I'mma be...

[Vesnic]

I'mma be thirty soon, bitches. That's right. On the 29th. That's right.

I know that some of you have already encountered and even defeated this badass boss of all birthdays, that you tumbled down the other side of the hill, stood up and brushed yourselves off. Or maybe you just slept for days on end, not wanting to acknowledge the terrible truth.

What is a day? What is a year? When we die, our whole life is supposed to flash before our eyes in a matter of seconds. Everything condensed, boiled down, purified to just the essentials. And what have been the essentials of my existence? Um... , well there was... and then ... Dooby-doo.

I am falling down an existential rabbit hole and it's all becoming spuriouser and spuriouser because somehow I just don't believe that any of this shit matters, or ever really happened... is that normal, Mommy?

So, some of you have done this thing which I am about to do. Did you face it with grace? With beer? Did you just not bother? How many years in a row have you been twenty-nine? And to those who haven't: do I look old to you?

[End Master]

It was another day just like any other and some of my family gave me money for my birthday which I probably used to buy a video game or books with.

Don't know if you look old or not, but I'm sure you'll have all the teenage guys calling you a "MILF" or "Cougar" or whatever new fangled names they're giving older women they want to sex up nowadays.

[Vesnic]

What the fuck? Is it just me or did Locke have a rather long and interesting post here, complete with a picture of a hang-glider, which he has now totally deleted? I came back here to respond to it and *poof * it was gone. Any particular reason for that, Locke? It kind of sucks that here I am going on about my insecurities regarding my birthday and you've basically done the equivalent of taking my new, still half-wrapped present right out of my hands. Seriously, dude, what the fuck? Did it embarrass you? Did you think it embarrassed me? Are you pissed because I didn't respond to it immediately and instead chose to talk about my poops for awhile before coming back 'round to it? Did you find a grammar mistake and you've gone so mad at this point that rather than utilizing the handy edit feature, you had to just nuke the whole fucking thing? Why can't you stand by your own words? I guess I have to finally join in the chorus of people who find this pretty damn annoying. Seriously, bro, what gives?

[End Master]

What the fuck? Is it just me or did Locke have a rather long and interesting post here, complete with a picture of a hang-glider, which he has now totally deleted?

Yep, I was going to quote part of it since when he brought up DEP and Drag, he mistakenly thought DEP was older than me, and I was going to mention that DEP just seems older because he's got a whole mess o' babies, but obviously I didn't bother and now it's all gone.

Drag's still older than all of us though.

[Vesnic]

I am hormonal, I am tired, I am sick, and I am FUCKING PISSED. This is no way to treat a birthday girl! Especially one who's afraid of her birthday. You have made me cry, Locke. You have brought back years of psychic trauma, thousands of SHITTY BIRTHDAY MEMORIES I have struggled so long to repress. And no, it is not fucking therapeutic! I think you're a...
a...
a squelching twat.

There, I said it.

[Locke]

Okay, fine. I got rid of it because I thought it was sort of hackneyed.

Did you find a grammar mistake and you've gone so mad at this point that rather than utilizing the handy edit feature, you had to just nuke the whole fucking thing?

I had a laugh at that, thanks.

I guess I'll just repost it at this point; here it is without edits. I should go over these things more before I hit "submit."




You're both older than me. I'd guessed that, in End's case. And if I had to guess, I'd say DEP is the oldest guy on the forum, except maybe Dragavan, who I haven't seen for awhile. I think I'm next, after Ves, though.

It's good that I have some time; I'd hate to hit 30 and not be a little further along. I think it will go like my last few birthdays, though, and I've felt about those what I feel for most holidays. They're sort of a hassle. Christmas is the worst, and I've been called out as a Scrooge by members of my family. I like them, one on one or in small groups, but the stress of getting everyone together in one house and trying to make small talk and find gifts for all of them, and making sure dinner gets off on time and so forth sort of kills the spirit.

Maybe it's different if you have a group of fun, spontaneous friends you do these things with, the kind you happen to be hanging out with on the prescribed day when someone mentions, "hey, today is Yom Kippur!" which surprises the rest of you, and you all go out and do something fun to mark the occasion.

Easter is my favorite. No one expects anything from you on Easter (unless you're especially religious, and even then it isn't that bad). It happens when it's nice outside, just this side of warm, everything blooming, and there aren't really any mandates about how to celebrate it. I think it's the most optimistic and hopeful of the holidays - the one with the most honest spirit - and even if you know someone who gives Easter baskets, they tend to be minimally invasive. If you're in the mood to take perfectly normal eggs and paint them the most insane psychedelic colors you can think of, you can do it, and no one will say anything.

No matter what I'm doing, I take the day off on Easter, find somewhere cool and quiet and aesthetically pleasant, and just reflect and exist for awhile.

There are a few other days like that - days that mark occasions - not official holidays, but I do take something from them, even the ones that don't mark something pleasant. There's something solemn and beautiful and right about them. They enshrine something that holds so much raw meaning you can't bring yourself to forget. A day of remembrance isn't enough - neither is prayer - but they're the same; they bring back echoes of the moment that shaped you.

I never felt that about my birthday - I don't remember it - but it should mean something, more than a cake and a dozen phone calls you have to stop what you're doing to answer. When I turn thirty, I want to silence my phone and have a quiet dinner - a few close friends or just myself - and remember having done something satisfying between now and then, something I can look back on and be okay with.

Or if my investments are looking good, maybe I'll just buy one of these. I've always wanted one.



It's a powered paraglider. You can store it in your car, and given a small open area, anywhere, you're airborne. If life isn't worth celebrating when I turn thirty, that ought to help make up for it.

[Vesnic]

Christ! You've only gone and bloody done it again! There was a second post there. I know there was. It had a crazy-tongue-face in it. Are you just TRYING to make me crazy? Because you're doing a damn good job of it! Christ! Is NOTHING in this world more permanent than a pigeon's fart? Not my youth, not my beauty, not LOCKE'S FUCKING POSTS! Gaahhh!!

But you did repost the original, which is something, I suppose. I should be grateful for small victories, yes grateful. Baby steps to the elevator, and so on and so forth. Lalala tee hee!

I'll even reply. Probably. But I have so much to do, and um, I'm cRaZy.

[donteatpoop]

Heppy berthdey soon.

Vesdic! We should have a three day birthday blow out as celebration for both of our milestones.

I will turn 35 on the 27th. I thnk End and I are the same age? Not sure though.

Also, I think we need to start treating Locke with the "quote his post before he deletes it" strategy that we've employed in the past for Chubby's posts.

[End Master]

Nope, I'm 38. Really don't feel it though.

[donteatpoop]

Oh goddamnit you're old.

[Vesnic]

Jesus Crystalballs, we might as well all start sharing social security tips and consider the institution of a bed-pan lending library and diaper fund.

End, I cannot believe you are 38. That is insane and probably illegal, despite the fact that I heard several years ago you were 33-34. It's just that in that intervening time, I wasn't allowed to age at all, so logically nobody else could either. I won't even ask how old the Dragman is.

And Poop, yes, I toaderly agree *eeyup! * We should just party and party and party and party and FUCK all the turds who don't like it! This is a momentous occasion. I call for an international holiday. Free drinks for everyone! Well okay, at least for us and those friends who make fun drunks.

The copy-post approach might work with that reprobate Locke, but I swear sometimes he breathes the wrong way just to fucking annoy me. I am not taking this too personally. It is a documented fact.

Anyway, boys, girls, amoebas, chairs and empty popcorn bags, life is too short to be lived as anything other than the most abandoned of hedonistic pursuits. Sense everything, smell everything (excepting perhaps those logs outside Poop's office), eat everything, drink everything, and most importantly fuck everything you can get your hands on and which won't press charges. This is wisdom, my friends, hard-won, naked-ass wisdom. Pain truly is pleasure, but only if you're skilled at the algorithms of conversion and the art of translation.

[Usoki]

I always forget that people on the internet have actual ages. I just sort of blur age into this sort of immaterial concept, and assume that people are either younger or older than me based on how much respect I have for them, and/or how intelligently they portray themselves online.

I do remember than I'm at least a few years older than Apoth, because he posted about leaving for college after I'd already been there for a year or two. Aside from that, I don't really know or care.

[Dragavan]

I guess I am the oldest one here. Not that age actually matters to me. I just don't care about it at all. I haven't since I was a teenager. The last year I cared about age was when I turned 18. Since I didn't drink 21 was meaningless to me. After that I just stopped paying attention or caring at all about age.

I don't even usually know what my own age is. When someone asks me I have to remember what year it is and then do the math quickly to remember what my age is. It that unimportant to me.

And I do still come check out the forums here pretty regularly. I just don't feel much like joining in the conversation often. Not that there's much of it here recently anyway.

[Vesnic]

And I do still come check out the forums here pretty regularly. I just don't feel much like joining in the conversation often. Not that there's much of it here recently anyway.

In fact there's been quite a bit of conversation here recently, and not all of it related to pooping. To say nothing of the new contest, which is drawing in an impressive number of contestants this year, there's also a thread called Idiots who get paid to write badly which you, as an obviously discerning reader in a world full of dunderheads could significantly embellish. There's also Current and Future Writing Projects or Tales from our collective past, which offer you a chance to take interest in other people or even assume that other people take a bit of interest in you and what you might be doing lately. There is any number of worn cliches out there attesting to the fact that communities are the result of multiple and diverse inputs, that if something underwhelms you there's always the option to try and make it better yourself, and that in life you've got to make your own fun. But I won't bore you with any of those.

You're welcome to join in at any point, obviously, maybe raise the quality of conversation if you feel it's lacking. Alternatively, start your own thread and we more sanguine types might even come out to play. But breaking into the middle of a conversation to say there's no conversation? That's a bit, well...how can I put this delicately, given that this is the age- and birthday-thread? It might mean, dear Drag, that you've become the forum's grumpy old man and that your age is in fact so incalculably high, you are sure to be forgiven for not being able to count to such intergalactic extremes. In this case we honor you, oh Great Senior ISer of Some Standing! Come to think of it, are you quite sure that 21 means nothing to you because you're a teetotaler or because the drinking age was in fact still 18 when you were that young?

Oh, and just on the off-chance that you feel like wishing me a happy birthday, this is the place to do it. It's not required of course. You've made your opinions on birthdays very clear. I'll stop bothering you now, Gramps. I think it's time for your nap.

[End Master]

Yep, 21 was also a day just like any other too. Some of my family gave me money for my birthday which I probably used to buy a video game or books with.