The world’s best pick up line that only takes 7 minutes to deliver…

I love being downtown sometimes. I just meet the most interesting people. Speaking of which, the other day I was walking down the street and two gentlemen in maybe their mid-to-late 40s were approaching from the other direction. One of them bent over and scooped up some snow in his hand. To throw at his friend? Nope. He threw the snowball at me. I’m going to try to quote him for a while, but to get the full effect try reading it at a quick pace and slurring the words in your head a bit.

“Oh, ha, sorry. I just had to, you know. Hi there my name is Malcolm and I was just, ya well what’s your name then?”
“My name is Christy.”
“Ah Christy yes that’s great. Nice to meet you. Wow! Your eyes are really blue, Wow. I think if I was walking down the street and you were walking like this [puts his head down as if looking at his feet] I could look up at you and see right through to – up to the sky it’d look just like that. Has any one ever told you that before?”
“Well, no…”
“Really, Wow, get out! [he said this with a flail of the wrist] oh ya, but I’m – I’m not gay or anything, everyone keeps asking me that, though and I think that is so crazy. So are you gay?”
“No, I’m not”
"Oh great, not that I, I mean I… well you know I just moved here from Seattle and so I’m kinda new here and I - I’m not drunk or anything, but that guy – WHEW! [which he said pointing to the friend he had been walking with, who had never even paused in his steps, which and made me wonder if they even really knew each other] ya, I tell you what, you’re the first girl that’s really talked to me and I’m Malcolm can I get a hug from you?”

[Okay, at this point I’m ready for the conversation to be over, not that he’s not a very nice son of God and all, but really. So armed with the knowledge that I was about 20 yards away from the safety of the front doors of my office building and knowing that hugs generally come either at the beginning of the conversation or the end I decided to give it a shot. I mean, if this guy asked Jesus for a hug would Jesus say, “No you're drunk and awkward.”? Not a chance.]

So I said, “um… alright.” And if he wasn’t drunk then someone dipped him in alcohol before he left home without his knowledge.

“Okay well I just moved here from Seattle and I’m just working over at Nordstrom’s, you know I do the reci- I’m uh a clerk at night in the back I – Listen… I work for the government. So if I gave you my number would you call me? I just, I, oh – are you eating this [he glanced down and saw I was holding a bag with jerky in it] you eat – let me tell you, this stuff, this stuff is packed with preservatives and all sorts of stuff and…”

I finally just decided to end the conversation, “Okay, well I’ve got to go now so have a nice day.”

“Ya, okay, ya.” And that was that, conversation over.

I might be wearing a sign or something that says CRAZY DRUNK OLD GUYS PLEASE ACCOST ME IN THE STREET, because it’s not as infrequent of an event as I would prefer. I guess I should let everyone know that sometimes people throw hugs into conversations whenever they want and you cannot depend on a hug to get you out of talking to anyone. I thought I had that hugging thing figured out, but I guess I just don’t know that much about interacting with humans, particularly drunk ones.

Ya, my head COULD fit in that dog's mouth

I think sliding glass doors should be outlawed. Who came up with that brilliant idea anyway? At least there should be a recall on any sliding door models made before 1998. No doors worth using that are made of glass were made before 1998. In fact, if you invite me over to your house and you have an old sliding glass door there’s a 78% chance that I will whole-heartedly consider putting a chair through it. Where did this hate stem from, you might ask. Well, I’ll tell you. A couple weeks back I was house sitting for some friends who have two GIANT dogs. I’m not kidding, Truman (the Great Dane) looks like a horse running around in the back yard and Whitlin (spelling?) is a good sized golden retriever with more than a fair share of energy. Well, obviously these guys like to get some exercise in and play in the back yard so what kind of a sitter would I be if I didn’t let them out in the morning to run around a bit? Here’s where the problems start emerging. If you are house sitting you are probably using the spare key to the house, I was. If the house has an old sliding glass door the lock might stay locked at almost all times no matter what you try to do to unlock it, it did. I didn’t go into this experience unaware; maybe that’s the worst part, but on that fateful Thursday morning I walked outside with two cute dogs and slid the door a bit harder than I intended. I heard the sickening click of the lock, realized my keys were not in my pockets, and felt my heart sink in despair. Never before in my life have I so desperately wanted the technical training of a locksmith. How great of a job would that be? In the meantime I had the small problem of figuring out how to get to work. I walked five or six blocks down the way to a bank that was opening and asked to use their phone and the yellow pages to find a locksmith. Oh the joys of house sitting… free access to a washer and dryer and a $40.00 bill to get into a house in which I didn’t actually live. Who am I kidding? I had a great time. I must get along better with dogs than with humans. Plus I came away with a strong urge to find some locksmith tools and do a little bit of practicing here and there. And now I know, if I’m going to build my own house I’m gonna get a fingerprint scanner locking mechanism and practice picking the locks on my front door on a regular basis. And for sure NO SLIDING-GLASS-DOOR!

What do people think about when they sit in a bank all day?...

Who’s in charge of those penny squashing machines you see at amusement parks and museums and aquariums? Those are the kinds of places and memories we deem important enough to imprint on official US coinage, but what if I want to remember other things? I think we should have some coin squashers at the supermarket so I can forever remember in alloy goodness, the day I saved $4 by buying 12 boxes of cereal. The machine would have to have picture options, like the standard squashers. Let’s see… you could choose from a picture of someone putting their hands all over every item in the produce department just in case you were thinking you might skip washing off your apples, a picture of a guy awkwardly picking out tampons for his wife, or a picture of a grocery cart headed for your parked car. I’m sure I’m not alone in my acquired cherished memories of the grocery store. It is a magical land with sweet smelling foods and more sugar than any being could ever ingest alone.

And how about the DMV? When you finally reach the front of the line – or even better – when you are done and leaving don’t you want something to commemorate the occasion? And of course there should be some set up at the bank. At the bank you could have all kinds of different sizes for different coins – the dime, the penny, the nickel, the quarter, the dollar coin, and the behemoth 50 cent piece, and for people who hate coins, have no respect for President Eisenhower what-so-ever and want the biggest piece of squashed metal they can find, the Eisenhower dollar. I wonder how big that would be when squished. You could have squashed coins the size of your head. The possibilities are really endless. I’m not sure why the machine owners don’t branch out a little – I mean who needs one more squashed penny from SeaWorld with a dolphin on it?

Darkness and mayhem... in a good way

How old are most people when they first see a shooting star? Is that one of those memories that is like the first time you taste ice-cream or the first time you wipe something gross on someone else? For me, I went my whole life, up till this part of it, until I finally saw this spectacle of brilliance. This might be due to my frequent sleeping indoors growing up. I blame my parents for this; how often was I allowed to sleep in the back yard in a sleeping bag? It just didn’t happen. Of course, now that I think of it, our backyard was never anything but hard-packed dirt at best and stickers that never seemed to come out of your socks if you tried to find vegetation to sleep on. And putting little kids outside at night in convenient carrying bags probably wouldn’t be a good idea in my neighborhood of weirdoes and creepy guys with mustaches. I suppose I should thank my parents for not allowing me to become an abducted child with the constant need for visits to the chiropractor.

So back to shooting stars…
The nothingness of the western Utah desert is very similar to the Mohave – it’s dirty, and it’s dark at night. It also happens to be the best place for a meteor shower. I drove out with a group of friends late at night prepared with an inflatable mattress, the car connecting inflator, and some blankets in a Pathfinder with a good solid roof. I don’t know if you have ever climbed up on top of a SUV and onto and inflatable mattress (not notorious for their stability), but it is quite death defying. It is also quite comfortable once you are all settled and staring into the sky. So there I lay peacefully gazing at the sky and waiting, while listening to the cry of coyotes in the distance. It gave me a bizarre longing for my desert home, which is not a normal response for me. One friend did not seem to share my sweet nostalgic moment as she seems to be quite afraid of coyotes. I found this very funny, even though I realize they are wild scavengers who can eat your face off. I mean, have you seen the roadrunner cartoons? Those guys are idiots; the roadrunner doesn’t even swerve very much and there’s never any hope for that Wile E Coyote. Although I’ve always wanted a catalog for the ACME Company. Plus, of all the times I’ve heard coyotes howling in the desert they’ve never been so bold or desperate as to get very close to live people. I suppose all the dead bodies laying around out in the desert are so much more accessible.

Did I mention meteor showers are SWEET! I can’t believe I waited so long.

Skanking - ya, that's right, I said it

Here's my skanking story.

I went to a concert with some friends a little bit ago to listen to bands I had never heard of before sing songs I didn't know. I had an optimistic bounce in my step as we walked past the merchandise table and I glanced at a sweet shirt with a worthy design. I have great respect for t-shirt designers who can make something I really want to wear more than a shirt I already have on. (The idea of changing clothes and all the work involved therein usually deters me from changing for at least one full day.) So we settled in and one of the guys with us passed out ear plugs for everyone since we are getting so blasted old. The first band was okay and the second was angry that people in the audience weren't screaming more so they decided to accuse the audience of being too mellow and lame, and then came the headliners...

First of all, the Reggae/Ska movement is not my number one choice when it comes to music, but it wouldn't be last on the list either. I knew I would need to stand in the back for this group to avoid the mosh-pitters so I leaned back and prepared for a visual show. The skanking in a circle ensued quickly by the chorus of the first song. Let me pause a moment to explain skanking.

"Skanking" - verb. Bizarre, wild dance. Skanking resembles running in place while flailing your arms. While popular at Ska shows, a more violent form of skanking is often found in punk or hardcore shows.

While I have seen skanking before, I will admit that I had not previously seen this brand of skanking and moshing or as I call it, the skanky-mosh. These young gentlemen were skanking in a circle while the people around the circle watched them until the dancers got too close to them (possible knocking someone in the head with their flailing arms) at which point they would shove them in a different direction until all the dancers were mostly just shoving each other as they were shoved by the watchers. My thought is that these young white teenage boys feel that the culture they grew up in doesn't honor the ancestors of the old world enough and they created song and dance as a show of their great respect for those who have gone before them. A tribute to cultures with circular dancing and chanting ceremony. If there had been a fire in the middle of the floor it would have looked almost identical to some of the great Discovery Channel documentaries on tribal celebrations. But of course, the modern world (with it's hatred of the past) has instituted fire codes and the like.

Well, that was my concert. Sore feet, sore back, sore ears, FABULOUS memories.

This is only a test. Had this been a real blog you would have been entertained