If Pandora Were A Person...

10:25 p.m.. On a Sunday. The Sunday after Christmas. It is snowing. Sort of.

Pandora plays Mobb Deep's 'Hell On Earth'.

Pandora: What kk? What?

Me: Are you trying to get me pumped up right now?

Pandora: Yes. You look like you're falling asleep over there. It's time. For you to get pumped up!

Me: For what, exactly?

Pandora: I want you to get really pumped up --

Pandora plays 'Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta F' With'.

Pandora: to MAKE YOUR LUNCH FOR TOMORROW! YESSSS!!!

Me: I have to admit, I'm legitimately excited to make to go make my lunch right now. Spinach salads better recognize!!! But why are you using all this motivational goodness up on me right now?

Pandora: I know you, love. Better than anyone else. And I care about your well-being in a completely proportionate amount. If I'd played that one-two while you were getting ready to go out last Saturday? Scary things might have happened. That close to the full moon and the solstice AND the eclipse? People might have died. Or at least disappeared. Wait, what are -- are you doing the butterfly right now? Hang on.

Pandora plays SWV's 'Rain'.

Pandora: Are you...is that a little better? I don't want you to stab yourself over there.

Me: That was exactly what I needed. Now I'm relaxed. Unpumped, a little. But still ready to continue chopping. Also, the SVW got me thinking about Taj, the lady in the group who got to be in SVW, marry Eddie George, and then was on fucking Survivor. Like, she is so awesome. Holy shit, I just Googled her to link to her name, and her Wikipedia page is unexpectedly inspiring. I was not expecting to read that and be like 'what an incredible story!' She is going to be so creeped out when I write her a letter asking if I can write her biography.

Pandora: Can you repeat that? I didn't catch it all, I'm playing pretty loudly right now. You turn it up a few notches when you're two to three glasses into the bottle. I'm not judging. I just notice these things. Hello, my whole appeal is in the observational data I gather and process. What were were talking about? Taj. Don't look at me like that! I mean it. I want to know. It's not silly. Tell me again. Oh my god, you're just going to tell me later anyway, spit it out. No, I'm not laughing. No. No (snort) I'm sorry, honey, now you're making me laugh. With your angry face. It's a perverse reaction, I know. Didn't I just get you all pumped up to make that salad? I can't relax for a minute? I'm listening to these songs too. Are you...what, you're not talking to me now? Don't test me, child.

Pandora plays an insipid commercial block, then threatens with the monthly listening limit warning.

"I *@/$!*>/* the Spiders on the Wall..."

I realize I'm probably a hundred years behind the times on this one, but this made my entire week.

I just wish I could have been in the room when Anonymous Stoner put all the glorious dots together and realized how amazingly twisted each and every episode of Sesame Street becomes when specific verbs are consistently replaced with a 'bleep'.

Fucking genius.

More About the Homeless...

(Yes, same tune.)

Maybe it's just been on my mind: the homeless and their technical status, or lack thereof. Whatever the reason, this morning it seemed like the Common was fucking littered with possible homeless people. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that the PHP were scattered, everywhere, in strange locations, in a way reminiscent of what occurs when my housemate's Boston Terrier gets into the bathroom trash. Okay, calling PHP trash is not the point. I'm just going to move away from that to get to the real point:

The crazy array of PHP this morning included one dude who was not only 'possibly' homeless, he also appeared to be 'possibly dead'. Like, as I passed by I tried to focus on his ribcage-area to see if it was rising and falling. I couldn't tell. I figured he MUST be alive, given that there were approximately 600 people around, including a bunch of dudes with hard hats on working on the historic cemetery wall against which his corpse-like personage was smushed. But what if EVERYONE assumed that? He looked like, seriously uncomfortable*.

What are you supposed to do in that situation? Call someone? The police? I don't want to call the police. Because if he's not dead, and he just passed out there, in the Common, all wedged against a wall...he probably had some weird shit happen to him last night, you know? He'll have enough to deal with when he wakes up, I don't want to cause an extra headache for the poor dude. His head probably hurts enough.

I am constantly haunted by the feeling that I skipped school the day They explained all The Rules.

*This bugged me out enough throughout the morning that I went back to check on him at lunch. He was gone. Which, I realize, means nothing. If anyone happens to learn the fate of the passed out Hispanic gentleman of medium stature wearing a grey t-shirt with a leaf stenciled on the shoulder, would you please let me know?

Rolling Like the Homeless...

Do you ever spy someone wandering around the city, and then find yourself unable to determine whether that particular individual is homeless, or if they've just been travelling for an extremely long time and are having, like, a really tough go of it?

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It happens to me almost daily. It doesn't help that I walk through Boston Common on my way to work every morning - a place populated by peoples in various states of homelessness, as well as hippies, students, demonstrators of ranging passions, tour guides dressed in colonial garb, worker bees eating lunch, wild children, harried nannies, and lost tourists evidencing different levels of distress.

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So I mean, there's really no way to know, with certainty, whether that dude is homeless, or if his luggage just totally sucks and he had to wrap his suitcase with twine somewhere in Iowa after the group of German house musicians he was hitch-hiking with parted ways. And that lady might be homeless, or she might just be having the worst time finding the airport EVER. And what is THAT DUDE's deal? Why is he sticking his entire head in that faucet? To wash it? To get water? Because he isn't able to do those things indoors? Or because it's been approximately 400 degrees for most of the summer, and one's hydration-situation can get pretty dire in a hurry? Oooh, although that's no reason to be sleeping on a piece of cardboard under a tree! Wait, but is someone filming you? Fucking Emerson kids.

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So then...what is homeless, anyway? What are the parameters? Why do I obsess over this stuff? Especially when it completely, totally doesn't matter? Because, in the end, you can't determine that kind of status with any real certainty?* I guess it's better than obsessing over something I saw last night on E News. Or what Frances Rivera was wearing on the Real News, even though that is admittedly, really fun to obsess over.

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You know what? All I can do is control my own actions. I'm just going to buy some really top-notch luggage and hope I avoid confusing people. You all can choose your obsessions accordingly. Just...don't let those Emerson kids record your image for too long, okay? I think they might be trying to capture your soul.

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*I take that back, I think. Because if all of your shit** is in a shopping cart, that's a pretty reliable indicator of...domestic flexibility.

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** If 'all of your shit' translates to 'garbage bags full of aluminum cans', then you have bigger problems than I'm ready to address right now. I'm sorry.

I Know Some People Would Rather Keep Gin In the Desk...

Quick, everybody: whatever document you're working on, just take three minutes and draw a monster on it with whatever 'Paint' feature your computer has. Seriously: a monster. Make it up. Just draw it right on there. Finished? Nice. How much better did your day just get?

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You can use my example above as inspiration.

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Actually I don't see why it has to be one or the other: Gin In the Desk v. Computer Assisted Doodles. Try both. I predict spectacular results. You might want to save it for Friday afternoon, though.

Great Balls of...Poop.

I was walking my dog through the park last weekend, and, halfway across the field, he stopped and took a poop. That is not strange, I realize.

After he was done, I took a plastic shopping bag out of my purse, did that thing where you make the bag like a glove and pick all the poop nuggets up out of the grass, and then turn the bag inside out so the poop is all contained inside and hope-hope-hope that you didn't get any on your hands, tied the gross little doo-doo package up, and carried it with us until we reached the trash can at the edge of the field. I realize: None of this is strange.

Except for the fact that it was. It was completely bizarre, foreign, alien. It was a tiny moment, the sort that's repeated all over the world a hundred times a second, it was not special. It is not important that I save all my plastic bags now, it is not globally relevant that I put some of those saved bags in my purse to take with me every time I take the dog out. It does not matter that I stopped to pick it up off the grass, the fact that I was the only human around to notice and still picked it all up does not make this a noteworthy event, save for this: It was huge.

It was - on a slightly different level- like the day I remembered, all on my own, that stores always stock the Q-Tips in the baby aisle, and so to avoid seething myself into an accidental brain hemorrhage, I should just look there first and bypass the cosmetics and bath aisles altogether, even though, yes, it makes SO MUCH SENSE to stock them in those places, as well.

Trivial as they might seem, those fell into the 'Watershed' category in my library of experiences. A few years ago, I would not have stopped to pick up shit when I could be reasonably sure that no one was there to judge me for my laziness, my lack of respect for shared public spaces, or my inability to get over the general ickiness factor of touching poop, even through a plastic bag. And, more importantly, I think, I don't pick up after my dog now because people will judge me if I behave otherwise. I do it because I'll be the one judging myself if I behave otherwise. Because people's kids play on that field, man, and how messed up of me is it to leave landmines of crap scattered across a field for a kid to step in, or slip on? People cut through that field on the way to the train station on the regular. Those people, many of them anyway, are going to work - work! Imagine what a terrible start to the day that would be! They'd smell like shit, and then the train would smell like shit, and then possibly their office if they hadn't realized they were the crap-carrier by that point...I could ruin the mornings of dozens of people I'll never even meet. Or, I could get the fuck over myself and pick up my dog's shit.

Growing Up is a sneaky little bastard, no? Attempt to cut him off at the pass, sure, knock yourself out. You'll run into him in the supermarket, Aisle 9, loading up on Q-Tips and Baby Powder. He's not so bad. Plus, they sell wine in the supermarket now! Take GU, go see what reds are on sale.

Dream Log

I had a sex dream about Jaime-Lynn Siegler once. You know - Meadow. From the Sopranos?

We were in a dormitory - what I imagine a boarding school dormitory might have looked like in a time before ascots were ironic; all dark wood and dim lighting.

Jamie-Lynn and I were alone. In the room, in the dorm, we were the only people on the entire campus. We didn’t talk about the Soprano’s. We kept our underwear on and kissed each other’s stomachs, and we stared out the window for hours without leaving bed.

When the sun came, the courtyard in front of her dorm filled up with cars. Every type of car. They - the cars, and people who drove them - held all sorts of events while we watched from the window. There were drag races and a demolition derby, and even a relay to see who could change a tire the fastest.

When they were done, the grass of the courtyard had been utterly ruined, and Jamie-Lynn pulled the blinds. She said she was starving, and we talked about where we should eat until I woke up.