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Song Info (from Beatlesongs):”Paperback Writer” is on the Rubber Soul album and was written mostly by McCartney after helping some friends set up the Indica Bookshop. This was one of the first songs on which Paul played a Rickenbacker bass, and it is emphasized in the song.

We didn’t watch a lot of TV when I was growing up. I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons when I was very young, but it was some time around kindergarten that the decision was made. [Update from my brother: “I believe the TV thing was related to a poor conduct grade on my part. You are welcome to blame me freely.”] I remember being bummed about it at times (like when the kids at school talked about how cool The A-Team was), but for the most part it was fine. I read a lot, so I think it accomplished what it was supposed to.

I mean, I read a lot. I would go to the library any time I could and come home with a stack of books, which I would have read way too quickly. I read all the time. Our babysitter used to have to kick me out of the house to be outside, and when I went, I took books with me. I used to love to read through the encyclopedia, even. I just loved to read.

Somewhere along the line, all that reading made me want to write. I remember writing a story in fourth grade about the Nativity scene from a mouse’s point of view. Then, in eighth grade, I wrote about an elite trio of soldiers who were called back into active duty to rescue an old buddy, and in the process, they blew up Saddam. An interesting four-year interval, to say the least.

In high school I still wrote some short stories (mostly about guys who didn’t get the girls they wanted), but I leaned more in the direction of poetry. At the time, I was convinced I was really representing what it felt like to be a teenager and that some day it would help other people understand what it was like. Reading them now, I see I was right… but not for the reasons I thought I would be. The stuff the poems were about wasn’t the picture, the bad poetry itself was the picture!

I had an English teacher in college who made me fall in love with literature. Somewhere in there I really took to Steinbeck, and he remains my favorite author. I know I liked other authors, but I can’t really remember who. I know I was more in the Hemingway (sparse) camp than the Dickens (wordy!) one.

I lost my appreciation for poetry somewhere in there, too. I used to like Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson just fine, but e e cummings drove me nuts. The more poetry I read, the less I liked. I couldn’t decipher the symbolism, and it got to the point where the fact that there was symbolism irked me. This makes it pretty awkward around my good friend who writes a lot of poetry, as you might imagine. He’s been pretty good about being patient with me and helping me understand stuff, though. I’ll never be a poet, aside from the silly off-the-cuff rhymes I do for the cats, who also don’t seem to appreciate poetry.

I’d like to write – a novel, a short story, a screenplay – but I can’t seem to. I have ideas I can’t put into action. I attempted NaNoWriMo once, and stopped after about two pages. I’ve had a children’s book written in my head for about 5 years now that I haven’t typed out at all. The closest I get to structured writing are my game reviews, and even those I do kind of unstructured-like.

That’s why I blog, I guess. This is my book, spread out over almost six years of entries. It’s disjointed and freeform and all over the map, just like me. I guess I just needed to wait long enough for a form of writing to come along that suited me. If this is all I ever end up writing, I think I’m okay with that.

Song Info (from Beatlesongs):”Drive My Car” is on the Rubber Soul album and was 70% written by McCartney and 30% by Lennon. Not much else to say about it, really, so here’s a link to the song.

If you’ve read my blog more than, say, three times, you’ve probably read about how much I don’t like driving. I’m not entirely sure where it comes from. It’s kind of like sleeping, I guess, one of those things you have to do that requires your full attention. You can listen to music (or an audiobook, if you’re so inclined), and that’s about it. Can’t play Scrabble or watch a movie or knit or whatever else. Then there’s the fact that cars are small enclosed places, and the fact that no one is a good driver (even though everyone thinks they are), and, well, it’s a recipe for nervousness on my part.

I passed my driver’s test the first time I took it, which I remember being a while after I turned 16. Not sure what the holdup was, other than the fact that I didn’t really need to get my license any sooner. The very first night I drove by myself after getting my license, I ran over a rabbit. I was on my way to help a family in the church hook up their VCR and it hopped out in front of me. All these years later, and I can still hear it. Poor rabbit :(

My dad’s been a mechanic since forever, and I grew up never knowing what kind of car might be in the driveway. My first car was a 4-door two-tone diesel Buick Century. It wasn’t speedy, by any stretch, and it’s hard to drive crazy in a diesel. It was a reliable ride, until February 1989 when I put it in a ditch. From then on, it never drove exactly right again, and had a weird thing where I had to keep more than half a tank of fuel in it or it wouldn’t work, especially in winter.

I’ve often wondered if having a “family” car as my first vehicle set some of my driving habits. I have only gotten one speeding ticket in my life, and that was in the fall of 1990. It was a construction zone on a weekend, and I was doing the normal posted speed. $74 later, I learned that construction zone speed limits count on weekends, too. To this day, people call me “slowpoke” and “grandma” when I drive. I have two thoughts about that: a) I’ve got other things I’d rather spend $74 on and b) Speeding’s breaking the law like stealing is breaking the law.

I spent five summers in a van with 5-6 other people while I was traveling for college. We spent 12 weeks a summer traveling to churches and schools to sing and perform dramas. The 7 of us and all our luggage fit into a 15-passenger van with the last row of seats removed, and it was a pretty tight fit. I’m not sure why I kept signing up for that, but I must have used to like traveling. Perhaps traveling all over most of the 48 contiguous states got my traveling bug out of me in a serious way.

Driving through or even around big cities stresses me out like very little else does. There’s too much going on with 4+ lanes of traffic all going at once, and my brain doesn’t apparently deal with it well. If there’s any kind of traffic jam, well that just makes it worse. There’s something about stopping and starting that have an effect on me, both physical and mental. It wears on me much like painting seems to.

I can drive a stick shift if I need to, but I’m not very good at it. One of the first times I ever had to drive a stick shift – a huge pickup – I was stuck at a stop sign on a hill for twenty minutes or more. Folks in the Midwest are usually fairly friendly, but the kinds of waves I got during that 20-minute stretch as people went around me were not the neighborly sort.

These days I drive a Saturn station wagon. It’s a good car and hasn’t needed much work. My only complaint is that it sits a little too close to the ground, and I have a hard time getting up out of it some days. That…might be more a function of my getting older than the car being too low, I suppose.

I doubt I’ll ever like driving, but having someone along for the ride usually makes it nicer. I feel guilty asking them to drive, as I figure if I hate it so much, it doesn’t seem fair to ask them to do it, especially if I’m going to enjoy my not-driving by sleeping or reading. Here’s what I figure, though: GPS is the first step towards self-driving cars. If the car knows where it is and where it needs to go, it should be a fairly simple prospect to have it get itself there. Once self-driving cars are commonplace, driving becomes riding, and I’ll get a lot more reading and sleeping done.

Hurry it up, scientists! I ain’t getting any younger, and I’ve got places I need to get to.

Song Info (from Beatlesongs):”And I Love Her” is on the A Hard Day’s Night album and was 65% written by McCartney and 35% by Lennon. By 1972 there were 372 cover versions of it. In 1984, Paul said, “…it was a nice tune, that one. I still like it.”

Growing up in church, I heard often about the word “love,” particularly as it was used in the Bible. There were three main Greek words translated “love” in the New Testament: eros, philos, and agape. The first refers to a romantic or sexual love (the word “erotic” is derived from this), the second to a friendly or brotherly love (“Philadelphia” comes from this), and the last, agape, refers to an unconditional love, a giving love, a sacrificial love.

This last one is the most difficult one. We like to do things that are easy for us and serve our needs. Agape, though, requires us to give and serve and meet the needs of someone else, regardless of how difficult that can be at times. It can be hard enough when everything’s normal, but when the other party has hurt you or ignored you or damaged your trust, well, it gets very, very difficult. It’s only natural to want to protect oneself from hurt, whether that be physical or mental.

The reason this topic is on my mind lately is… well… I’ve been in a relationship with someone difficult for quite some time now. She’s mean to me and my friends, she has total disregard for my wishes, she expects to be waited on at all times, her breath is terrible… and sometimes she hisses at and bites people.

Some of you have met Nutmeg, so you know what I’m talking about. Nobody likes her. …except me. I don’t know why, but I do love the little monster. Part of it’s probably because I’m the only person she likes, I’m sure – when I’m the only one here, whatever room I’m in, she’s there. Another part is that I know I’m all she has. If I didn’t love her and keep her, no one else would take her.

She does purr and cuddle, so I guess it’s not completely selfless of me, but I think for the most part that I love her more than she “deserves.” And isn’t that kind of the point, though? Most of us have done rotten things and don’t really deserve love, so it’s all the more special when someone does choose to love us.