A Little Real-Life Story

I love "little real-life stories." They're tiny little things, sometimes practically just a scene, but they say a lot about people, and about life.

One of my favorite ones from a sister is this: She was walking around the block, and as she rounded the corner, she saw a little boy untangling himself from his bicycle, where he'd just fallen. He looked determined not to cry, and sort of embarassed as he was standing up, but once on his feet, he hopped on his little bike and rode away quickly.

I like that one. It's just the ending of a story, but it's a nice little scene. What made the boy crash his bike? We'll never know. What we do know is that he was embarassed but brave. And that's all we need to know.

Once, before my cell phone, I was lost at night on the way to a friend's new place. I was kind of in the middle of a wintery nowhere, but there was a little gas station with a pay phone, so I pulled in. There was a guy huddled up the phone, stamping his feet to keep warm. As I got out of the car, he shouted into the phone, "Dammit Janice--it's VALENTINE'S DAY!" slammed it down and drove off. As I reached the phone, it rang. It was Janice. I had to tell her Dave drove off. And then I realized Dave was right. I'd forgotten--It was Valentine's Day.

So many little things going on in that one.

The reason I thought of little real life stories is that the Boy called a few minutes ago becasue he needed to tell me one he'd just seen: He was walking through the emergency room at his hospital, and some paramedics came rushing in with a guy on a gurney--obviously writhing in pain and roaring, "My left nut!! My left nuuut!!" The nurse at the desk looked up and primly inquired, "Now what do we have here?" One of the paramedics looked back and seriously said, "It's his left nut, Ma'am."

Come on! Do little real stories get any better than that?

And good luck with your... um... nut, Buddy. Seriously.

Misanthropy in 3...2...1

I've said before how I enjoy the idea of "freecycle" where people offer extra/unwanted items at no cost, and people can request items they need. I still enjoy the idea of it. But the fact that people are involved makes it quite the crapshoot.

Bear with me:
I recently pruned my massive lilac bush, and have an abundance of cuttings and branches that could easily be grown into lots of bushes by someone with a semi-green thumb. In fact, years ago, one of my younger brothers stuck a lilac stick into the ground, and it's still growing there.

I decided that since plants can be expensive, I could kill two birds with one stone by offering the cuttings on freecycle to 1. give someone a chance to have a nice lilacky (?) yard and 2. get the darn things out of my way. I made sure in my listing there could be no POSSIBLE way one could misinterpret what I was offering: three big bundles of lilac branches.

I cut my huge lilac bush back a lot this spring, and have three
big bundles of branches and cuttings to give away. Lilacs can be
rooted pretty easily, so in a couple years, you'd have a whole
backyard of lilacs if you wanted.

The branches are beginning to bud even on their own, but I can't
guarantee that every single branch is still alive. I checked several, and
those were still flexible and green inside, though.

Just trying to cover all the bases here. Simple, right?

1 moron + "Simple, right?" = Not simple. Not right.

I follow the "first come, first served" approach, so when I got an email from a woman who lives in the same city as I do, I gave her the address of my house at 39 Blankity blank street, which is off of Such-n-such, down from this main road in this city. My first clue something was amiss should have been when I got an email back that said (and I'm cutting and pasting straight, here people):

Hey Steph. What is the pusical address, I don't know pontiac very well.

Pus-ical address? Ewwww. As opposed to a scab-ical address? Or maybe it's pronounced like "musical?" Ah well. I emailed her back and let her know my pusical address (again) and becasue she seemed sort of unobservant, I let her know I had bundled up the branches and put them at the side of the house by the driveway for her.

No problem. Her husband will pick them up.

Today I got an email complaining that when her husband arrived, instead of lilac BUSHES, it was just branches! What the..? Can she even make a branch grow? Huff! She's going to check the WEB. ( the all caps was her thing.)

I'm such a misleading conniving bitch trying to trick other people into taking away my useless yard waste, dontcha know?

First of all, if they can't be rooted, why the heck would I be offering them?? And secondly, did I NOT specifically write about that in the posting? Was I confusing and unclear? So I checked back through every email from the posting on, and these are the word usage stats--

"branches": 4
"cuttings": 3
"bundles": 2
"bushes"or "plants": 0 ...as in not any.

RROOARR!
__________________

In other news, the next door neighbors have cleaned up their trash heap of a yard, and now their daylilies are growing, and their house looks quite pretty.

NOT rroaarr! Something nice!!

Square One

It's been a while since I've written. With the exception of this blog and work, I've done almost nothing in terms of writing for a few years now. I'm not sure why I stopped journaling with a pen into a paper book. I'm not sure why I stopped writing fiction and poems on a regular basis.

It's also been a long time since I've worked on music or songwriting--more creative things I abandoned for no good reason. So weird to think that there was a time in college where almost every spare moment was spent recording or songwriting or spilling ennui into the pages of some unsuspecting journal. I occasionally dig out recordings from that era and it's like listening to someone else sing words I don't remember making up. Fortunately, a good friend got things rolling in the music field again, and this week we got together to work on some songs. I took some time this week to go through my stack of old journals and poetry and find things that are worth reworking or using as ideas.

They say that one must write 1,000 pages before anything worthwhile comes out of your pen. I believe it. Heck--make that 2 or 3,000...10,000 pages. And it's not exactly like riding a bike, this. I haven't song-written in a while, and it shows. It's going to take some awkward maneuvering and major rewriting to get back to a point where I have anything worthwhile on paper. I have managed to carefully eke out a couple things this week that I'm not embarassed to sing.

That's a pretty darn good start. Things are looking up.

Electro-sketch

I've been entertained by a couple online doodling places recently. One of them I can't remember the name of, but it basically was a site where the premise was that you sketched something, and then were rewarded by seeing an animation of the process of someone else's drawing. I think watching some random stranger's drawing actually emerge was the most interesting part. Apart from the obligatory huge wang from a thirteen year-old, the site had some interesting impromptu art.

I've been poking at Mai'Nada Comics today. Basically the same idea, but you don't have to draw anything to watch other people's sketches, and you are allowed to rate pieces. (mwahaha!) I notice that some of the things I think are really interesting and beautiful are not rated very highly. Hmm. I choose to believe it's because everyone else wants a crappy manga-type scrawl of a girl with big hooters, or a comic revolving around the word"poop."

Spring Cleaning

Well, I just spent a chunk of time organizing maybe a quarter of my quadrillion bookmarks, and in celebration of that, I added a few things to the links section. Over there -->
You will find that there are several sections now, including (but not limited to):

• Some of the many blogs I enjoy stopping in at regularly. Some of these people are friends in real life, some of them I know virtually, and a few I just read anonymously.
  

• Craft and art links. These are places I go to get ideas and inspiration, and sometimes just to stare at other peoples' amazing stuff. I stuck my Flickr link in there because it's sometimes sort of crafty, and there are links on it to a lot of really interesting people's photos. Flickr is a great place to browse around, and a nice community to be a part of.

• I added some of a gazillion comics I have bookmarked. These are some of the ones I check most often. I will probably add others in the future, or perhaps add a Dead Comics section. There are some really worthy comics out there that have either finished their storylines, or been abandoned (poor things). They still deserve a read.
  

• The music links I am going to try to rotate on a semi-sorta-occasionally regular basis. I've added some more general links, and also a few links to some friends and aquaintences who make lovely sounds that ought to be heard.

• The various and sundry section is mostly composed of nerrrrrrdy links that also happen to be very interesting and entertaining. Many of them are blog-style sites (updated daily or weekly) so should you enjoy them, you must check back again and again! Hmm. I just noticed that Exploding Dog is in this section, and it probably ought to be with comics, but I'm blatently going to leave it there for now.

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Boy is playing a Star Wars game on his computer, which means that it sounds as though there's a lightsaber fight going on right behind me. There is grunting and exclaiming, and the occasional Rodian voice yelling, "Doba mei E'kusha!" Whatever, Greedo. Whatever.