Wings got me all into a silly mood by writing about Monty Python. So I will reveal myself as the giant dork I am and (figuratively) recite the entirety of the Drunken Philosopher's song from memory. After that I will write about something less incredibly goofy.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable
Heidegger Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table
David Hume could out-consume Schoppenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlagel.

There's nothin Nietzsche couldn't teach ya bout the raisin' of the wrist
And Socrates himself was per-man-ent-ly pissed

John Stewart Mill of his own free will off a half a pint of shanty was particularly ill
Plato they say could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day.

Aristotle Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and Hobbes was fond of his dram
Rene Descartes was a drunken fart I drink therefore I am.

And Socrates himself is particularly missed...
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!

Now that my geek seizure is over, back to expostulating about my family.

Anyway. My aunt and uncle. The ones who live on Tara.

It's my father's eldest brother (there were four children, 3 boys and the youngest, my aunt. The youngest boy is now not-so-sadly dead) and his wife.

Me and them have a not-so-terrific history dating back to when I was a teenaged brat asshole. Remember I wrote about that trip to Florida with my ex (not ex at the time) whose only redeeming characteristic was ownership of a van? Probably not. Anyway. I just sort of took off with him on that trip. Left my parents a note of such remarkable adolescent idiocy that it makes me wince to this day. My conversation with the ex about the trip went something like this:

Me: "Hey, it's snowing. Let's go to Florida."
Him: "Okay."

(All you parents of young children out there? Pray they do not end up like me. Well, the ending part is okay. Pray they do not have middles like me.)

So, of course we stop down at my uncle's place on our trip. That visit lasted just long enough for my uncle to tell me I was an asshole and my aunt to attempt to bitch me out, at which point I said yet another thing that still makes me wince, but did make her shut up, which was, after all, my goal.

Since then (I was 17), I have seen the both of them and their younger child once at my great-aunt's funeral, and then my uncle once for dinner when he was in the city. They had appeared to have forgiven. THEN I fucked up again by not communicating with them clearly enough...me and Boy had talked about going down there for a weekend, and mentioned it to them, and I thought it was obviously tentative, and they thought it was obviously written in stone, and they were waiting for us and I was sitting at home staring at the computer. But I apologized for that and then this year when the trip was being discussed they said they wanted us to come down and so we did.

Happily, we seem to be all right with them again.

My uncle is a bit of a prick. He's fine in many ways. But he's been pretty nasty to his wife over the years, and he's not exactly brilliant at the whole relating to others business. For the first few days of our trip I was convinced that he hated me. But then he seemed to warm up, which was good. Having the dogs around to talk about helped.

It's also a little hard to see my aunt (by marriage). When I was younger I thought she was just bitchy. Now she seems kind of sad to me.

She married my uncle when she was something like 17. Lest you think she's the victim there, let me describe the circumstances. He was already married to I Forget Her Name. Presumably happily. Aunt, at 16, decided he was the One, and followed him *everywhere* until (and I'm not real sure how this actually worked) he gave in and married her (after divorcing #1, of course). Basically she stalked him into loving her.

This, as one might imagine, points to a wide variety of neuroses.

One of the results of this is that my older cousin, C., spent much of her adolescence in purdah, what with her mother trying to prevent her from becoming her. Aunt never went to college, never really DID anything other than be a wife and mother, and regrets it. So guess what happens? C. becomes boy-crazy teenager. Drops out of college. Gets engaged. Blows up like a balloon (seriously, it's actively unhealthy at this point. Way beyond chunky, and into heart-attack regions). Is getting married in 2003. She is pretty much the reincarnation of our grandmother, except at age 50, not age 20.

She's a great person, C. She's sweet and kind and her fiancee is a great guy.

But her mother is and has been for years very disappointed in her. Textbook self-fulfilling prophecy over here. I mean, you could take a psych class down there and save may pages of reading with a week of observation.

And she's got the apron strings tied so tight to the younger cousin, Jr (boy) that I can't imagine how that will end up. He's asserting himself a little but in a really confusing sort of way. He doesn't seem to be balking at her possessiveness at all. It's as if they have some sort of Oedipal tacit agreement between the two of them.

And he has been a disappointment in other ways. He's fairly seriously learning disabled with reading/English. He's a very smart kid, just almost unable to read.

The irony of this is incredible. My weight/looks-obsessed and early-marriage-regretting aunt winds up with an obese daughter who's practically married already (younger than me). My looks but way more so success-obsessed and book-learned uncle winds up with a sensitive artist punk learning disabled son whose apparent choice of career is glass-blowing (he's really very good at it).

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha hee hee.

They're both great kids in their way, and I like them both quite a lot. But I still think the whole thing is fucking hilarious.

Next week's episode: More relatives!

- onehanded