Creeps, Coworkers, Motives, and Naivete at 28

One of the younger people I work with asked if I wanted to grab lunch after the gym today, but I already had a sandwich so he suggested we meet for dinner on the way home. His kid was with his ex wife for the night, and I thought he just wanted someone to eat with.

After an uncomfortable conversation about both politics and religion, he asked, "Okay, here's one for you: Where's the craziest place you ever had sex?" I'm sorry, I thought I was having a quick weeknight dinner with a coworker, not trying out for the next episode of Blind Date.

I looked at him and said, "I haven't." He was confused and didn't understand, so I clarified, "I never had sex."

He followed by asking how many times my boyfriend cheated on me. As if I would deserve to be cheated on because I didn't give it up. He also referred to MF as "your Indiana boy" rather than by his name.

"I have some crazy stories about dirty, dirty bad girls that would shock you." I suggested he save that for his guy friends, who might be more interested to hear those stories.

Then the check came, and he insisted on splitting it in half even though I am in the mindset that you pay for what you ordered. Whatever. I will pay twice what I owe just to get out of that restaurant and drive home. But then my fortune cookie read, "Don't put off today what you can do tomorrow" or something like that, and he said, "I think your fortune cookie is telling you to have sex with me."

Two Funny Things for a Tuesday

1. I went to Blockbuster to return my late DVD and asked the dude if they charged late fees. He said there are no late fees, unless I kept it more than a week. In that case, I would have to either buy the movie or pay a $1.25 "restocking fee."

So basically I rented a DVD and if I returned it late, there would be a $1.25 late fee.

2. I tried on my fake vampire fangs and they are no bigger than my current fang teeth. I was totally made to be a vampire.

Great Music... and Idiots

Sometimes I get my paws on a new album, one that I devour, one that encapsulates my soul, one that I can't stop listening to, on my laptop, in my car, in my office, on the walk from one building to another. I take 10 minutes to burn something to a CD or put onto my mp3 player because I just can't bear tearing myself away from the sound for a couple minutes. One that I lose a full night of sleep, lying in bed and clicking repeat every time it finishes. And I get up in the morning, fully aware that I haven't slept, but what keeps me going is that I know I can keep listening to this music in the car on the way to work, and while at work between meetings and while I'm eating lunch at my desk and on the drive home from work... And the lyrics are deep and incredibly moving, and the melody is new, and the music is hushed and downplayed, and it just begs for someone else who loves it as much as I do to have a listen, so that we can talk about it.

No one I work with gives a shit about music.

I told an officemate today that I heard some new music I loved. He asked me if it was off Britney's new album. No, it wasn't. He wanted to hear it anyway.

I let him have a listen to one of the songs.

"This seems like the type of thing you have to be in the mood for. But it sounds very relaxing."

I deeply regret letting an ignorant uncultured fuck listen to and comment on my music.

Sunday Football

I don't really like the game, but being in a Fantasy league it gives me something to do on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.

I have one major problem though, with football. I am not a germophobe or anything, but when I see those dudes lick their hands between plays, it just goes right through me. I don't know what about it bothers me so much. I guess I picture what they must be tasting. Like a combination of dirt, grass, sweat (theirs and other people's)... it is so disgusting to me, and I wonder what their mothers think when they see their sons licking their dirty hands on national TV.

On a side note, I realized today that most of the NFL players are younger than me. Like most of these dudes were born in like, 1985 or 1986!!!! What the @#$#$^%#???!!!

Things I'd Like to Eat Right Now

After my "Surprise! Your tooth cracked in half from eating a breakfast bar, you're getting a root canal!" a lot of people at work joked, "Oh, just stay on the liquid diet, if you know what I mean har har har!" But seriously, it is crazy how much of a desire I have to actually chew. I have been sustaining myself on soup and bread dipped in soup and fake mashed potatoes and milkshakes for over 2 weeks now. I would kill to even chew a fucking piece of gum. They're not putting the crown on for another 2+ weeks and I'm going insane.

Top 10 Things I Dream of Eating (IN A PARTICULAR ORDER):

10. That can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs in the cupboard
9. Microwave Popcorn
8. Cheesesteak, Provolone With
7. Tortilla chips and salsa
6. A Salad. I swear - Just a regular salad!
5. A Sugar Daddy - In all honesty, I have lost 3 teeth from Sugar Daddies, and I know full well I can never eat one again. But I still love them.
4. Sweet Corn
3. Candy Corn
2. A Charms Blow-Pop
1. A GIANT STEAK MEDIUM RARE STRAIGHT FROM THE GRILL

As a side note, after all these years I finally have "dental insurance" but learned recently that they will pay only 50% of a "reasonable charge" (which they have deemed "reasonable") for whatever dental work I receive. Which means I get basically nothing toward my actual dental bills.

And... my tooth hurts.

Poem I liked.

I was sharpening my chain saw when they called me from Washington, D.C., to ask me how to fix the economy.

This request focused my thoughts, or the lack of 'em, to such a fine point, I gave my 14-inch Echo an edge it never had. Good enough for cutting half a cord at least, to keep the wood stove going through October. I love not paying the oil company a nickel. Except for the half-gallon of gas and the chain oil, but I'm fixin' to make the thing run on plum brandy. I've got a plum tree.

Ah, where were we? The economy, yes: $700 billion is more than enough money to buy every able-bodied American a chain saw, a solar-powered generator and a stake in a communal well and windmill. Also, red dirt and plum trees. That would probably only cost about $100 billion, and you can use the other $600 billion to buy everybody their house outright.

Now everybody can own their house and be green and self-sufficient, and can go back to whatever they were doing before the world ended: watching TV. Except for me. I was sharpening my chain saw.

So I go back to it, and I see a line of refugees coming up the road to move in with me. Oh my God, it's the '70s again. All my deadbeat friends — dead and alive — are being chased out of their homes and heaven for not owing any money. They are debt-free in a world that can't exist without interest rates. The dead are especially egregious in this regard; you can't squeeze even an extra penny out of them.

Oh, no, now that they are getting closer, I don't even think it's people from the '70s: It's people ... from the future!

It's worse than I thought: These are people independent from foreign oil, carrying solar-powered chain saws, full of American ingenuity. After the bailout, they owned their own homes, they didn't pay into a corporate energy grid, and they didn't worry about food because they grew it on the roof. They didn't drive, because they didn't have any jobs to drive to, and every garage in America was the site of an invention that was so darn beneficial nobody needed anything from the store.

Without worries about money, without a job, and with extra space in the garage to grow food and invent, these people forgot about the stock market, stopped borrowing money, even forgot how to shop — in short they stopped being American. These un-Americans got their exercise raking the compost instead of circling the mall; they home-schooled their children and were never again embarrassed that their kids knew more than they did. Heck, they were in heaven, the place where the pursuit of happiness leads to when you stop pursuing it.

Such self-sufficiency made the economy grind to a halt, so the government had to do something again: They called in the Army to chase everyone out of their self-contained greenhouses.

And now they are coming up the road to my place because I'm a poet, and I live in a compound defended by polygamist haikus.

"What did you do wrong?" I asked the first of the refugees to get over the palisades.

"Nothing," he said. "We just got out of debt and stopped watching TV! So the urge to buy things on credit disappeared. So they sent in the troops. First thing they did was to put a 40-inch plasma TV in every room and fixed it just so we couldn't turn it off. Just like in Orwell, only with much sharper images. They are calling this the Second Bailout, or the Bail Back In."

"At least the Second Amendment is safe," I said. "Nobody took away your guns, and the Founding Fathers didn't say anything about TV."

And with that, my chief haiku welcomed them thus:

make yourselves at home

you won't be bailed in or out again

you're safe in Second Life