Furby

So, there I was at Starbucks, grading papers and trying to ward off an Overused Comma coma with a Cranberry Bliss bar, when Tiny Bladder at the next table asked me to watch his stuff for the millionth time.  I rolled my eyes, stuffed a chunk of Cranberry Bliss into my mouth and said, “Dude, I don’t care how cold it is outside, no one wants your dollar-store notebook and the ratty goddamn trench coat your mama obviously dressed you in.” Somehow, through the crumbly brown sugary goodness that fell from my mouth he heard, “Sure! No problem!” Then he dashed off.

While Tiny Bladder ran to the bathroom, a fetid odor snuck into the coffee shop, curdling the last of the lemon frosting sticking to my fingers.  I held my nose in the nick of time because, given a few more seconds, it would have jumped off my face and scurried out the door.  For there in the doorway stood Furby.  I groaned.  I had thirty-three more papers to grade with sentences like:

Homosexuality didn’t have a name in the 12th Century.  It was called gay in the 20th Century being that men what lived together were happy.

And

During the American Civil War in the late 1960s feminism was dying.  It was in its death throws.

I did not have time to deal with Furby’s brand of crazy.  My stomach tried to dissolve itself with its own acid as Furby’s pungent, dank, mop soaked in urine, moldy cabbage scent settled over the store.  I turned back to my papers hoping Furby would not sense the crazy magnet implanted behind my left ear during a secret government experiment in the 1980s.  He had thirty or so mangy stuffed animal torsos from the Island of Plague Infected Toys pinned to his moldy jacket and 70s era running shorts.  As he made his way toward me (natch!) eyeless heads with mouths disfigured by rats and dry rot taunted me, “We’re coming to get you, Dingo!  We’re coming to get YOUooouuuuUUU!”

It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, I told myself, closing my eyes and wishing it all away.  It worked.  Sort of.  When I opened my eyes, Furby was seated at Tiny Bladder’s table drinking Tiny Bladder’s coffee and writing in Tiny Bladder’s notebook. 

“Excuse me, “ I said.  “Someone’s sitting there; he’ll be right back.”

Furby continued to scribble in Tiny Bladder’s notebook.  Although Furby ignored me, his Typhoid Toys did not.  Bouncing and bobbing with every elaborate flourish of Furby’s Tiny Bladder’s pen, their empty eye sockets stared at me accusingly, spewing reproach (not to mention hantavirus) in my direction.  I was supposed to be watching Tiny Bladder’s things!  What kind of derelict sentinel am I?  I had to do something.

Before I could interrupt him again, Furby paused from his frantic writing.  Apparently, all that creative activity, together with the large coffee, were making him warm.  So he removed the head-studded coat with some fanfare, and the smell of sick room sweat and body odor became even more overpowering. 

But at that moment, thoughts of compassion, understanding, and kindness rose above the wormwood stench of Furby’s presence.  Furby, after all, seemed to have fallen on hard times.  I was warmed by the holiday music playing over the speakers. The beautifully lit professionally photographed pictures of pumpkin pie latte evoked Normal Rockwell images of friends and family.  Furby’s furry contingent of contagion was his family.  And I, I am a friend to man, a comrade of all mankind.  My mind floated on thoughts of “we are the world” and “we are the children,” and, miraculously, my body went with it, all the way up to the manager where I, with compassion, understanding, and kindness said, “He’s using someone else’s stuff.” Because nothing overcomes a spiritual bond with your fellow man like good ol’ property rights.  It’s the American Way!

I stayed at the counter thinking of Peace on Earth and ordering another Cranberry Bliss as the manager gently, and with compassion, understanding, and kindness, gave Furby the boot.  Furby gathered his things and flounced out of the Starbucks with a primetime pageant-worthy flounce to end all flounces.  If trumpets had heralded his departure, it would have been no more dramatic.  Still, if he had turned at the door and said, “Good day, sir!  I said, GOOD DAY!” I would have applauded.

Instead, I hummed Fa la la la la! La la la la! all the way back to my seat and launched into another poorly written paper.  Tiny Bladder returned.  Dear god!  What took him so fucking long! 

“Hey!” he exclaimed.  “What happened to my coffee?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Well,” I began to explain but was cut short.

“And where’s my coat?”

Oh shit.  Still sitting on the chair was Furby’s coat of heads, all of them staring at me critically with their vacant eyeholes.  Tiny Bladder’s trench had departed.

“That’s not your coat?” I asked.

Yes, there are eight million stories in this naked city.  And tonight, one of those stories is a little less naked. 

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Pound Of Flesh

Quick Update:  I did a movie review for The Greenists.  Please check it out!

Tap, tap, tap…testing 1, 2, 3…is anybody out there?

Well, that was an unexpected and unintended bloggy hiatus! 

The last two weeks of class were a flurry of papers, projects, exams, and grading.  You’d think that once grades were submitted I’d be able to kick back with a beer and revel in the five minutes I have to myself before I begin prepping for the fall.  Oh, Innernetz, how silly you are!  I had to use four of those minutes to catch up on the many things I had let slide during the summer session.  After grades are submitted, my personal life takes over. Among the many joyous tasks I had: calls to my slumlord about the dismal water pressure that had turned my shower into Chinese water torture, involuntary volunteer work, and inventing new miracle diets that magically and effortlessly pack on the pounds.  Yes, I did watch eighteen nonstop hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood, but that indulgence was earned since, even after grades were submitted, I spent a disproportionate amount of time performing cutting edge surgery on students whose heads were so far up their asses that their burps were indistinguishable from their farts

All of the students (and some of their parents) think that if they could just meet with me, they’d be able to convince me that getting that pedicure was much more important than attending the mid-term exam.  And every semester I get one or two students who tell me that they thought all of the assignments were optional.  I tell you what, if they were as creative and diligent in doing the assigned work as they were with coming up with excuses for not doing it, they’d all be A+ students.  But they’re not.  They’re just idiots.  Two seconds after grades were submitted I began receiving phone calls and emails asking, “What can I do about my grade?” My standard answer always starts with, “First, build a time machine....” They don’t think that’s as funny as I do. 

One student failed the course because she missed an entire week of class.  She flounced into my office peeling like a soft shell crab, her tan lines fish belly white against her crocodile jerky skin.  “I told you that I had a family vacation that was non-negotiable!” she shrieked, waving her arms with such fury and drama that she looked like a fight scene from the Matrix.  Layers of baked flesh drifted onto my desk as though I had landed in a dust-mite’s dream.  Flake threw herself into the chair next to my desk and crossed her arms like a petulant child.  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Flake demanded, her face shriveled like an Appalachian apple doll.  What else could I say?  I gently pushed a tube of Aveeno across the desk and held up the garden hose I keep in my desk.  “She rubs the lotion on her skin....”

The last time I saw skin like hers, I was Flake’s age and working at a video store.  (Just in case any of my students are reading: yes, they had televisions and even videos when I was your age.  Yes, the videos were made of wood.) My co-irker was a tall bottle-blonde who aspired to be a supermodel.  I didn’t see it ever happening only because she had a congenital defect that was impossible to overlook: she was butt ugly.  Willem Defoe/Janet Reno love-child ugly. If ugly were a sport, she would win the Tour de Ugly every year and, every single year, the French would accuse her of taking ugly-enhancing drugs.  My co-irker would lay out in the sun every chance she got, but her skin never changed from baboon-ass red to the deep copper tan she so desired.  I called her Chernobyl Barbie.

One day, after being on vacation for almost two weeks, Chernobyl Barbie walked into the video store looking as if she had vacationed on the sun.  Her skin was brown, blistered, and pork rind crispy.  In her red and white sundress, she resembled a KFC Chicken Strip.  Chernobyl Barbie slathered on cheap body lotion throughout the day to soothe her skin and prolong her third degree burn tan.  She scared more children than usual.

By closing time, her chest was an oozing mass of moist, peeling, bubbly flesh.  After returning some videos to the stacks, she came behind the counter where I was counting the day’s receipts, noting the surge in rentals of Nightmare on Elm Street. Chernobyl Barbie went to grab the next pile of unshelved movies from the floor and tripped.  I tried to catch her but my palm landed with a schwack! in the middle of her lubricated chest. It was like sinking my hand into Vaseline covered Tempur-Pedic foam, patented NASA research and all.  I yanked my hand away but, after her twelve hours of regular basting, my hand just slid across her Butterball chest, the skin curling like ribbon candy and encasing each digit like a Chinese finger trap. And the smell!  I gagged and tried to breathe through my nose as her skin gave off the swampy, wet smell of a dirty fish tank.  Where was her filter?  Must change her filter!

“Get it off!  Get it off!” I screamed, snapping my hands back and forth.  But the dead flesh clung on, not wanting to relinquish its hold on living cells.  Chernobyl Barbie was no help.  She was staring in disbelief at the raw white skin emblazoned on her chest in the distinct shape of my palm.  With a final violent shake, the skin came loose and dropped onto the glass counter with a sickening schlock! Imagine the sound you make when you suck Jello right out of the bowl: schlock!

I don’t remember much after that, and neither would you.  But I do remember that, for the rest of that summer, Chernobyl Barbie walked around with my handprint on her chest like a turkey drawing kids do at Thanksgiving, except that, against the crispy pork-rind skin next to it, it looked like a marshmallow turkey.  Still, somehow, she continued to scare more kids than usual.

I thought about Chernobyl Barbie as I watched Flake douse herself with my tube of lotion.  As she sputtered and spewed about her vacation and how I owed her a good grade, her dry skin crackled and threatened to split like a crusty baked potato.  Where was my sour cream?

With the apartment in such a state of disrepair that Dingo Girl and Not a Dingo are weighing the benefits of homelessness and the drama of summer semester just beginning to fade, students for next semester are already starting to contact me (“Do we have to read all the books on the syllabus?”).  I have been too tired and unmotivated to blog, preferring instead to escape my surroundings via the Fine Living channel. But that will change soon.  I’ve scheduled myself for a thirty minute nap on Thursday.  After that, I’ll be Dingolicious all over again.

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Never Been to Spain

Hello, Innernetz!  I guest posted at Kelley’s blog, Magneto Bold Too, a few days ago.  I’m cross-posting it here just in case you didn’t get a chance to pop over there and read it.

I went to see Wolverine earlier this week.  Did I replay the Hugh Jackman in his birthday suit scene over and over again in my dreams that night?  Oh, quit whining.  That’s not a spoiler, folks.  That’s incentive.  Now plop your $12.50 down and go get a gander at some man candy. 

Anyway, no, I did not dream of Hugh “Come-to-me-Baby” Jackman.  I dreamt that my mother was trying to get me to go to church.  But not just any church.  It was some country church with hard wooden pews and a preacher who looked like he just stepped off the set of The Scarlett Letter.  There was a fruit stand just down the street selling cherry pie and I could see it from my pew.  I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.  I don’t even like cherry pie all that much.

Anyway, I woke up craving pie and pissed off that I did not dream of Hugh “You Know You Want Me” Jackman.  But the universe was not finished fucking with me yet.  I packed up my bag o’ books and headed to Starbucks to study.  As some of you know, my Starbuck’s study days are often rather interesting.  I am a magnet for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who want to critique my hair or otherwise flaunt their crazy.  This particular day was no different.

The coffee shop was relatively empty.  I set my laptop up in my usual spot, a tiny table that’s just large enough for my computer and a book.  About an hour later, I was thoroughly engrossed in my work when I heard someone say in a pissed off voice, “I said hello!” I looked up to find a woman standing beside my table with a Tupperware bin filled with a murky biohazard and, in her other hand, a newspaper.  “Um, hello?” I said, sure that she had mistaken me for someone else — like someone who was about to share my table when there were at least ten empty ones in the store.  At my acknowledgment, she beamed.  Her face broke into a smile and her hair, which radiated out from her head like braided spokes on a wagon wheel, practically shivered with delight, each braid giving the others enthusiastic high-fives.  My stomach dropped.  And then she dropped into the seat across from me, pushing my laptop across the table and placing her Tupperware Dumpster of Death and newspaper in the now-empty spot. 

Now, for the uninitiated, if you MUST share a table at a coffee shop, all that is required is a civil acknowledgment of the other person’s existence.  You do not need to engage in small talk, exchange phone numbers, or arrange for a house swap while one of you is in France.  No, just nod.  Smile.  And done.  Apparently, Wilma Wagon Wheel didn’t get the memo.  She plopped down and immediately started blathering, only pausing to inhale enough air to re-inflate. 

“Do you think we’re going to get some sun today?  I like to go barefoot when it’s sunny.  It makes my corns feel good.”

*deep breath*

“What kinda laxtop is that?  My brother has a laxtop but his looks better than that one!

*deep breath and a shaking of the braids over the sorry state of my “laxtop”*

“Did you see Medea Goes to Jail, Race to Witch Mountain, Mall Cop? ”

*deep breath*

The easiest thing would have been for me to move to another table, but once again I was cursed by my southern upbringing.  I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I stayed put.  And, as she opened the Tupperware Dumpster and began gobbing its contents like a mouse trapped in a cheese wheel, I figured she’d either finish and leave soon or the hazmats she was eating would kill her.  I tried to focus on my work only giving her a nod and an “uh-huh” every now and then.  I figured she’d get the hint.  She didn’t.  Instead, she stopped mid-slurp and slammed the container down on the table slopping a few tentacles over the edge and soaking her newspaper with ooze.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled.  Oh, crap.  What the hell is going on?  I looked up from my laptop to see that she was directing her ire toward a man at a table several feet away.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled again.  In an indignant stage whisper, she turns to me and gestures, “That man is staring at us.”

And then I sealed my fate.  I answered her.  “He’s not looking at us,” I said.  He’s working.” With an emphasis on the “working.” That simple answer appeased her and now, having gotten my attention, her braids did a happy dance.  “I’m going to Hallelujah!” she said.  “Have you ever been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  Shitfire, I thought.  She’s going to whip out her Gideon Bible, or Watchtower, or copy of Dianetics.  My dream of my mom trying to get me to go to church became less of a dream and more like a premonition. 

“No, I’ve never been to Hallelujah.  I’ve never even heard of it,” I said.  She was flabbergasted.  Her eyes rounded into a Tex Avery cartoon look of surprise and her braids just about leapt off her head in shock.  “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!” she shouted.  “Nope, sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “Where is it?” Clearly disgusted by my lack of world geography, she waved her hand in the general direction of the Starbucks entry and said, “You know, over there!” I just shrugged and gave her a weak smile and said, “Sorry, still don’t know where it is,” as I prayed to God and L. Ron Hubbard that she would not ask me to look it up on my laxtop.  But I didn’t need to look it up because she described it to me in great detail.  How she’d gone to Liberty Travel to book her ticket (I didn’t even know people used travel agencies anymore) and that she just wanted to get her ticket but the travel agent wouldn’t stop talking about transfers, fees, and other mundane things.  But she finally got her ticket.  Just that morning. But she wasn’t sure where she’d put it.  No problem, she’d go back and get another one if she couldn’t find it.

“Are you sure you’ve never been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  The look of pity on her face was genuine.  First, I had a second-rate laptop and now, she discovers, I have never been to Hallelujah.  Hell, I’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!  So, she described it to me. 

Hallelujah has water, and sand, and palm trees and — wait a minute, this is sounding awfully familiar.  “Do you mean Honolulu?” I asked.  “Where?” she asked?  “Honolulu,” I repeated. “It sounds like that’s what you’re describing.” “Honolulu?  I’ve never heard of such a place!  Honolulu?” she said as she and her braids start laughing at my stupidity.  “Honolulu.  Hmph!” Now she thinks I am completely off my rocker.  “It’s just that I’ve never heard of Hallelujah and what you are describing sounds a lot like Honolulu.” I must have offended her with my suggestion because she placed the lid on her Tupperware Dumpster with a brusque snap! and gathered up her newspaper, soggy though it was with offal.  She and her braids turned their back on me and began to walk away from the table.  “What do you know,” she said, “you’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!”

She stomped away.  Three feet away.  And plopped herself down at the table of the man she’d yelled at just moments before.  I sighed with relief, went back to my reading, and pitied the poor man as, five minutes later, I heard her exclaim, “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!”

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Welcome to Crazytown

I have frizzy hair.  Please, please, you are too kind.  There is no need to protest in my hair’s defense.  I know I have frizzy hair.  The Hunch-Back Woman at the post-office told me so.  If anyone knows frizzy, it’s the Hunch-Back Woman with her I Dream of Jeannie couture, Sideshow Bob ‘do, and John Wayne Gacy clown make-up.

During a Starbucks Workday last week, I decided to take a brief study break and stop by the nearby post office to mail a package.  I pass this post office frequently and Hunch-Back Woman appears to be a permanent fixture. You can smell her before you see her — she’s fond of a particularly aromatic variety of maryjane.  In fact, if you stand downwind of her for a minute, you get just a little high.

Hunch-Back Woman usually stands at the door to the post office and opens it for the unsuspecting public like a mime playing a doorman except that the door is real.  And she is not silent.  I say “unsuspecting” because the last thing you expect as she holds the door open is to have her bellow the post office hours in your ear.  It’s a lovely customer service.  I don’t know why the post office didn’t think of it themselves.  It’s so much more convenient than having to review the hours plainly posted on the door.

What post office patrons could do without, however, is the colorful dressing down they receive if they ignore the nasty coffee-cup tip jar half filled with an unknown, grayish fluid she shakes in your face as you enter the building.  Hunch-Back Woman has quite a repertoire.  “Cheap bastard!” and “Dirty Whore” seem to be her favorites, but those epithets are usually reserved for the people who actually tip her.  Those who don’t tip her are often called much worse.  Her favorite — perhaps she is a fan of Mike Myers’s films — seems to be “Fat Bastard.” Every now and then I’ve heard her let loose with “Motherfucker!” but I think that special nickname is reserved for those who decide that facing off against Yucko the Hopheaded Clown is not on their Bucket List and decide to come back some other time.

On this particular day, I had already been tapped out of tips.  Figuring I would get a pass because I give Hunch-Back Woman change every time I see her, I offered a smile and a “Sorry.” Oh, yes, I was sorry.  Her pasted-on smile immediately transformed into one of Virgil’s Furies and I began to wonder if Hunch-Back Woman’s Wet & Wild Carnage Red lipstick was actually the bloody remnants of other non-tippers.  She sucked in enough air to demonstrate a lifetime of perfecting the art of inhalation before expelling a loud and vicious…

 
“FRIZZY!”
 

Um, what?  Frizzy?  Frizzy?!  I was stunned.  I was braced for “bitch” or worse, but not FRIZZY!  Is FRIZZY worse than Dirty Whore, Cheap Bastard, Twatwaffle, or all the other colorful euphemisms for men, women, sex acts, minorities, and homosexuals?  Because, believe me, I’ve heard her use almost all of them but I’ve never heard her use FRIZZY.  Self-consciously I reached up to touch my hair.  Had I forgotten to use my humidity resistant gel this morning?  I did switch conditioners, but this winter weather has really made.... 

Seeing my weakness she pounced on it. 

“Your hair is FRIZZY!  FRIZZY!  FRIZZY!  Hahahahah!  You have FRIZZY hair!”

I rushed past her into the post office lobby checking over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t flying at me with VO5 and a hair net.  I seemed safe for the time being and the long lines at the post office almost assured me that she would be gone by the time I left.  And thank goodness, she was.

So, stamps in hand, my frizzy hair and I headed back to Starbucks.  About a block away, I felt a presence at my shoulder.  Oh, no, I thought.  I walked a little faster.  The shadow kept pace.  I slowed down.  So did the shadow.  I was trying to avoid a confrontation but apparently there was going to be one whether I liked it or not.  I quickly turned to face Hunch-Back Woman and was surprised to find that it wasn’t her.  My shadow was a thin, bespectacled, confused-looking man in colorful superhero tights and high-tops.  Thinking that maybe he was lost or needed some other assistance I asked, “Can I help you?” This man who two seconds before was walking close enough to give me a colonoscopy suddenly reared back and yelled, “YOU STINK!!”

What.

The.

Fuck?!

Surely he and Hunch-Back woman came from the same family shrub.  One root.  One branch.  Twice the crazy.  He repeated it again just in case I missed it at 180 decibels.  “YOU STINK!!”

This time I was ready. 

Me (in sweetest voice evah!):  Why thank you.  That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day.

Shrub:  No!  I said, you STINK!

Me (very sweet):  I heard you.  Again, you are too kind.

Shrub (getting frustrated and welling up with tears):  No, no, no, no!  I said —

Me (making myself choke with my own sweetie sweetness):  I know.  And you really are a doll but I must be running now.  You have a nice day!

Shrub (crying):  crycrycrycrycry

I don’t know what the lesson is from all of this.  Do I need to pay more attention to my personal hygiene?  Do I need to find a Starbucks that is not in Crazytown?  Or maybe I should just tape twenty-dollar bills to my packages and avoid the post office.  My packages will still get to their destinations, right?

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How ’Bout ’Dem Apples!

Sometimes I think I can change the world.  Sometimes I think that I can do something that makes a difference.  I usually feel this way when I’m listening to the Broadway soundtrack to Hair. I get pumped.  I look up volunteer positions, I make sure I’m getting Rachel Maddow’s tweets and then…and then, I just get deflated.  It’s overwhelming. Bailout.  Homelessness. Domestic Violence. Illiteracy.  Animal Abuse.  Natural Disaster Relief. Fashion Policing and Passing Judgment on Tourists.  There’s so much to be done and I can’t even remember to change Not a Dingo’s litter box with any regularity.  And then sometimes I feel that the best thing I can do is to bolster the economy by ordering another Venti Earl Grey and slice of pound cake from the grumpy Starbucks barista.  And no, I’m not putting a tip in the tip jar. 

Really, who does that?  You know when I put a tip in the Starbucks tip jar?  When the whole bean coffee Mr. Dingo drinks isn’t on the shelf and someone runs to the back to get some for me.  Not when someone puts a tea bag in a cup of hot water.  Excuse me, isn’t that your job?  You want me to tip you for doing your job?  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am definitely in the overtipper category.  Waiters, hairdressers, delivery people, and cab drivers love me. These are all people who tend to go above their job description to make my interaction with them the best it can be.  Refills before I ask, squeezing me into an appointment at the last minute, delivering my pizza so that it’s hot and right side up keeping the cheese on the pizza and not sticking to the cardboard box, seeing me waving frantically in the pouring rain and pulling over to haul me and a soaking Dingo Girl to a vet appointment uptown — those things get tips.  Big tips.  But, no, grumpy barista, you are not getting a tip from me for simply turning from the cash register to the hot water spout and dropping in a tea bag. 

But lately, I have had to change my grumpy barista tipping policy.  You see, I’ve become one of those people.  You know the people I mean, the people you see sitting in Starbucks for hours at a time typing away on laptops or scribbling furiously in a wire-ringed notebook.  I always asked myself, “Don’t they have an office or at least a dining room table to work from!  Who comes to Starbucks to work?” People like me, that’s who.  People who can’t see their desk for all the crap piled on top of it.  People like me who cannot shut out the catcalls and running commentary on my poor housekeeping skills from the dishes in the kitchen and laundry on the floor.  And the mold in the bathtub shooting dice with the soap scum?  They taunt me.  Oh, how they taunt me. 

You know who else works at Starbucks?  People who can’t type a complete sentence without Not a Dingo walking all over the keyboard on her way to the mouse.  The mouse she then chooses to sleep on only to wake up when I try to slide my hand under her dingleberried butt to do a cut and paste.  And waking her up means that I must want to pet her, right?  So she makes sure she stays within arms reach by sitting in front of the monitor. 9999999999999999999999999999 (okay, that was from Not a Dingo walking on the 8888888888888 keyboard and I’m too lazy to delete it).

And then there’s Dingo Girl.  Dingo Girl who loves her mama so much that she must sit and whine at her mama’s feet for attention.  If whining doesn’t work, she’s sure that pawing at my arm will.  Or maybe licking my feet.  Put shoes on and she licks my leg.  Put on jeans studded with cactus tines and she stands on her hind feet to lick my face.  There’s so much love at Casa Dingo.  Love is killing me.  Hey!  I think that’s a great title for a new Lifetime Movie. 

*announcer voice*

One woman.  Two fur-kids.  She’s slowly losing her mind.  Is the descent into madness a sadistic plan by the four-legged critters or is this woman simply unable to love?
Starring Melissa Gilbert, Garfield, and that dog from the Taco Bell commercials.

*end announcer voice*

Really, go set your Tivos.  I’m sure that my screenplay is going to be picked up by Jane Campion or Sofia Coppola any day now.

I could go into the office to work but I share an office with about a gabillion other adjuncts.  It’s less of an office and more like detention from The Breakfast Club.  No one really goes there to work.  It’s a place to go to commiserate about The Man and hand out leftover homemade cupcakes.  Here’s how my attempt to work in the office went late last week,

Me:  (going to my desk and taking out a six inch pile of papers and notebooks)
Co-Irker #1:  Talktalktalktalktalktalktalktalktalk…My daughter had her dance recital.  Talktalktalktalktalk…living room…talktalktalktalktalk…Peru…talktalktalk..ha!ha!ha!...cupcakes!
Co-Irker#2:  Slurp! Chomp! Chomp!  Slurp!  Click! Click! Click! Slurp!

Apparently Co-Irker#2 needs to get his dentures fixed.  He brought in an apple and proceeded to grind it to applesauce with ill-fitting dentures.  He couldn’t bite the apple like a normal person.  Instead, he would slurp the apple creating a suction of saliva and spittle that softened the peel allowing him to chomp into the crunchy flesh.  Of course the saliva made the apple a little slippery. His mouth would lose suction and he’d have to do the slurping thing again.  Then, his dentures would shift and protrude from his mouth like the creature from Aliens.  They’d chatter together with a clicking sound as he masticated the poor fruit and then the cycle would start all over again.

So, I’ve ended up at Starbucks.  And the past two weeks have been more productive than any day I’ve had in the past two years.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner!  The only down side is not having internet access.  I mean, they have it but I’m not about to pay ten bucks for it.  Hmmm, could the lack of internet access have something to do with my productivity.  Nah, that’s just too silly to believe.  And oh, Innernetz, the people who come to Starbucks are a strange lot.  I have some stories for you.  But those are for another day.

What I want to tell you is that I tip at Starbucks now.  I tip a lot.  Hell, it’s more like I’m paying rent.  I’m not tipping for my hot water and tea bag.  I’m tipping for a place to work, a place to think, and a place to people-watch and be highly entertained.  I love you Virginia Woolf, but you didn’t need a room of your own.  You needed a Starbucks.

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