1. I had a semi-boyfriend,* with whom I conjured the design of a business card dispenser in the shape of a fortune cookie. I’m pretty sure it was my idea, originally, but if he uses it, it’s okay. The whole business card concept works better for his trade than mine, seeing how he works for himself as a dance and music teacher, as well as the director of a purportedly decent experimental jazz band, and I’m an unmotivated, forgotten administrative cog in a non-profit machine, with nebulous off-hours artistic goals.

Actually, I suppose that “Non-Career-Oriented Creative Type” is just as effective on a business card as “Private Saxophone and Tango Teacher, Couples Welcome.”

He and I could print out a bunch of cards that read, “Twentysomething Hand-to-Mouth Post-Undergrad Wastrel,” and share them. Get yours, today!

2. My She-Devil Jack-O-Lantern won first prize, which was a $50 bar tab at the pub hosting the carving contest. This means I’ll be buying rounds next time I and my friends go there, and can take a brief break from being the po’-ass freeloader. (I’m not really a freeloader, but I can seldom afford to buy rounds for everyone.)

3. Speaking of pumpkins, there’s a vacant lot that I pass on my way to work. It sold pumpkins all through October, which are now being fazed out to make room for the Christmas Trees. The signs advertising the trees are already up, even while the leftover pumpkins sit in the corners, unaware of their impending collective demise after the tease of temporary exhaltation.

At least they get to be pies, some of them. As for the trees, when their time’s up, they just get burnt to shit.

There are some people who would point out the beauty in the Circle of Life, and that trees’ ashes will become part of the earth from which the next generation of trees and pumpkins will spring, and that the digested pumpkin pie will join the necessary process which makes sanitation jobs possible.

Sometimes, though, it might benefit such people to shove a sausage-stuffed porkchop or two in their hippie, vegan cake-holes, and appreciate the fact that there are instances in which sad is just sad.

4. Last Saturday, I helped an elderly Vietnamese woman find her bus stop. The language barrier provided significant challenge, but after some elaborate interpretive dance with the use of props, I figured out where she was trying to get to, got off the train with her, and walked her to the correct corner. When she got there, and recognized it as her bus stop, she gave me a hug bigger than she was, made a little Celine Dion-esque thumping motion toward her heart, and hugged me again. Then we cheered, and she gave me the international sign for “Scoot.”

She did know the phrase “Thank you,” too, though she seemed unfamiliar with the response, “No problem.”

5. The conclusions to my most recent Saturdays have all been in keeping with the theme of me stumbling home drunk, and passing out, alone, in my bed, in various states of undress.

a. Two Saturdays ago, I attended a party that was originally intended to honor the change of seasons, or some shit. The host, David, had some idea that we would all light a candle and walk to the lakefront to be reflective and lame.

Well, that was the intention.

The reality involved invention of juice-and-vodka cocktails, mockery of Taoism, and David's putting on his gogo boots, wig, and sequinned gown, and proving once again that even Cher's stuff can be palatable when performed by a female impersonator. David also promised me a pole-dance for my birthday. (FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY!)

I walked home at around 3 AM, my understanding of straight lines so skewed that I was ricocheting off of the buildings I passed. Evidently, when I got home, I just took off my shoes and pants and fell into bed, because when I woke up on Sunday, I was otherwise clothed exactly as I was when I went to the party, except that my pants were on the floor and the cat was on my head.

b. This past Saturday, some friends and I hung out, drinking, bullshitting, and watching “Schoolhouse Rock.” I woke up on Sunday morning in nothing but my socks, my left sock bonded to my toe with coagulated blood, from a now-forgotten run-in with my friends’ doorjamb of doom. I think I may have drunk-dialed some folks on the way home.

6. On my more cynical days, I suspect that if karma exists, it’s arranged according to some inequitable, bureaucratic, trickle-down system, wherein an arbitrarily chosen few get most of the good stuff, and the rest of us are stuck with the dregs. In such a system, the meek don’t stand to inherit the earth, but rather to wallow in mucky rainwater run-off.

a. I don’t usually hold much stock in the above suspicion. But I do believe that if karmic pay-off worked the way it should, I’d get laid a lot more often.

b. Then again, it could be that I spend most of my karmic bonus points to keep myself safe on my late night stumbles home. I really have to stop doing that. It’s scarier than I let on.

7. Coincidentally, one of my best friends, who I only see a couple of times a year, is coming into town on my birthday. (FRIDAY!) I have really good luck such things happening on my birthday, and I’m thrilled.

I’ll be meeting him and his girlfriend for a drink or two, and, between you and me, I hope to God they’re willing to foot a bit of the bill, or I’ll be shit out of luck. I’m at the point now where I’m smelling my clothes before putting them on, because if I break down and do laundry, I won’t be able to afford CTA fare for a couple of days.

It’ll work itself out. In the meantime, though, it’s a good thing I’m not stinky.

8. I conclude gracefully on the symmetrical number 8. Thank you, number 8.

You guys have been wonderful. Especially all y’all in the back.

Useless outlinin’
a song between
my brothers and my sisters
all over this land,

Kelly

*Semi-boyfriend: n.1. Someone you “sort of” date until he tells you that he has taken a temporary vow of celibacy. 2. Someone you "sort of" date, who has so much baggage that a semi-tractor trailor truck would be required to carry it all.

Definitions #1 and 2 can exist in conjunction.

(Honestly, he was a really nice guy.)

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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