Some things just wear on the soul. There is repetition, and there is bleak hell. The daily rhythm of a predictable course of events can be enough to dull the most sharpened blade. The drive to work, finding that damn parking place, the drive home, the stop for gas, the phone calls, the billboards, the Golden Arches, the myriad warehouse superstores named after Sam Walton. I find myself dealing with such calamity at an alarming rate these days.

Even enjoying company can become a trial of taking the good with the bad, as one walks out of the bathroom (the last sacred place on earth?) to find personal articles rearranged, molested, possibly gone entirely! Anyone out there have a chronic practical joker in his life? I do. In fact, I have two. One's a very old friend, the other is an older friend, and he's related to boot. Silly fathers, while lovely and jovial in small doses, can be a bitch in the long run, especially those who use every moment of every recollection as an opportunity to say things like, "did you know I was the Yoyo Champion of Kansas?" as hiding your Shiner Bock in the microwave when your back's turned. Sometimes I just wish I was Loretta Lynn. This is why we all have to eventually leave the nest. Forget all that nonsense about making your own way and independence. What a joke. It's more about crime prevention.

Truth be told, I am a nonviolent person. The last willing fight I participated in was over 15 years ago, but sometimes, good people of the intervoid, I find my fist balling up into a gnarled clump of rage I like to call Da Hammer. Something gets punched or kicked, and it's rarely anything that needs to (like a pack-a-day smoking habit or habitual reality TV watching). Thankfully, I have learned to find other outlets for my aggression in this Autumn of my youth, almost all of them legal.