reason I bring them up is because it’s a new year. And the thing I like about every new year is that we never know what will happen. Life could dramatically improve. It’s very exciting.

Also? Why won’t they release Season Three of Battlestar Galactica? I might as well hang myself.

Perhaps you are a new grad or an experienced pro and you’d like a few extra hours a week? And most of all, perhaps you’d be willing to help me.

Dennis’ brother’s wife is very ill with a severe and rare neurological disease that doctors can’t diagnose. A combination of multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy with some features of ALS. Her father died of this condition and it’s struck her in the prime of her life. While her husband has a good job, his insurance won’t pay for a visiting nurse. So Dennis’ brother pays for one himself - a nurse that comes once a day to help her in the bathroom.

We all know our country has a shameful medical care system, but we have the best health care providers. And I would like to hear from any nurse in this Chicago suburb who might be available and willing to help.

What you would need to do:

1. Assist Dennis’s sister-in-law –this could involve administering medications, helping her in the bathroom, helping her around the house, helping her sit up and walk. Very basic, but very important functions.
2. Three days a week, three hours a day. Nine hours a week total.

Contact Dennis for payment information and further details

DennisPilsits@aol.com

If you or somebody you know might be interested, please contact me. Thank you.

-Augusten

The holidays, long swirling above our heads in a thick, opaque cloud, are now upon us. In my town, snow is banked along the roads five-feet high and there’s a layer of ice, sprinkled with sand, on the streets. It seems every car has a pine tree strapped to the roof.

I’ve been thinking it would be nice to attach a real reindeer head to the grille of my car. I could spray paint the horns a festive green and reindeer’s nose bright red. When I used to live in Marblehead, every Saab, Volvo and BMW in town would have a wreath attached to the grille this time of year. But I like the idea of a reindeer head much more. The times we live in warrant a more aggressive celebration.

No, we will not have a tree this year. In fact, we have no plans to ever have a tree again. We have been infected with the Christmas Curse. The first year we had a tree, the house flooded. The second year we had a tree, my dog became paralyzed. I am not about to decorate another tree and then get a phone call informing me that five of my friends were killed when a sinkhole suddenly opened up in the earth.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel festive. I feel, as my brother would say, “perky and activated, tail up!” I still love Christmas even though Christmas hates me. I am like a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, who keeps coming back for more. Christmas gives me a black eye and I bring Christmas a beer and then Christmas kicks me and I rub Christmas’s shoulders. It’s a bitter cycle but I’m not about to stop it.

I love the cloying music, the glittering lights and the spectacular retail displays. I love the sense of urgency that permeates the air like an actual airborne virus.

You can see, then, my state of mind.

This week we had a snowstorm. It was a storm on a pre-global-warming scale. See, we haven’t had a lot of snow in Massachusetts for the last couple of years. But this storm restored the balance. This storm dumped enough snow to bury the town. It was spectacular. Not just because I love snow. But because of what I saw at the end of my street.

I did a stupid thing. I left the house at eleven at night before the roads had been plowed because I was out of Red Bull. Blinking through the snow at the end of my street: hazard lights on a car. As I drove closer I saw the car was stuck. But there was another car right beside it and this car was helping.

Then I turned right and saw the highway was populated by pairs of cars –stuck cars, people helping.

I felt a fine, tight musical note ring through the center of my body. I felt light headed, euphoric.

I don’t believe in Santa anymore. And I don’t believe in Jesus. But I do believe there is something called a Holiday Spirit and I believe for a moment, on a highway in Massachusetts late at night before the snowplows had come, I was caught right in the middle of it.

When I reached the center of town, I drove past the common where every year the Boy Scouts set up their Christmas tree stand and homosexual recruitment station and I thought, it’s lovely. It’s all lovely.

Don’t pity me because I have no tree, no blinking lights, no mistletoe. Don’t pity me because the Christmas Curse has the leg of my jeans in its toothy maw; pity me for other reasons but not for these. I am happy, we are happy. It’s Christmas and I feel it in the air.

From my dented little family to yours, Happy Holidays.

It’s not officially The Holidays until my friend Kevin sends out his annual card. Here’s this year’s masterpiece.