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Blogs

No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Friday, January 27, 2006

I’ve had to wrestle with these lettuce issues lately, because a bagger at the grocery put somebody else’s pre-washed, sliced pure iceberg in my bag (yes, with my taco shells). I’ve been eating it on sandwiches. But don’t think for a second I’m eating iceberg lettuce on tacos. I’m not a cretin!!

The Weekly World News has a very useful article on 10 ways to tell if your neighbor worships Satan. Number 5 is “They rarely laugh, or laugh under the wrong circumstances – for example, when a child is hit by a car.”

I’ve got this one neighbor; I don’t think that he worships Satan. But I am starting to suspect that he might be a prostitute. I just had a conversation with one of his gentleman callers who pushed my intercom buzzer by mistake, a very timid man who referenced not my neighbor’s name but very courteously described some sort of enigmatic “recent phone call.” I’ll keep you posted.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Regarding my new-found fame, here’s not one, but two (we must be syndicated!!) local newspaper stories featuring Sharon P. and I on the Annual Christmas Bird Count (known to cats as the Annual Christmas Bird Eat) in the Indiana Dunes. The South Bend Tribune, and the Fort Wayne News Sentinel. You’ll find a picture of me swaddled to the nines in the miscellany of military surplus that I can’t stop myself from purchasing out of pulp-paper catalogs that get shipped to me on a regular basis - the kind of military surplus that comes three in a pack, folded together in a plastic bag, smelling of mildew and with buckles covered with corrosion, (for cheap! Cheap! CHEAP!), and with names like Eric Taylor and Estoban-Morrocaz felt penned on the tags (Eric and Estoban, BTW, are real names I found on tags in a pack of green wool headsocks I bought).

In the photo, Sharon P is shading her eyes with mittens that she crocheted herself.

The writers of the stories use creative license in the captions underneath the photograph. We weren't actually "spotting" a bird. As I recall, I was either pointing out a bird that somebody else had already spotted, or I was misidentifying a tufted titmouse as a nuthatch to a disbelieving Sharon P.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

I've discussed this phenomena with lots of people. "Bums," they tell me. "It's because of bums." I've never gotten a good explanation, and if I push it too far, the person behind the counter at the shop or at the host stand at the restaurant starts getting suspicious and narrows his or her eyes and is like, "I think that you're a bum! Get out of here you bum, you can't use our bathroom!!"

I don't get it, because how is a bum using a bathroom any different from the non-bum's use? Unless it's because a bum might comb his hair in a bathroom, using the sink over the bathroom (I saw a guy doing this exact thing in the Harold Davis branch of the Chicago Library once, and I think he might have been a bum). But if local retailers don't want people combing their hair, then why do they put mirrors in their bathroom to begin with?

As I was saying, I had to take a leak real bad. I was on Belmont, just off the Redline. First I tried that philly steak place. I found the bathrooms, but they had this elaborate set-up. There was a sign that said you had to get a receipt, and then you had to show the receipt to the manager, and then somebody had to buzz you in, like you were entering lock-down or something? I was like, fuck this receipt and manager shit, and tried to open the bathroom door anyway, but it was LOCKED. So I was like, "Aargh!!" and then I ran out of there. Then I tried the Starbucks.

This is how I pulled it off: First I stood about ten feet away from the counter, and looked up at the menu and acted like I was going to buy something, but I couldn't decide what. If my act was any good at all, then it was conveyed that I couldn't decide what I wanted to drink until the uncomfortable pressure in my bladder had been alleviated. Then I approached the counter person, and asked if she had a bathroom. She said yes and pointed to it. The bathroom was unisex. It wasn't locked, but it was unmarked and placed next to similar looking decoy doors.

While I was using the bathroom, I analyzed my situation. I felt confident. So upon leaving, I walked by the counter without buying anything, trying to play it cool (see what you've done to me Chicago, with all your mean signs?). I kept expecting somebody behind the counter to shout something like, "hey, come back, you used our bathroom, now you have to buy something!!" And then, I had decided, I'd have to turn and shout "Suckers!" at them through the crowd and run out. But the counter people played it cool as I passed the counter. Then I was at the door, and nobody had shouted anything. I paused there, just a few seconds, as a fair-play thing, to give the counter people a chance to shout. But they shouted nothing, and I wasn't able to yell "Suckers!!" despite having played the bathroom situation brilliantly. Touche, Starbucks. Touche.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

For those who don't (and didn't) want to see my ear wax picture, I am providing an alternate picture as a means of making amends. This is me wearing my new pair of glasses that I bought when I was at a thrift store with Sharon P. They've got detailling on the huge plastic frames to conform with the aesthetics of some old dude who reads both Omni Magazine and Popular Science. The lenses are two different sizes and shapes. The right lens is really, really thick, and the left lens is thicker. And as you'll notice, my head, viewed through the glasses, is only three inches wide. I'd call my new specs floundervision (because it makes my head narrow, not because it makes both eyes move to the same side of my head), but one lens is wall-eye and the other is inescapably house of mirrors vision.

I found these on the counter at the Thrift Store on Lincoln. They didn't have a price on them, but I wanted them really bad. I took them up to the counter and asked how much, and I was nervous, because what if the counter person said $20? Would it really have been worth $20 to buy a pair of glasses that I can't see through and, in fact, made my vision worse.

So I trepidatiously approached the counter, and asked for a price. The counter person was like, "You want to buy those? " I was like, "yeah. How much?" Then the counter lady snorted like I was an idiot and told me she would sell them to me for one dollar, inclusive of sales tax. And it was like this: A MIRACLE.

Later I sat in Dinkels, spilling Earl Grey, missing a cinnamon role with my fork, giggling and generally refusing to take off my new glasses until I had a huge headache. So now I only wear them with respect, and for photo opportunities... and for calculating how much money I'm going to make selling crap on E-bay... and for doing my taxes.

Friday, January 13, 2006

I was on the sidewalk last night, squatting next to my bike locked in the rack outside Jim’s Fruit Round-Up on Kedzie, trying to stuff three bags of groceries into a backpack that already was mostly full with bike tools, binoculars, and the few UFO abduction books that aren’t mysteriously “missing” - (cover-up) - from the Chicago Public Library. The most terrifying part about the whole thing is that they (extraterrestrials, not the librarians) use this mind control device so you can’t even fight back. I mean sure, I probably shouldn’t judge all extraterrestrials by the few bad apples out there that are abducting people. All I’m saying is that if you try to beam me up into your ship from my bed through a closed window you’d better, (a) have my permission (why can’t we just talk about this?), or (b) keep your mind control device on the whole time – otherwise you’re going to get punched in your oversized black eye or your disproportionately large grey head, both I imagine would feel squishy on my extraterrestrial punching knuckles. I may have mentioned this before on this journal, but it bears repeating.)

So there I am on the sidewalk. I look up just for a second and I see this short elderly woman approaching me. It looks like she’s looking at me, and she’s smiling too. I don’t think much of it at the time, because who doesn’t look fondly upon some scraggly jerk squatting on the sidewalk trying to bicycle an impossible amount of groceries home? But I wish I would have given her a second glance, because her facial expression turns out to be important, after what happens next.

My shoulder is about at her hand level when she passes, and this is what she does, she reaches down and pokes me in the shoulder. So I spun around, and I was like, “why did you touch me!?” because I know a curse when I feel one. But she is already fifteen feet down the street, and I can’t believe it, so I look at her side that touched me, thinking maybe that she bumped me with the corner of her purse or something, but, looking at her, the only thing that could have bumped me were her stubby old lady fingers that curled out of her oversized black parka sleeve. And this wasn’t an unintentional bumping, anyway, it was a touch, then a push, I felt it all the way through my many not winter weight jackets.

So I’m like, “AARRGH! now I’m cursed!!” But then I remembered the old woman’s face, and wasn’t she smiling? So maybe it wasn’t a curse, maybe it was some sort of old woman blessing.

This is the subsequent good thing that happened to me: As I was bicycling with my impossible load of groceries, a fast food cup lid, sans cup, but with fast food straw halfway through the lid-hole, blew across my path and I totally ran over it with both wheels.

You see, Sharon P’s got this game when you get points for stuff you run over with your bike. For instance, chicken bone is 20 points (frankly I think that a chicken bone should be worth more. A flat cigarette pack is 5 points. Try looking for a chicken bone in the street – they really aren’t that easy to find. It’s Sharon P.’s game so she gets to do the point values, but I’ve been lobbying hard for the chicken bone for, like, months). That lid with the straw through it, it was twirling in the wind across the asphalt and it looked like a space station. I bet it was worth a lot of points.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Lately I’ve been gauging my level of emotional maturity by the amount of wool clothing I wear. I except suits from this measure.

Also, a few days ago a guy was telling me about hand-job massage parlors in Chicago. He says some advertise a limousine service from the airport in various papers. I don’t know if he has experience or not, but this is how he says it works: First, they give you a bath (giggling while they wash your balls - this is an important element), then they take you into this room and dry you off with a bunch of towels. Then they take you into different rooms, and do various bathing things to you (I wasn’t paying careful attention during the explanation of these parts of the process). Then, at the end, the masseuse asks you if they missed any spots. This is your chance. If you want a hand-job, then you’re supposed to take the masseuse’s hand and place it on your genitalia. Then they give you a hand-job.

“I don’t think I could ever get up the guts to do that,” I told the guy.

“Maybe, when they ask you if they’ve missed a spot, instead of putting their hand on your dick, you could just point to your own crotch or something,” the guy suggested as an alternative.

Which was both a thoughtful and hilarious thing to say, and seems to be about par for him - this dude is pretty cool.

But I realized later that my comment was more of an admission: no matter how much time I had during a layover, and how nice of a limousine ride it would be, I don’t think I’d ever really have the guts to go through with it. And I’d walk out the door of the massage parlor without a happy ending.

And as a younger man, I would have interpreted my own reticence to taking advantage of a well-recommended hand-job parlor as a self-indictment against my coolness and adventuresome spirit. Me just being a total square. But as I’ve thought it about these last few days, I’ve realized I’m okay with it, and myself, regarding this issue. And maybe this is part of growing up? That and all the wool.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

I made it back from Zen Camp. It was a terrible ordeal, but one through which I discovered an increased ability to prostrate myself and perform sweat shop labor in silence, communicating only with improvised hand gestures.

Do you remember me telling you about my current landlord? He’s really really old and has just a little pink hair that he wears all messed up on top of his head and he walks all hunched over. I’m pretty sure he’s not faking the hunched-over walk either, because it’s not like a really cool gangsta limp AT ALL.

The most important thing you need to know about my landlord is that I was in his apartment one time when he was eating dinner, which looked like a bowl of sour cream. He was spooning it into his mouth and when he talked to me I could see the white goop coating the inside of his mouth like a slimy-tongued catfish that just ate a bunch of sour cream. It was gross.

He’s got a whole complex of several large box-canyoned buildings he rents out, built in the Chicago style, which he defers maintenance on with an iron fist. I see him sometimes, tuft of pink hair fluttering in the evening alley breeze as he takes out a handkerchief to mop his brow like a really satisfied cow-poke on the range after fixing a hundred miles of barbed wire or something. But I’m not sure that any actual work ever gets done.