Tales of the Interregnum

There are still white dog hairs from Nipper left on my brown winter scarf.

“There’s a happy place where it’s just geometry and women singing in Latin, and that’s where I am right now.”

-me, a long time ago

on the bus, among four African-Americans

Man 1 (to Man 4):  Obama’s in the White House, fool, you ain’t in the White House.  (laughs)
Man 2:  Yeah, he representin’ us.
Man 3:  (correcting Man 2) He representin’ AMERICA.
Man 4:  Yeah. (thinks) He half white, you know, you don’t never hear no one talk about that.

There is a flashing yellow sign I have never seen before in the status bar of Windows, warning me that the hard drive of my mainframe is about to give up the ghost.

Not only is Magic dead, Science is failing!!!

… the chicken’s involved, but the pig is committed.

In what has become something of an annual tradition of its own, I reprint here the relevant portion of an extended story I told in 2003, about why today is endlessly annoying to me:

I hate Halloween.

I’m not much for most holidays, of course, but there’s just something especially about Halloween that sticks in my craw, something that I don’t have one coherent explanation for.  I didn’t like candy when I was a kid.  My Mom never made us costumes; she bought them for us, and back in the Seventies the costumes were all made out of vinyl, the smell of which made me nauseous then, and makes me nauseous now.  We lived on a dead-end street off a very busy road, surrounded by commercial developments, so there were only so many houses we could go to, and only a couple of those where anyone would answer the door.  I couldn’t see the point.  It was a lot more fun for me to stay home, light my carved pumpkin (carving pumpkins was the one thing I loved) and watch the Disney version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” on TV.  That was the only time of year they played it, and you couldn’t just go out and buy it on DVD and play it ad nauseum like you can today.

One year they decided to have a Halloween “parade” at my elementary school.  They took all the kids who came to school in costume and marched them around the kickball square on the blacktop outside, while everyone else looked on.  I had worn a V-neck polo shirt and shorts, and borrowed an old tennis hat and racket from my older brother, who lettered in it, so I could go as a tennis player:  a costume with no vinyl.  I remember the older kids pointing at me as I walked past and yelling over and over “Billie Jean King!  Billie Jean King!”  I knew who that was.  I didn’t understand why they thought it was so funny.

As I got older, it didn’t get any better.  If you’re an adult and you’re still into Halloween, then either you’re embracing all the stuff about Death and giving the underworld its one night and facing what you fear that the holiday is supposed to embody, the stuff that the whole Trick or Treat thing swept under the carpet, or you like the idea that for one night you and everyone else in the world can have this sort of nation-wide Mardis Gras, flip out, break the rules and be whatever you want to be.  That’s swell.  My family owns a freaking funeral home.  I don’t need to give Death one night, because I get to live with Death and the trappings of Death and the reality of Death every single damn day of my life.  And I don’t need a special night to be what I want to be (or to flip out).  I’m already what I want to be:  …It’s enough for me, and it takes all of the strength that I have to be it day after day in a world that alternates between laughing at me and not giving a damn.

The full story is actually pretty good, but I prefer not to drag it up anymore because some of the people mentioned in it later expressed their distaste at being portrayed by me in this medium.

—

The local youths also chose to celebrate my return to Sealand last night by singling my car out from all the others parked on the block for a shaving cream adornment, a fact I only discovered on my way out of the house to catch the bus.

—

On the other hand, this is one of the few days of the year I can wear the sorts of accoutrements I normally wear without anyone cracking wise, since they assume they’re part of a costume.

House phrases that have evolved as a result of shared video-game playing and media viewing with Jack:

Cowboy Ending: any cut-scene at the end of a game or movie involving a large sunset as the back drop.  (Jack is more of a purist in this respect;  he refuses to apply the term unless the backdrop also includes cactus or mesas specifically evocative of a Western.)

Meanwhile, in Tokyo: humourous descriptor applied to any cut-scene involving gratuitous destruction of the environment (a la Godzilla).  Can also be interjected as a non-sequitor in any conversation, if followed by appropriate screaming and pantomime.

Explodamo: enemy whose primary mode of attack is to approach the main character and then blow up, especially one that can later be used by a player with the correct upgrades as ammo in his own attack, or to manipulate the environment.

In the Can: phrase denoting a power-up or other asset held in reserve for later use.

“The druggies are out there,” says Opal, squinting through the front blinds into the night.

I look up from the screen of her laptop, where I am busy leading a nation of fictional British colonists through an eight-decade long struggle for independence.  It’s not quite an atypical statement for her, but it is somewhat incongruous, coming as it does without warning, and given that she lives on a quiet street in a reasonably safe, well-policed neighborhood.  I am reminded uncomfortably of our next-door neighbor, who spiraled off into drunken dementia, and had all the pine trees around her house cut down because she thought there were black men hiding in them, waiting to attack her.

“What?” I say.

“The druggies,” she repeats, evenly.  “Every night about this time, two cars drive up the street and park, and then sit there with the lights off.  Then a little while later, another car drives up the street, and it parks with the lights off, too.”  She leans to the right slightly to adjust her point of view, moving her fingers to a different part of the blind.  “The three people in the cars get out for a little while and talk to each other-  trade the drugs for the money, I guess.  Then they all get back in their cars and drive away.”

I open my mouth to say something dismissive, to the effect that there are probably lots of reasons why three people might engage in such behavior that have nothing to do with drugs-  then shut it again as I realize that I can’t think of any.  It’s a dead end street off a major highway, with no streetlights, and little if any foot traffic:  factors that would all recommend it for exactly what she’s suggesting.

I stand up from the dining room table and wander into the living room, as she turns away from the blinds.  “So…  why don’t you call the cops?” I ask her.

“Me?” she says, surprised.  “I’m not callin’ the cops on them.  They’ll come and burn down the house.”

She shuffles away into the kitchen, leaving me standing there watching her, blinking.

—

At the bus stop, as I huddle behind a thin glass partition against the wind and rain, I notice a color poster taped to the side of the shelter, hanging half-on, half-off.  It shows a Crimestoppers tip number, and above it, a picture of the County Sheriff:  a clean-cut, handsome-looking gentleman wearing a grey dress uniform, smiling at the viewer.  He seems vaguely familiar.  He might have been one of the people who attended the visiting for my father’s funeral.

“ALERTNESS IS THE KEY TO PREVENTION,” reads the sign.  “YOUR INVOLVEMENT IS CRUCIAL.”

A small truck roars by, close to the curb, sending up a splash of water that leaps through the shelter door and soaks me.

It seems that one of the contestants on the current iteration of “Survivor” also goes by the name of Ace.

Well that’s going to futz all my Google traffic.

… the next person who asks me if I am “still” doing something-  “still writing”, “still typing”, “still reading”, “still drawing”, “still playing that computer game”, “still at work”-  is going to be subject to spectacularly violent retribution.