Fly Like a Rat: Liveblog for No Good Reason

6:23 a.m. HELLO. Welcome to Liveblog* ’10…Electric…Bonobo Pen. (???) Expect more of that type of massacring of the English language as the day commences, because those four hours of sleep I got last night simply FLEW by. BOY I thought I was free-associating yesterday? Just wait. Seriously, though, I am very excited to wrap up this contract, which has been good to me. Very good. When I am at work, I don’t even walk: muscular, beleaguered hamsters act as a gentle live palanquin. Don’t even question that. The Seattle tech scene is all about the hamster palanquin. This group was especially dedicated, however.

Sitting here thinking about my day I feel pretty good. I am going to be optimistic because I had several moderate head injuries in high school and say that I may even get through my to-do list. HA HA HA! JUST KIDDING! Or am I? BRB commuting, see you in a couple of hours.

8:37 a.m.: I’ve Got Fangs, You’ve Got Rabies Well HELLOOOO there. It’s pretty quiet here this morning. Last night I was out til 12:30 at live music with Ruby. We saw Quintron and Miss Pussycat, which is an outfit out of New Orleans. Ruby wanted to see some shows on her return from the Midwest–she even went to Noah’s Ark in Wisconsin, which is allegedly the largest water park in the U.S. I believe it, as the Wisconsin Dells are a tourist trap of delightfully epic proportions. I have a story about Noah’s Ark, which I will tell later.

The verdict on the show: not so good. Once I saw it was a possible show we could go to, I went to the googamachine and hunted up some videos to see how they were. They looked awesome live–kind of some hybrid of The Cramps, the B-52s, and Boss Hog. I was in. The show started with a puppet show which was adorable and well done, and about as simple as a kids’-style puppet show with an adult twist should be. There was jungle animals and magic and policemen getting beheaded.

Then the music started. It was like a switch flipped and every former frat boy shoved to the front of the stage. Elbows were flying and the ladies who were up front quickly fled to the fringes, except for this small chick who was obviously tripping balls and kept sitting down. Shirts flew off and white men were getting sweaty. CROWDSURFING started. Seriously? Crowdsurfing? The music was danceable and had a great beat, and it was nice to see Seattle audiences enthusiastic for once, but ock, no, bad touch. The hipsters who hung on to the edges were doing their little skippity hipster girl dances, via the spirit of undead Calvin Johnson. We kind of gave up a few songs in and called it a night.

“I am embarrassed for white people right now,” Ruby said.

However, I still like their music. Ok, back to work.

9:54 a.m. Dr. Dre “Still”: Woo it is Bastille Day! I don’t know about storming castles today, but I like the pattern forming here. I quit my last job on my birthday last fall. That was pretty ace. I had a funny thing when Ruby and I went out to dinner before the ugh-fated show last night. We were back at Quinn’s, which I cannot seem to stay away from lately.

We were seated and our server approached. “Do you have…a blog?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, my face burning. “I mean, noooo.”

“I cannot take you anywhere,” Ruby said.

Later I asked him if he would indulge me and tell me how he’d heard of me. It turns out a friend of his was a reader and passed my link on. “This is when I lived in Toronto,” he said.

“HOLD THE PHONE ARE YOU CANADIAN AND ARE YOU SINGLE,” I said, licking my finger and smoothing my eyebrows. This is how goddam suave I am. I should write one of them pick up artists books. Chapter One: “TAKE OFF PANTS NOW Y/Y.” Aggggh. I get into trouble when people know about the blog because I feel like that is a disclaimer. “Oh, so you KNOW I am an asshole already. My work is done here, we can just skip to the break up part.”

“NO and NO,” he said quickly. Ruby was rolling her eyes so hard I thought she was going to pass out.

“Ah,” I said. “I have a thing for Canadians. You are safe.” He humored me by looking relieved, in spite of the fact that he could not have possibly believed for one second he was ever unsafe. Was I even drunk at this point? No, I was not. I have no excuse. Later I was drunkish and I told him he looked like a cuter version of Crispin Glover. WHAT who was THAT LADY. It was like liquid cheese was coming out of my pores. I was a delicious human nacho fountain. Rudy was audibly tsking. At least she is never bored when we are out.

Lesson: if you ever encounter me and are Canadian, lie and say you are not.

11:23 a.m. Dan Savage Lovecast:

Over the past few months, my desk has gotten increasingly pinker where my left wrist rests. Whoops. I’m like the love child of King Midas and Strawberry Shortcake. Pink Creep!



12:15 p.m. Pete Rock, “I Got A Love”:

I just had a run in with my boss. “Can you do X, Y, and Z?” Yes, I already did. because I know how you roll and I am just that awesome. She invited me for a drink, which would be fun, but I knew everyone else on my team is out of town, so I had already made plans for tonight. They are talking about creating a position here with me in mind, which sounds nice and is very flattering, but sometimes these things do not get off the ground.

1:35 p.m. GETTIN ANTSY HERE. “Expert Chef”

HEY I just had what P. likes to call Crap by the Pound, which is buffet that gets weighed after. Then you have to have that reckoning moment where you say, am I really going to eat 47 pounds of Spaicy Tofu? Yes, yes I am. I had to go and have food down here one more time though. I also had a nice 15 minute conversation with my copyeditor and you will be pleased to know that we solved the whole world’s problems.

I was going to tell you about Noah’s Ark. Sorry, this story is going to be the razorblade in the apple that is my fluff today. But it will be short. When I was wee, my grandparents had a farm in Wisconsin, near the Dells, and we would spend time in the middle of nowhere in the woods doing things like hunting for asparagus and also time in town doing things like looking for the totally most bitchen gold-plated Eyetalian horn at the mall. (That was more the younger relatives.)

One summer we were planning on going whole hog and taking the entire pack of wild Italians to Noah’s Ark. The baby oil would flow! The white bathing suits would be rocked! And then there was me, the little whitey stepchild who was along for the ride…until I did or said something that pissed off my stepfather. We rolled into our parking spot, which seemed so far away from the park the waterslides looked like plastic piping.

“She’s staying here,” he said. “All day, in the car alone, as a lesson.” I was six.

I think about leaving my girls alone in a car outside of a waterpark for five or six hours while I went in to have fun, and my stomach just twists. I still remember that as one of the longest days of my life–I have rarely felt so completely alone. He doesn’t know it, but he taught me a lot about parenting, and that I would rather be loved than feared, though sometimes you need to choose what you will call on.

3:21 pm. It’s that bad place, you know? That ZZZZZ place. Oh, and Mos Def “Ms. Fat Booty”

I am on my last task. Switching to twitter after I leave, as is my custom after work to make a flurry of twoots fly out of my twoottwat and then I will try to update one more time later. Ok, be back drunker, ilu.

*******

*All content comes from a timed release feed, outsourced from Romania, and is not actually live, nor is it created by the author, and especially not today on the clock. LOOK IT’S THAT JESUS-BUGGERING ELVIS-WIG ELEPHANT I LIKE SO MUCH.

7 thoughts on “Fly Like a Rat: Liveblog for No Good Reason

  1. FYCL!!1! I am supposedly on deadline, but I am tired and this is more fun.

    Crispin Glover is delicious.

    That is all.

  2. Great example of terrible parenting there, SJ. I too wish to punch that step father of yours but I shall make up for it by making sure that my kids know they’re loved and NEVER handling them in that manner. Ugh.

  3. I am a little drunken and therefore cannot face reading the sad parts. I skimmed the edges tho. My 3-year-old just saw the outside of a water park for the first time today and has been talking about nothing else since. I hope your stepfather has been kicked repeatedly in the balls by a very strong horse.

  4. I apologize that you were deprived of the awesomeness of Noah’s Ark as a child. No child should ever have Noah’s Ark removed from them as a punishment.

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