Eleven Reasons Why Life Is Worth Living

My good friend Kevin at the Rumproast HQ has been issued a challenge to come up with ten reasons why life is worth living.   Of course Kevin is a connoisseur  of the finer things (qv his entry for #3), and his listicle reflects a generous nature and hotshit knowledge.  As reinforcements, Mark from Holly Martins's Friend and myself have been recruited.  Mark's post is outstanding and even better than Kevin's; hit the link for some wisdom and fine writing.

I live life at the margins.  I don't see things the way that a lot of people do.  I've done a lot of swimming against the stream.  I've taken a lot of hits.  I don't think my values and ideas are twisted, but they are skewed.  It doesn't matter.  Life is very much worth living, for reasons both large and small.  I don't think, I know, that often life sucks and things are hard and things are miserable and everything is bad and on and on; it's true.  Life does stink.

But it's wonderful, too.

1. Air.  Clean air.  I work in a factory, comrades, and let me tell yez, the air quality is not good.  When I step outside for my 2:30 break, I am very appreciative.  It's the stuff of life.  In 2006 I had an episode where I was having a lot of problems breathing.  I could have died.  I no longer take this for granted, and nothing else is as important.  A very personal entry.
2. The part in the Clash version of "Police on My Back" where Mick Jones scream/sings "What have I done? What have I done?"
3. The ability and freedom we have to mock things, and to try, if we wish, to make things better.  Through satire, through good works, through good thoughts.  E. M. Forster wrote a lot of good stuff, but here are his two best words.  "Only Connect."
4. This woman's smile.
5. Last abstract item.  I made a friend recently.  She looks a bit like Jessica Lange.  She takes me seriously.  I take her seriously.  It's very nice.  We're just on the part where we talk and look into each other's eyes simultaneously.  I believe in a thing called love, motherfuckers.
6. This post, with its headline and (resounding) image, and tribute.  I'll use this spot to stand for the computer/electronic/blogical part of our lives.  I do get a charge out of Missing the Moon, and I find it curious that it has its own little niche.  Naaah, it's just the porn NC-17 stuff that keeps 'em coming back. 
7. WSER---Silver Eel Radio.  Link is up at left.  Should be ranked higher.
8. What was that quote by Bart Giamatti?  "In the end it breaks your heart, but then it's supposed to."  I have definitely garbled it up, but you know what I mean.  Baseball.
9. Raising Arizona.
10. The end of 900 years of Republicans in the White House.
11. America's best-kept secret, C.D. Payne.  Wow, can this guy write.