Hello all. James here, new blogger on Chud. Well, no shite, but I thought I’d be formal and introduce myself. Living in New York City in the borough of Brooklyn (or as the ‘cool kids’/ Spike Lee says, Crooklyn ), I see a lot and I hear a lot. About what, I really don’t know. A little bit here and a little bit there. But now I’m rambling, so what was I going to talk about?

I helped my uncle today with the unloading of his apartment. You see, he had a fire last week on Memorial Day (what a memory!) and he’s been devastated by the amount of damage. A bit depressing, I know. But it’s real life folks! He was the person who I got the whole collector adage from and since then, I’ve accumulated a DVD collection at around 1400. But it had me thinking about the devastation that a fire could do to someone’s life, per se.

Luckily, his life is intact. But right now, all his memories are skewed from left to right. He sees this happy place as a citadel of burden. Of pain and non-virtue. It’s quite sad, considering my uncle tends to be the happiest person in my entire family.

As I sit at my brother’s computer, celebrating my belated birthday with my family, even after all that’s happened, he still went out of his way to get me a present. He’s mad, I know. But once more he gave me stuff I could collect and put on a shelf and start conversations with people who come by my new apartment. I would have started on a brighter note if life gave us those notes.

Family is fighting like cats and dogs. *sigh* Things are starting to get back on track already.