BOOKS OF MY LIFE: Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was a slog, but thanks to Bob, I dunnit.

The irony is so delicious I might just dine on it for weeks, because all those looters, parasites and second-raters populating Ayn Rand's barely readable Atlas Shrugged turn out to be precisely the same ones citing her novel today as their primary formative influence as they busily calculate the price of human life compared to the bare necessities of accumulating capital and enhancing profits amid our cancerous late-stage capitalism.

COVID-19 shortly will become their own personalized Taggart Tunnel. I don't want anyone to die, but these real-life moochers need to go far, far away where they can live happily ever after making mad, passionate love to their fattened wallets.

John Galt, my pasty white ass.

However, perhaps even bizarrely, I've read Atlas Shrugged. It's actually one of the most influential 32 books of my life (a list that needs updating this summer). How I came to read Atlas Shrugged is a story worth retelling, though only briefly.

Rest assured that I didn't choose the novel for leisurely beach reading, or because of a fondness for its mentally unbalanced author, her bizarre message or the self-indulgent cult politics it spawned: Woman meets married man and falls for the steel he invented, and they don't live happily ever because her real spirit animal is another guy who is stopping the engine of the world to lead a rich dude's revolution so that millions will starve, and in the process, somehow prove his point.

No, the reason I read Atlas Shrugged is that the late, great Bob Youngblood, my literature teacher as a senior in high school, commanded me to read it in two weeks flat or risk failing his course, this edict coming after I'd devoured the class assignment (Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations) in a single weekend, then openly taunted Bob on Monday about it not being sufficiently challenging.

"Fine, you little shit": I was kept after class to be informed that if I was so incredibly bright and advanced -- if I wasn't willing to help my classmates understand Dickens -- a book like Atlas Shrugged should be the ideal, advanced challenge I so evidently craved.

Scoffing, I agreed ... and got schooled, hearing Bob's message loud and clear long before the infamous section in Rand's novel where Galt commandeers the planet's radio frequencies and delivers the single best cure for insomnia ever conceived by a speech maker. It asphyxiates me even now, 43 years later.

Atlas Shrugged was in fact completed, the college prep course passed and Bob's letter-perfect point very well taken ... and retained. I hope I never have to read that book, ever again.

R.I.P. Bob Youngblood, 1943 - 2016.

A concert and a funeral.

Like me, the musician Bob Mould was born in 1960. I have about two months of longevity on him.

Hüsker Dü, the band that made Mould famous, was formed in 1979, roughly a year after my final high school English class. My teacher (and subsequently, my friend) was Bob Youngblood, whose funeral was held this morning, less than twelve hours after we saw Mould perform at Headliners.

As noted elsewhere, the volume of Mould's show may have fractured my skull, but it was a very joyful injury. The Youngblood visitation was sad, and yet redemptive in its own way.

There was a lot of love in both those rooms.

Honestly, I can detect absolutely no connection between the two Bob's, except that I'll always remember the concert before the funeral, and chuckle. It's quite likely that back in the day, as a senior, I stumbled once and maybe twice into Mr. Youngblood's class with a hangover, ears ringing, still reeking of pot smoke, because the gang had attended a performance the night before.

No, there isn't a conclusion to this rumination.

It just is what it is, a sort of free association just like all the rest. There'll be more of both, shows and funerals. Maybe they won't always coincide, but this time, it helped.

Here is the link to Bob Youngblood's obituary as well as information about funeral arrangements.

My heart's still heavy, but we move forward.

Bob Youngblood's obituary has been published and the funeral arrangements revealed.

If anyone is interested, perhaps September 17 would be a good day to drink lunch and hoist one or two to Bob's memory. There is time for thinking about it. For now, the details.

Visitation: Saturday, Sep. 17, 2016, 10:00 AM

Memorial service: Saturday, Sep. 17, 2016, 10:30 AM

Seabrook Dieckmann & Naville
Market Street Chapel 1119 East Market Street
New Albany, IN 47150

R.I.P. Bob Youngblood, 1943 - 2016.

"If every child on every street, had clothes to wear and food to eat -- that's a miracle."

You never know where it's coming from, or what might trip it.

Bob Youngblood was my high school English teacher. He was a mentor and a friend. He died on Friday, but because it was my responsibility to host the annual family reunion weekend, I pushed it off to the side.

First you do your job, then comes the rest.

On Saturday night, 40 of us descended on Big Four Burgers + Beer (staff was awesome, by the way) for food, drink and socializing. Most of my cousins are older than me, and many have grandchildren. Some of these kids were there at Big Four, for the most part running amok.

Often I'm a Grinch at times like this, but oddly enough, on Saturday their joyful, writhing presence seemed comforting. None of it bothered me.

Closing ceremonies for the reunion came on Sunday morning, with Honey Creme doughnuts and Quills coffee, and then a bout of yard work, and finally a chance to catch up on writing.

Looking at the photograph of Bald Knob (the future Summit Sprigs off State Street), the very first words to come into my head were "Mother Nature does it all for us," a lyric from the Queen song "online.com/en/the-band/discography/miracle/">The Miracle", off the album of the same name.

The fifth and final single was the album’s title track. The Miracle, coupled with a live version of Stone Cold Crazy (recorded in London in 1974) was issued on November 27, and reached No 21 in the UK charts. The accompanying video is one of Queen’s most endearing and memorable, and features four child look-alikes (chosen after weeks of auditions) in the guise of the Queen band members. Directed by the DoRo team and filmed at Elstree studios, the real band members were only seen in the final part of the video, when they join their younger counterparts on stage. After seeing the ‘young Queen’ performing, Freddie was later to quip “Could they do a whole tour for us?”

I wrote the article, then thought it might be nice to hear the song. It had been a while since I'd listened to it. Life is strange. You push play, and before you know it, you're bawling -- because of life, death and all the stages in between.

They're tears of sadness because Bob's no longer with us, and tears of joy at his amazing, enduring legacy.

It's crying because those grandchildren are the future, and because I hope they have a damned future.

You're reaching for the tissues because music can be so deeply redemptive, often when you least expect it.

 Thanks. I really needed that. I'm going to listen to "The Miracle" again. This time, I'm ready.

R.I.P. Bob Youngblood, 1943 - 2016.

For those who didn't know Bob, he was a teacher at Floyd Central for more than 30 years. Speaking personally, he had a tremendous impact on my life.

Bob died yesterday after suffering a brain aneurysm earlier in the week, and to be perfectly honest, it's a bit much for me at the moment.

Words don't often fail me, but this is different. When they return, I'll write more, and also update this space when funeral arrangements are announced.