Non-Alcoholic

I love this stuff. Love it, love it, love it!

Go Outside & Drive

I've been reading a lot of good stuff lately, like Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, and it had me wanting to write something deep and important - something about my generation's apparent fear of anonymity, as displayed in all the various ways we've found to make our private lives as public as possible. (yes, like this weblog.)

But then I turned on my radio and it was Blues Traveler! An old favorite song, from my all-time favorite album, a song which anyone who isn't a fan won't have heard of, because most people aren't nearly as familiar with Blues Traveler as they ought to be. So, for everyone's enrichment, and because it happens to be very appropriate to my life at this moment, here's the song. The other stuff can wait.

Go Outside And Drive

I've really got to clean up my room, you know it's been so long since I've seen my floor. It's getting kind of scary, in fact I suspect that when I finally clear away, I won't know it anymore. And we'll have grown so far apart from those early days with a fresh new start. So in the end it won't matter at all, so why should I bother with the rise and the fall? So I quietly lay back down and watch TV.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.

I have resolved not to leave my house till my floor comes back and my room is clean. So I'm really kind of glad that my TV's here, while I concoct my plan to fulfill my dream. Now won't that be wonderful when I'll finally be done? I just can't wait for it, then I'll start to have fun! It's getting hard lately to concentrate, all my appointments canceled cause I'm horribly late. You know, I think I need a prison in order to dream of being free.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.

Now weeks have gone by and my room's not done, in fact I could say that it's gotten much worse. Old Chinese food and ravioli cans amongst the crumpled letters, the mood's quite perverse. But I got a new TV with a remote control. Styrofoam and instructions fill that hole where I once cleared a path, where I once blazed a trail to the bathroom, but I fear that a nail is buried there now, and I step very rarely and try not to get out of bed.

You know, tomorrow I'll get up and I'll walk out that door, and life will return to the way that it was. But I think I'm getting sick, I better give it a day. It mustn't be the flu, but it usually does. So I'll sit right here till I'm old and gray, I need my rest, after all I'm wasting away. And I just saw a cockroach crawl out of my sneaker. I think he's biding his time till I get somewhat weaker.

Things could still work out for me as long as I'm not...dead.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.
We're gonna go outside and drive!
I'm still alive!
Is it sunny or is it raining? I wonder if it's light outside?
What's it like outside?

"Twenty-Two!"

Time was, at my job, about two-thirds of the staff was female, and it wasn't at all unusual to have a shift with only one or two guys on the floor. The one or two guys then inevitably became objects of ridicule and derision - we girls worked well together, got everything done, and saw no need to flub things up by adding a couple of Y-chromosomes to the mix. The boys were for the weekend shifts (when everything is more chaotic anyway) and for after-hours socializing, that's all.

Now they're everywhere! Thursday night in the kitchen, it's like the Godfather - they have secret handshakes, and code words, it's a whole brotherhood.

One thing that kills me, they have this "babe alert" system: one of the guys walks into the kitchen and calls out a table number, seemingly at random - that means that there's a hot girl at that table, and over the course of the next five minutes or so, every guy on the shift will find some reason to go by that table and check her out. It's hysterical.

Girls don't do that. If we see a man worthy of a double-take, we may or may not share it with, at most, one or two friends. We are much less likely to say something if he's with a girl who could be a significant other; and chances are, at least one girl will disagree and there will be a "you don't think he's cute?" discussion. The guys aren't like that. They don't care about type, don't care if she's with someone - if she's cute, she's cute, and they ogle indiscriminately.

I know there are proven psychological reasons for the different ways we behave - the whole Mars/Venus thing. I just find it amusing. I love the guys I work with! I don't get it, don't understand 'em at all, but they crack me up.

Learning from Amy

When I was in college, one of my good friends was blind. Her name was Amy Gray. I remember one time, somebody asked her who she thought were some of the most good-looking guys on campus.

I loved her answers. She thought about it for a while, and then named about five guys. And a couple of them were indeed thought to be quite good-looking by most of the female students. But Amy named some of the kindest, funniest, and most interesting men we knew - even though the average girl wouldn't have considered all of them very handsome.

When we asked her why she picked the people she did, she said it was a combination of things. How other people talked about them, and how they talked about themselves. She told us a person's voice, obviously can be attractive all in itself, the tone, the timbre, the way someone speaks, the words they choose. But a voice can also convey confidence or lack of it, humor, attitude, boredom or enthusiasm, a smile or a frown. And she judged by how generally well-liked the various men were that she knew - if a lot of people want to spend time with this man, then he must be pretty attractive.

I still remember three or four of the names on Amy's list. And it's much easier for me to remember them than the names of the guys that were considered handsome by more conventional standards.

Angela's Birthday

I went out last night with about a dozen people, one of whom (Angela) is a good friend of mine, and four of the others I’d met once or twice before. Now that’s not usually my scene – I don’t always do well in a crowd of people who don’t already know and love me – but I had a fantastic time! My girl Ang has some very cool friends.

So here are just a few of the highlights:

• There was a small but intense debate on the merits, and methods, of pickle-juice drinkers.



• The sister-in-law...was she for real?



• Kenneth ("Raise your hand if you like Kenneth!") has a new red couch, so he now has someplace to sit while playing video games.



• The "handsome stranger" from out-of-town kinda reminded me of Justin from Blue October.



• On the drive from the restaurant to the comedy club, we were assaulted by not one, but two flying doughnuts!



• There was a whole story-time episode about a girl named Mary*, a Slow Roosevelt concert, and a white thong...but I can't tell the rest of that story for fear of death and torture, at the hands of a bunch of big guys called Sonny.



• First Chair, Low Brass and the Flag Corps (Band Dorks RULE!!)



• I still didn't get an answer to my cocktail question.

Evil Zombie Lion

In the plains of Africa, in a tiny village whose name had never been pronounced by an English tongue, there was a shaman who lived in a mud-brown hut. But this shaman was no wise and benevolent healer; his heart was wicked, and he served a destructive spirit far older than the village or the plains, or any of the tongues that had ever tried to give it a name.

This spirit at times took a familiar form, the form of a great lion. When the priest had a special petition, he would surround himself with strange objects and sweet smoke, and perform his incantations, and then by night he would make a certain mark on the door of one of the village huts, and the lion would come and carry his sacrifice away. And the villagers never knew what was behind these disappearances, and they trusted their priest to keep them safe.

   

One year, among the many that passed unchangingly in the little village, a great hunter came through the plains, a European, in search of trophies that would bring him glory and fame. As one of his hunts brought him to the fields near the village, he sighted the greatest, grandest lion he had yet seen. Sure that this would be the most glorious trophy of all, he brought up his gun and sent a bullet through the heart of the animal, whose spirit was the consort of the wicked shaman.

At once, a howling wind swept over the plain. When the fury had passed, the hunter lay dead. The lion he had killed was nowhere to be seen.

That night, the same mighty wind swept through the village, leaving devastation in its wake. When the sun rose, not one of the villagers’ huts was left standing, and of all the inhabitants of the village, the priest was the only one left alive to witness the ruin.

In the desolate light of dawn, in the grip of terror such as he had never known before, the shaman went to the tree that had once stood tall outside his door and now lay blasted and broken on the ground. From the tree, he took a piece of wood and began to carve it into the shape of a lion. When the image was formed, the priest began to pray. For three days he chanted, entreating the spirit of chaos that was his master, to return and commune with him once more.

On the third night, at the same hour that the wind had swept through the village, the carved image awoke. Its blind wooden eyes looked into the face of the wicked shaman, and in that moment, the wind began again.

Many months later, a pair of traders from the East made their way across the African plains in search of rare and valuable treasures to carry back to their homeland. During their travels, they found the ruins of a village. No houses were standing, nothing remained intact, and they were preparing to leave, when they saw a small statue, a carved image of a lion. This statue was the only thing in the entire ruin that was not broken, and the travelers wrapped it and put it in their pack to take away with them.

When the traders reached their ship, they put their packs and their merchandise into the cargo hold, and retired to their cabin to sleep, as they began the long journey back to the Indonesian bazaars where their goods would be sold. That night, the wind blew fierce, sending shudders through the boards of the ship and chilling the bones of its passengers. Nobody ever saw the two traders after that night; when the ship reached harbor, they were not among the crowd of weary passengers coming ashore. Their packs were found, still in the cargo hold, and in the cabin that had been theirs was a small carved statue of a lion, with great staring eyes.

Goodbye, Alison

You know, almost worse than the feeling of being set up, is the confusion of not knowing who to trust anymore.

It's been almost a year since I wrote about Alison*, and we haven't seen much of one another lately, but I've always considered her to be one of my old, true friends. Now, in light of some recent events, I don't know...

There's a pretty ugly situation afoot right now: theft, cover-ups, conspiracy, possible destruction of evidence, lies, betrayal - the kind of stuff you'd expect to find in a Presidential campaign, right here in River City. And I'm part of it; I didn't do anything, but I could have a hard time proving that.

What's almost as bad is that, knowing as I do that I'm innocent, I have to start looking more closely at the people I've always trusted...and one of the first on the list is Alison. And that calls into question a whole list of other people and things. Like Alison's old boyfriend, who was (is?) also a good friend of mine. And like the real reason I don't live in that house anymore.

It helps a little to remember that, whatever anybody did, it wasn't intended to hurt me. It's just my bad luck that I'm the one left holding the bag.

I'm willing to do whatever I have to do, to convince the people that matter that I didn't do anything wrong. But I'm not willing to take the fall for anybody and everybody who acted dishonestly in this situation. I can't afford to take that fall. It could happen anyway, though. The evidence is all circumstantial, but it looks very bad, and I'm scared.

Yes Virginia, innocent people do go to the chair, and trusting the wrong person can cost you everything you've got. In a perfect world, it wouldn't be like that - but this obviously isn't a perfect world.

For a much more poignant view of another side of the same die, click here.

Froggie

My froggie he am a queer bird
Him ain't got no tail almost hardly
Him run when him jump
When him jump him fall down
Cause him ain't got no tail almost hardly

Frustrated

How do you convince someone they're awesome when they just won't see it?

Somebody did it for me - actually, a couple of somebodies - a few years ago. I wish I knew what it was they said that finally clicked. Maybe it wasn't anything that was said, maybe it was just that even when I hated myself, they still wanted to be with me, and they cared enough about me to put up with all my issues and insecurities. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I think that was where it started, for me. (And to both of those somebodies: thank you.)

Now I wish I could do the same for my friend.

I wish I could bottle it for you, or just snap my fingers and make it all make sense for you. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.

Do you honestly not realize how beautiful you are, and that if he doesn't see it he's blind (not to mention a complete idiot???)

Kumbayah

I'm toasting miniature marshmallows over a candle. With an icepick! It's fun.

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Uh-oh

"If you feed it, it'll grow," I said...

I've got to start learning to heed my own advice.