Skunk’d

Found an old entry in a long gone blog of mine, and it’s adorable:

circa September 2007

I pull into my driveway at around 1am the other morning, tired and happy to be within minutes of bed.

I pull into the side spot and turn off my lights, gazing out the window at the garage door just in time to catch a glimpse of two little eyes staring back at me.

I think it’s another possum and open the car door to frighten it away. As I put a foot onto the ground I suddenly make out the uncomfortably familiar two-tone pattern of my nemesis: black and white stripes and all attitude.

I slink my leg back into the car and quietly pull the door shut.

Shit. I text a few friends with the amusing “Now what?”, and some of their suggestions were pretty damn funny.

Blare the horn? Yeah, my neighbors would love me for that.

Spray him with mace? Um, anti-cruelty animal activist here.

Spray him with the garden hose? I’d have to walk past him to get to it.

Start the car and startle him away? I suppose my car’s exterior could take a dose of stink with more brevity than I could.

I start her up, idle a bit, and he just stands there. Staring at me.

Waiting.

I rev the engine a little. He stares at me.

I open and slam the door a few times. He stares.

I throw her into reverse and back out, hoping the movement of a large metal cage will rattle his confience and send him scurrying off. Instead he stares.

Fine. Fuck you. I’ll take a drive around the block.

I text a few friends who I know are still up and severely amuse them with frustrated details of my stalker’s activities.

I circle once. He’s waddling around in the driveway now, helping himself the the newly vacant open space. I pause the car in front of the house. He turns his head and looks at me. And stares.

I circle again. And again.

Each time the little shit is still hanging out in my driveway or on my grass.

A full 20 minutes and 30 or so texts later, I come back around to find him conspicuously missing.

I creep the car in and turn the motor off. I sit inside for another minute, paranoid, really not wanting to shower in tomato pulp at 2 in the morning.

I handle my mace canister then think better of it. I look in the back seat and remember that I have at least 4 pairs of sandals strewn about, all within easy grasp.

I choose my weapon and emerge. All is quiet and tranquil.

I walk past the trash cans, the garage door, the overgrown rhododedron, and the patio table, any of which could be hiding my stinky predator.

I clutch my sandal in a dumb gesture of armed menace.

I creep to the front door. Unlock the knob and swiftly get inside.

After settling the dog, I hear a rustling outside and go to the window and gaze out into the backyard.

I had wondered why I hadn’t heard as many screaming cats mating in the grass this summer, and now I know why: Pepe Le Pew is a resident of my nearest fence bushes.

Dammit.

Shit My Husband Says

“And no, I did *not* just use my towel to pick my nose. You saw nothing. Also, we ran out of Kleenex in the bathroom.”

Mini-Asteroid 2012 DA14 On Near-Miss Course

Relax, it won’t actually hit us.

That is, according to former astronaut Ed Lu in a brief article on the matter.

I’m actually excited by the graphic novel sci-fi potential. What if it grazes our moon? What would the immediate implications be if it unexpectedly strikes a U.S. military satellite? That would be quite a storyline, as an unprecedented opportunity might arise from out of nowhere for hostile factions. An unplanned war strike, or nothing at all? And think of all of the alien invasion plots.

Or maybe just a pretty blip through the sky for a second and then I do more laundry.

Will The Other Woman Ever Learn?

Oh, LeAnn.

You were married to another man.

He was married when to another woman.

He cheated on his cheating wife, with you.

His cheating ex just dropped a book about all that sexy cheating.

Including the cheating he’s doing on you.

This is just painful. I’m already looking away.

Oh, look! More Trampire gossip over there …

Back From Hiatus

Took some time off to rebuild two sites, move, change jobs, get married and re-elect a president.

Oh, and I learned how to bake tiramisu. Good times.

Nice to be back.

Ariely Explains the Illusion of Choice

Professor Dan Ariely is a very warm and funny guy with an excellent understanding of the human condition and the wiring behind it.

The Best Ice Breaker Ever

A loud bar, a dense crowd, and a hot chick who’s too drunk to have a conversation with you. What to do?

“So… were you here last weekend when they removed the body?”

My male friends never cease to appall me with their bizarre mating scripts. It worked, as less than an hour later she went from shocked to intrigued to impressed to naked in his apartment. This guy is one of the weirdest hyperboles of the dating spectrum. I am not sure whether to shudder or applaud.

Lips Like Sugar

How to Ditch a Telemarketer

I’m not clear how a cell phone number qualified for a telemarketing call list, but this particular salesperson got a bit more than they bargained for from me today. This tactic worked incredibly well and it took less than 3 minutes.

She started in the usual manner of asking for one of us by name. She then sped through a scripted greeting, in a thick Indian accent, made worse by the shoddy sound quality of the connection.

I cut her off quickly and asked if her company was hiring.

There was an awkward pause.

“I will buy $1000 worth of product from you right this second if your supervisor can fax me a 1099 form and an offer letter for a job making at least $40k a year. You may put me on hold if you need to.”

She did, indeed, give me over to her supervisor who informed me that there were no jobs available in his department and that he had no realistic gaurantee of any work available anywhere in the company. His tone said even more, as he obviously thought I was right outside of my mind for the mere proposition. He seemed slightly miffed and a bit worried. His accent made his annoyance that much more amusing.

“Well, I got laid off and can’t find steady work, so I can’t afford any of your products. But if I had a job with the company, think of how much of this shit you could sell me now that I’d have a paycheck! And even more with an employee discount! My God man, think outside of the box! Why, you could even —”

“We are so very sorry to have bothered you today and wish you the greatest luck in your circumstances. Have a wonderful weekend…”

And -click- the call ended.

I take great pride in my work.

She’s Lost Control

I was only recently born in 1977 when, on May 29th, a band going under the name Warsaw played a show supporting the Buzzcocks at the Electric Circus in Manchester, UK.

On January 25, 1978 they played their first gig as Joy Division.

My mom, an irreverent hippie unlike any other you’ve ever known or heard about, was into every scene and had vinyl for every band with a basement to play in.

Her best friend (and co-owner of their craft shop in New Hope) was a staunch collector of british punk and post-punk as well as that weird shit that was soon to be dubbed “new wave”.

In the late 70’s nothing had imploded yet; she’d not come to the plot twist of divorcing my father and my brother wouldn’t be born until 1979.

Everything in my world was handmade by her: the bean bags I slept on, the stained glass windows that filled the holes in trailers where we lived, the cloth dolls I clung to as I slept.

She knew everybody, everywhere.
We’d drive for hours to visit friends of hers and stay for weeks.
We were vagabonds and beggars and creatures of vibrant eccentricity.
We had no money and no roots but we were rich in ways that could make the Kennedys annoyed with envy.

And in the middle of all of this was me, a tiny gelfling of a girl with homemade cordouroy overalls and dresses hand-stitched by my mother and a head already filled with Doors and Fleetwood Mac lyrics. My platinum pigtails flickered when I’d bob my head to Neil Young or Pink Floyd.

Of the 8 years of memory I lost and then found from early childhood, this one (from 1981) came back sharp and crisp:

Sitting on a back porch of a hippie commune in upstate NY with mom, my baby brother and an indian couple from Canada, listening to a local college radio station. The dj was playing Mike Oldfield and then started talking about a guy named Ian. He gave an introduction and played an entire hour of brit stuff, and one song grabbed my by the synapses:

The faint lull of uncharged guitars and the gothy drawl of a singer they said was since dead, layered over the off-kiltered beat of punkish drumming.

“The past is part of my future, the present is well out of hand…”

Heart and Soul smacked me upside my 4 year old brain like a lucid dream.
I had it stuck in my head for years and one day in my freshman year of high school I stumbled across a Sisters of Mercy tape and the sound of Eldritch’s voice rang odd in my brain and bothered me for a good long time. Not even The Cure could scratch that deep-buried itch of memory that I couldn’t identify.

In my senior year with spiked leather collars, knee-high Docs and Kyle’s old beautiful California Rider jacket I managed to trip over the industrial scene and fall face first onto a subgenre of 80’s re-verbs that were being fanatically re-released on cd, the “new” format.
(Yes, I’m that old: cds were just coming out in an affordable way as I was graduating from high school. Oy.)

It was then that I found it: Permanent, the compilation released the year I left school, and it saved my head from exploding. Contained therein was another chunk of brain bricks that lined the floor of my cerebral basement, covered here by The Killers:

Ian Curtis, Division’s lead singer, committed suicide on May 18, 1980 by hanging himself in his kitchen. Retrospectively, he was that generation’s Kurt Cobain.

Focus on the sound and the imagery (and desperately forget that it’s the same band that brought you the ubiquitous Mr. Brightside). I can’t stop watching this video. I can’t stop listening to it on a second Firefox tab as I type this in my blog. Plug in your headphones and listen to with the volume cranked way up.