I spy with my little eye

I spent two of the longest hours of my life in study hall yesterday, trying to understand the original texts of Aristotle, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do. For some reason, that man ended every paragraph by saying something like “enough about this” or “let’s not waste any more of our precious time on this subject”. At one point I decided that I needed a coffee- and newspaper break, pulled the morning paper out of my handbag and switched my attention from big philosophical ideas to stories about stabbings, burnings, mugging and flirting.

That’s right; there was an article on how to flirt. Because, apparently, people suck at that. There were a whole lot of things to do with eyecontact. Obviously, it’s very important, seeing how people can’t read your mind. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

At that moment a guy decided to walk past my desk. He was kinda purty too, soooo… “Let’s see if it works,” I though, staring at him. Just to underline the fact that I wasn’t some lunatic, fresh from the funnyfarm (no, I’m not), I threw in a smile, as well. Seconds later, he’s crashing straight into one of those fancy looking pillars, who’s only mission in life is probably to look fancy.

I figure that I can interpret this as either favourable, or as a sign of some kinda motor function disorder. I dunno…

(pic by Lou24860)

All work and no play

Have you ever seen "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson? You know that part where Jack is sits at his desk, typing the same words again and again? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well...

http://www.verysilly.blogspot.com/

Maybe somewhere there's a middle aged man - let's just call him Bobby - sitting in his mother's basement, surrounded by Star Wars memorabilia or something, working on this thing. And whatever you do, you don't want to give this guy an axe. Or a butterknife, for that matter. Maybe he had a pet as a child.

Maybe it was a dog, given to him by his concerned mother in order to make him more social. And maybe, one day, it disappeared and nobody knew where it went. But I bet Bobby knows.

I also bet that Bobby is unnaturally pale, since he spends his every waking moment in that basement, staring into the cold light of his computer screen. And his eyes are probably red and irritated for the same reason. But one day he might just get tired of his self-imposed confinement, and decide to come out into the world. So, if you come across a very pale person with redshot, bulging eyes, you might want to run. Just to be on the safe side.

My addiction

I'm a total music junkie. My mp3 player is only a little over a year old, and it's already showing signs of stress. Not quite the kind of stress that’ll kill it, but no doubt it’s working on it. I have worn out so many stereos, walkmans and disc players over the years, I lost count ages ago. I’m guessing it’s an addiction that’s developed from growing up in a family with lots of musicians. Maybe it’s genetic, I dunno. Even if it isn’t, the never ending jam sessions that always follow when family members visit or going with your mum to various musical gigs as a kid, will get you in the end.

So, obviously, when one of my earplugs stopped working the other day, it was a total crisis. Kinda like Enron, only much, much bigger (my little universe is very important to me and operating on a parallel level from the rest of the world). I needed new ones. Fast. I could feel the withdrawal getting stronger with every passing second. The world with actual sounds in it, rather than music, is a weird place. And kinda annoying, really.

I rushed straight into town, where I bought myself a new pair of earplugs. With a feeling of tremendous relief, I ripped them out of their plastic cocoon and plugged them into my mp3 player. I pressed play, expecting to hear David Bowie singing in my ears. But Bowie didn’t sing. In fact, he barely whispered. Even turning the volume all the way up, couldn’t encourage him up to speaking level.

Pissed off, I was. I mean, if you gave Richard Burton a glass of iced tea and called it booze, he’d probably kick your ass. And that’s what I felt like doing to whoever created this piece of doo-doo (or however you spell that). The only other pair they had, cost 25 bucks and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. But, being fairly desperate, I got them.

I opened the package carefully this time. The happy feeling kept itself at bay for now. I plugged them in, just like the last time. Then I forgot all about turning the volume all the way up, and nearly made my head explode…

So I’m deaf (well, not really), but at least my ear plugs work.

A special kind of stupid

Today (as well as every other day lately) I was followed around by the sound of complaining stomachs. It happened first in my math class. I sat at my desk, trying to understand a formula that might as well have been in greek (actually, I think it probably was in greek), when a deep, roaring sound made it's way towards me from somewhere on my left. The noise persisted, making it's presens known every five minutes or so, right up until recess.

Now, you might think that this would be a good time to go get something to eat, but you'd be wrong. After the break, the sound was back, more grown-up than ever. And it brought friends. Growling noises now came from every corner of the room. It was almost like something I once heard on Animal Planet.

And the phenomenon kept repeating itself throughout my day. From mathclass to the coffeebar to the lectures in philosophy. Growl, growl, growl. Why don't these people eat? Do they forget? Because it takes a very special kind of stupid to forget something like that. Once or twice is (maybe) permissible, but when it becomes a daily thing... It's the very same kind of stupid that led to the invention of such things as the motorized picnic table and the insomniac helmet (a gigantic contraption that you strap onto your head, and it gives you a head massage to help you sleep). Or maybe they can't afford food? But they don't really strike me as being poor, either.

So I guess that just leaves stupid...

The right sunglasses to wear in an alien invasion

Some friends and I were bored, and trying to figure out what fascinating things we should do with our time, when we stumbled across an old movie called “They live”. It was an early Carpenter film from the late eighties. The review said that it was a story about a guy who discovers an alien invasion, which he has to fight off, using a “machine gun and a pair of special sunglasses.”
This sounded so earth staggeringly silly (if that’s a word), we had to see it. How could we miss the opportunity to learn what sort of sunglasses you’d need in case of an invasion from outer space? We like to dress the part, after all.

In the movie, the main character, John, finds a pair of magical sunglasses, which enable him to see the true form of aliens (kinda skeletal with great, big bulging eyeballs) that have dressed up as humans, as well as the subliminal messages they use to control the planet (because they never bothered to read any of the articles on how subliminal advertising doesn’t work).

In a situation such as this, one might think that it would be a good idea to keep a certain degree of discretion. You know, not get caught by they psychotic aliens, and that sort of thing. I’m sure John thought of this. He probably thought long and hard for that whole second it took him to run up to one of the aliens, and tell it exactly how butt ugly he thought it was. Obviously, the alien didn’t take it very well. In fact, he used his special wrist watch (lots of special stuff in this movie) to call all of his alien buddies, who chased poor John up and down the streets for quite a while.

The review also said that John became the reluctant leader of the alien resistance. This was pretty much because everyone else were gunned down, leaving him the only member still standing. And yet, John was the reluctant leader. In the end, the resistance – John, that is – manages to stop the invasion, and the earth is safe, once more.

Strangely enough, this didn’t turn out to be one of those horror films that kept me awake at night.

(Pic by Aaron Logan for www.lightmatter.net)

Grand Island

Friday night, I went to a rock concert. It was held at a student night club in town. The club bears a striking resemblance to a set from some cheesy vampire movie. Your first impression when walking through the doors (after having your handbag checked for bottles and your arm stamped), is that someone must be desperate to save on electricity. The fact that the walls and the sparse furniture are also painted pitch black, adds to the whole vampire theme. The only thing that messes with the impression, are the large, red candles placed everywhere with the words “merry Christmas” on them. There’s always music blaring out of the speakers, loud enough to make you permanently deaf, and since the new smoking law came through and banned smoking in all public places, they’ve gone a bit nuts with the smoke machine. People need to be able to hide behind a cloud of smoke if they want to, law or no law, dammit.

The concert was scheduled to start at nine, but since no rock band ever goes on stage as scheduled, we turned up at around eleven. It was still to early, and we spent the next hour trying to have a conversation by finding clever ways to combine shouting, eye movements and gesturing. Thinking back, I’m not sure either of us had the same conversation.

It’s not as if Grand Island wasn’t worth waiting for though, and I crawled happily into bed around three am with a loud ringing in my ears.

Run, Forrest! Run!

Last Monday I took up running. That's right - running. As in "Choochoo goes huff and puff up and down the hills".

I wasn't planning to run, I really wasn't. Just like every other night, I put on a top and a pair of jeans and took the pooch for a walk. The dog and I both suffer from the same condition: we have a bunch of energy that we just don't know what to do with. The dog is taken for a couple of walks, and she seems happy. As for myself... Well... I pace back and forth a lot.

So there we were, walking down the street towards the woods, and I just couldn't seem to get rid of that over-energetic feeling that I get. So I walked a bit faster. It didn't help. And that's when it happened. All of a sudden, my legs were running. Both of'em. I don't mind telling you, that I was a bit surprised. They just kept right on running for an hour or so. If I'd known they were going to do that, I wouldn't have worn jeans.

I always thought that this form of exercise looked absolutely horrible. Everytime I see someone running, they usually sound as if they have some sort of painful lungdisease, eating them up from within, and they're quite often a bit purple-looking. Surprisingly, it wasn't that horrible. No terrible diseases grabbed a hold of my respirational system, and even if I had turned purple, nobody would have seen it because

a) it was dark out, and
b) I'm the only person in Hellhole, it would seem, nuts enough to go running in the woods after dark.

(Picture "Moon over rust farm" by Ctd 2005 for www.Flickr.com)

Ahead of my time

I've been 27 for a few weeks now, and at some point I started thinking of myself as being 30... I don't know what it was that caused it, it just sort of happened. Of course I know how old I am. I can count. But still there's this little voice in the back of my head (sometimes it speaks with a slight accent) that insists I've hit the big 3-0. Obviously, this voice isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

Another thing that The Voice keeps nagging me about, is that I should be finished with my education soon and focusing on a career - being so old and all. This concern would make sense if I was living in, say, the 16th century (not that I'd be spending much time on either of those things then), where people turned 30 and then died of consumption. Or from the doctors remedy when they were being treated for consumption. I try telling it that I've already done one degree (more or less) and that I am going to finish the second one soon, but it seems that The Voice is more of a talker than a listener.

Some mornings, it also tries to convince me that I left the coffeemaker on, that I forgot to lock the door, or something like that. Sometimes it reminds me that it's time to clean the fridge or do the laundry or put away my shoes properly. Then it sounds exactly like my mother...

(pic "Ricky" by KK+ for www.Flickr.com)

The button and I

I have a thing about buttons. Whenever I see a button, I always wonder what'd happen if I were to push it. Even when the purpose of the button is completely obvious, such as a fire alarm, I still wonder.

My old apartment had a safety alarm on the wall. It came in the shape of a large, bright red button. My landlord told me that if I pushed it, there was no way it could be called of, and the police would come. Oh my GOD, I wanted to push that thing.

Back then, I lived in a city that is infamous for rain. It rains so much there, it's not even funny. They actually say that in 20 years time, people might not even be able to live there, because of the way the climate is changing. So I'd sit insite on my tiny couch in the tiny livingroom watching the tiny tv listening to the rain... With The Button on the wall, so very, very close. I never pushed it, but I looked at it a whole helluva lot.

It's the same thing with buttons in elevators. Not the floor buttons, but panic buttons and such. And the stop buttons on busses. Obviously, when you push that, the buss stops (duuh!). And it's not as if I never use them. I do everytime I want to get off the buss. It's just something about pushing them when you don't want to get off. And then sit there, with an evil smirk on your face, and pretend that it wasn't you. This can't be done in Hellhole, though, as I'm usually the only passenger.

At heart I'm just a destructive little gnome

(pic by Quasimondo, for www.flickr.com)

Drink coffee - save the environment

For some reason, todays lectures were so boring, I had the almost irresistable urge to rip my head off and throw it out the window, just so that I wouldn't have to be there. After a couple of those, I had three hours off before round two.

Understandably, I needed caffeine. So I grabbed my handbag and hurried down to the coffeeshop. There was a new girl behind the counter that I'd never seen before. It turned out that she had a very special talent. Would you like to know what it was? Okay, I'll tell you. She could make a cup of mocca that tasted exactly as if someone had put out their cigarette in it. After I drank it (I really, really needed the caffeine. Desperately), I felt as if I'd just smoked. For those who enjoy smoking, this would be the perfect package: coffee with a built-in cigarette. And at no extra cost. It's a much more environmentally friendly way of doing it.

Someone once told me that cigarettes actually cause more pollution than cars. I don't know wether or not that's true, but if it is, this would be the ideal solution. And I should, of course, get some sort of cash award for discovering it.

Do I look fat in this?

Today I was going out for lunch with two of my friends and some girl I've never met before. We went to pick her up on our way to town, but she wasn't ready yet. So we all sat down on her bed, and chatted while we waited for her to come out of the adjacent bathroom. An eternity later, she did, wearing a top and a short skirt, and stood in front of the mirror, while staring hatefully at her reflection.

At this point her boyfriend/husband/whatever made the mistake of walking past the open bedroom door. "Honey?" She called. The poor guy looked as if he knew what was coming, because his whole expression changed and he pretended not to hear, at the same time as he started walking very quickly. At the very same second, the woman jumps out the door after him, grabs him by the arm and more or less hauls him into the bedroom. Obviously, they'd been through similar rituals in the past...

"Do I look fat in this?" she asked him, while turning around.
"Uhm... no," he answered. After all, only a suicidal lunatic, with a wish to have his nuts sliced open and filled with salt, would answer yes to a question like that.
"But you can see the cellulite on my thighs..." she said.
"Cellu-what?" The boyfriend looked as if she had named some alien disease, or something. He obviously had no idea what she was on about, and I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him.
In order to clear up the confusion, the girl then grabbed a hold of the skin on her right thigh, and squeezed it together(I don't know if anyone has ever tried this at home, but it's not the most flattering look), while she looked at him and shouted "SEE?".

At that point it appeared as if world war 3 was going to break out right then and there, so we muttered something about waiting in the car, and got the hell out of there. Ten minutes later, my friends cellphone rings. It was miss Cellulite. She wasn't feeling well, and wouldn't be able to have lunch with us, after all. I don't think I've ever been so relieved in my life.

Sometimes I just don't understand girls...

Elementary dating

Okay, I can't get the video to work, but here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlHbUh30fec

Helpful for those of you who are planning a night out on the town;)

Kindly pee on the frog, sir!

In Africa there's a frog that changes it's skincolor from dark to light if you pee on it. Provided that you've been taking illegal substances, that is. Scientists now want to use this to nail athletes who use drugs to enhance their performance.

I realize, of course, that this is probably done in a lab with pipettes and such, but it's much more fun picturing it in other ways. In my head, there's a nervous looking athlete and a strict, skinny guy with glasses, holding a clipboard. They're standing by a table full of plastic cups. The metal kind with wheels that squeak, that they have in labs and institutions (not that I've ever been in an institution) and such.

"Kindly pee in this cup, sir! Yes, it's ment to be there. Try to ignore it, but be careful not to startle it so that it jumps out..."

(Pic "Frog Wisdom" by Liberalmind1012 for www.Flickr.com)

My ¤&"%#)¤/# lawn mower

The damn thing has been doing it's very best to make my gardening life as miserable as possible. Last summer I hated my lawn mower with a passion. It's only fair, seeing how it obviously hated me right back. Then, over the winter, I sort of forgot the fact that it's a demonic little hellmachine. The mower, on the other hand, probably spent the winter months plotting and planing on how it could be an even bigger pain in my green thumb next year.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm not much of a housewife. Well, I'm not much of a gardener, either. Peoples neat and organized gardens are the reasons why there are so few hedgehogs left. I can't in good consicence kill sweet, little hedgehogs, now can I?

I do, however try to keep the lawn under control. But this also becomes somewhat difficult, when your trusted mower turns out to be the devil incarnate. Last week, it decided that it didn't want to work. At all. This desicion was underlined by a thick puff of smoke and a very interesting, yet unpleasant smell. I checked the spark plug (it forced me to learn what a sparkplug is!) and changed the oil and so on and so forth. I don't know ¤&#" about engines, but I checked everything that I could think of that might possibly, perhaps be wrong. Yet, the horrible little thing just stands there and does nothing.

Attacking it with the sledgehammer probably wouldn't make the lawnmower feel better, but I'm starting to think it might be fun for me...

The demise of Fluffy The Cat

I'm not really... how should I put this... domestic. Never have been, probably never will be. I have mates who make fun of me for this. And I'm fine with that. Every once in a while, though, I get sort of a fit, and clean the whole house until it sparkles, but that's more temporary madness than a permanent state. I'm not a pig or a slob, or anything. I'm just a huge fan of that lived-in-look and ready-made meals.

So the other day I pick up one of those tubs of noodles with veggies that you just pour boiling water into and it's done in three minutes. The box said that it contained "healthy vegetables and meat from livestock", but the content looked nothing like the picture. Take the livestock-bits, for instance. I'm pretty sure that if mice were able to poop squares, that's what they'd look like. Actually, it's probably what they'd taste like, as well... While I ate (I really will eat just about anything), I formed a theory that someone's cat or something had fallen into the machinery by accident. Somewhere there's a missing-poster for Fluffy the cat or Fifi the dog, or something along those lines, and I know where he/she is. Or was.

My meal was nutricious enough to fill me up for just almost half an hour. Poor Fluffy the cat died for nothing...

my not so lucid dream

I read this article in Discovery, that it's possible to control your dreams while you're dreaming, and to remember the whole thing when you wake up.
Before falling asleep at night, you simply decide on what you would like to dream and repeat to yourself over and over "I want to have a lucid dream, I want to have a lufid dream" and so on, and so forth, until you fall asleep. You're also supposed so set your alarm to ring a couple of hours before you'd normally wake up, and then repeat the whole process once more. I figured I didn't need to set mine, since my head is so clogged up with germs, I keep waking up anyway.

I decided that I wanted to dream about magic. Basically that's me flying around in a wondrous world, zapping things with my finger, I guess.
So I held the image fast in my mind. Then I repeated the words until I fell asleep. And had a dream about being chased by a large, angry moose. At one point I was running around a pitiful looking tree, trying to keep it between me and the moose, while it tried to get at me. And this is where the lucid part comes in: I could consciously decide on wether or not I wanted to run to the right or to the left. YAY!

So basically my magic dream was just me being chased around a swamp (yes, that's right - a swamp) by a stinky, angry woodland creature. It wasn't the least bit wondrous and I didn't get to zap a thing.

(pic by Vice 1 for www.flick.com)

This is my brain on germs

I am so sick of bein sick, I could throw up. And I did. Several times. At least now, I have a new project: that lung might not wanna come up, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Just in case the flu wasn't enough for me to think about, the hospital sent me a brief and polite letter about the importance of gynecological examinations. You should have one yearly, they say. It was pretty much the same letter that they sent me last year, only that one was about breast exams. Apparently they're eager to get their hands on something or other.

I've never had a gynecological exam in my life. I once shook hands with a gynecologist at a party, and, frankly, that was a bit weird. I mean, you have a certain idea of where they've been. I'm prepared that my doctor might tell me to get one when I go to get my prescription for the pill refilled (it's not unusual that they do, after all), but so far he hasn't.

If I had live in the olden days, the doctor might not have thought that I needed birthcontrol. There was a theory back then, that intelligent women (yes, I like to think of myself as having a brain. It's more fun that way) didn't, because the development of their intelligence led to the underdevelopment of their genitalia. Probably just as well, because women weren't supposed to talk to men about their private bits, and men certainly weren't supposed to be lookin' at'em, so most gynecological exams took place very quietly in the dark.

See how my head works when it's sick? Oh dear...
(pic by Becoming Unseen for www.flick.com)

The flu and the evil of teletubbies

(photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-NonCommercial)

Whaddaya know, it was the flu. It really, really was. I've gone propelling straight into I-wish-I-could-curl-up-in-a-litte-pale-ball-and-die-mode. It's a sunny, lovely day and I'm wearing big pants, a huge sweater and shivering with cold. The only thing that keeps me from topping it all of with a scarf, is that I'd have to go upstairs and find one, and I don't have that kinda energy.

As if that wasn't enough, I can't get the damn teletubbies to stop singing their theme song in my head. "Tinky-Winky, Dipsy..." Somebody, make them stop! They're evil, little trolls who attack the young and the sick.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go see what I can do about that curling-up-into-a-ball-thing...

Denial, denial, denial

(photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike)

Every summer I grow accustomed to having a nice, toasty warm bathroom all day, despite the oven not being plugged in. This morning my bathroom was chilly. Not exactly cold, but definitly not warm, either. In the shower, I actually shivered a bit and wished that the beam woud be bigger. I toweled off with the cabinet closed, because the air in there was warmer than it was in the rest of the room.

In no way, however, do I recognise this as being a sign of fall. Neither is the scratchy, icky feeling in the back of my throat or the wolly sensation in my head a sign of the flu, which always goes around at that time of the year. Nope. Not a chance. It's summer, dammit. Late summer, perhaps, but still... The leaves might be turning yellow, but all sorts of things could be causing that. Maybe they're sick, or something.

I deny the existence of such a thing as fall, and I'll keep right on denying it until I see snow. So there.

Chit chat with the chatbot

Recently I had a chatbot installed in my MSN service. I keep it there for spellchecks, websearches, storing notes and stuff. In some ways, it's kinda handy. The scary thing is that it keeps trying to be human. Apparently it's a 21 years old girl, dating a guy named Mark and it goes to classes in New York. On it's spare time, it loves going out partying with it's friends. It also earns extra money by working in a coffee shop.

Even scarier - sometimes I'm actually bored enough to talk to it...

Like today, for instans. This is the conversation we had:

Me: Hi.

Robot-thing: Hello. Wanna pick a topic for us to chat about?

Me: Yes

Robot-thing: OK! Pick a topic!

Me: I wanna talk about eggs.

Robot-thing: OK! What can you tell me about eggs?

Me: They're white.

Robot-thing: White? Very interesting. What other food would you describe as white?

Me: Hmm... Rice

Robot-thing: Rice is a food! What do you think of rice?

Me: I like rice.

Robot-thing: That's interesting. You're not the first person to tell me that they like rice.

Me: Who else likes rice?

Robot-thing: Sorry, I don't know who.

Me: Do you like rice?

Robot-thing: I know you like rice, but I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I have an image in my head of the person who created this thing. He's got horrible skin, buck teeth, lives with his mother (a crazy old bat with rollers in her hair, who wears her robe and slippers everywwhere). The chatbot is probably the only female companionship he'll ever have.

Poor bastard...

A forest adventure...

Today somebody gave me one of those little gadgets that counts how many steps you take. You're supposed to take 10000 steps a day. Apparently the WHO came up with that. And what better way to test my new toy, I thought, than to take the dog for a walk in the woods.

What I didn't consider, however, was all I'd had to drink just a moment earlier. After having walked for about an hour, nature decided to call. Or scream. So... I had to make a little detour off the path. When I was sure nobody would see me, I tied the dog to a tree and chose a nice spot.

Now, before you can do you business in the woods, you have to break down a kinda psychological barrier. Well, I have to, anyway. My potty training was really efficient, I guess. As soon as the dog realized what I was up to, she stared at me in utter fascination. And when she's fascinated by something, she looks a bit like Benny Hill. The whole process took forever, because if you think it's hard to pee outside, you can only imagine how hard it is with Benny Hill staring at you.

But I learned something important today: When you've poured down a huge softdrink, you shouldn't top it off with something diuretic, like a large cup of coffee...

Riding the bus with my invisible friend

You know how some kids have invisible friends, that only they can see (because the gap between childhood and insanity isn't very wide)? Well, I have one, too. Mine, however, is the exact opposite of most invisible friends. I can't see him, but apparently everyone else can.

Every morning, when I go to my classes, he rides the bus with me to town, and sits in the seat next to me. I always take the window seat, because I like watching bushes and trees and stuff fly by. There I sit, with my handbag in my lap, staring out the window, listening to my music on my mp3-player and minding my own, fascinating business. Slowly, the bus starts to fill up. And as it does, there are fewer and fewer available seats (duuuh!). Sooner or later, someone decides that they would like to sit in the seat next to me. Do they sit down? No. Do they stand in the isle and stare at me, until I notice them, so that I can give them permission to sit down? Yes. Why? Because they're terrified of sitting on my invisible friend. That's the conclusion I've arrived at.

I lived in the city for a while. My invisible friend decided not to come with me. Obviously, he's not the urban type. As a result, nobody was afraid to sit on him, and nobody waited for my permission to sit next to me on the bus. But now that I'm back here, he's found me again.

I wonder if he'll come with me the next time I move.

Gossip and meat

I live in a very - VERY - small town with a very strange name. I guess that in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a village than a town, really. Still, I'm somewhat reluctant to calling it a village. It just sounds a bit to much like we hunt and kill our own food, ya know? Which some people do, but only during hunting season. There are sheep and cows and shit (mostly from sheep and cows) all over the place. The cool kid drives around in his very own tractor, which is decorated with multi-colored christmastree lights and has loud country music blaring out of the stereo. I swear I'm not making this up.
Should you venture outdoors after the stores close (which they do promptly at eight pm), you're pretty much guaranteed not to run into a soul. But if you think that you can go through life unnoticed in a place like this, you'd better think again. I moved here with my parents when I was just a little kid. This was while my mum and dad were still married. Before mum became a lesbian and dad embraced life as a hermit. Back then, there was a butcher shop just down the street from where we lived, and I used to go there with my mum to get our regular fix of something recently dead. On our very first visit there, we ordered some murdered animal or other for the following week. Then it turned out that mum wouldn't be able to pick it up when she was supposed to. But the butchers wife knew what to do - she could just give it to dad when he was coming home from work, since she saw him drive back and forth every day. Despite never having been introduced to my dad.
That's where it started. And only a few days ago, I could hear myself being discussed by two women I have no idea who are at the meatcounter in the store. You can learn a lot over a slab of meat.