Tuesday, August 30, 2005 R U hiring???? LOL
This is a story I heard second-hand, when I came in for an afternoon shift today: Today at work the boss was yelling at one of my fellow receptionists. The crackdown against reading at the desk had returned, which is a shame, because I've been kind of down lately, and reading fashion magazines when I had a spare minute was a key component of "making the workday bearable" challenge. Evidently, there is always something to do, and if I or my co-workers ever think there is nothing to do, we should call our boss. I'm gonna. "Hello, boss? I am SO bored right now."
A second crackdown has to do with food at the reception desk: the boss is against it. My co-worker had left a bag of snackfood in the lower portion of the desk, and the boss saw it. "Are these your cheetos?" she asked. "Yes, I left them there yesterday and forgot to take them home," my co-worker said.
"Well! They're mine now," the boss said, and she took my co-worker's cheetos.
Confiscated them. Maybe my co-worker will get them back, when she's shown that she can handle cheetos. Did you hear that, internet? A grown woman took another grown woman's fucking cheetos.
Anyway: I am an administrative assistant with a heart of gold. I have a stupid work ethic, and work hard even when it will do me no good and will fail to buy me one glance at the latest magazines in a slow time. I show up, even when scared and sleep-deprived. I have a pleasant phone manner, and I don't steal the inventory. Who would like to hire a nice girl? posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/30/2005 07:37:00 PM
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Monday, August 29, 2005 Wake up, wake up, wake up
It's the 31st of the month. I've got my September bus pass, and the natural order of things is being restored.
While I was waiting to get home today, a guy with a thick Eastern European accent was asking various bus-related questions. He was asking obscure, unanswerable stuff, though. "When will bus be here? Has bus already passed?" No. Is no bus. Is goddamned lie. Finally, after half an hour, three busses arrived at once. I said, "Jesus!" and the young man said, "We are so lucky!"
Now I'm eating candy, and in a few hours, it will be time for roller derby practice. I hope once again that a kind soul will have a spare wristguard for me, because I've been bad about going out of my way to get another one. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/29/2005 04:06:00 PM
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Sunday, August 28, 2005 house
The kids are back from tour, and the house is full again. The cats and I are going around sniffing everything, alternately purring happily and becoming alarmed. I think I'm going to go and have a piece of the traditional welcome back sheet cake for breakfast. I would like one with a flower, but we ate those first. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/28/2005 11:16:00 AM
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Friday, August 26, 2005 FYI
Not having a car is the new being vegan. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/26/2005 09:11:00 AM
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Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Once I get you up there
In the brilliant comic Life in Hell, Matt Groening has a strip called "What's your deal?" about the bargains people make with themselves to get through the day. I have so many deals. I am a used car salesman. I am a horsetrader. One sweet little arrangement I've had going for the past couple weeks is this: If I keep it together and keep going to work and going out to socialize, then I don't have to clean the house. It is a terrible deal. I walked down this morning and was like, "When did we get a gravel kitchen....oh, God."
You've got to admit, though, I've been holding up my end of the bargain. Last night Tracy and I took Bus Challenge to get to the blogger happy hour, and because every bus schedule, route map, and destination indicator in this town is a GODDAMNED LIE, we arrived after the hour was no longer technically happy. The bloggers were, though! They are nice people, and they enjoy time spent in bars. I know things about them, they know things about me. I think I told them that next time we would have it at my place. I stayed and stayed, and when it was time to leave, I joined the splinter group going elseswhere to harass a man from the internet that I had never met. In his workplace, no less. Do we fuck around? Why, no! (We do not.)
Hi, Blogtimore! Hi, hi! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/24/2005 08:49:00 AM
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005 The things you do for those children, Anna Louise
Tonight I went to a roller derby meeting, and that was hard. I am willing to risk injury and to knock others down, but I hate meetings more than most things. We were all asked to join comittees, which makes sense, but I joined the sponsorship comittee, because even though it involves unpleasant tasks such as cold calling, it's probably the comittee that's least likely to get together and have long talks amongst itself. Avoidant Sally should be my derby name. IF you work for a business that would like to sponsor a Baltimore roller derby team, or if you know someone who does, you let me know. We need you, in order to electrify you with sports entertainment.
It was a good day today. I walked home from work instead of taking the bus (save abuck or two), and the weather was almost decent enough to support it. The meeting was mericifully short, and several people were kind to me. Later, Tracy and I applied a thin coat of paint to the town. Thin, because we have things to do tomorrow. Cross your fingers. I had a great idea for a series of books aimed at smart fuck-ups like myself, but we'll see how that goes. I lie down for a while, and the urge passes. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/23/2005 01:52:00 AM
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Monday, August 22, 2005 Bless your metal hearts
The only ones reading this site lately are lonely robots looking for new ways to promote online gambling sites. Hi, robots! Hi! I don't blame your human brethren for giving it a rest: after content challenge, I was a little tapped out. I still am, but I will change. I will get a work ethic and learn to budget my time, and I will begin flossing right and left. No one will know me anymore, I'll be so wise and good. They'll think I ran away and left an imposter in my own place.
There's few places to go but up. The other day one of my co-workers came into the back room, where I was eating my lunch. She looked a me, and looked away quickly, and finally she said, "Are you eating a mayonaise sandwich?" I was shocked. What a question. I told her, NO, I was eating an onion roll with cream cheese, because that was all there was in the house that morning. Total latchkey kid meal.
I'll tell you, though, I haven't been writing because there's basically one thing I want to write about right now, and if I was going to get all obsessed, I should have done it two weeks ago while the sympathy iron was hot. I'm like a twelve year old in love, though. When is his birthday, what's his sign? What's his favorite color, and which teams does he support? If I brought his favorite food for my lunch, would he sit beside me and trade? Did he follow me home after all, or had he been hiding in the yard? Was he as tall as I told the cops, or did I inflate his height in my mind because I was frightened?
Let's echo middle school some more: Kurt Vonnegut. There's one Kilgore Trout story, I think in Breakfast of Champions, but maybe not, about a planet that is so teeming with life, the people who live there crusade and work tirelessly to drive species to extinction. When they finally get one, they have a big party to celebrate and yell "Gilgongo!" which, in the language of their planet, means extinct, gone forever.
It's become one of the mindless little chimes that sound in my head ( I have one million of them.). My old student ID, so useful for fraudulent discounts? Gilgongo! That was one I just thought about the other day. It keeps giving and giving, my incident.
While I try to think that I am keeping things cas, I can look and see how a part of me is laboring constantly to bring the big it up in conversations where it is not strictly required. Like now. You ain't need to hear this, internet.
The worst part is my own stupid head. There is a part of me that wants to freak the rest of me out and tries to drive it into a panic. The other day it rained, and when I walked home from the bus stop in the evening, it felt a little like twilight. The bad part of my head began to taunt the rest with, "What happens when it starts getting to be fall and getting dark earlier and you have to walk home in the dark? What will you do then?"
What do you think I'll do, idiot? Don my burqua of barbed wire and electric eels? Fly home? I'll walk home in the fucking dark. Is there any other answer? No. Stupid, stupid, bad head. Why try and get me riled?
I'm going to retire for the night now. It's late, and there's somebody good waiting for me. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/22/2005 01:16:00 AM
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Thursday, August 18, 2005 Like a bad pizza burn
Today I think I'm too tired for roller derby, and it is so sad. Last night was the first closed practice I'd gone to, and it nearly killed me. One of the sponsors rented the rink for us, so instead of skating around on our own at the same time and dodging children, we did drills upon drills. One day, I will have thighs like mighty sequoias, and I won't go get a beer before practice, either, so I might be even better at not doing things like rolling over my own fingertips when we do the drill where we have to touch the floor. A girl got knocked out for a few seconds when were playing tag after practice was over. She seemed OK, eventually. We're ordering helmets soon.
In other news of health and safety, I got to go to the dentist today. I'd waited two months for the appointment, but I'm rising in the hierarchy of the sliding-scale clinic now, because the next appointment is in mid-September, practically tomorrow. I like the dentist, because she wears really reasonable eyeliner, and she knows that dental patients are basically flawed souls who aren't going to follow her orders, so she doesn't try to use the brutal sarcasm and scare tactics of previous dentists. Still, she told me not to pick at the goo that's stuck to my tooth and the surrounding area. I'm one step closer to eating with the left side of my mouth. Under that assumption, the future holds twice as much candy. I can't have nice teeth. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/18/2005 04:40:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005 Friday catblogging!
For various reasons, I have a tattoo of a black cat Halloweening (family word, means what you think) on my upper arm. People ask what it means, and sometimes I tell them, and sometimes it doesn't seem worth it, because the thing it means for me is that 18 year olds are impulsive. A few weeks ago a man that Tracy and I were involved in a game of pool with was drunk, and he kept grabbing my arm and meowing and hissing at the tattoo. I guess he thought it was a real cat, and he was trying to make it even madder than it already seemed to be. I say he kept doing it, because he did it twice, and each time the meowing and hissing went on for thrity second intervals. The duration! The frequency! He will be asked to pose for an inspirational office poster for DEDICATION. He will be pictured standing triumphantly atop a rocky crag at sunset, pestering my arm.
Later I told Tracy that the tattoo is like a mood ring that reflects whatever my emotional state is in a given moment, and whenever my current mood is anything other than "reeeow!", the image will change to something more suitable, but that this has never happened. Now my personal terror alert feels higher, but I keep checking my arm, and the tattoo is still just a cat, so things pretty much have to be OK.
Earlier today I was standing outside my workplace, waiting for one of the keyholders (keyholders: gatekeepers:demons in the fridge--get it? No? If it's too loud, you're too old.) and bitching about aspects in common of our dumb lives with one of my co workers (She hates the bus!) when the hulking lunatic who haunts the block near my work came pacing by, scowling. "Suck DICK!" he told the village. My co worker and I agreed: it was going to be one of those days. Later, I had to go to the nearby bank and get change, and I usually love that ritual, because I get rockstar treatment at the bank, but I failed the "avoiding the possibly dangerous lunatic during a one-block journey" challenge so bad. I zigged and zagged, and although he was not following me, everywhere I went, there he was. I thought I'd outsmarted him on the was back, because I was going around the long way. Just as I was about to turn the corner and congratualte myself, he popped up again, in all his red-faced toeheaded glory. He was using his regular voice and asking someone for change, but I still freaked out (Rrrrreow! Puff puff puff!) and practically ran back to the beauty parlor.
Last night, what turned out to be my final night of housesitting for David was interrupted when a stranger rang the doorbell at 3 a.m.. When Tracy anc I came down and stared through the window at him, he said, "Wrong house, y'all. Wrong house." I couldn't figure out if he was mistaken for real, or if he was trying to pre-crime. That ruined sleep for a while, and I dragged all morning at work today.
Yesterday, I tried to hand a man a haircut card. "What's this?" he asked. I explained that once he got ten stamps, his eleventh haircut was free. "That is terrifying!" he said with disdain. I continued being polite to him, but I stopped smiling. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/17/2005 11:21:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Zombies are so played out, but not in my heart
Yeah, I didn't want to give anyone's mom a heart attack, so until I saw it reported on another internet, I decided not to mention that the big mugging night turned into a total blogger meetup. Leah's post as well as Tracy's tell about how we all acted like zombies were coming, since the dude accosted us on my doorstep and then got my housekeys when he got my purse. Crude barricades: your best defense. Messy Hair Girl and JWER act as though the end of content challenge is a license never to post again, but the internet doesn't reveal how they came and brought us supplies when we were afraid to go out, and sat around with us 'til all hours of the night until we were too exhausted to keep ourselves worked up. dooriya came all the way from Iowa (by way of other places) to see what Baltimore was all about, and I think between the bars, the dancing, the restaurants, the quirky little stores, the buses, and that night of huddling around and holding improvised weapons, she got a pretty good taste. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/16/2005 08:50:00 AM
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Monday, August 15, 2005 Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far
Last night at roller derby practice, we did a drill where six or eight of us skated in a single file line while one more wove through the line in a serpentine motion. When she got to the front, she had to race the person at the head of the line around the rink and then rejoin the line in the back. Then the person who'd just been racing around once had to thread through the line and race the front person. Those roller girls weren't playing around. By the end of the drill, I had completed the cycle three times, and my legs only supported me out of habit.
Today I'm sore from that, and kind of tired, still. I couldn't get to sleep for a while last night. In hindsight, it was dumb to have a giant Coke-flavored Slurpee at 10 pm. Yet, in double hindsight, so? Sleep when I'm dead. No, I need to take it easy soon. Maybe today. This past week was packed, and I'd be more exhausted yet if most of it wasn't so good. One out of town guest has been staying since about Tuesday, and more came and went over the weekend. It's nice to show people around town, although comically difficult sometimes. "We're taking the bus again?"
"Yes, if it ever appears."
"When is it supposed to come?"
"Three times an hour, but that's obviously a lie."
Then I got mugged a few days ago, and that was pretty rough. I'm OK, but sadly, so is the guy who attacked me. Also, he has my three favoriite shades of lipstick, the book that I agonized over paying full price for at Atomic earlier in the week when Tracy and I were showing his friend the sights of Hampden (Fiskadoro, by Denis Johnson. I hope the mugger is enjoying it, because I certainly had been.), one single roller derby wrist guard that I forgot to take out of the bag after the practice before last, my i-pod (I told Tracy that this is one way to get his music out to a wider audience.), and some large black sunglasses that make one look sort of like a starlet and sort of like a bug.
And my bus pass. He has that, too.
People told me that my purse was probably in a trashcan or some bushes with the valuables removed. This was less comforting than they'd probably intended. I had to work early the next day, so I didn't have time to pick around the neighborhood hunting for my personal effects like so many Easter eggs. In some ways, I'd rather picture my mugger (who PS I can SO identify if they ever catch him, which will be never) curled up on a windowseat somewhere, reading my book and listening to my music. He's wearing my prettiest lipstick, and somehow, feelings in him that have been dormant for years are beginning to arrive again like new green sprouts. He turns from his life of crime and gets a job as a receptionist in a beauty parlor, because his heart has cracked open.
I don't know what the hell he's going to do with a single wrist guard, though. I guess that's his problem. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/15/2005 08:32:00 AM
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That's the breaks, that's the breaks
My dogs is barkin'. So tired. Too tired. This will have to do for tonight. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/15/2005 01:47:00 AM
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Thursday, August 11, 2005 freak out let it go
My life has been a parade of special occasions for several months now, and what kind of asshole worries about spending money on a special occasion? Not this asshole! This asshole is the one who uses the pocket calculator for simple math. This asshole is definitely not the asshole who keeps a running tally in her head of her spending level vs. her account balances. This asshole is also the asshole who left her ATM card in an ATM machine on a corner in Fell's Point a few months ago (point: what's with Baltimore that it didn't manage to steal my card that day?) , so spent the month between losing that card and receiving a new one just merrily charging things on credit, because it was a special occasion.
So, lately I've been the asshole who's been like OMG I can't buy shoes because I spent all my money on candy. I HAVE NO SHOES. Shit shit shit.
And then I met a man with no feet.
Well, I did, because it's Baltimore, and you're always meeting amputees around here, but not recently. Today, though, I paid off my credit card, and I'm feeling a little broke, but substantially less doomed than I have been. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/11/2005 12:35:00 PM
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Monday, August 08, 2005 Technology: one woman's journey
History is now: not only am I the only one home, but all my housemates are gone, including my summer housemate, her twelve year old sister (who has been visiting for a week and inspiring everyone to remain fully dressed when in common spaces), and the large, joyful, bitey dog that has been keeping the cats in their place. I know at least one of them went to weaving camp, and I bet that's where they all are. It sounds like them, and I can't keep track.
My housemates' angrier cat just licked my head and purred for a few minutes. I'm not sure if it's because I fed her, because my head tastes like delicious hair dye (I'm more brunette than usual today), or because she thinks I made the dog go away. Now she's glaring at me as I type about her. You see, this is a valuable lesson. Sometimes people resent it when they become characters on your weblog.
See, too, these themes that I'm writing about? Sisters? Cats? Resentment? Weaving?
This is one key way to tell if a woman has been using your technology. Footprints in the butter and so forth. My sister (actual blood relation, not "ya-ya" or "of the traveling pants") writes at length on women getting into the technology on her own fine personal homepage, but I thought--sorry, it's lady's day: I felt I should share what it is like to be near technology when you are a girl. In keeping with today's theme, it is a first person personal essay.
(This is the start of the essay down here. I have put references to technology and related attitudes in bold-face type.)
Sometimes I think about making a t-shirt that says "I don't really identify as a receptionist" and wearing it to work, but I think it would lead clients to ask me questions about my hopes and dreams, and up with that I could not put. I prefer to remain a little island of reception in a sea of swirling hair and refuse to pay attention to my surroundings. There are times, particularly when there's a lot of stylists working and the phone rings constantly, that I pull out the pocket calculator that I use to add up the totals when I close, and I add numbers such as 13 and 16 together to give the customers the price of their products or services when they come to pay. I know that I star in anecdotes in a certain type of household. "And that girl at the cash register! My God, her highlights were exquisite, but talk about dumb!" Ask me how I know about such households, such anecdotes. One always has to find innovative ways to shame her family. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/08/2005 08:40:00 PM
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Saturday, August 06, 2005 2,2,2 much
Last night I went to a wild party, so I've been walking around today with my head all stuffed with rags and thinking "This must be what it feels like to be a regular person." It's unpleasant, but deserved.
On the way back from party central this morning, I saw a woman get on the bus barefoot. She seemed very comfortable. Her toenails were painted a delicate shade of pink, and I marvelled for most of the ride at how she was able to pay enough attention to her feet to decorate them and yet disassociate herself from them enough that she was able to put them on the floor of the bus without blinking. She did take a break and put them up on the seat next to me for a while. Her gentleman companion was wearing a yellow rubber bracelet, but I wasn't able to tell what he was supporting. It probably said "GERMS". posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/06/2005 09:02:00 PM
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Friday, August 05, 2005 button up your overcoat
Earlier today when I was getting coffee with David, the sound system in the coffee shop played "Maggie May," and it was too bad, partly since that song has irritated me ever since a high school friend pointed out to me that the protagonist of the song is dumping all this stuff on Maggie after pulling her out of a sound sleep, and partly because that's a song that they play on the radio when summer's over. That's it?
No damn way. There's almost an entire August to go.
Typing in real time is the kiss of lame, but you, the internet, deserve to know that it's storming right now. It's bright out, and the rain is knocking the petals off the awful neighbors' white crepe myrtle tree. Somehow, I'm the only one home. I keep telling myself that after daily content challenge subsides, I'm going to have work your ass off month.
The idea is that it doesn't matter whether the work is efficient or achieves any results, but I have to work hard at something every chance I get. I have my doubts. It's harder to maintain the letter of the law in something like that, and I don't do so well in things that require strength of spirit. The non-efficiency stipulation might make it easier, though. I think we all know (because we all closely follow my dumb life) that I can't work towards a goal and meet it. Everything good that comes to me comes around sideways because I did things that I never dreamed would bring about the results they did.
Content challenge was a nice time. I'd keep it up, because it was permission to post every day without feeling like I had no life, but it's hard to structure one's life around the internet. It was a nice drunken 4th of July idea.
Thanks to my fellow challengers, whether you were there in the smoke-filled room that began it or whether you came in late and still have to post for a few more days to maintain your honor.
I may see you tomorrow, or I may sleep the hell in. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/05/2005 07:31:00 PM
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Thursday, August 04, 2005 almost finished
Soon some friends are going to take the "pick my carless ass up" challenge and take Tracy and I to Roller Derby, and after that, it's time to show people what it looks like when a girl falls down. I have nothing but dertermination and gusto, nothing including balance. I get by, though. I am a trooper. I think my friend might be bringing me padding, which has been a long time overdue.
My hair looks like Robert Smith's today, if Robert Smith had cheerful highlights. This is what comes of sleeping on it when it's wet. I'd imagine I'll intimidate my fellow roller girls. They'll be like, "Look at her hair! She has nothing to lose, and she makes her own rules."
Last night a band from West Virginia was staying in the house, and they loved our city ways, and they kept saying that Baltimore was a great town. They're right, of course, but they came to the decision pretty quickly. They wrote a very nice note when they left, and spelled everyone's name correctly.
My summer housemate's little sister just came and gave me a seashell from Assateague. One of my other housemates only refers to that place as "Island of the Ponies," and when we first mentioned it to him, he thought we were making it up to tease him. I haven't been in a couple years, but I told him that the last time I'd gone, I'd seen a wild pony eating garbage from a garbage can, and his face lit up, but you could see the war inside him, and he said I was just telling him what he wanted to hear. I guess it does sound a little implausible.
Content challenge is nearly over. I should probably think of a grand finale for tomorrow, but I don't know if that's my style. I need to think of something else to do, too, once the challenge is over. I may have to plan the August "drink in the park" meet up, or maybe I'll devote myself to doing productive things to improve my life. Or I may sniff glue. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/04/2005 05:58:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005 Short and sweet, y'all
Today is the day I became a woman, because I finally have my monthly bus pass. I'm so excited. Bus, metro, light rail. I own this town. Own it. I've written my name in on its inner lining in permanent marker.
The best part is, I did some math, and I'm spending like, five dollars more a month than I would if I just bought a one-way ticket every time (a day pass is more expensive than two one-way rides, because LUNATICS are the only people employed at the higher levels of the Maryland MTA.)
On the other hand: sometimes, when I have to, I take the bus even in my leisure time, and my calculations were based on riding to and from work, so maybe the pass will pay for itself after all. Beyond that, the feeling of being nickel and dimed is far more acute when one is dealing in actual dimes and nickels, and the fate of one's entire morning depends on whether one can locate thirty cents in the cracks in the living room chairs and the pockets of one's dirty laundry in the next 20 minutes. Ugh. No more of that for me. I've reached a new pinnacle of self-care.
Now, I have got to GO, because this is Wednesday, suckers, and on Wednesdays I paint the town. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/03/2005 07:21:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 02, 2005 Rest easy, knowing the truth
My job is probably the most fun job available to a human being and all, but sometimes people come in and get so excercised about their low, low-priced haircuts that I can't relate to anything they've ever experienced or felt.
Today a woman came in, dragging an unresponsive husband-figure, looking for an appointment. I asked him what his name was so I could write it in my book, and he and his wife were completely non-plussed. Finally, he was able to tell me his name, and even spelled it, which I thought was an unnesscessary flourish. I don't think anyone had addressed that man directly in years.
Anyway, he had a haircut, and I didn't really get too emotionally involved in the process. I rang him up and he and his wife left. Twenty minutes later, she was back, as I knew she would be. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the haircut, but I used my preternatural powers of reception to diagnose her as a monster. She refused to come into the shop to make her greivance. Instead, she stood on the stoop, holding the door open, letting all the damn cold air out. I let her do that for a while, until she began to make more and more agitated noises and motioned me over by quirking her index finger at me. Menials love finger gestures. It is the only language we speak. I am so glad I am not an alpha.
She told me a long story, in the first person, about a terrible woman who was upset with a haircut and enjoyed swearing. Then she dropped the door on me. "Ooh!" she said, by way of apology.
She eventually dragged her husband back in. I imagine she'd tethered him in the shade before, with a small bowl of lukewarm tap water and a rawhide chewie. She made further complaints about the haircut. "I'm not usually a bitch," she said. "But I am going to be a bitch right now."
I knew a secret that she didn't know, and I'll share it with you now like it was the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe: that woman is usually a bitch. She's a bitch on the tennis court, a bitch at Ann Taylor Loft, a bitch when she's getting botoxed, and a bitch when she snores and thrashes under her maribou sleep mask. She is a bitch when she excuses herself to powder her nose, a bitch when she is driving her monstrous SUV, a bitch to the maid, and a bitch at the PTA. She is a bitch when she finds a carb in her soup, and a bitch when she cries alone at night as her log-like husband slumbers in one of the guest rooms because her snoring keeps him awake. She is a bitch at thousand dollar a plate dinners, a bitch at the dog groomers. She is a total fucking bitch to the au pair.
She may not, in her heart, realize what her vocation is, but that only means that she needs to self-actualize and understand the full nature of her soul, which is the soul of a full-time 24/7 bitch.
Anyway, I gave her her 'leven dollars back, and finally, justice was served. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/02/2005 10:21:00 PM
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Monday, August 01, 2005 brakes on a bus, brakes on a car, breaks to make you a superstar
Today one of the dudes who hangs out on the next block over from where I work, if he had a livejournal would have put "Current mood: off my medication. FUCK you FUCK fuck FUCK GRAFLLE SNARL argle BLARGH!" I wish he had a livejournal. Last winter, one of my co workers called the cops on him, because he was down in the bathroom punching walls and yelling. The cops were like, "Oh, that's Mike. We'll come get him."
Until a few days ago, I didn't realize that the guy who beat up the bathroom was the same guy I see hanging around all the time when I go to the bank or the corner deli, because he's not wearing a hat anymore, and because the guy I always see isn't usually yelling. Then the other day one of the stylists and I were talking about a different local dude who is less than coherent, and she mentioned this guy. She told me he'd attacked people in the past, which I hope is just folklore. "You should be careful," she said. "You especially..." and she trailed off, because the reason that I especially should be careful is that what the man was yelling at the bathroom about that time was the mingling of the races and how much he disapproves of that, and because all Charles Village knows my bidness, including that guy, because I commit hand-holding and similar acts in public, but it just wouldn't do to finish that sentence out loud.
Today, though, the dude just seemed to be free stylin', or if he wasn't, he was doing a terrible job of staying on message. I got a little worried when we were briefly just across the street from each other around noon, and he was bellowing and bright red, but I don't think it was anything personal, and I'm not sure he even saw me. I got worried again when I heard him out in the street when I was closing today, and I hesitated a little when it was time to leave. I didn't want to be sitting at the bus stop and have that guy pop up and get enraged. I told my work buddy (not the one who couldn't finish the sentence) that I wasn't sure I wanted to go out there. "Well, I don't hear him," she said, and that was all it took to put my mind at rest. Of course! I'd hear him coming. If only everybody who was potentially violent also yelled all the time! As my housemate said when I told him the story, "He's practically wearing a bell."
No one accosted me at the bus stop, and then things got better and better, because my darling 61 came and picked me up. Unlike the 3, whose schedule is an outright lie, the 61 is rare but consistent, and it always seems to come through for me just when I need it the most. Naturally, the 61 is one of the lines I think the city is going to cut all together this fall, so my ride was bittersweet.
As I was walking back towards the house, I pass a guy on the street, and he was grinning, so I smiled back. Once we were a step or so past each other, he turned around and said, "Miss!" I turned around. "Do you want to see the prettiest baby in the world?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
He took out two envelopes of photos and showed me all of them. "That's my son. Here he is sleeping. Look at all that hair! He was born with all that hair. Here he is about to cry. Twenty days old, can you believe it? He's getting so big. Isn't that the prettiest baby in the world?"
I said it was. The best of the pictures showed the man holding the baby, who looked so tiny in his arms. The man was looking at the camera straight on and biting his lip, shocked at the luck he had had to conceive the prettiest baby in the world. He showed me every picture he had. Then he thanked me for looking and we said goodbye and smiled. I guess he went home to see the prettiest baby in the world. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/01/2005 07:53:00 PM
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