Not dating. Not looking.

Every time I visit Grandma, she asks me whether I have a girlfriend. This’d be one thing if I visited her once a year, but lately it’s been every week—and she’s suffering from dementia, so it doesn’t matter how many times I tell her, “No I don’t.” She’ll forget and ask again.

“Why not?” she’ll follow up with. “Don’t you like girls?”

“No,” I answered last time, “I like women. Girls? Eww. What do you take me for?”

“Oh,” she’ll say dismissively, “you know what I mean.”

Yeah, I know what she means; she’s from that generation where any woman, regardless of age, is a “girl.” But she’s also from that generation where single men in their forties are weird. So she wants to make sure I’m attached, and on the way to producing her some great-grandchildren.

And one of these days, just for fun, I might invent a wife, kids, and grandkids. Make her an unexpected great-great-grandmother. But no, I don’t make up stories for Grandma. ’Cause dementia is a weird thing: You never know which stories might stick in her head. Next thing you know, she’ll be asking me every week when I’m gonna bring my grandchildren over. Rather than spinning a different yarn every visit, best I stick to the truth.

But the truth is I’m single, by choice. Not that I rule out ever being in a relationship, or ever marrying. It’s just I’m not looking.

Ten influential books.

The theme is 10 books which have had the greatest impact on me. It’s been bouncing round the internet, and Wednesday I got nominated to share my own list, and of course every book has a backstory. Giving the list without the context made no sense to me, so I got to writing.

Not nominating anyone else to share their 10, because I’d want to know the story behind each selection, and I don’t expect them to write 500-word essays on each of them like I did.

Not counting bible either, ‘cause that one’s way too easy. Any Christian who doesn’t have bible influencing them is asking for it. But any Christian who includes it is trying to escape 10 percent of their thinking.

So here’s the list.

Mr. Squish and the Virgin Mary.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t rule out the possibility the Virgin Mary can, God permitting, appear to people. Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, after all. The problem is when people want Mary, or Jesus, or angels, or space aliens, to appear to them so bad, they’re willing to desperately grab onto anything. That’s kinda what happened in November 1990, both in Colfax, California, and in the above Mr. Squish strip.

This wasn’t new news, but it had just gone viral. (No, the term hadn’t been invented yet in 1990.) It hit the Sacramento Bee and the TV news, and people were starting to make pilgrimages to go see it. In fact, if you still wanna see it, the “sighting” is visible every morning between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m.

Trees.

I’m very white. Not culturally; I’m not into whiskey, mayonnaise, ironic tattoos, grumbling about people who don’t speak English, and blindly defending all police behavior (except when they shoot white gun nuts). I’m white in that I have very little pigment in my skin. Enough to produce freckles; not enough to keep me from sunburning easily. So if I go outdoors, I either have to slather myself in sunblock, or stay in the shade. And since I find sunblock uncomfortable, shade it is.

So, despite how allergic I am to them, I’m very fond of trees. Big, shady trees. The more the better.

Mr. Squish and sucky music.

When I was a kid my musical choices were all over the place. I listened, as most kids do, to what my parents listened to. Unfortunately, in the 1970s, that was disco. And I wasn’t all that into disco. Apparently I had some taste. Not much though. Kids have no taste, as you can tell by their musical choices, and the fact the Disney Channel gets the ratings it does. They’re learning taste. Exposure to crap helps.

When I started listening to the radio, it was San Francisco’s KFRC, which was still on the AM dial (which was how I could pick it up in San Jose), and still doing the Boss Radio format: Top 30 songs, wacky disc jockeys like Dr. Donald D. Rose, and tons of commercials. Tons. Commercials after every song.

Mr. Squish and term limits.

In 1990 I was in favor of term limits. Not anymore. Twenty-four years of a short-sighted do-nothing California government, where the politicians only concentrate on their next job, has disabused me of that notion.

One can argue the Founders were in favor of term limits. After all, congressmen only get two-year terms. And yes, in the case of the House of Representatives, the idea was they would serve for brief lengths of time. But not so the Senate. Six-year terms, longer than that of the president; elected (at the time) by the state legislatures; vacancies immediately filled by the governors; staggered terms; the whole system was set up to encourage incumbency, longevity, and stability. Like Parliament, where the House of Commons could be turned over on a regular basis, but the House of Lords would always have the same lords in it, the idea was one house would be forever renewed, and the other not. Term limits for all? Goes against the intents of the Founders.

Listening to audiobooks. Or not.

I read a lot. I also listen to audiobooks. I get ’em from the public library, for the most part. I listen to them on my iPod or pocket computer. Now, since the library’s collection comes almost entirely on compact disc (they do still have cassette tapes, believe it or not) this means I obviously have to rip the CDs—convert ’em to MP3—before I listen to them. ’Cause I’m not lugging around a portable CD player and a case of discs.

I’m not sure how the library feels about this; I never bothered to ask. But my usual modus operandi is to go to the library, pull the audiobook CDs off the stacks, sit down with my laptop, and rip it right there. Then I put the CDs back. I don’t even bother to check them out. I used to, but that was silly: I’d just go home, rip the CDs, then return them the next time I went to the library. Meanwhile the discs just sat there at home, and any poor schlub who wanted to listen to that book had to wait for me to return it. Seems a waste. Now, no waste.

I figure it’d be piracy if I kept the MP3s, but I don’t. I delete them after I listen to them. Or once I’ve given up on the book.