Manic Oppressive

So I just finished writing my story of the day. It’s longer then usual, so it has it’s “special place”. It also might be considered, um, Too Much Information. But it has to be one of the funnier experiences I’ve had in a while, so it might be worth checking out.

Warning: Unedited. Too late right now…

Occasionally, in Seattle, my stereo’s receiver picks up these weird, errant signals which causes my speakers to buzz. The signals are brief; maybe about a second long, and they occur a few times a day.

Well, I had enough tonight and I was feeling brave, so I decided to decode one of the signals. It turns out, it’s the Devil, and he’s been giving me directions to my next meal.

So I ended up at IHOP.

Then, when I was paying my tab, the guy behind the counter asked me how I pronounced my name. “I usually don’t,” I replied. “But when I do, it rhymes with clue.” Yuk, Yuk. Then I said, “You know, it took me 20 years to learn how to pronounce that?” Yuk, Yuk.

Then I messed up adding my bill: $11.89 + $3.00 =? $15.89. So he says, “I think your math is wrong…” and I had to agree…

Last year, I wrote about Coke 0, and I postulated a “Pepsi -1″ coming soon. Well, I was wrong again. The Coca-Cola company was able to pull even more magic out of their own skunkworks. There’s a writeup on slashdot about their upcoming product, Enviga.

It’s late; it had been raining.

I walk into Safeway, I just need a few things. Probably food and shaving cream. So I stood there, at the entrance, for a few minutes. I needed to get my bearings, as these super markets change on a daily basis. And I never can find the hand baskets. The security guard walks up to me and says, I know what you’re thinking…. I look at him quizzically. He repeats, I know what you’re thinking.
Where are the hand-baskets?
Oh, there over there, He points. You’re thinking, I should’ve taken the blue pill He pointed at my chest.

And then I looked down at my shirt, and I realized that I was wearing my I took the Red Pill shirt; a salute to The Matrix. Then it hit me that he was repeating lines from the movie. Then I grabbed a hand basket, and continued on…

An interesting article about the guy that does Girls Gone Wild, if you have 15 minutes or so.

One of my co-workers is snoring right now. Guess this means I should go home.

[Edit: It's been pointed out to me that I should specify that I was at work when he was snoring. So: I was at work. Ayup. ]

I read an interesting travel story which mentions how weird it is to stay in a hotel in ones hometown. I was mildly amused because there are a few of us that don’t seem to have a concept of “home”. I seem to be one of them somehow.

It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try anyway (because I’m a sheet or two to the wind right now; somehow related to women or something…)

People will occasionally say things like, “Well, it’s good to be home,” or “Yeah, I’m feeling kind of homesick.” And these make sense to me, somehow, because I can completly understand the purity of the relationship between someone and their environmental being.

Yet there are some people (me included, evidently) that never get a longing for “home”. I couldn’t even tell you where “home” is for me. I might state that it’s my parents’ house; but that appears to be a side effect of living there for 19 years. I feel the same whether or not I’m in a shady motel in Upstate New York, or my current digs in Seattle’s International District.

I really discovered this during my brief homelesss stint a couple of years ago, where I found myself just quite happy and content in the backseat of my car with occasional “shower stops” at various places.

So yeah, here’s to the vagabonds of the world…

I opened my mailbox Saturday afternoon, and was greeted by the most recent edition of Cosmopolitian. So The Problem is, although men have various protocols for various situations, having one of these magazines just isn’t covered. In fact, we don’t even have a “Guy Name” for them. What, “Bag Mag?”

So I’ll shut up about that before Simone D’Beauvoir comes down and starts kicking me in the kidneys.
But anyway…

It turned out all of the mail I got was to the woman across the hall (happily married, of course). So I just wrapped the magazine around her things and plopped it in front of the door, with a cryptic note dissing our mail-person. Problem solved. Maybe next time I see her, I’ll asker her, “So, what are the 14 new ‘expert’ ways of pleasuring your lover, anyway?”

My mail box still smells funny.

So there was a meeting among us residents today, regarding the recent break ins at my apartment. One girl had her car broken into three times; the last time they couldn’t find anything, so they figured they would just take the whole thing.

My neighbors want a gate. If I hadn’t been there to dissent, it would have been unanimous. Now, my reasons for objecting are philisophical in nature (and other people have said it better than I can), yet I was still suprised to hear some of the arguments. Like, “I’ll feel safer…”.

Then we started talking about what would happen if we came accross someone looting our stuff. One lady* stated that she would be well into the garage by the time she noticed someone, and that she would run if she saw a criminal… err criminalizing?

Anyway, I asked her if she really wanted the gate there in that case. Turns out, no, she doesn’t.

It suddenly occurred to me that we think that all economics are monetary, and that we can solve any problem by throwing a bunch of money at it. The idea of “opportunity cost” seems to have gone the way of slap bracelets and pogs.

The short term solution is that we’re going to take everything out of our cars, and put notes saying that there’s noting in them. Meanwhile, the building owner (who was extremely receptive, by the way) will research, and presumably install, cameras.

So soon we’ll have a security system, but no gate. I don’t want a gate…

So, since I haven’t posted in a while, I figured I would tell a story about me in a store.

Yup. Some kind of messed up alliteration just happened, but I wasn’t there so I had nothing to do with it.

So anyway. In the Cherry Creek district of Denver, CO, there’s a place called The Brass Bed.

So I wander on in there a few years ago, on a whim to buy a bed (I guess). I see the sales lady, and I asked her, “Do you have anything that would look good in a Bob Dylan song?”

She did something weird with her eyebrows that I can’t repeat here (too many kids watching).

She had no idea…