My dad might be going to prison. I wish I had known about this earlier. But he, being a drunk, often drives drunk. He was pulled over recently. A third offense. So he has to stand trial, and got an expensive lawyer to try to make it so the first time didn't count because he didn't have legal representation. Which strikes me as bullshit, but what do I know of the law?

It seems fairly unlikely he'll go to prison, what with being in his forties and white and all that.

I don't know what'll happen to him. I hope he doesn't get sent to rehab, just because I know he's not really repentant.

I don't want him to go to prison, even though that would be funny to me, in an awful kind of way.

He's moving out of his parent's house, though, which is for the best. Closer to work so that if his license gets taken away for ten years (which strikes me as something that should probably happen, and is apparently a possibility) he could still keep his job.

Interacting with my dad is weird. He belittles my haircut, I tell him that my brother saw him in a strip club and said he was the sleaziest dude there. He argues that he's not sleazy, he's playful. I say my brother calls 'em as he sees 'em, and is way less biased than he is, since no one wants to think they're sleazy. He tells me he might be going to prison, but he likes to party hard and likes having crazy friends. I tell him that it is bad to have crazy friends exclusively, and that a balance must be maintained between the crazy and the sane. Then I tell him not to go to prison, and point out that he, in living with his parents, tends to get angry about nothing.

I've been happier since I left home, but since he moved back in with his parents, he's had a heart attack.

What I'm saying is that I am now at the point where I am better at living life than he is. And I say this as someone who's unemployed. He's paid for a few quarters of tuition. You know what's funny? Life is funny. Life is goddamn hilarious.

I don't want my dad to go to prison, but I've wanted him to learn a lesson that would mean stop drinking to excess and hanging out with- when he says crazy people he means perverts with serious drug problems- but I mean I guess he is as against his own self-growth as I am mine.

My mom used to hope and maybe pray that my dad would get in a car accident, not too bad, but enough to make him learn a lesson. I used to imagine scenarios where he would hit me with a car while driving drunk. And when I was younger and more religious I would pray for his redemption, just a general becoming a better person. Now I just have a dark sense of humor but I still feel a kinship with that younger me, and feel like the connection between being deeply cynical and darkly humored and being religious and spiritual is undervalued. I don't know what'll happen to my dad, and I don't know if he'll change. More on this story as it develops, although as I type it I feel like nothing will ever happen.

I read Kurt Vonnegut's Jailbird, and liked it okay, and was able to relate to parts of it if I was being intellectually dishonest.