9/14/02
3:30pm


OBLIGATORY OBLIGATIONS


Did you ever find yourself hungry, but not hungry enough to make something to eat, so you find a can of frosting in the back of your cabinet right next to the peanut butter, and you open it, eat it, and wash it down with a glass of milk?

No? Must just be me.

It was all in celebration, though. I finally finished re-re-re-re-editing Nemesis. I hate being a perfectionist, especially when now I wonder if maybe the original final copy was as good as it was going to get to begin with. Oh well.

In other news...

Yeah, so Wednesday marked my 1 Year of Pain and Sadness. I went out and dyed my hair blonde. Figured maybe if I could look the part I could feel the part, too and start giggling a lot. Life is kind of funny when you watch a plane fly straight through where you would have been working had you taken that job on the 98th floor. Maybe not so funny ha-ha, though. I've face the limits of my own mortality so many times, but never have I had to watch it over and over again on television. My count on near death experiences is up to.... 14, I think. Maybe more. I lost count.

And as for those two guys that got stopped on I-75 yesterday. All I have to say is DUMB. I can see it from the woman's point of view, calling the cops when she overheard something about bringing things down, and mourning 9/11 and 9/13, but at the same time I have to wonder at the intelligence of the two guys who were talking like that to begin with. Two middle-eastern type guys, chatting away about 9/11 and mourning on 9/13, and bringing things down, and they expect that no one will call a cop??? That would be like me dressed to the teeth in goth gear in a Denny's on the anniversary of Columbine and chatting about "They make me so mad I just wanna blow 'em all to hell." I mean, COME ON. Granted, I could be figuratively speaking, but some folks might get edgy. And I doubt the cops would be so accomodating in my case. Looking different for religion is one thing, looking different because you can is something else entirely.

The one bad thing I see coming out of this is the complete lack of privacy issue. Now we can't even express ourselves in a restaurant for fear that some panicky tourist might call the cops. And I can't even put up links to some fun conspiracy THEORIES (for entertainment only) for fear that some asshole will send me a slew of viruses.

Thank you, Big Brother will see you now.


But I digress...

Let's talk about my downstairs neighbors for a lil bit. Some of the fun of living southern is that you have warm days most of the time, which seems to invite people to grill things. My downstairs neighbors are no exception, apparently.

Yesterday, I was minding my own business, and Pants was cavorting as only the Pants will do. My downstairs neighbors dragged their grill onto their porch (we have barbecue pits in the development, so I don't understand the need for a porch grill), and they fire it up. Pants is jumping around the porch, sniffing through the cracks at the tendrils of smoke coming up, and prancing about excitedly. I'm in the middle of editing, so I don't pay too much mind.

A few minutes later, my cat runs through the door, a thick tendril of smoke following her. I get aggravated, since we have no meat in the house and the grill smells wonderful, so I shut the door. Pants climbs to the top of her cat tree and doses, glaring occasionally at the porch. I ignore it.

I finally look up when Pants is sitting at the door, staring onto the porch and looking at me in a way that makes me question whether she might be telepathic. She catches my eye and turns back to the outside, not like she wants to go out, more like there's something interesting going on. I look outside and wonder when it got so dark before I realize my neighbors are burning something. My entire porch is full --and I mean FULL-- of thick white-gray smoke to the point that I can't even see my tacky blue and white striped beach chair, which is pressed against the sliding door.

I'm understandably upset by this, as is the Pants, who looks at me as if to say, "See, woman? Do you see what they've done to my porch??"

I have no comfort to give to my sad-looking cat, so I give her a Pupperoni treat to keep her quiet. What can I say? The cat likes dog treats.

I got revenge on the neighbors the only way I knew how in this situation. I over-watered all my plants. Rained out their lil grill party real fast, and put out whatever they were burning.

9/10/02
2:02am


THE BEGINNINGS OF AN END.....


It's late, I'm tired. I've been playing at sun-bunny and I have a tan/burn to show for it. The sun drains me. I don't know what I was thinking other than how I wanted to go swimming and feel like the vacation I'm supposed to be on. Likely. I updated a friend's website today. It gave me something to do and I felt like I had been useful to someone. All good.

Just finished the second Harry Potter book, the Chamber of Secrets. It was good. Very nice --hmmm. I swear I just saw something go streaking across the floor. At first I thought I was overly tired, but then Pants came chasing after it. Pants on the prowl. How cute.

Crossing the crossfade. Hair triggering the endless void stuck between my ears. I swear I was only CLEANING it and it just went OFF. Not a safe thing to go walking around with a mind full of ideas these days. Man, I need a better place to dwell instead of in my own head.

How the hell did the West Nile Virus get alllllll the way over here? Last time I checked the Nile was a river in EGYPT. I only assume there's no West Nile River hiding in the States, but I could be wrong. There's a West New York, New Jersey, so why not a West Nile, Florida or something like that?

Fragmentation, not just for stories anymore! I either need to get some sleep or get back to work on stories that will pay the bills.

9/09/02
12:36am


A LIMO RIDE FROM HELL

Wow. That's all I have to say to start things off. My first limo ride, and what a long strange trip it was. But I suppose I should start from the beginning....

Dante called me up in the middle of an afternoon recovery from watching small spawn of a toothpick I assumed to be woman running aroun a swimming pool and having "lovebugs" landing and copulating all over me. How dirty did I feel? So Dante calls me up and says, 'Hey, there's a party tonight. Do you want to go?'

Sure, I say. Let's. It'll be fun. Haven't been to downtown yet, and this one club sounds promising. He calls me back mere minutes later and says something about a limo. Keen, sez I. I've never ridden in a limo before. The time draws near, I put on my makeup and dress to impress, and we walk over to where we're supposed to be meeting the limo.

One hour of sitting in an empty parking lot later, and having the imprint of a parking block delving across my ass, the limo FINALLY shows up. With a life-size Minnie Mouse doll buckled into the passenger seat. I'm skeeved. Not necessarily because I have anything against Minnie, although I always found her high-pitched bitching akin to nails down a chalkboard, but because it's a WHITE limo. Tacky. Now I know why stars get miffed if they don't have a black limo come pick them up, because let me tell you friends and neighbors, the white limo is truly tasteless.

Even worse was the trip. A mere 20 minute trip turned into the ride from hell. You can SEE the lights of downtown from my house, and yet our driver couldn't have found his way out of a pair of footy-pajamas. The inside was a porn star's dream, complete with tacky mirrored ceiling, a set up for a drink bar with glasses, napkins, and a deliberate absence of alcohol. We got over it. One of our party rolled down his window and lit up a cigarette, and the limo driver told him it was a no-smoking car, to please put it out. Once the cigarette had been thrown out the window, the driver ROLLED UP THE GUY'S WINDOW AND LOCKED IT. Yikes.

Being the folks we are, we try to be cool with this treatment, and we ask for the radio to be turned on so we can start getting geared up for the night. The driver informs us that the radio doesn't work. What about the CD player? That doesn't work either, yet the guy had Eminem's greatest hits playing in the front of the car. He informs us that the televisions work, however, so we ask him how to turn them on. He ignores us for the first three requests. Finally we manage to harass the remote control out of him, and all we can watch is The Littlest Vampire. The ride was quickly becoming like Disney on wheels. A nightmarish hell of Minnie and clean-living. Gag.

We tell the driver the club we want to go to, we give the guy directions all the way there, and the only thing we finally requested adamantly was that he put up the driver's window that separates the driver from the passengers. He informs us that the window will not be put up, that it's company policy.

Honestly now, it was just too much. But wait, it gets even... worse....

We ask him to pick us up in the spot that he left us at, at 2:30am.
We go out, we have fun, and at 2:30 we wait for the limo. Dante and I watched this guy drive by not five minutes before, and the guy kept circling the block without slowing down. 2:30 came and went and our driver was MIA.

3am came, and we finally got a taxi van to take us all home. The antics were mild considering, but we all were somewhat expecting the taxi guy to yell at us for something. The taxi ride didn't need directions, it had a working radio, working windows, ability to smoke, ability to act like maniacs, and at less cost than the limo. Oh yeah, and the taxi was on time.

I felt a familiarity in the limo, it was strange. I was recognized when I went out, which was stranger. But a word of caution to anyone renting a limo: if you have to give the driver directions and they still get lost, get a cab. They never made a good movie about a limo driver, after all.