premo peanuts

I'll probably always equate love with pain. Maybe that's why I'm so unsuccessful at love. Sometimes I seriously can't even visualize successful love. I can either perceive the pain that comes with it or passivity. An actual equal relationship is unfathomable. Either she's driving me crazy or I'm driving her crazy. There's nothing good about crazy in this case. We're not young anymore.

I've found more romance in the pain of it all. I hate hate hate to admit it, but I'm pretty original emo. I've always been that way too (so let's just say pre-emo (premo)).

Of course I hesitate to say I'm depressed or sad or anything because I don't want to give the wrong impression. I don't say it to mope. And a bigger worry of mine is that someone may think I'm fishing, which I'm not. And let's not forget my biggest fear of suggesting that I'm less than joyous is the inevitable response of "Get happy, stupid!" Everybody has periods of happiness and sadness. I would say on the whole I'm usually unhappy, but that's nothing to worry about because that's the way I've always been. I don't necessarily categorize myself as an unhappy person, because I just feel "normal" the way I always have. I may be unhappy lots of the time, but I'm not sulking all the time because I'm used to how I feel.

This is all very subjective, of course. Most people very well may be less happy than I am. There's really no way to judge. I have no idea what kind of agony you go through with everyday. Kudos for being positive about it, whatever it is.

People make fun of me, but I'm a big fan of the comic strip Peanuts. I've always been a fan. People don't get it. They don't understand how it's funny or see anything artistic in the way it's drawn. I've always found beauty in it because it extends humor from misery. It presents bleakness and attempts to make some semblance of sense out of it. Its whole concept is using humor as a defense mechanism -- which I'm pretty sure I do quite a bit. The true nature of Peanuts is actually pointed out quite well in the experimental web comic strip called 3eanuts.com. It's simply original Peanuts strips with the fourth panel -- the punchline -- omitted. In the words of the site's tagline: "With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all."

That's why, even though I've never seen it, I think You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown may be the worst musical ever made. I just heard a song from it a few hours ago on Showtunes Saturday Night on KOSY 106.5. The musical's message seems to be about blind hope rather than the quiet comfort that comes with absurdity. Charles Schulz of course was a different type of cartoonist than the ones today. He's no Watterson. No doubt, growing up in the shadow of the Great Depression, he was taught to milk his craft for everything (hence cheesy Peanuts sno-cone machines and cheerleader-like Broadway musicals). Some of us see past all that though, and laugh. It's nervous laughter, but it's still laughter -- and far more legit.