Years Gone By and Still

Brought a huge pile of old crap home from my parents’ house yesterday. My Mom is sure that it’s my old papers that are cluttering up her basement, and I am going to let her maintain that delusion. Anyway, since I didn’t ever manage to leave the house today… (vodka = bad, apparently. At least +vodka -dinner = bad.) I thought going through some of this old stuff might be a good brainless thing to do while I munched veggie pizza and watched Chronicles of Riddick for the 179th time.

Tons of things I’d forgotten about in this first pile. Creative writing from high school and early college – typed on a typewriter even. Old pictures, cards, journals and artwork. Very interesting to read in the voice of my 20-year old self, especially. So many of the things I struggled with back then (in terms of the ways I relate to the world) are still things I struggle with today. It seems my view of them was much clearer back then, now it’s all covered in grimy layers of nuance and experience. Back then I was much more blunt, especially with myself.

Yeah, my hair pretty much looked the same back then. And yes, I still wear that exact style of shoe.

My favorite thing I’ve found so far was this little book that my first really serious boyfriend made for me. He was an amazing guy in a lot of ways, and reading his old letters lets me put a rosier glow on the relationship than it perhaps deserves. See, he was just the type that my stupid broken brain still picks out for me today—artistic, talented, emotionally needy and super-controlling. Such a delightful combo of traits! So that was not going to work out, of course. But there were good parts, like in any relationship, and looking through this makes me remember his insane sense of humor and how he always made me laugh. I actually think that he hated everything even more than I did, and that’s an impressive feat indeed. Looking back, I think part of my attraction to him was being the one thing he loved in the world. Or at least the one thing he didn’t despise. Being the center of that kind of attention was compelling, and the two of us together were an amazing asshole misanthropic duo.

When we couldn’t be together he was always making me things, sending me stuff like this. (Part of our relationship was long-distance, when we were both in college, so we did a lot of mailing.) I think I am part of the last generation to ever carry out love-affairs via postal mail. That’s sad. You can’t sketch crazy characters in the margin of an email. The feeling of getting a new mixtape in the mail from someone you weren’t going to see for two months carried an emotional intensity that you can’t really match in a world with on-demand video chat. We could only talk on the phone twice a week because long distance was so expensive. And I had to trade off phone time with my roommate, because of course we shared the same phone in our apartment and he wanted to be using it to talk to HIS girlfriend. No cell phones with text messaging and free long distance. I had to make lists of things that I wanted to remember to tell him when I talked to him. No instant messaging! No email! Having to go buy stamps at the post office! Writing so much that your letter was over the limit and having to add more stamps! It was insanity, I tell you! OK now I sound like someone’s grandmother, so I am going to stop there before I take to walloping people with my cane.

Anyway, here’s part of one of the little books he put together for me. Seeing it made me smile.

Continue reading »

Further Adventures in City Living, Pt. Eleventy Seven Thousand

Yeah, so my license plates got stolen last weekend. And because everything about my life is required to result in some sort of saga of ridiculousness and aggravation, I still don’t have any license plates now. The nice part is that no one, including law enforcement, seems to give two shits if I drive my unlicensed vehicle all over town, so I am not too bothered about it either. (It makes sense that they don’t care if I have plates, actually, as they really don’t seem to give even half a shit if someone’s stealing my wheels or fucking a hooker up against the side of my car or popping the passenger side door handle off with a screwdriver or whatever. I presume they have more important things to do. Like direct traffic and… well I’ve really ever only seen them directing traffic, mostly. Anyway.)

So last Friday night I went out to the bar and then to another place to see a friend’s band play, and that was all really fun until my other friend got maced by a third friend. And that’s another story entirely, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice, so I really won’t try. So anyway, I am sure I had license plates when I left that place, and here’s how I know: last year when I had to get new plates my dad sheared off one of the bolts on the back plate holder thing when he was trying to change them, and then w/o asking he strung the license up on one side with wire, so it hung down at a jaunty angle. And every single time I’ve approached my car since then I’ve though “Jesus Christ, I am a hoosier.” and then I’ve gotten in my car and driven away contentedly, because I hope my car looks extremely hoosier, to keep these ghetto motherfuckers from wanting to mess with it. So I remember seeing my dangling plate late Friday night/early Saturday morning when I got in the car to drive my friends back to their cars. Continue reading »

The Friday Five – Bands We’d Like to See Again

So tonight is the last show ever for our friends’ band, Stella Mora. All good things come to an end—usually too soon—and we’re very sorry to see them go. But this sad state of affairs led to this listing of other bands we’d love to see once more in concert, if only they were still touring.

I would absolutely love to see Oingo Boingo one more time, that was one of the most energetic shows I’ve ever been to in my life. October Project I would love to see again, just so that I could properly appreciate what I was experiencing, they’re one of those bands I got much more into once I had seen them live, then never had the chance again. Anyway, here are the rest of the results from this week’s Friday Five, thanks for playing along! (see what I did there?):

• superbadgirl (that’s me!) Mine are Oingo Boingo, Dead Can Dance, October Project, Nirvana and Cocteau Twins. #fridayfive
• tungmobi - @superbadgirl Pale Saints, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Catherine Wheel,Genesis (with Peter Gabriel)
• gw10101 – @superbadgirl, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Jesus Jones, Soul Coughing, Depeche Mode (wilder years), The Cure (disintegration era)
• The_Cyr – @Superbadgirl Skynrd (original band), Led Zep, Kansas, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Guns n Roses (original band)
• narcise – led zepplin, django reinhardt, janice w/big brother & holding company, pixies (just missed reunion), jesus and mary chain #fridayfive
• H_Wallbanger – @superbadgirl The Clash, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Thin Lizzy, Massive Attack
• stevodarkly – @superbadgirl #fridayfive The Police, the Beatles, Dead Can Dance, Led Zepplin and … I do miss local guys Todd on LSD.
• UnclePilot – @superbadgirl #fridayfive The Seatbelts, Led Zepplin, The Miles Davis Quintet, Crowded House, Soul Coughing
• El_Dickman – @superbadgirl Ummm… Queen, Led Zepplin, Collaborateur, Bel Canto, Beatles #fridayfive
• cbellers – @superbadgirl Morphine, Pale Divine, Dance Hall Crashers, Chemical Brothers, Lords of Acid
• trmink – @superbadgirl New Pornographers, The Kinks, Harvey Danger, Sleator-Kinney and a second on Thin Lizzy
• _bunny_ - @superbadgirl Gang of Four, AC/DC with Bon Scott singing, Queen, James Brown, The White Stripes #fridayfive
• sub_english – Dead Can Dance, Joy Division, The Clancy Brothers, Billie Holiday, Cocteau Twins. #fridayfive

The Possible Return of Meaning

I’ve been going through a weird phase with music for the last few months. None of it has meant anything, I haven’t been able to relate to it. For someone like me, that’s excessively strange. Normally I am finding meaning in every song lyric, relating it all to my life, relating it all to my experience. And for the last few months I’ve been wearing out the skip button on my iPod, not feeling anything about anything I heard. And I think it’s been a symptom of a larger disconnect in my life, a sort of emotional time-out from everything. There’s been so much going on, so many things to process, that I don’t think I’ve let myself feel most of it, just because there’s not enough computational power in my emotionally stunted introvert’s brain. Sometimes I can either do or feel – and I’ve been doing a lot of doing.

I’ve almost been afraid to be alone, to sit down and think, to stop doing and digest for a minute. I don’t think I wanted to know what I’d discover. But my brain – despite copious amounts of denial and overprocessing and rationalizing and frenetic activity and drinking and running around and never shutting up and refusing to be alone and refusing to stop stimulating it – seems to be finally sorting things out without my help. And as I reach some sort of understanding, things are starting to mean things again. Music is speaking to me again. Emotions are slipping through again. And that is painful and shitty and sucktastic, and it’s also pretty fabulous.

There’s a line in a Laura Veirs song called “Cast a Hook in Me” (see – I told you I relate all my own experiences to music)

And at night a fractured star fell
And pierced right through the thick of me
I cried out in pain and joy, yes
I’m not dead, not numb, not withering

and I love it because yeah, sometimes pain is all you feel, but the pain means you can at least feel something. And if you can feel something, sometimes you’re going to feel joy. Sometimes you’re going to feel contentment and happiness. Maybe not right now – but eventually it’s got to be joy’s time to come around.

At times I wish that it wasn’t so hard for me to deal with everything. That it didn’t take me so long, and it wasn’t so painful and confusing while I do it. But then I think that I am feeling it harder than most people, that I take more away, that I learn more and then I use it to understand the world better and understand myself better. I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences because I do learn so much, and I don’t want to give up anything I’ve ever learned. Not really. And no, my way of being is far from perfect, but it’s far from the worst I’ve seen either. So anyway, here’s to the possible return of meaning in my life, let’s see if it sticks around.

Protected: Dark Night of the Soul

The Choices We Make

OK so here’s a story about how the choices we make affect us in unexpected ways.

Tuesday night I made a decision to be social way past my bedtime. I also chose to drink almost an entire bottle of wine.

I chose to protest the end of social activities with “Oh, it doesn’t matter, I don’t have to get to bed early.”

As a consequence, I was as worthless as a dessicated sponge mop all day on Wednesday. Worthless at work, brain fog, no higher cognitive powers at all. So I chose to come home and take a nap.  But I had also chosen to turn off my air conditioner, so I was hot and sweaty and tossing and turning and my nap was unfulfilling. I was still tired. So I chose to go out and get some chai and do some writing at the nice, cool Gelateria, because I had to get something done for The Grand Conspiracy today. That went well. But still I was sleepy. Then I came home and took a shower. When I got out of the shower I faced the prospect of dealing with my hair (+/- six hundred hours of hard labor) shaving my legs and then liberally applying lotion all over. I chose to skip the lotion, because it would save me five minutes and I just wanted to go fall in bed, dammit.

That meant this morning my legs were dry and itchy. So I chose to scratch them. And I scratched them so hard I chipped a nail. And now I have to go to a work luncheon with a chipped nail, like a total trashy hobag. So this is what I get for trying to be social. Do you see?

Another Weekend Come and Gone

That one was faster than average, I think due to spending most of Saturday in a drugged-out haze, in search of some form of sleep. Prescription meds can be a good way to find some rest, but a good way to lose some serious time too.

In other news, I am no better at relating to other people than I ever was, and tend to spend most of my time befuddled, running into walls and banging my head against them. I must really like that. People confound me. But I have it on good authority that I am dealing with some really confounding people, so it’s not entirely my own fault.

Dinner at the Stables on Saturday, for which I was barely conscious, but the food that I came home with tasted good the next day, so I suppose that was a success. Big Ass Indie Craft show was visited, but is mostly a big blurry cloud of felt and string and buttons—aside from the utter FAIL of parallel parking I tried to accomplish in front of the place. Was it my imagination, or was there a cop standing there? I think I ran over a curb too. Let’s see, after that I had another nap, some going out, an extremely ill-advised adult beverage, threw a minor fit, was consoled and then came home and went to bed, all piqued-out. I no longer remember what my issue was, but I was angry about it, dammit, and I was not going to take it anymore. So there.

Sunday was blissful, chilled-out normalcy, yummy brunch, yummy Mexican for dinner and the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And now it’s Monday again, and I resolve firmly to do much better next weekend.

Really.

Not that that sort of vow has helped me out any in the last eight months, but maybe this weekend?

Maybe?

The Grand Conspiracy

A few months ago, some of the local St. Louisans I’ve met via Twitter told me about a project of theirs, known as The Grand Conspiracy*. Since they’re almost all artists and writers—and many are both—they wanted a collective place/way to share their work.

The Conspiracy was apparently originally conceived as a one-sheet of short fiction and artwork to be distributed in local bars and shops.  Since then the project has morphed into an electronic one, centered around a collectively updated blog, with a print version to eventually be taken from the best of its posts. The other Conspirators kindly invited me to play along, and I was really happy to accept. It’s much easier to write when you have an intended outlet in mind, and it’s easier to keep to a deadline if you know someone else is depending on you to do so.

Of course, people and their schedules being what they are, the blog has taken quite some time to get off the ground, but I am excited to announce that we’ve got our collective asses in gear, and will begin (hopefully daily) posting at The Grand Conspiracy today!

As luck would have it, Thursdays are my posting day, so there’s a new piece of mine “Make Your Selection” up now. I’d love for you to have a look and let me know what you think of the blog overall, and of course any critiques of my work are always welcome.

(I mean, I am not saying I won’t punch you in the face for daring to dislike my writing, but I certainly welcome the opportunity to punch you in the face.)

Anyway, have a look, add it to your feed reader, check it every day. If I know these people at all, there will be some stellar work there for your edification and delight.

*For those of you who are not St. Louis natives, this name refers to the the street, South Grand, where all our favorite bars are located. Not that this is a group which centers itself on drinking at all. *ahem*

Can we be absent anymore?

Once more Cary Tennis’s advice resonates with me. Not only because this guy is a whiny dipshit (I am hoping he’s young, and hasn’t figured this stuff out yet because he’s young, and not because he’s always going to be this whiny of a bitch.) who violated his wife’s privacy, but because Cary takes such a mundane event and strip mines it for the one true thing it really addresses: the fact that it’s almost impossible to be gone in this world. And while I like that my people cannot often be gone from me, I do sometimes wish to be gone from them. So it’s a conundrum.

My wife doesn’t miss me! | Salon Life

…the very definitions of presence and absence have changed; absence has become contingent; presence has become inescapable. No matter where we are, our virtual selves remain under surveillance.

Until recently, one could actually achieve absence. One could go somewhere and be gone. The traveler would send postcards. The postcards would have pictures of beaches or statues. They would be eagerly awaited and gratefully received. Absence was simple. It was an absolute condition, soon relieved by presence. Presence was also an absolute condition.

No more.

Now absence and presence are contingent and variable, matters of degree and form. A person may cease responding to e-mail and achieve a sort of absence although he or she remains in place. Or a person may go to India and yet be as present as always.

A version of us is always present. We are over-connected. We spy on each other from afar.

The quality of our absence is thus degraded. Absenceness is a precious resource we are fast running out of. Soon there will be nothing but presence. We will wish we could go away but will not be able to. The pain of constant presence will be too much for some to bear; it will be a torture like that of sleep deprivation. There will be a rash of virtual suicides, in which people disconnect themselves and appear to be dead. We will have virtual funerals for them. This will all come in time.

via My wife doesn’t miss me! | Salon Life.

I have extremely useful friends

My friends make me feel like a major underachiever sometimes. Collectively I don’t know that there is much they cannot accomplish. Since my main contribution to any group seems to be snark and a bad attitude, I think I would really be likely to be the first one killed off if we were in a horror movie. I am just saying.

So the lovely and talented Narcise finished my Dave McKean bracelet and pendant set last week, and they could not be more perfect! I love them beyond all reason, and most of all because I know that no one in the world has them. They are mine all mine.

The bracelet is fabulously chunky and makes really satisfying sounds when I flail my arms about. It’s also extra-strong to keep me from breaking it.

See below:

Bracelet. I scanned this, and it came out a little blurry, but I think you get the idea.

Pendant. This was the only warm-toned image of the bunch, and as such it stands alone very well as a pendant.

Bracelet on my arm, to give you an idea of the scale (they're very large stamps)

If you’re interested in your very own Narcise creation, you can get in touch with her via her Etsy shop. She makes many lovely things that you can purchase and (obviously) also does custom work. She worked with me to make sure that my pieces fit my needs exactly, and I am very pleased with them.

You can also see her September 26th and 27th at the Strange Folk festival in O’Fallon, Illinois.

In other news, another friend of mine is doing some landscaping work in the front of my house, and it looks amazing. So neat and tidy! I was totally overwhelmed by the hot mess of dirt and weeds out there, and he was able to sort it out within a matter of days. I think he will finish tomorrow, and totally change the look of the front of my house. And he even put up with a hornet attack, and the random weirdos who wander up and down these city streets pushing lawnmowers.

Still another friend of mine is going to come over and install some ceiling fans for me – another task that seems insurmountable, and yet he considers no big deal. And today MyTodd sorted out a longstanding personal problem of mine in two sentences. Just listened to the story, explained the issue, and there it was. Crystal clear. Why didn’t I think of that? It’s like free therapy, so I bought him lunch.

Honestly, there’s no end to my friends’ utility, and I don’t know what I would do without access to their skillz.

What the fuck, chick?

OK. So of course some random shit has to happen to me at the bar last night, when I was just standing there minding my bitchy, bitchy business. Why is it me who is always targeted by the crazies? We don’t know. It’s a mystery.

From time to time we get some random tourists in the bar. By three signs do we know them:

1. They ask for Bud Light. (No AB products at all are available at the bar, and we like it that way because we’re snobs.)
2. They try to pay with a debit card, credit card, or any form of legal tender other than cash money. (That’s when Matt/Eric sends them to the skeevy gas station for cash.)
3. They ask what the drink specials are. (There are no drink specials, everything is fucking cheap, and really strong.)

So two tourist girls walk in last night and sit down next to us at the bar. They’re not wearing all black, which is a strong indicator that something hilarious is going to happen, but not a certain indicator. So we knew to watch carefully. They then asked what the drink specials were. *sigh* and then when they heard there were no drink specials, they both wanted a Bud Light. *sigh again*. Then they finally ordered some PBR or something, and sat there being trampy and talking nonsense. Other than Hotpants and I rolling our eyes a little bit, I mostly ignored them, because they were ridiculous. Hotpants was trying to convince a friend of ours to try to get both of their numbers, I think there might have been some casual betting on that likelihood. But mostly we were busy with our own business. But then after 15 or 20 minutes, brunette tourist grabs my arm. I am not a fan of being grabbed by random strange chicks, as hot as that may sound. “Hey” she slurs at me. “I really need to introduce myself to you by name.”

I think “Whaaa?” and stare at her blankly.

“What’s your name?” she asks. I tell her. “Well, I needed to introduce myself to you, because I am sitting here, and I think you hate me.”

I think “Whaaa?” and stare at her blankly.

I then assure her that I rarely hate people I don’t know and pat her on the arm, hoping she will fuck right off again to hobag land, or wherever she came from. But no such luck. After now being assured that I do not, in fact, hate her, we’re apparently besties. Now she has to explain that she thought I was looking at her funny (maybe I was, but not for long) and that I was talking about her (maybe I was, but not in a very intent way). So she thought that once I got to know her personally this would change? I don’t know. Drunk girls are weird. So she wants to go to the bathroom. I REALLY really want to her to go to the bathroom too. Firstly because she would then be gone from my immediate presence, and secondly because she needs to experience the bathroom at this bar in order to be sure she doesn’t really want to be here. But she won’t go. She just wants more reassurance that I don’t hate her. But at this point I am starting to. Then blonde tourist with the ponytail interrupts us, and urges brunette tourist to go to the bathroom already, because “Jason” is on his way, he called and he’s on his way to pick them up, and it’s rude to keep him waiting. Brunette is all Wah wah you hate me! and blondie is all wah wah, stop making Jason wait for us. Finally the girl fucks off to the bathroom, comes back, slurs at me some more, and then leaves. Well, I think she leaves. No. In 15 minutes or so she’s back. With Jason. Jason is wearing a knee-length white tshirt with, I shit you not, some kind of bedazzling all down the front. Dooooouuche! So he fucks off back outside, and then – for some reason this is the funniest part of the story to me – the brunette is standing there again, talking about how her friend told her that everyone at this bar hated her, and why would her friend do that? I replied something about meh, you know drunk girls. Then she starts lambasting our friend Jeremy for “whispering” about her. Jeremy replies firmly that he was not whispering. She tells him it’s mean to whisper about her, just because she’s not from there. Jeremy replies again, most emphatically, that he was not whispering about her. I am afraid he’s going to start talking some shit right to her face at that point. But then Eric delivers her three shots in plastic glasses, which distracts her. So then she’s standing there talking to me about how that girls is her best friend, no matter what kind of shit she talks, and she loves that girl 4-evah! then she looks down at the three shots, declares “I’m making mine bigger!” and pours some alcohol off the top of each of the other two shots into her own cup!Then she toddles off merrily on her way.

Fucking drunk girls, seriously.

Just Wondering

Why it seems there’s such a strong correlation in my world between the feelings of  “Oh, I really like you!” and “Oh, I would really like to punch you in mouth!”

Perhaps I just have a tendency to like really, really aggravating people.

Or maybe I am mentally 5 years old.

Or both.

Holy fuck, I hate parties.

Went to a party last night, which reminded me most painfully how I hate fucking parties. A bunch of uncontrolled drunken shirtless strangers, shooting fireworks out of their mouths and cavorting homo-erotically around a stripper pole… excuse me for not seeing the fun there. It probably didn’t help that I only knew about 10% of the people there, less and less as the night went on. And then I am in the corner having a political discussion with a stranger at 4 a.m. and thinking it’s the first interesting conversation I’ve had in the last hour. Everyone else is just rubbing up against each other sweatily and talking about how drunk they are and what a great party it is, and I do not get it at all. I suppose I should have just gone home – but since I have such an strange way of perceiving social events I am never sure if I should force myself to do these horrible-seeming things or not. Most things seem horrible and strange and upsetting to me at first, and then sometimes they get better. In retrospect, this particular thing was never going to become superbadgirl-friendly, and I should have cut my losses and run at 1:30 or 2:00 when most of the people I knew left. But I stuck it out, and learned a lesson.

In other news, I think I am going to have a party for my birthday. Surely I can’t hate a party at my own house, where I control the guest list, like I hate other parties – can I? Stay tuned.

Things About Which I Am Excited

So a few months ago Neil Gaiman twittered something about Dave McKean designing some stamps. Not just any old stamps, Mythical Creatures stamps. Naturally I knew that I needed to own any such a thing, but somehow just owning them didn’t seem to be enough. What fun is it to have some beautiful miniature artworks created by my favorite artist, and then just stick them on a shelf somewhere? It’s not like I would pull them out periodically for reverential gazing. I thought about ordering two sets and framing one, or displaying them in some other way in my house.

Coincidentally, my friend Jenny twittered something around the same time about a new jewelry technique she was trying out, and like your chocolate getting in my peanut butter, and your peanut butter getting on my chocolate, a great idea was born in my noggin.

See Jenny does these lovely custom jewelry pieces, and has the technology to make me better, faster stronger… wait no, that’s the Bionic Woman. What Jenny has is the talent and know-how to take my lovely, lovely stamps and create a beautiful one-of-a-kind bracelet for me! I talked to her about it, and she knew just where to order the settings she would need for the project. (And she also knew to make the links extra strong since I have a tendency to be tough on my jewelry in general, and bracelets in particular.)

The stamps arrived in early June, and earlier this week I dropped them off with her – and I got to see the setting they will be in! She ended up deciding to make a bracelet and a pendant from the stamps, since there are 6 and the bracelet was the perfect size using only 5.

Here are the stamps, the dragon is the one she’s using for the pendant, the rest will be used on the bracelet.

In case you can't see, it's a unicorn, a dragon, a giant, a mermaid, a fairy queen and a pixie.

She’s working on it now, and I can’t wait to see it finished! Stay tuned and I will post pictures when the pieces are done.

Vacation all I ever wanted

…so where did I leave off? Oh yes, that tree coming out from behind a bush and attacking my Mom’s bumper. Tiresome.

After that the day got better. We chilled on the beach, and Dave discovered that the cast cover is suitable for swimming in the ocean, as advertised. We all got a little pink in the sun, then had a pretty bad lunch at The Crab Shack. (Stale kaiser roll with some prefab shrimp salad, microwaved hot pecan pie from a plastic wrapper – bleh.) Also the lackadaisically indifferent waitress seated us as far back as possible, despite Dave’s gimpitude. Rude. Oh and the bathroom was really dark, dirty and spider-y. We all thought we’d like it better if it were cooler outside, and we were drunk.

Dinner wasn’t much of an improvement, we ventured down to the main strip here and tried one restaurant – but no one ever came out to take our order at all, and they kept misting us down with water of questionable origin. We moved on to some Applebee’s wannabe type of place, and the food was OK, but the wait to get in there was quite ridiculous. We left the house at 7pm and we didn’t get food until 9. And the place was about four blocks from here. I guess they don’t have to have good service if they deal with primarily a touristy crowd. Anyway, we did have plenty of time to people- watch while we waited for a table, and that’s where I saw a girl who was maaaaybe 13 years old wearing incredibly short shorts and a very tight black t-shirt that said “I’m Fun Sized.” Good going parents, way to pay attention. She was with a whole cadre of other pre-teen/teen girls, all of whom looked ripe for sexual abuse and drug problems in later life. Once their adult minders showed up, it all made sense though. Todd spotted a super-geeky 14 or so year old boy wearing a “Tell Your Girlfriend I Said ‘Thanks’” tshirt, which made Todd want to give him a smack.

Todd and Dave looking a little pink around the edges at Wannabee's.

After dinner we headed over to Tybee Time for some very strong frozen drinks and more people watching. We discovered that, among gentlemen, the “Captain Ron” look is very big here. Well, if Captain Ron had been played by Richard Dreyfuss, anyway. We saw all kinds of other interesting people, like Little Smokey, a wee man with a cigarette behind his ear, who was vying for the attention/affection of Eve, the lady in the dirty stripey dress. The main problem with this is that Eve was more interested in Captain Ron. Little Smokey got louder and louder in his quest for Eve’s notice, but to no avail. Frustrated, he ended up giving Captain Ron a smack in the mouth as Captain Ron was trying to do a shot. I think there was some blood. Captain Ron had to go to the bathroom to clean up, and Little Smokey took the opportunity to usurp  his seat. Eve was having none of it, however, and moved away to shake her braless tits at other bar patrons until CRs return. After that Little Smokey took his cigarette from behind his grimy ear, smoked it quite forlornly, and then left.

We were pretty worn out after that, and had to retire to our condo for reflection and meditation. Also bed.