Five Wonderful Sights I Didn't Get Pictures Of (While At the Bike Rally)

1. A rat atop a cat atop a dog, who was being lead around on a leash by its owner. The cat and rat sat perfectly still while dog and owner wove through the maze of motorcycles.

2. The Christian Coalition of Motorcyclists, who trudged through the heat bearing wooden crosses (I still say they were hollow inside) and signs saying "Got Jesus?"

(I desperately wanted to follow them singing "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life," but I didn't. Because I suck.)

3. A man with "TANK" tattooed across his beer gut, who totally checked me out.

4. A woman wearing her underwear and bra with silver knee-high hooker boots, her hair styled like Cleopatra's.

5. Two children asleep in a little red wagon, being pulled down the sidewalk alongside a row of motorcycles.

Hollywood > Real Life

He was tall. He was burly. He had a blond buzz cut, so he really wasn't my type.

He followed his mother and sister into the store, and then stopped and looked at me curiously. I thought he looked familiar, and as it happened...he was.

"Hey," he said after a moment, "were you...on a plane at all? Like yesterday?"
"From Denver to Rapid?"
"I think I sat next to you."
"I think you did too. How weird."

His mother was delighted. "Really! What a coincidence! Did you two talk the whole way?"

"No," he answered. "We were reading."
"You were reading Twilight..."
"You were reading a very interesting-looking book. It was...Brief Interviews With Men - despicable men? I remember they weren't good men."
"Hideous men. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men."
"Right. What was wrong with the men?"
"Mostly they were misogynists."

The rest of the conversation wasn't particularly notable. We reminisced about the toddlers who squealed with delight during the plane's turbulent descent and then we marveled at the smallness of the world, and as he left he made a point of saying that he was glad to have seen me again and hoped to see me soon.

All of which would have been kind of awesome and mid-90s-romantic-comedy-esque were he remotely my type.

(And of course his airplane reading choice didn't help matters.)

This Is the Abridged Version, On Account of I Am Lazy

I went out for a beer last night with a friend, and then we ran into another friend, and then we made a friend, although I don't believe she ever told us her name. But then it's hard to remember all that when you're so trashed that you start hatching schemes sure to win you a Darwin award.

"I want a log cabin that's built around a tree, and I want the tree to be a chimney."
"But...then it would burn."
"No no no! I would scorch it. I would scorch it really, really well, and then it would be fire resistant."

Our new friend flicked the ashes from her cigarette into our bowl of pretzels and continued, claiming that, while she did want to live in a forest, she couldn't always tell the difference between forests and cities.

"Well, what if there were more trees than people?"
"See, now that's a forest."

She took a pretzel, swirled it in the salt and ash at the bottom of the bowl, and popped it in her mouth. I tasted it vicariously, the ash gritty and wet between my teeth, and, grimacing, washed it down with a swallow of beer.

And then our friend was standing, grabbing her empty glass, and deserting us - she was, apparently, in search of more beer. It was only after she left that we noticed her wallet, also deserted, sitting on the table. Rachel picked it up and turned it over in her hands, saying:

"You know, if we weren't such nice people..."

So We Stopped At This Sketchy Gas Station

There was a curb I had to step over on my way to the door, which was coated with a thin layer of dirt and smeared with breath. The cashier was a disheveled, heavy-set woman whose long, yellowing fingernails bore curving strips of glittery blue polish - crack nails, Anna called them - and she tapped them menacingly on the counter as I walked by. When I looked closer I saw that the nail on her middle left finger was beginning to detach; it dangled by its corner, swinging with the motion of her hand.

On my way to the cooler I passed a tall kid with delicate, slightly feminine features, who stared hollowly ahead at the wall in front of him. His mouth was a straight, fixed line, and he held something against his leg, covered with his hand. I pictured a knife, or a razor - something that would appear, suddenly, between his fingers, slicing through the air and turning my life into a Lifetime movie. (Two girls on the road, victimized by a teenage psychopath. Two mothers, bent on revenge - at any cost.)

I got a Sunkist from the cooler and stood in line, behind Potential Psychopath. At the front, a balding man with a body lumpy and pale as a pierogie pounded his fist on the counter, crying, "but I don't want to sign. Why can't you sign?"

Crack Nails tapped his credit card on the counter and smirked. "Well, I guess I could sign. I could sign your name."

"No! I'll sign my own name." Pierogie drew a loose slipknot slightly below the line, then looked back up and whined, "I don't cause problems."

"You don't cause problems?" Crack Nails dropped his card back on the counter, then folded her arms across her chest, digging her crack nails into her upper-arm skin.

"I've never caused problems."

"Alright, you don't cause problems."

"That's right, I don't."

"Bye, William."

Potential Psychopath's hand shifted slightly as he watched Pierogie leave. I embraced my histrionic side and flinched, stumbling back a couple steps; and then my suspicions were confirmed when he lifted his hand and held up a sleek, gleaming silver razor.

Or rather, Razr. Like the cell phone. I'm an idiot.

Well. That Was Weird.

So there I was, walkin' along, in search of a delicious yet nutritious lunch, when I got catcalled by this really pretty girl. A really pretty girl who, in addition to making that ridiculous "ow!" call which is apparently meant to suggest that the object of said call is painfully hot, yelled out "hey sexy!" as she leaned out the passenger's window of a black SUV.

I was far too perplexed to be offended.

I mean, do I look gay? Not that there's anything wrong with that. (God, that joke has officially become a cliche. Sadness.)

Anyway. Chicks dig me, and that's all. The End.

Something I Noticed While Checking the Weather

The top searches on MSN today are Victoria Beckham, 23,000 Big Macs, and Child Brides.

That's wonderful. Or would be, were it not for the fact that I will probably have some weird dream tonight involving all three.

My Religious Epiphany

A few weeks ago, en route to my blog, I made a simple typing error and became lost. By switching the s and p in blogspot, I found myself in a crazy religious site run by people who think that, since I am a Catholic who sins frequently and flippantly, I am going to Hell. Which is entirely possible, I suppose, but something tells me that God would decline to share such a juicy piece of gossip with self-righteous borderline-psychotics.

Anyway, I thought it was odd for a religious site to have http://www.skippingpastconclusions.blogpsot.com as their URL, since 1. they're not a blog, and 2. "skipping past conclusions" is meant to imply a lack of both focus and knowledge. (Although, maybe that's why they misspelled "spot.")

Then this morning, on my way to Carrie's blog, I once again switched the s and the p, and, once again, I wound up in Psychotic Pseudo-Christian Land. This seemed strange, so I started testing other blogs, and the same thing happened every time. Rachel, it works for your blog. It works for the Guerrilla Knitters as well. It works for everything.

And that's when I realized - the roads to hell are both profuse and varied, but all it takes to bring us to Jesus is a simple typo.

Thus, stupidity saves.