Well, the week of my birth has passed once again. I have to say, I thought it was going to get to me this year, with the turning 25 and all, but it reammy dimmin't gung ou an bag an I gough ig wuh gunga. Pardon me. My dentures fell out. I hate when that happens. Especially on paper. Birthdays are all about the aging now. Naturally, when you're little, they're mostly about the presents. When I was making an annual income of $104 thanks to a generous allowance, in 1985 or so, birthdays were the lynchpin of my personal economy. Half the stuff I was going to have that year came in the last week of March. Now, though, the stuff I have is mostly acquired by me saying, "Hey, I want that stuff. I should buy it sometime. Right this second, for example. Pay the good man, Citibank!" No birthday's going to compete with that. Half the people who used to recognize my birthday are relatives who've decided I'm "too old for that sort of thing." And half the people who used to send me cards and stuff aren't even on the planet anymore, because they had one too many birthdays. Imagine my demeanor. So I'm 25 now. All riiight! I can... rent a car! WOOOOO! Woooo, woo. I also expect my insurance rates will plummet, since that is what The Man has been telling me ever since I turned 16. Other than that? Good job, good apartment, good friends, good single-hood... with occasional bouts of brief acute loneliness, coupled with the knowledge that I have looked as good as I'm ever going to. Who wants cake? Oh, I gave up sweets for Lent. There's some forethought from Mr. Easter Birthday. Well, sweets typically freeze well, anyway. "What did you do for your birthday? Did you do anything fun for your birthday? What did you do?" Everybody always asks, and typically the answer is, "Squat." My friends have work. My parents work. Actually, my dad forgot what day it was and took my mom to the hockey game, but that's not important. I just don't care much for everybody paying that much attention to me. A nice, quiet birthday is all I really need. This year was good for that. I'm knee-deep in cards over here from the out-of-town grad school contingent, and I've gotten more than my share of free meals. Chris came over on Tuesday or Wednesday, actually, and we ended up going to Ponderosa. It was either that or Thai food, and I hadn't been to the land of the $5 steak in a decade or so. We have reached that point where we do the "normal" things so infrequently that they actually become adventurous. "Let's go get some Lebanese food." "Yawn. Not again... I know! Let's go to McDonald's!" "McDonald's?... Whoa! That's so crazy, it just might work!" So we went to Ponderosa. The food was okay, but we sat in this booth next to these kids who looked like they were in about junior high, and at one point one of them turned around and said to Chris, "Blah blah blah something something?" and then they laughed. I thought Chris was going to stab the kid with a fork, but they left soon after. About ten minutes later, Chris got tired of pretending it didn't happen and blurted out, "Just what the @%#$ did that little @%#$ say to me exactly?" Having made a habit of being mocked by children, I rather calmly looked up from my baked potato and said, "I can't be absolutely sure, but it sounded an awful lot like, 'Which one of you is on top and which is bottom?'" "Oh my God! You're right! That is what he said!" "Implying, I imagine, that you and I have sex with one another because we didn't bring dates to Ponderosa." "I didn't understand him at first, but now that you say that...! Ooh! Ooh, I could just kill that kid! Where did they go? Are they still here?" "Calm down. I probably just heard him wrong." "No, you heard him right, the little...." "So, yeah. Kids always think I'm gay. What do you think that's about? Is it the sweater? Oh well. Could you pass the butter?" I later imagined that it actually went down something like, KID: Excuse me sir, is there any salt at your table that we might borrow? US: What did you say? You called us gay, didn't you!? We're not gay!! We're not even insecure!! Not even in the slightest!! KID: Never mind. Let's go, guys; these intolerant homophobes sicken me. *** Normally, I like my pages low on the images. I just have to show off, though; my parents got a really nice camera for my birthday. I promise not to bore you with too many pointless snaps.

Where does my mind go? In my haste to tell birthday tales and recount the 100th time in the last five years that I have been mistaken for a gay man by rude children, I completely neglected to mention committing the murders. A few days ago, a friend of mine rang me up to tell me that KSLU was celebrating its anniversary. 50th, I think, or possibly 15th. Anniversary of what, I couldn't tell ya; although my college's campus radio station did supposedly have a long and honorable tradition of something or other, all I really saw was that it had a long tradition of ceasing to exist and becoming something else entirely every couple of years. The old records that were piled up in the booth had about 10 different names, frequencies and call letters written on them, suggesting that KSLU had at some point been KSLU 550, KBIL 77.9, KBZZ Static FM, and K- 2- Guys- In- A- Booth- Listening- To- The- Sound- Of- Their- Own- Voices. When I was a freshman, it was at 550 AM assuming you lived in the dorm that had the trasmitter atop it and/or you did a weird modification to your clock/radio involving a coathanger and some foil. By the time I graduated, it had moved to a cable TV channel that showed slides while the music played. (That cable thing was typical SLU all the way. KSLU STAFF: Can we please, please, PLEASE have an FM license? Just a shred of credibility? A faint whiff of what legitimacy feels like? Please? Just write "FM License" on some looseleaf and give it to us so we can pretend? SLU ADMINISTRATOR: (fondling pitchfork) You know, on a lot of up-and-coming campuses, getting your station piped in on closed-circuit cable has been an invaluable stepping stone towards getting an FM license. Prove yourselves with cable, and we'll talk about FM. KSLU STAFF:.... OK, we did what you asked! Can we start working on the FM license now? SLU ADMINISTRATOR: (polishing horns) FM license? You greedy bastards. What do you need an FM license for? We already gave you that nice cable station! KSLU: But...! You said we'd...! And then you...! Want... soul... back....) KSLU, for all its deficiencies, was one of the most pleasant things I did in school. I was on two shows during my four years. The first was a retro show with my roomate Brian. The second, which ran for a couple of years (and was named Best Show by the general manager in KSLU's biannual magazine, making it a pathetic little feather in the pathetic little cap that was my teenage resume), was a current events, mostly-news-with-some music hour that I did with Nicole called the Erotic Penguin. It was supposed to be informative; in reality, it was a lot like this journal except it was out loud and Nicole had the power to turn off my microphone. I was proud of that little show. My biggest stumbling block was that we agreed to start with campus news, then move to national and finally world news. Let's just say I had a hard time knowing when Campus News Time was over. "... and many German officials fear that this may signal a surge in neo-Nazi activity in their country. Hey, speaking of Nazis, did anyone go to the Residence Life open house yesterday?..." But absolutely none of this has anything to do with the murders. My apologies. Anyway, I heard about this KSLU anniversary, at which Fishbone was performing. Fishbone was a favorite band of several of my cohosts/roommates, and the nostalgia was almost too much to bear. I decided I was going to go, and that was the plan for about an hour. "So, what do I need to do for tickets?" "There may be some at the door, but it'll probably sell out. So what you'll need to do is go to the website and print it out. Then, just go down to SLU's Student Life office before they close and talk to some of the people down there. I'm sure one of them will be more than happy to set up the hoop and light it for you, and then you're just a jump away from being all set." The thought of going back to SLU (and getting there before the offices closed at 11 a.m.) put a feeling in my stomach not unlike the feeling you got on Halloween night after having ooooone or two too many Hershey bars in a sweaty plastic outfit. Go back to the Busch Center? To Student Life? Guhhh! To buy tickets for a SLU event, in the hopes of running into old SLU people? Guhh guhhh! Run away! I do not need to go back to Midtown any time soon. My last memories are universally bad. Even KSLU is not balm enough. So I didn't go. It was the right choice. Still, when I got home that night, that made my plans a great big Nothing. Actually, it made my plans "sit around and think about how much fun the show might have been." Even knowing all the downsides I'd avoided. That's just the way I'm wired. Thank God I wasn't home long before my friend Chris called and treated me to one of his standardly brusque and random phone calls. Chris has a knack unseen in anyone I've ever met to end a conversation in what you think is its middle. Most people will wind it down, like you would if you ran into someone at the mall, you know? "Well, I've kept you long enough. I have to go do X and Y anyway. Good to hear from you though. Talk to you later!" Chris' phone calls always end as though someone just burst in with a gun. CHRIS: What are you doing Saturday? Anything? ME: I'm not sure, really. I was just gonna kinda play it by ear, I guess. Why? CHRIS: I have to go. Goodbye. CLICK! ME: Okay. Wait, what? Hello?... This call began the way they usually end. RING RING ME: Hello? CHRIS: Lobster! ME: Uh... spatula! Orangutan! Turns out he wasn't speaking in code. He'd just gotten up from a nap that night and thought, "Hey! I should go make a lobster!" And so he called, and that's what we did. He came over, we walked to the grocery store, and we bought butter, lemons, and some cranky-@$$ shellfish. Weirdest Friday I've had in weeks, but well worth it. Lobsters are actually cheap if you make them yourself, which turns out to be embarrassingly easy. It's a wonder people don't make them all the time. Which people obviously don't, because when we went to the seafood counter and said, "Two lobsters, please," the woman acted like we'd said, "Weapons-grade plutonium, please!" She had never been asked for a lobster before, didn't know how to get em, and seemed pretty sure that they had venom-tipped fangs and propellers under their shells. We waited fifteen minutes while she called for a helper, who then helpfully stood behind her and eyed the lobsters like they were coiled to spring through the tank and attach to her face like they'd been in Aliens. By the time we got them, I was prepared to say, "Oh, never mind." Eventually, she got us two, and she put them in these somewhat inappropriate Happy Meal-looking boxes. We named them--Jacque and Pierre-- and we were off. I guess the boxes weren't inappropriate, per se. It's not like they had cute little happy pictures of Sebastian from The Little Mermaid on them saying, "I'm being boiled alive!" or anything. But they did seem like a weird mode of transport. I'm not sure what would've been better; maybe a small version of that thing they used to transport Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. The comparison is apt, too, if you've seen how much love and warmth are radiated by these creatures. When I tell people I made lobster, they get all oogy on me. "Nnnh, I dunno if I could make lobster. I mean, you, like, kill it! Right there in the kitchen!" I guess most people feel better not thinking that their Extra Value Meal started with a blow to Bessie's skull, and I can certainly understand that. I'm not Papa Hemingway over here. I'm not big on the killing of my own food. It's all macho posturing in this day and age. But it was hard to feel bad for the lobsters. Biologically, they're less like my pet fish and more like radioactive roaches. Exoskeletons, antennae, and pointy, angry claws. Claws in rubber bands, granted, but still. They were not in the mood to talk. ME: Hello, little fellow! Do you like lemons? PIERRE: KILL YOU! EAT YOUR BRAINS! thrash thrash thrash ME: Okay then. (Chris was... very much in the spirit. Some people anthropomorphize animals; Chris dehumanizes them. "God d@$# lobsters... walking around like they own the place... let's see you swim your way out of this one, Frenchy!...") And so, with a pot and some boiling water, I have gained some cooking knowledge and maybe even a weapon in the impress-a-date-someday-if-such-an-event-ever-occurs-again arsenal. (Although, of course, the first woman I mentioned it to immediately said, "Guh! I hate seafood," at which point I actually felt myself shrink.) If I ever do it again, of course, I need to buy a utensil for opening the thing up. As it was, I had to go to the tool box and eat it with my hammer. journal index | journal archive | journal search | e-mail me

Lent has made a new man of me. It's still an enormous struggle to keep from shouting streams of profanities, which I'm discovering was not so much my habit as it was my hobby. I was getting so bad recently that just thinking of certain people caused me to mutter "@$#%er" aloud almost uncontrollably. Former coworkers, former schoolmates, people I hadn't talked to in ages would pop into my (bad) memories and I would start cursing to no one. It's a temper problem. I recognize it. I am a verbal mine field with a long memory. I'm not over it entirely, by any means, but making a conscious effort to curtail the symptom has actually done wonders for the disease. As for the end result... well, something still slips out about once a day, but usually only one at a time. It's progress. Giving up sweets, though, has been a breeze. I don't even miss 'em. I'm looking forward to finally eating those birthday cookies, but they're not tempting me from the freezer. What's more, all the self-denial has put me in a self-improving mood. But I know myself, and I know that any decision to do anything radical like lift weights or walk ten miles or some BS will last approximately twelve seconds into the first time I try to do it. So I was thinking about the way my mom always used to bug me about drinking water. As far as Mom is concerned, drinking eight daily glasses of water eradicates hunger, promotes weight loss, improves SAT scores, cures cancer, teaches you really cool card tricks and gives you the ability to fly. Water is the solution to every problem. "Whew! I'm so out of shape, I get winded turning my head." "You need to stop drinking that soda and do eight glasses of water a day." "My joints are sore." "Sore joints? You need to stop with the soda! Eight glasses of water, I'm tellin' ya!" "I'm bleeding from my ears and tear ducts! I think it's Ebola!" "See? Soda! How many times do I have to tell you...?" So, I checked up on this idea online (which is, of course, where all reliable information is born), and it turns out my mom is not a crackpot. Health Online even had a sample card trick to prove it. In my fit of self improvement, I finally thought, "All I have to do is drink? Hell, that's easy! I mean, not 'hell'... oh, dammit... I mean..." And with that, I started to try out the water thing. I couldn't really get an exact figure on how much to have, unfortunately; most of what I read was something like "eight 8 oz. glasses unless you weigh more than your ideal weight in which case the amount should be increased three gallons for each additional pound until your urine is transparent, unless your blood pressure is low in which case it should be salt water with a little paper umbrella in the glass." Only a doctor could complicate drinking a glass of water. I decided a nice round 90 ounces would do the trick. By all accounts, drinking this much water makes you feel a lot better, which leads me to believe I'm doing it wrong somehow. Maybe I should have bought the little umbrella. I don't know if the water is good for me. I don't know if I'm benefitting from drinking it. All I do know is that my body is violently, bitterly angry with me. As I gulp away, I can hear my systems screaming at me. "What are you doing?! We're not thirsty! We told you!! For the love of God!!! You're killinglubglubglub!" At the new office, my desk is just being installed in the bathroom as a time saver. Pregnant women look at me and say, "God, you have to pee again?!" One thing is certain: I am a completely different person than I was when I started. Literally. I've pee'd out all the cells that composed my body two weeks ago. By this time next week, I'll be able to ooze under locked doors. --- The fact that the highlight of this weekend was a marathon game of Monopoly should not go unmentioned. I don't know that I have anything to say about it, but I did feel the need to come forward and admit that it happened. I had houses on Boardwalk and Park Place, and I was still the first one to go broke. It's no wonder it took me so long to get a decent credit card. I have the financial savvy of a toilet brush. journal index | journal archive | journal search | e-mail me

There is a nasty rumor going around about me. In the last week or two, nearly everyone I encounter seems to be under the impression I'm buying a new car. I've had half a dozen conversations this month, casual everyday small talk, wherein the other person will turn to me and say, "So, how's the new car search going?" "What? Which search? Car which?" I dunno where it's coming from. Maybe they're trying to tell me something. It's the most delicate way anyone's ever broached the topic of how much they hate my car. The time came for me to get a new vehicle when I graduated from high school. Until then, I was driving what can best be described as a big red jelly bean. It was a 1989 Dodge Colt known as the Easter Egg. It made the Yugo look like a Winnebago, but it never gave me a day of trouble (except for that day I left the door ajar and went to school for seven hours). (Oh, and that day it was covered in flour. But that story only gets told once.) It was my pride and joy, because any time parking was scarce I could put in my pocket and take it inside with me. I don't exaggerate by much; more than once in those early driving years, I got out of a tight parallel parking wedge by having my friends carry the car out of the spot. Eventually, though, my sister got old enough to wreck a car-- er, I mean, drive a car*-- and the folks saw the Easter Egg as one of our many hand-me-downs. Between a couple of serious scholarships and some college credit courses, I'd saved my already generous parents approximately $7 million in tuition, so I got a new car as a reward/something in their name that could be taken away if I got out of line. What I ended up choosing was the Geo Storm, a car that represented my personality the best in that it secretly wanted to be a sports car, but not as much as it wanted respectable gas mileage. Continuing the trend of my life, it was a tiny, tiny car made primarily out of Tupperware. (Don't knock it; I'm guaranteed to bounce away from almost any serious accident.) It, too, would eventually prove itself to be lift-able. (That first year, I would park it on an enormous mound of plowed snow outside the movie theater where I worked; that snow then froze in such a way that my rear wheels were no longer on the ground, forcing four of us to eventually go out and carry it off of the mound.) The most prominent thing about my Storm, though, is the thing I think people hate about it most. When I was picking it out at the age of 18, I tried to employ a little foresight. "By the time I'm ready to replace this car," I thought, "I'll be an old man in my mid-twenties. If I end up like most people, I'll have a significant other and a 'respectable' job. (Yeah, right.) Which means my next car will probably have to be a brown sedan or something. I'd better make this one count." So when the time came to pick the color, I cleared my throat and exclaimed, "Bright purple, please!" More accurately, when I saw the shade the brochure referred to as "Electric Purple," I immediately said, "There it is! There's my car." My parents and I talked about it all the way past the "ha ha, purple car, it was funny the first few times, what do you mean you're not joking?" phase, and then the deal was sealed. Barney and I have been happy ever since. The car has been Barney ever since I got it, since "Electric Purple" actually turns out to be "Barney the Radioactive Dinosaur Purple." I denied it for months, up until my then-girlfriend bought some Barney toys and put them all over the hood. Seeing the scourge of parents everywhere right next to my paintjob pretty much shut me up. Unfortunately, four or five years without a garage roof were not kind to Barney. As the paint faded in the sun, it gradually became much less Barney and much more Barbie. As tired as I got of saying, "It does NOT sing 'I Love You, You Love Me!'" I am even more tired of saying, "It is NOT f***ing pink! That does it; Skipper and I are going back to my dreamhouse!" But it's worth it. It's worth it to not have any car payments. My friends can keep walking home in the rain rather than be seen with me. Neighborhood children can keep alternating between calling me Gay Dude and inviting me to tea parties. It doesn't matter. My car will implode before I replace it. I will turn the key, there will be a wheeze, and the dashboard will crumple in on itself like a cheap straw as the engine heaves itself altogether out through the hood. And I'll still turn the key a few times before I call the dealership. This car has saved me a bloody fortune. I've only refilled the gas tank three times since I bought it. And it's never really broken down; the pipe to the muffler rusted through last month, and for a while I drove it while it made sounds like a motorcycle being launched out of a cannon, but that's about it. Oh, and I guess it broke last July when I went out to get a burger, and I made a wrong turn and ended up getting lost in my own town, and every turn I tried only made it worse, until finally I got so mad at the world that I looked skyward and shouted, "Why are You doing this to me?! What the f*** is Your problem?!" at which point all the power steering fluid suddenly gushed out of my car and I was so creeped out that I decided never to think about it again. Other than that, though, it's been solid. I can't understand why they don't make 'em any more. *(Within a year of owning the Easter Egg, my sister had utterly relieved it of its ability to perform. Smashed it full speed into a Caddy, as I recall. The incident was like a haiku snapshot of my sister's troubled high school years; she had a wreck with an expensive car in a part of town she was forbidden from going to with a car full of people she'd been told not to hang out with, a moonshine still in the trunk and the gun that killed Kennedy in the glove box. She couldn't have been more red-handed if she'd had the Communist Manifesto tattooed on her palms.) journal index | journal archive | journal search | e-mail me

They made a sequel to the Flintstones movie. That settles it. Western civilization just is not going to work out. I actually saw the first Flintstones movie when I was working at the theater. Because we were in The Organization, the ushers let us in for free. It was still a rip-off. I'll never get those two hours back. I could have been reading a book, or writing a letter, or out in the park playing ball. I wouldn't have been doing any of those things, but I could have been. At the very least, I coulda been watching something that sucked less. It was one of those movies bad on a Waterworld scale. Make-me-angry bad. I-paid-for-the-popcorn-why-are-you-doing-this-to-me bad. So of course, a sequel was inevitable. You know, to get it right this time. To be true to the artistic vision of the cartoon caveman sitcom with a laugh track. It could be worse, I guess. At least it was only two hours. I could have been the guy who wasted three months of my life in the Creature Shop recreating the baby elephant vacuum cleaner. Sorry. We just seem to be going through a good movie dry spell, and there's nothing like hoping for a good preview to promise some kind of oasis and getting Viva Rock F***ing Vegas. And seeing the preview just reminded me of a little blurb I read last month where someone from the studio announced it was coming out ahead of schedule because "we got the Burger King tie-in finished early." --- Until the summer comes to take me away from the cinematic doldrums, there are still plenty of other random things going on. Easter, sadly, wasn't really one of them. Every year, Easter gets to be less and less of a holiday 'round the ol' homestead, which is a shame considering it's sorta the whole centerpiece of my religion. It all gets back to something I've blah-blahed about here before: when you get right down to it, the extended family is just too much now. Any time we all get together, it's just six hours of moms yelling at kids, and moms yelling at dads to yell at kids, and dads yelling at moms and kids yelling at dads and kids yelling at moms and breaking, breaking, breaking. It's frustrating, because I've met so many sweet kids in my lifetime, and so many children are bright and inquisitive and friendly and well-mannered, and yet so few of them are related to me. And you just get the sense as you get kicked in the shins by a five year old for the third time that day, "This all could have been fixed at some critical juncture if we'd all been paying enough attention. If I ever want to be a good parent, I need to study this riot-in-progress." But even the anthropological value has started wearing thin. Add to that the fact that my parents are getting older and acting older still, and our attendance at this year's easter egg bloodbath-- er, I mean, hunt-- was not exactly in the cards. Even so, I was astonished at how wimpy even our immediate family's observance turned out to be. My dad called me on Thursday, the first time my parents had talked to me in a week or more. Last time I'd heard from them, in fact, the entire conversation went ME: Hello? DAD: Who is this? ME: Jim is this. Jim lives here alone, remember? DAD: I was calling your daughter. I mean, your sister. (CLICK) And then a week went by. Sure, I coulda called them, but I wasn't sure they'd know who I was. And that's just a quirk of my dad's, by the way; I can't remember a time I've talked to him in like five years when he hasn't first inadvertently referred to my sister as "your daughter." Senility in the mid-fifties, maybe, or maybe it's related to how many times during her difficult high school years my dad said, "She listens to you. You straighten her out." He may want to transfer parenthood over to me on days like those, days which apparently include the day of his random confusion of our phone numbers. (Which are easy to confuse, seeing as mine's local and hers is out of... state... hmm, maybe it was a speed-dial issue.) Apparently, Sis had been forgetting that the checks we write are supposed to represent money that's actually in the bank. But none of this has anything to do with Easter. My dad called on Thursday to fill me in on Easter, and it was like scheduling a dentist appointment. ME: Hello? DAD: Hello there, son. ME: (high-pitched voice) Dad, you've called Kansas again. Jim's not here. DAD: Ha ha. Very funny. I'm never going to live that down, am I? ME: Well, this is the first chance I've had to make fun of you, but no. You're really not. DAD: Were you planning to come to church with us on Sunday? ME: ?!? DAD: Were you planning to come to church with us on Sunday? ME: Has it been optional this whole time? DAD: Well, we're just trying to figure out what we're going to do. I think I'm going to 7:30 mass. ME: Saturday night? DAD: Sunday morning. ME: Dad, God's not up at 7:30 A.M. DAD: Your mother says she's going to go to 10:00 mass over at the hospital chapel. ME: What? DAD: She likes the masses there better. She doesn't really like the choir at our church, and the place is going to be so jam-packed... MOM: (in distance) Damn kids running down the aisles pompous priest with his three-hour homilies mumble grumble garble barble! ME: So, on Easter Sunday, we're not going to church together. And I guess I'm supposed to what, choose which one of you I love more? Decide whether to wake up Jesus or go to mass at Our Lady of the Emergency Tracheotomy? DAD: I was just thinking you ought to go to mass at your church and then meet up with us for lunch afterwards. ME: (long pause) Yes... my church. Yes! I will go to mass at my church. That I have. That is clearly the best solution. Good idea, Dad! DAD: So we'll see you afterwards? ME: Absolutely! Right after the mass I'm going to go to. Have that ham piping hot for me. DAD: Actually, we're not having ham for Easter. Your mom's grilling steaks. ME: Um, OK. Should I pick up some fireworks on the way over? Maybe make some turkey and stuffing? DAD: See ya Sunday! As a result, the most holiday appropriate thing I did all week was when we ended work early on Friday to have an all-office Easter egg hunt. My boss filled 70 plastic eggs with jelly beans and Pasta House gift certificates and scattered them throughout the yard. The amount of work I didn't get done was worth it for the looks on the faces of passing motorists alone. Plus, the intimidation factor plays a larger part in Easter egg hunts when you get older. "Watch out in that high grass." "What do you mean?" "Never mind. It's nothing. It's still so cold out, I'm sure most of the snakes are still hibernating." "Ack!" (running away from prime egg-hiding turf) journal index | journal archive | journal search | e-mail me

My cousin's prom is tonight. It seems she's in the running for prom queen, but unfortunately she couldn't find a date until like half an hour ago. Although they laughed as they told me about it, my aunt apparently seriously considered having her call me and ask me to go with her. I cannot adequately tell you how disappointed I was to hear she found a date. I mean, can you even IMAGINE how funny that freaking story could have been? I'm almost tempted to pretend it happened and write it anyway. I've been thinking about doing that here for years now. Stringing people along for a while with my actual life, and then without warning or acknowledgement just veering off into some bizarre fiction. So if you're reading next August and I suddenly start to run for president or develop the power to fly, just play along. --- Got a resume in the mail yesterday from this guy who apparently wants a job with us. I get them all the time, so that's not especially noteworthy, except that the guy signed off his cover letter with "Sincerely Yours." "Sincerely Yours"? I don't know this guy. I've never met him. He's not mine. Not sincerely, anyway. In fact, he's pretty much the exact opposite of both those words. But they look nice. They seem like the thing to have on one's cover letter. The English language will be a meaningless collection of sounds by the time I have grandchildren. The people of earth will communicate entirely through t-shirts and movie quotes. --- Driving home from work, I encountered a gold-kissed, $uper Deluxe Lexu$ Grocery Getter $UV in front of me that was marred by a bumper sticker. The sticker read, "My Dog Was Camper of the Week at Kennelwood Estates!" Now, Kennelwood Estates is just what you think it is. It's a kennel for the pets of people who can afford to drive gold-kissed $uper Deluxe Lexu$ Grocery Getter $UVs. Apparently, the driver had put her dog in this kennel and returned a week later to the news that the dog had not mauled any of the serfs. The dog was rewarded for this with a sticker. This achievement of the dog's was then deemed so great by his owner that it will now forever adorn the family car, on display to all who come into contact with them. I think of the things that people feel strongly enough about to broadcast them with bumper stickers. Abortion sentiments. Political candidates. Jesus fish. Darwin fish that pervert and mock the Jesus fish. Big Jesus fish eating little Darwin fish as rebuttals. Giant angry "Truth" fish devouring both of them. Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes" gleefully peeing on all of the above. All of these say something significant about the driver, something worth bashing down your resale value for. Even those lame student of the month stickers say, "I'm proud of my kids." But "My Dog Was Camper of the Week at Kennelwood Estates"?? Basically, what the Kennelwood sticker said when I read it was, "Look! I'm a pampered moron with enough money to ruin the bumper on a car like this for no apparent reason! Yay capitalism! PS, please key me." But traffic was bad, and my mood wasn't great to begin with. --- Word of the Day: ransacked sample sentence: today, my apartment looks like it has been ransacked, possibly by hungry raccoons. I realized while cleaning my place up today that if someone had ransacked my apartment, they would have found over a dozen pairs of dark blue dress socks. No idea where they came from. I've held on to them for God knows how long, and there is no WAY I will ever go through 12 pairs of non-white socks between laundry days. No series of events could ever make me dress up that much. And yet, week after week, I have no drawer space for the clothes I've actually worn in the last six months. It took me this long to throw them out. I have no idea what exactly that says about me, but it seemed germane somehow. (See? Sometimes, there's just nothing to say. It's better to save things up for entries that actually go somewhere.) journal index | journal archive | journal search | e-mail me