- Of late I have found myself walking to work “unplugged”. I noticed a direct correlation about
the time I got a new iPod. The Baroness could have given a shit about my last iPod.
However open discovering that with my new iPod she could watch videos, view pictures,
listen to music, and the final deal sealer, play solitaire, there have been a number of
instances where she is out the door with my thirty gig toy while I am still wiping the sleep
from my eyes. This iJacking, oh god that’s bad, has forced me to interact with my fellow
man while braving our nation’s capital.
In doing so I have come to know that, at the risk of sounding like bad vampire fiction, this city
talks to those who listen. I have become something of an urban mystic. Constantly trying to
divine portents from the random happenstance of this shit-hole city, and it seems to be
working out. I realize that in the matter of “signs” and horoscopes it is belief that makes
them real, kinda like Dumbo with feather, by wanting to believe, you make them fit/apply to
what ever is going on in your life. Psychic is a fancy name for huckster, excepting of course
Momma’s powerful divinations in the medium of tuna salad.
It must be this self fulfilling delusion that has come into effect as I am hardly a soothsayer.
Yet there have certainly been omens in conjunction with events that have caused even other
greatest of skeptics in the barony to begin to wonder. Is there more out there? Some only
perceived by a “fifth sense”.
One such instance was last Thursday. The morning began with a bang, or should I say
blood curdling scream. I ran out of the bedroom, half dressed, convinced that I would find a
nineteen fifties monster movie happening IRL in my living room. Alas the shrieks were not
eliminating from a cone boobed co-ed, but by the Baroness herself. The source of the fright
was a dead rat, some where between the size of a baby hippo and a cougar, on our door
step. The baroness was creeped out beyond logic and kept insisting that it was just sitting
there looking at her. The oddest part of all this was that when I had to clean up the “Rat
Doe” I could see no obvious sign of death.
Things calmed down and we both went about our day, though the Baroness was visibly
shaken. I got to work and discovered that we had hired a staff assistant that morning (A
position that had been open for two months and the bulk of whose duties I had to cover).
Later on in the day I talked to my mom, who wished me a belated happy birthday. She said
she would get me a plane ticket home when ever I wanted it as a present, enabling me to do
the 40k OFCC. When I got home I discovered a check from my dentist in Seattle saying that I
had over paid by one hundred dollars. Not but thirty minutes later my neighbor told me that
she had just gotten back with a whole cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory and asked
me if I wanted a slice.
Clearly this dead rat was the luck bringer! This rodent, that Katrina thought an abomination,
was obviously some sort of powerful totem for warding off evil spirits. I went to bed that
night, hoping against hope that some other dead rodent would be on my doorstep in the
morning.
Still another sign occurred yesterday. I got up in the morning and walked down to get some
coffee. I passed by a homeless guy sitting on a corner with a flimsy buffet tin full of mac and
cheese. It looked silly and I remember thinking, “Fuckin A, good day for that guy.” When I got
to the coffee shop I hadn'’t accounted for daylight savings and missed their “early bird”
prices by a few minutes. On my way back the homeless guy was gone, in his place was a
pile of reeking vomit, occupying at least twice the space he had, and I spent the day
wrestling with a Space Marine Landspeeder. I don’t know if mine was anomalous, but the
kit went together for shit, I couldn't get al the edges to line up, shit was going where it was
supposed to, and glue leaked out of all the seams. Had I been extorted for even one cent
less then the thirty-five dollars I was made to pay that Landspeeder would have known
fleeting moments of true flight as I hucked it at a fucking wall. Regardless, my discretion did
not keep it wholly safe, and some “battle damage” did ensue.
Obviously powerful and fated magics are at work here. Or maybe not. Perhaps, like so
many others, I am just looking to spice up the mundane with properties of the fantastic.
Even still, I am giving serious consideration to building a small shine of delectable trash for
the rat gods…in my neighbor’s yard of course.
Next week will mark three months of writing to you every week. I realize it doesn’t seem like
that cause time flies when you are reading pure comic genius. Or maybe it is just that not all
of my writings have made it up on the boards yet. I am going to do my best to facilitate that
being fixed this week. Even if it means e-mailing Momma daily, which I do anyway, just to
shoot the shit. Read up, as next week there will be a quiz and I will be asking the “hard”
questions.
