Last night was my last Tuesday Night Karaoke With Wendy.
It passed quickly, which is either indicative of how much fun I had (the amount of which surpassed the weight of a herd of T-Rexes on Jupiter) or Wendy's reluctance to start karaoke without Ron and Randy being there right at the beginning. Both are probably true.
Clint came with two CDs full of downloaded karaoke songs, most of which I would have loved to sing. I chose "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles because it made me the happiest. I made requests for Clint to sing "Born to Run," Jared to sing "The Lady is a Tramp," and Aaron to sing "Come to Papa." Due to the enormous volume of patrons, however, the only one that happened was the first.
I sipped two Bloody Marys full of vegetables while Randy sang "The One," Jason sang "New York State of Mind," and Max sang "Your Song."
I bought Justin a drink in exchange for him singing "Other Side," convinced Liz put in a song, and hated myself for perpetuating all that "You just have to sing!" crap which I despise.
I never had time to step outside. I never got to talk to Gina, Ron's wife, and tell her I was leaving in a week.
Jared, Aaron, and Clint collaborated on "Hey Jude." It's one of my favorite memories.
I put down "New York, New York" to be my second song despite the potential cheese factor, but due to a special request from Dereck, Wendy changed it to "Don't Stop Believing."
Karaoke in Kirksville is strange. It becomes a cultish habit. I feel particularly queasy at the moment for even devoting a post to a topic so shallow as this, even more so for actually listing the songs. I don't know why it's such a big deal other than that it's an excuse to socialize on a weekday and this condition is recognized among my immediate aquaintances; I don't know why I've gone almost every week for the past two and a half years and it's become a ritual steadfast enough to make plans around, other than that for every night that is gratingly lame, there is one that becomes a warm beery haze or laughing stumbles to my apartment afterwards. But like everything else, for better or worse, I'll miss it when it's gone.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Come Fly With Me
I was walking towards the square tonight and saw a small brown lump on the sidewalk under a streetlamp. At first it looked like a frog, but when I approached it closer, it turned out to be a bat. I don't know how bats are supposed to move, so I'm not sure if he was hurt or just learning to fly, but this one couldn't get very far off the ground. I saw him hop, scuddle, and occasionally flap up a few inches into the air in the grass.
Once, he stopped moving for a several uncomfortable moments, and I was shocked at the thought that I might have just seen him die.
He moved his head around, though, and continued scurrying to the steps of the nearest building, crawled up the wall and across the stoop. I let him be after that point. I'd never seen anything like that up close, or at least, up close and not in a cage.
Once, he stopped moving for a several uncomfortable moments, and I was shocked at the thought that I might have just seen him die.
He moved his head around, though, and continued scurrying to the steps of the nearest building, crawled up the wall and across the stoop. I let him be after that point. I'd never seen anything like that up close, or at least, up close and not in a cage.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Last Unicorn: Brought to you by IceBreakers
When I was in the checkout line and couldn't find the type of mint I usually get, my eyes settled on this robin's-egg blue tin with a chipper stick-figure man raising his arms triumphantly, surrounded by fresh, moist mint leaves. "IceBreakers Energy," it read. "Peppermint Mints with caffeine."
Now, if there are two things that are A-OK in my book, they are mints and caffeine. As a matter of fact, if I were to make a fairly comprehensive list of things I like, mints and caffeine would be on there somewhere. Not at the top, which would be reserved for stuff like Chekhov, Gonzo journalism, Taco Bell, drawing time, acting, and stories about Beatles songs, but nestled in the middle among Ric Flair, vitamins, and Papers I Wrote in High School But I Still Think They're Pretty Good, At Least For High School.
And "Peppermint Mints"! Repetition is way cute, guys. Not since "The Chippiest Chips Around" has there been a hotter slogan. Those pictures of kittens with those poorly-spelled Net-speak captions don't stand a chance with a market like this. Needless to say, I bought a tin immediately, as delighted as the minty stick man with my daydreams of the even later nights I can stay up reading or drinking with a palate more pleasing to the nose and tongue.
I checked the side after downing a few, to see how long I'd have to wait before maybe tossing on my shoes and going for a run. "One serving (3 mints) contains about as much caffeine (30 mg) as one half-cup of coffee," it read.
One half-cup. When I worked at the hotel, I once put away an entire press pot of coffee. I like toting quadruple-shot espresso drinks before important rehearsals or performances. This half-cup equivalent in breath-freshener form wasn't going to do the trick. The stick man smirked. I sighed in defeat. The only thing they could probably do is keep my heart beating if I were inches away from death.
The thought made my heart jump, as if these were really the mints I'd believed them to be, but in fact it was brought on a more shocking revelation. The only other item that can do that is none other than unicorn's blood.* My stomach twisted. Without even realizing it, I'd condemned myself to a cursed life. It didn't stop me from eating the rest of them, but I sure wasn't going running anytime that day.
No wonder they were so expensive.
*Well, maybe also an AED machine, but you don't see anyone packing those into any peppermint pellets. Think of the lawsuits.
Now, if there are two things that are A-OK in my book, they are mints and caffeine. As a matter of fact, if I were to make a fairly comprehensive list of things I like, mints and caffeine would be on there somewhere. Not at the top, which would be reserved for stuff like Chekhov, Gonzo journalism, Taco Bell, drawing time, acting, and stories about Beatles songs, but nestled in the middle among Ric Flair, vitamins, and Papers I Wrote in High School But I Still Think They're Pretty Good, At Least For High School.
And "Peppermint Mints"! Repetition is way cute, guys. Not since "The Chippiest Chips Around" has there been a hotter slogan. Those pictures of kittens with those poorly-spelled Net-speak captions don't stand a chance with a market like this. Needless to say, I bought a tin immediately, as delighted as the minty stick man with my daydreams of the even later nights I can stay up reading or drinking with a palate more pleasing to the nose and tongue.
I checked the side after downing a few, to see how long I'd have to wait before maybe tossing on my shoes and going for a run. "One serving (3 mints) contains about as much caffeine (30 mg) as one half-cup of coffee," it read.
One half-cup. When I worked at the hotel, I once put away an entire press pot of coffee. I like toting quadruple-shot espresso drinks before important rehearsals or performances. This half-cup equivalent in breath-freshener form wasn't going to do the trick. The stick man smirked. I sighed in defeat. The only thing they could probably do is keep my heart beating if I were inches away from death.
The thought made my heart jump, as if these were really the mints I'd believed them to be, but in fact it was brought on a more shocking revelation. The only other item that can do that is none other than unicorn's blood.* My stomach twisted. Without even realizing it, I'd condemned myself to a cursed life. It didn't stop me from eating the rest of them, but I sure wasn't going running anytime that day.
No wonder they were so expensive.
*Well, maybe also an AED machine, but you don't see anyone packing those into any peppermint pellets. Think of the lawsuits.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Confusion and Contradiction in the Rec Center
I had to get a special guest card at the gym because they won't let you use the facilities after you graduate, and even with it, I can't work out there after 2 PM without paying two dollars. However, the girl swiping my card either didn't notice or ignored that fact, so I got in for free.
The second thing I noticed when walking towards the locker room were the three huge sheet cakes sitting on a table, "provided by the Student Senate" for the tenth anniversary of the Rec Center or something. I was pleasedly puzzled, because considering it's kind of supposed to be an establishment promoting healthy lifestyles, I'd think they'd at least have fruit plates or something, but the counterproductivity of the fact was far outweighed by my desire to have cake. I sat down to eat a slice after running, saw Jared's brother, and talked to him for a few minutes about how he should write his German essay on him not paying attention in class because he was distracted by the frisbee players outside.
Finally, when walking out, I noticed a list of activities scheduled in weekly segments for the first semester. One of the first was "Fantasy Football."
The second thing I noticed when walking towards the locker room were the three huge sheet cakes sitting on a table, "provided by the Student Senate" for the tenth anniversary of the Rec Center or something. I was pleasedly puzzled, because considering it's kind of supposed to be an establishment promoting healthy lifestyles, I'd think they'd at least have fruit plates or something, but the counterproductivity of the fact was far outweighed by my desire to have cake. I sat down to eat a slice after running, saw Jared's brother, and talked to him for a few minutes about how he should write his German essay on him not paying attention in class because he was distracted by the frisbee players outside.
Finally, when walking out, I noticed a list of activities scheduled in weekly segments for the first semester. One of the first was "Fantasy Football."
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The BBC Would Like to Issue a Clarification to the Previous Post
When I wrote the line "...Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye," my immediate thought was "Holy cats! Nixon?! What fucking generation did we belong to, anyhow?" Because, of course, if anyone it would most likely be Bush. Rachel and I were also two of the five-odd Libertarians in our high school, but while outspoken on social and economic issues, neither one of us were rampantly into Bush-bashing.
Then the literal truth of the line sidled up to the anachronistic humor, since we did not, in fact, make Scan-Tron pointilist masterpieces at all, with any political figure, past or present.
Then I realized how cool and hip and so punk it would have been if we really had turned our backs on criticism of the current administration and retrograded to picking apart the Nixon era. And then I figured, why stop there? What history teacher wouldn't kill to see a well-rendered grayscale of Benedict Arnold hanging from a mighty oak, or perhaps Rasputin's icy corpse by the frozen Neva riverbed? I'd give them an A just for that, regardless of what the test results were.
Another clarification: Unfortunately, regardless of how delightful a phrase it is, I did not actually think "Holy cats!" before pondering why on earth Nixon would be our rendering of choice.
Superbfairywren.blogspot.com regrets these errors in communication.
Then the literal truth of the line sidled up to the anachronistic humor, since we did not, in fact, make Scan-Tron pointilist masterpieces at all, with any political figure, past or present.
Then I realized how cool and hip and so punk it would have been if we really had turned our backs on criticism of the current administration and retrograded to picking apart the Nixon era. And then I figured, why stop there? What history teacher wouldn't kill to see a well-rendered grayscale of Benedict Arnold hanging from a mighty oak, or perhaps Rasputin's icy corpse by the frozen Neva riverbed? I'd give them an A just for that, regardless of what the test results were.
Another clarification: Unfortunately, regardless of how delightful a phrase it is, I did not actually think "Holy cats!" before pondering why on earth Nixon would be our rendering of choice.
Superbfairywren.blogspot.com regrets these errors in communication.
Monday, September 10, 2007
"Be excellent. Don't be average." *
"But you see, it's not REALLY a Snickers, because it has no nougat! It's an imposter. ImpostiSnickers."
Rachel punctuated her disdain by smacking her fist on the lunch table in our high school cafeteria. She purchased an Ice Cream Snickers, not for the first time, but had only then discovered why they'd not achieved post-lunch taste bud satisfaction. The so-called Snickers bars had the requisite chocolate, caramel, and peanuts, true, but made a costly error in the decision to substitute the ice cream for nougat.
"So?" another friend of ours asked.
"It's not a Snickers without the nougat! To be a Snickers, the nougat is inherent! Just like the chocolate, peanuts, and caramel! To exclude one of those makes the claim of being a Snickers null and void!" She defiantly tossed her hair over her shoulder.
"Wait, but if the components of "Ice Cream Snickers" in and of itself are ice cream, chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and no nougat, that makes it its own separate entity!" our other friend countered.
The table was silent for a minute. "No!" Rachel laughed.
"It doesn't matter," I added. "For all the big deal they make out of copyrights and trademarks, the Snickers name brings a certain expectation to the product. The Snickers label should bring, at the very least, the chocolate, caramel, peanuts, AND the nougat. Ice cream is the modifier, and should be added on top of everything else. Or, I guess, inside."
Rachel nodded approvingly, flattened out the wrapper of the misnomed frozen bar, and wrote IMPOSTER! on it in menacing black Sharpie. I bought one too, ate it, wrote the same, and we stapled them to our backpacks in solidarity against The Man. When they frayed and fell off, we bought new Ice Cream "Snickers" and again with the ebony letters sharply branded them IMPOSTER!, hanging them by staples to the gallows on our backs. We realized later that we'd only fed The Man by buying more, but we wrote it off as a necessary expense as a means for providing greater damage.
Sticking it to The Man was kind of our thing back in high school, when we became friends during her senior and my junior years. It manifested into a mutual decision to "become" punk on the way back from the first speech tournament of the year, chalupas in hand and Green Day on the tape player. She threw away her Blink-182 cds ("They say they're real punk, but they're pop, and it's because they cater to the mainstream instead of defy it. When they traded their drummers for someone who was more appealing, that was the end of their real punk days") and we made rainbow bead rave bracelets that read "Fuck Authority," without having been to an actual rave.
Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye. But we listened to plenty of NoFX and Green Day and Janis Joplin, used obscenities freely, shopped at thrift stores, and small-scale rallied against the district's ban on teaching the Communist Manifesto in class.
Yes, we knew that clothes didn't make the punk, and sometimes it was hard to say exactly what we were rebelling against, but going to school in the middle of Chesterfield while growing up on the outskirts, it was hard not to say "everything" and be pretty much on the mark. The Facebook group isn't so far off the mark when they say West St. Louis County is like the Orange County of Missouri. So even the acts of reading literature, not dropping triple digits at Abercrombie and Hollister, not attending Mizzou, and having parents that worked at jobs instead of the school store was in opposition to a large chunk of what the rest of the school stood for. We were against assimiliation, against the desperate clinging addictive desire to conform that reeked from so many of our peers like too much Hugo for Men cologne. We wanted to be original, and if we could achieve that, maybe we'd finally make some sort of impact. Damn it, The Man would not get away with denying us our nougat.
*-Mr. Bekemeyer, who taught AP Euro, and with it, the Communist Manifesto.
Rachel punctuated her disdain by smacking her fist on the lunch table in our high school cafeteria. She purchased an Ice Cream Snickers, not for the first time, but had only then discovered why they'd not achieved post-lunch taste bud satisfaction. The so-called Snickers bars had the requisite chocolate, caramel, and peanuts, true, but made a costly error in the decision to substitute the ice cream for nougat.
"So?" another friend of ours asked.
"It's not a Snickers without the nougat! To be a Snickers, the nougat is inherent! Just like the chocolate, peanuts, and caramel! To exclude one of those makes the claim of being a Snickers null and void!" She defiantly tossed her hair over her shoulder.
"Wait, but if the components of "Ice Cream Snickers" in and of itself are ice cream, chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and no nougat, that makes it its own separate entity!" our other friend countered.
The table was silent for a minute. "No!" Rachel laughed.
"It doesn't matter," I added. "For all the big deal they make out of copyrights and trademarks, the Snickers name brings a certain expectation to the product. The Snickers label should bring, at the very least, the chocolate, caramel, peanuts, AND the nougat. Ice cream is the modifier, and should be added on top of everything else. Or, I guess, inside."
Rachel nodded approvingly, flattened out the wrapper of the misnomed frozen bar, and wrote IMPOSTER! on it in menacing black Sharpie. I bought one too, ate it, wrote the same, and we stapled them to our backpacks in solidarity against The Man. When they frayed and fell off, we bought new Ice Cream "Snickers" and again with the ebony letters sharply branded them IMPOSTER!, hanging them by staples to the gallows on our backs. We realized later that we'd only fed The Man by buying more, but we wrote it off as a necessary expense as a means for providing greater damage.
Sticking it to The Man was kind of our thing back in high school, when we became friends during her senior and my junior years. It manifested into a mutual decision to "become" punk on the way back from the first speech tournament of the year, chalupas in hand and Green Day on the tape player. She threw away her Blink-182 cds ("They say they're real punk, but they're pop, and it's because they cater to the mainstream instead of defy it. When they traded their drummers for someone who was more appealing, that was the end of their real punk days") and we made rainbow bead rave bracelets that read "Fuck Authority," without having been to an actual rave.
Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye. But we listened to plenty of NoFX and Green Day and Janis Joplin, used obscenities freely, shopped at thrift stores, and small-scale rallied against the district's ban on teaching the Communist Manifesto in class.
Yes, we knew that clothes didn't make the punk, and sometimes it was hard to say exactly what we were rebelling against, but going to school in the middle of Chesterfield while growing up on the outskirts, it was hard not to say "everything" and be pretty much on the mark. The Facebook group isn't so far off the mark when they say West St. Louis County is like the Orange County of Missouri. So even the acts of reading literature, not dropping triple digits at Abercrombie and Hollister, not attending Mizzou, and having parents that worked at jobs instead of the school store was in opposition to a large chunk of what the rest of the school stood for. We were against assimiliation, against the desperate clinging addictive desire to conform that reeked from so many of our peers like too much Hugo for Men cologne. We wanted to be original, and if we could achieve that, maybe we'd finally make some sort of impact. Damn it, The Man would not get away with denying us our nougat.
*-Mr. Bekemeyer, who taught AP Euro, and with it, the Communist Manifesto.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Nomadism is the New Pink
"Rachel and I discussed it, and you're the best roommate ever. We see you for five or ten minutes at a time, then you disappear for a few days, and it's anyone's guess as to when we'll see you again." -Nick
At least fifteen people have asked me when I'm leaving. The answer is shrug, with doubts about having the will or the way to go at all. About the same number, give or take a few, have generously offered me their couches to sleep on while I'm still here. I'd be like a portable slumber party, but gone for work before everyone wakes up, with none of the awkward bleary-eyed good-byes. If I brought the Strip Twister board and had kitchen and bath privileges, I would be called something else.
Randy: Why don't you want to go anymore?
ME: I don't think I can afford it.
Randy: I don't really think you can, either. What's another reason?
ME: I'll miss my friends.
Randy: That's not a good reason.
Saturday is my last day at the coffeeshop. They hired someone new to replace me, so the only hours I would get would be last-minute desperation replacement shifts.
"There's nothing like being alone in a city when you're young and shit-broke." --Katie
Truer words.
At least fifteen people have asked me when I'm leaving. The answer is shrug, with doubts about having the will or the way to go at all. About the same number, give or take a few, have generously offered me their couches to sleep on while I'm still here. I'd be like a portable slumber party, but gone for work before everyone wakes up, with none of the awkward bleary-eyed good-byes. If I brought the Strip Twister board and had kitchen and bath privileges, I would be called something else.
Randy: Why don't you want to go anymore?
ME: I don't think I can afford it.
Randy: I don't really think you can, either. What's another reason?
ME: I'll miss my friends.
Randy: That's not a good reason.
Saturday is my last day at the coffeeshop. They hired someone new to replace me, so the only hours I would get would be last-minute desperation replacement shifts.
"There's nothing like being alone in a city when you're young and shit-broke." --Katie
Truer words.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
I can only write when that madman is staring down at me.
I was going to write something funny about how I moved all my stuff out of my apartment but I'm still in Kirksville, and now I'm a homeless bum living off the charity of friends, and I'm going to try and see if I can sleep in a different place every night. Then, as I was carrying my computer monitor to my car on the third carful of boxes I took to Rachel and Nick's, I saw a lady dumpster diving in the garbage bin behind the apartment, filling a baby carriage with salvageable rubbish, and I didn't really feel like it anymore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
