please don't talk to me...

I need to put my headphones on to discourage this guy sitting next to me... some kind of stoned-Giovanni-Ribisi-type guy... from talking to me any more. He's not getting the hint. He's asking me about my laptop. "You do like... WORK... on that, or what...?" No dude... it's just to keep guys like you from striking up inane conversations with me. You can see how well that works.

Right now I'm enjoying a wonderful story about how this guy and his friends would cut school when they were 14 and take the train into the city and get drunk and go to Yankee's games. And then drink all day. And then go to a bar and get drunk. Mm-hmm... and how did those life-choices work out for you, Mister "Ask Everybody on the Train if you Can Borrow Their Cellphone to Call Your Buddy to Pick you Up From the Train Station and Drive You to Court"? That good, huh?

At least I know he's getting off halfway through my trip.

Oh My God...

"And I used to take the taxi up there all the time cuz my license got suspended a few years back from a DUI (pronounces it "dewey") and I had to get up there to Newburgh... there's nothin' but criminals up there, it's like a mini South Bronx man... nothin but fuckin' drug dealers... they should put a cop on every corner and clean that place up... it's all crack too, you can't even get cocaine... well... I know a coupla places you can get cocaine, but it's almost all fuckin' crack dealers up there... and heroin costs $20 a bag man, I told my friends that... back when I was using I got into selling for a while and I told them heroin costs $20 a fucking bag up there and they were like, no WAY man..."

What could possibly make you think it's a good idea to be telling me this? Is my body language not "closed" enough? Are you interpreting my monosyllabic grunts and forward gaze and vague head-nods as encouragement? Jesus Christ on a Crackpipe! Please stop!

Anyway, he finally bummed 3 bucks off of me for a cab and got off. Thank god my cellphone battery died a couple of hours ago. I'd hate to be getting the callbacks from unsavory characters that the woman whose phone he borrowed is going to be getting tonight.

Hey lady... when the phone rings, tell them - "$20 a bag"!!  (posted by Dave at 6:00 PM || )

  or maybe it was a capybara...

There are power lines that run over the front of our yard... a few feet in from the property line. There are also power lines across the street. This morning I was sitting in the living room checking my email, when I saw something moving... "scurrying" if you will... out of the corner of my eye. There was a tiny gap through the open-backed bookcase where I could see out the window, out to where the power lines are. And because of the angle, I thought I was looking at the powerlines way across the street rather than the ones in my own yard. As a result, I perceived the animal scurrying across the power lines as being far away, when in reality he was quite close. The upshot of this perceptual misalignment was a very convincing optical illusion that had me convinced, for a brief moment, that I had just seen a beaver run across a power line.

Turns out it was just a squirrel, so... no need to be alarmed, kids... there is no highly-evolved commando-beaver uprising going on.

Not YET anyway...  (posted by Dave at 8:23 AM || )

  i'm sleeping with a lifevest...

So, Jennifer booked a cruise for us for this summer. Four nights... Key West and Cozumel. The ship we're travelling on has been recently "refurbished". Which means they sawed the fucking thing in half a few years ago and added a couple hundred feet of hull in the middle.

The thought of this process makes me uneasy. Our room is going to be located right on the fucking weld, I know it.  (posted by Dave at 8:29 PM || )

  breathing life...

So, I've been meaning to start writing here again, but never seem to get around to it. I have a bunch of ideas for posts jotted down somewhere... maybe I'll try to find those.  (posted by Dave at 8:28 PM || )