Three Thinky Things

Hey Shorties!
Sorry it's been so long since I dropped in. I fell prey to one of the oldest obstacles on earth and grew afraid to write and speak and sing and play, mostly. I've surrounded myself with people who are so insanely talented, it's made me question the treats I bring to this party. My vintage body waged a war that benched me into submission and forced me to crochet blankets for all my loves (just act surprised when you open your Christmas gift) and while I've imagined a billion things to write, I've banged out none of them.
What.ever.
I'm over it. 

Today's three things are a little more thinky than some others, and I might be using bigger words and more of them, but you're in middle school now and I know you come here. I see everything - like Santa Claus but more digital and less jolly. If I use a word you don't know, click over to your open Google tab (up there, at the top ... it looks like a tab resting on the address bar) and open a dictionary or thesaurus. I'm not writing down to you anymore because you're almost taller than me.

one One of you guys (or two or three) needs to launch an initiative to bring integrity and truth back to informative media. Start here - one of you needs to invent a TIME/DATE stamp that is present on every single page we can find on the internet. For the sake of this paragraph, just please for the love of all things holy, one of you kids needs to write the code for a time/date dealio that is always in red (or whatever your fave and logical, well thought-out color might be) in the upper right hand corner. Of  EVERY single.page indicating the last moment it was touched by the content creator. We put men on the moon way before you got here, I'll bet they'll teach you something in high school that will make this possible. But, just do it. Please. Then make it a law or something. It wouldn't hurt anybody.

(Backstory on this: Papa Z was wildly unique in many ways, but his attention to details, like who what where when why and how, was insane. It was his business to sell data, so it had to be fresh. Fresh hot data. If he found something in his daily stack, which included everything from our report cards to super secret government memos, that was not stamped in exactly the same place on every single page - he freaked the fuck out. He'd start bellowing "STALE DATA! This is DEAD to me NOW!" It was a much larger display than just all caps here can convey, but when Zulu got mad, our whole area code went dark. It was scary. As much as I wish this attention to detail didn't matter, it does. The internet is a dumpster fire and I hope you kids get it cleaned up. I apologize on behalf of all of us who came before you and tore into this technology like a toddler high on coffee cake under a Christmas tree.)

two Vote. Vote anytime voting is an option. Rally and gather and protest and resist and rise up, if you're on the wrong side. Vote in school elections and learn how the current process works. It could go without saying, but it would be verrrrrry unmomolike of me to not say it: I am pretty sure the whole poliltical process is trickery. Sadly, I invested my ten thousand hours in marketing, advertising, researching and entertaining, so I missed way too many memos about how our government really works and... I'm pretty sure capitalism is a scam. You guys have no excuse because I'm telling you now: Learn and research and vote. Study the French Revolution and see how it worked out for those guys. Build beautiful, smart and huge posters to take to marches and protests. Go to YouTube college and learn how to build the sturdiest torches and check amazon for the best deal on pitchforks. Go radical if you have to, just learn how to NOT get arrested. Your parents will teach you. I've seen them. So far - no arrests. Let's keep it that way if possible. And, please vote smart.

three You might not love this one, but I've seen your bedrooms and I would be remiss if I didn't just suggest this: You should consider the 100 Things lifestyle. If you start now, while you're still young and your brains aren't so hard-wired to associate joy with owning stuff, you could be some of the most chill adults in 30 years. Here's the deal - I didn't adopt this minimalistic lifestyle on some wild whim, it was the byproduct of inheriting about seventy kabillion things from dead people who just never threw anything away and kept on buying stuff. When they died, they did not take their stuff with them and I got to deal with it for years. I aged like a mofo in my 40s, it was not pretty. But, it was just stuff and it was eventually all gone. What would you grab if you were being chased by zombies and you could only keep what you could carry? Just pretend like you can carry a lot, because 100 things can weigh a ton if you're thinking you want books or weights. You will be so surprised at how much easier your life becomes when you just own what you need. Your brain will work better, you'll be less stressy (the average American spends 60 hours every year just looking for misplaced stuff) and you'll appreciate what you have way more than your mates who surround themselves with plastic crap from Walmart. 

Just a thought or three. I know you're young, but I'm sure I'll mention all this again. 
I love you and miss you like thunder.
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xomomo