Birthday

Today I have finished replacing every cell in my body with new cells, a process that takes 7 years, as I once read.I don't feel any different, but...I do have more varied complaints than ever, yet I find myself more forgiving, better able to handle really shitty music, and ready to help any of God's creatures at a moment's notice. I have reached that tender age of 3 and a half years old, when a man attains wisdom if that be what he seeks. Such I have done. I often think I'm not rich because I never really cared about money, though when you do most of your sleeping on buses and trains, one does begin to see how money could come in handy. I expect that feeling to really kick in with the first frost, coming soon to this area. Until then, I live my life like the carefree grasshopper, depending on the charitable whims of industrious ants. That is an allusion to one of Aesop's fables, when the grasshopper spends all summer hopping on grassblades and playing his fiddle, while hassling the ant about working so hard. When winter comes, the ant survives on all she has accumulated through her hard work, while the poor grasshopper has nothing. The bridge of his fiddle cracks and the strings break, and he dies of pneumonia, as the ant bingewatches 'Taxi' and reads the novel 'City' by Clifford D. Simak, her favorite science fiction novel (I think that's right, the spelling of the author's name that is, because I know without equivocation that 'City' is her favorite book). That reminds me of the helpful ants in my life, giving me a little here and there, for which I am forever grateful and will repay generously, if I ever manage to accumulate any meaningful amount of riches. Still, were I in their shoes, and they in mine, I would give enough so that the grasshopper could get a nice place for the winter and fill his larder, and ask for nothing other than a couple of tunes on his trusty fiddle. Maybe that's why I'm not an ant, because I see myself in agony soon while my ant friends just shake their heads at my sorry plight, looking out their windows as snow blows around my withered husk. Very sad, yes very sad. WHy can't the ants get together and give the grasshopper the help he needs to put a band together and record all his tunes, and create a legacy that will shake up the culture so much that no one would want to listen to shitty music EVER AGAIN. O well, a man can dream. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Maybe the government can give free electric cars to every homeless person in America, saving the environment and ending the crisis of homelessness at the same time. Obviously, the busy little ants in our legislatures lack the imagination to think of such audacious plans. If they did, they would involve so many layers of bureaucratic bungling that no one would get a car, kind of like hoe they authorized $47 billion for renter's assistance and only gave away $3 billion of the fund. That is so wrong. Authorize the free electric cars, which double as mobile homes, and make the President go throughout the land, giving car keys to bums. That would be the beginning of the healing process in our country, and everyone in the land would be glad to live in a country where a man can fuck up totally and still get A BRAND NEW CAR. Also, make the President walk the land with a sack full of money, asking people questions and giving away BIG CASH PRIZES. That would solve the problem of hunger in America, plus take up so much time that the President would have less time to do anything stupid. What an elegant, yet simple, solution to the problems that matter most today. Only one nice ant, my brother George, wished me a happy birthday and gave me a gift. My friends don't know it's my birthday, and the rest of my family really doesn't want anything to do with me. I respect their decision to shun me, and it helps me in my vocation of philosopher. I started living in my own world a long time ago, and, despite the lack of creature comforts, it's not a bad place, not a bad place at all