my careless contagion

Written in 1987 and released in 1990, the song Ball and Chain is found on Social Distortion's self-titled album. Some of the timeless themes this song deals with are addiction, hopelessness, heartbreak, poverty, failure, and suicide — all themes I am intimately familiar with — and all made life feel like a ball and chain and not worth living. I know what it's like to think, "I can't take any more pain." This is a song I know by heart but heard yesterday on the radio, which isn't entirely strange, except I'm not sure how many people are familiar with Social Distortion in South Dakota or how many of them are listening to the radio on a Sunday afternoon. That's okay; we don't have to know what we're listening to in order to enjoy it, right? Well, except Social Distortion sings a lot of "hard luck" songs, which are an acquired taste. As Social Distortion's singer, Mike Ness, has been known to say, "We don't sing no happ...

  Originally my plan was to end this blog after one year. Frankly, I wanted to put the damn thing out of its misery. Today is the one-year anniversary, but I just can't do it. There have been some really ugly posts lately. Still, in all the ugliness, I feel a cathartic cleanse. It's like sitting in a therapist's office and hearing myself say things that never would have been said otherwise. There may be no truth whatsoever in them, but at least they are out there and they can go bother someone else instead of me. The little buggers.  After 238 posts, I'm not going to call it quits as I intended. I do need a break from this, though. It's a virtual problem-solving exercise, and what I need is real-world problem-solving. That will be my focus. I wish to thank all of you who have diligently read my ups and downs over the last year. It's been intense at times, and too often it's been tedious. If you're just discovering this blog, I was dealing with a d...