Life is a motherfucking BITCH.

I think karma is a great concept. If you're a fucked-up person who does fucked-up things, you deserve to have The Fates fuck you up in a similar fashion. However, I can't say that I believe in karma, since the phrases 'nice guys finish last' and 'bad things happen to good people' still hold true way too often for my taste.

I'll cut to the chase: My little brother died this afternoon of an apparent heart attack. He was 26 years old. He never did wrong by anybody. He got along with everyone. He had a great wife and two wonderful kids, with a third child on the way. You know what? FUCK karma. If there was such a thing, he'd be here right now. But he's gone.

I spoke to him almost every day, usually about stupid stuff like old NES games we used to play, or old-school wrestling, or quoting our favorite 80's action movies like Big Trouble in Little China, or occasionally even deeper stuff like politics (he wasn't very political but he was glad to vote for Obama). He talked about how proud he was of his children, and how fast they were growing up. We used to talk about anything and everything. Now there will be no more talking.

I don't know how to feel right now. I'm completely numb, and miles away from the rest of my family. I'll be back with them in 24 hours, but I'm not sure if the denial will stop before I actually see his body. He was alive less than 12 hours ago, but now he's gone. It doesn't seem real. My baby brother is gone and I don't know how to deal with it, except to come here and post a bunch of ramblings.

Well, I will do one other thing. Since I'm about to travel, and won't be online much, I'm posting the 'Video of the Week' a little early. It's of my brother from a year ago, playing part of Joe Satriani's 'The Forgotten Part 1' on an acoustic guitar:



He was really talented, and could play Satriani and Metallica without even blinking. He also could play a lot of old NES game music by ear (Castlevania, Super Mario Brothers, Blaster Master, etc.). However, the one NES song that was just out of his grasp was the in-game fight music from Pro Wrestling:



We spent years playing this stupid game back in the day, and it always made us chuckle. We even had that music as ringtones on our phones, for when either one of us would call the other. I always told him that he'll nail it on guitar one of these days, but it's fast and complex in some parts, and will be really tricky. A while back, he called me with a breakthrough: He could now play every note, but was having trouble nailing down the speedy parts. He played it over the phone, and we both laughed our asses off. With more practice, he'd get the speed down, and then he'd have it.

But now he'll never have it.