Tuesday, October 18, 2005

I realize today's lil story is going to sound, er, slightly odd-- but bear with me because I'm nothing if not slightly OFF MY ROCKER. I'm also full of cheer and goodwill.

** One of the above statements is true. One of them is not. YOU GUESS.

My 'slightly odd' statement revolves around some recurring dreams I've had. Recurring for the past three nights. In a row.

It goes something like this:

I'm in a car, then a plane. The transition is very smooth in the way that only dreams could be. Because you and I and Corndog Bullwinkle know it's near impossible for any plane-train-automobile adventure to be referred to as "smooth." "Bearable" - maybe. "Horrific"- more likely. But smooth... how I could only dream. <--- Very bad pun.

This whole time, I'm looking at what I think is a man (faces very blurry, but he/she looks tall and I'm making a generic assumption due to the nature of what I can see in his head) and though the face is super blurry, I can see quite clearly INTO HIS HEAD. Not with super-man like powers, but with the ability that one has to see what cartoon characters are thinking because there are giant white bubbles above their head spilling every single one of their stupid thoughts into the cold uncaring universe. Only there's no stupid white bubble. It's like the bubble is INSIDE his head. Like I took an MRI printout and said "Oh, look, there's a picture of a horse. He must be thinking about horses." But in THIS CASE the man is thinking about a RING.
A sparkly till death do us part RING. After seeing the sparkly ring in his head, I see him flash through mental thought pictures. I see him and another blurry-faced person on a couch together, watching movies. I see them holding a baby above their heads together. I see them sitting on a rocker looking old and decrepit together. Only, ONLY, he's sad about something. At this point in the dream I'm curious about why he's sad so I make myself into a fairy and I fly in his ear.

CUT ME SOME SLACK IT'S A DREAM.

Once I'm a fairy and I've flown in his ear we have some thought-picture conversations. I wish I could tell you what these thought-picture conversations were about, but I can't. It's like I read that part of my dream in a book. "They had thought-picture conversations." But the book doesn't tell you what they were about, only that they had them. Very annoying if you ask me. No idea how THAT author got published. Gah. <---making very Napoleon type sound.
So the next thing I know, I'm looking at some weird body of water. It's very calm, so I'm thinking lake. Though there's a very big beach, so it could be an ocean. Not that lakes don't have beaches, too. But here in Arkie-saw, lakes substitute pretty sandy beaches for mossy, swampy areas that are inhabited by the nation's largest icky amphibians. So them I'm in a house and there's all kinds of people around. Blurry faces, natch. GOD FORBID I GET A DIRECT CLUE. And then I see the airplane blurry guy and he's standing in the middle of a room next to blurry girl and then WHAM! He falls in a big deep pit. A big deep pit that not THREE SECONDS BEFORE was nowhere to be seen. Just swallowed whole. The blurry face people look around and seem to shrug, then go on about their merriment.

Uh. Yeah. Then I wake up.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Ahh. Super.

Saturday morning I awoke to the very loud and uber-annoying moto ring of my only communication link to the outside word. The Cell. I groggily flipped open the phone and tried to modulate my voice into one not so closely associated with a 50-year-old smoker. A smoker who happens to have a penis.
"Hello?"
"Good Morning Miss Birdsnest! I'm Captain McDouchey-Pants and my partner Lt. McDouchey-Pants and I are calling to confirm our 9am appointment to install your Comcast wireless internet and basic cable!"
"Ok."
"Will you be availabe to have your high-speed wireless internet and basic cable installed today at your previously scheduled time of 9am?"
"Uh, yeah."
I'm still moderately groggy and trying desperately to appear fresh and rested as opposed to tore down from my night of marathon "Friends" viewing and screwdrivers. The drinky kind, not the metally kind. Because normal adult females do not drink screwdrivers in the privacy of their own home, alone, while watching a third season marathon. They awake early, eager to start their day being fresh and cute and, if still single, begin The Prowl at coffee houses, newstands and cute breakfast shops.
Me? I'M A FUCKING REBEL.
So I click shut the phone and fall back onto my super delicious and comfortable bed. It's talking to me.* Telling me to go back to sleep. One does not have to put on clothes for the Comcast dweebs, it says. Just stay in bed until you hear them pull up. It will be fiiiine.
*Never listen when inanimate objects talk to you.
Five minutes later I convince myself that I do indeed have to get up because I would sooner cut off my arm than let strange people see my unmade bed. Forget reigning in the boobies, BED MAKING IS A PRIORITY, PEOPLE.
So I make the bed, pull back the hair, put on a bra (thank god, my knees were starting to chafe) and pull on yesterday's pants. Just as I'm swishing the oral fungi from my mouth, the Comcast truck pulls up. Then, as I'm unlocking the door, I see a second Comcast truck pull up.
I think, "Hnh. Weird."
I don't dwell on this thought long because Lilleeeee, my upstairs neighbor, is barrelling down the stairs so she can chill in the apartment with me while Comcast goes about its business installing shit. You know. To protect me. Because I'm a weenie.
The two McDouchey-Pants manage to carry themselves into the apartment while carrying wires, boxes and wearing tool belts with giant walkie-talkies that I assume are suppose to convey a sense of authority. A sense of "I TOTALLY know what I'm doing. I've got a TOOLBELT, duh."
I show them where the cable outlet is. It's in the bedroom closet. A completely ridiculous place for a cable outlet but I'm not the one who made that decision, now am I? So after showing them where the outlet IS and where it NEES TO BE they stare blankly at me, informing me that they just can't do that. I'll have to have written permission from my landlord.
"To install A CABLE OUTLET?" I ask.
Yes, I am informed. To install a cable outlet.
"Ok. Super. So why wasn't I told this ON THE PHONE when I made my appointment and every single ridiculous detail was examined and typed into some soul-less Comcast database??"
More blank stares.
"So what you're telling me is, I can't have cable unless I a) get written permission from my fuckwad landlord or b) decide to turn my bedroom closet into my very own entertainment center, complete with NO ELECTRICAL OUTLETS??"
"Er, yes."
SUPER.
So I think, screw the cable, I'll just get internet. I NEED the internet. I MUST HAVE the internet. So I tell Douche 1 and Douche 2 to install the wireless internet. I retreive my laptop and place it on the coffee table. Wherein Douche 2 looks at my pretty white macketymacmac and goes:
"Oh. They didn't cover those in training."
"What exactly do you mean 'they didn't cover those in training'?" I say.
"Well, um, I don't think our stuff works on those Apple computers."
"Uh huh. And again I ask, WHY WASN'T I TOLD THIS DURING MY TWENTY MINUTE PHONE CONVERSATION WITH YOUR SHORT BUS COMCAST REPRESENTATIVE?"
"Well, uh, maybe they didn't know?"
"Yes. I suppose it would be confusing for the rep to ask what type of computer I have and for me to answer 'Apple ibook'."
Douche 1 then decides to make his presence known. I mean, I'd been concentrating all my efforts on Douche 2. He was being ignored. How dare I.
So Douche 1 takes my laptop and tries to mess with settings, mess with buttons, MESS WITH ALL OF IT and then finally makes his Word of God Announcement:
"It's too old."
"My ass it's too old. I bought it in April of last year. That makes it less than two years old. I. Don't. Think. So."
"Nope, it's definitely too old."
So I fume and bite the inside of my mouth while Douche 1 gets on his beep beep walkie talkie to confer with Corndog Bullwinkle on the other end. Corndog Bullwinkle expresses his confusion over someone owning a Mac. He asks what operating system I have. I tell him. His conclusion? It's too old.
"IT'S NOT TOO OLD YOU DICKWEED. IT WAS UPDATED NOT SIX MONTHS AGO. TELL ME ONE MORE TIME IT'S TOO OLD. TELL ME."
So then Douche 2 has the brilliant idea that they can go ahead and install the cable and set up the wireless explaining that maybe I can find someone who knows how to set up a mac on Comcast internet. I stre incredulously at him, TOTALLY AMAZED THAT THOSE WORDS HAVE COME OUT OF HIS MOUTH.
"Maybe I misunderstood, but- AREN'T YOU THE ONE THAT'S SUPPOSED TO KNOW HOW TO INSTALL THE FUCKING INTERNET??"
"Well. Um."
Yeah. This is how my morning started. And let's not even TALK ABOUT the incident involving how my fuckwad landlord moved the rusted out water heater from her upstairs back porch to the 2-foot wide "alley" behind my apartment, placing it DIRECTLY UNDER MY WINDOW. Don't you worry. I called their answering service and made sure that Cody the Super Duper Answering Service Operator took down every. single. word. of my message. A message in which I used the phrase "fucking cunt" a total of four times. Why? Because I was SUPER EXCITED to see how I am now a Burger King drive-through. Please, give the fucking homeless rejects in my neighborhood a STEP STOOL into my WINDOW you FUCKING CUNT.
So anyway. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Re: Freaktastic

So lately I've had this obsession with Maine.

Yes, the state.

The really cold one in the very northeast corner. The one where it snows like, oh, I dunno, FOR YEARS without cease.

But I want, no, NEED to go there. I've never been there, so I can't say it's because I want to smell the special Maine smell or see the special Maine shore. It's not like I've got some poignant memory embedded in my brain from days long past.

Nope. But the NEED, the URGE is so strong I almost took off work last week to drive 24.4 hours to Portland, Maine. I also looked at flight schedules, bus schedules- I even researched renting horses for the trip.

Ok, the last one's a lie. But the rest are true. $368 for a plane ticket. $324 for a bus pass. 9 tanks of gas (round trip) at $35 a pop = $315.

But I fought it. Fought the urge. And the urge has now calmed down. But I can still feel it at the base of my back, sometimes pushing up to tingle between my shoulder blades.

It's horrible, this feeling. I want to go. But what THE FUCK IS IN MAINE????

LOBSTER???

I DON'T EVEN *LIKE* LOBSTER THAT MUCH.

Ugh.

I so wish we got memo's. It would look like this:


To: Birdie
From: PowersThatBe
Re: Maine Tingle

It has come to our attention that you may be experiencing some precipitous leanings, commonly referred to as "urges" involving a trip to Maine. These leanings were planted in your spine so that you may take a trip of self-exploration and meet an old man in downtown Portland by the name of Big Sam who will teach you the meaning of life.

We at ThePowersThatBe hope this memo will clarify the "urges" you have been experiencing. Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Bill Gustenstaf
Assistant to ThePowersThatBe
Starry Walkway, Universe 01202355-8