“Lucky Day in Hell” by Eels oozes out of the pumpkin shaped speakers… “This could be your lucky day, in Hell. Never know who it might be, at your doorbell…”
I was at a rock venue. When I stood near the stage door I could hear hundreds, possibly thousands of people outside, cheering. On stage, an established band would play a set in the evening, with newcomers and the unsigned as opening acts. Walking through the backstage doors and into the lounge, I noticed a lot of people I didn’t know sitting on chairs and around tables, chatting over various cans of beverages and finger-foods. I recognised one face though; which belonged to a guy who used to be in my graphics class in high school. He and some of the others were chatting, and kept stealing glances at the two dye-orange haired girls on the next table, whose backs were facing me. I scanned the room briefly. No seats available, except opposite those two.
I sashayed across the room using my “rock star” walk and took my seat at the table, opposite the two girls, all the time looking over at the groups clustered around the nearby tables. Everyone was looking over at me and even my old school friend didn’t recognise me. I had a smile on my face, as always. So did everyone else. They all seemed to be excited about something unobvious to me at the moment. I turned to face the girls, to greet them. It was then that I noticed they looked like they were probably in their early 20s and looked pretty similar. Similar enough to be sisters, or even twins. Upon closer inspection, I came to realise that the young woman on my right was Tomoko Kawase, from the band The Brilliant Green and Tommy February 6. The girl on her right had a different style, with her hair tied up and pinned at the back. In any case, she had almost the exact same facial features as Tomoko! My heart-rate picked up in the background of the confusion, but I was able to say “hello” and ask of their health in what was probably the most native-like few lines of Japanese to have ever left my lips. I was just about to introduce myself and ask which one of them was “Tommy.” I woke to the sound of the phone ringing. I jumped out of bed and gave my eyes a quick rub to read the display on the clock: 11-something. With the sleep still in my eyes, I negotiated the staircase in what might as well have been pure darkness. I scrambled to the phone. It was my boss asking what was up. “Ah sorry, I overslept. I’m coming straight to work now.” I had fallen asleep again with the alarm set to “pm” instead of “am” and that was the first proper dream I could remember in what seemed like aeons, when sliced into aliquots of “6 months.”
I spent the second half of the day at work playing Chess online against Q, who was seated at the desk opposite me. It was obvious to the others sharing the same office that we were waging war on a small battlefield instead of telephoning contacts, mining data and creating new databases, because we were sporadically calling out a barrage of comments designed to derail the other player’s train of thought. I know, it’s unsportsman-like since in Chess, concentration is key. But hey, he started it:
Q: Hurry up!
Me: Hey, I want to make sure I’ve planned this correctly so I can take your Queen out.
Q: You’re winning because you’re cheating.
Me: What, by thinking?
Q: Oh, so that’s what you’re doing.
Me: Hey, should I take your Queen, your Rook, or just win the game? (whilst planning out the last moves of that current game).
Puns are great things. It was a good thing everyone knew we were playing Chess when we decided to have a slanging match on the side.
“I’m going to kick your ass!” proclaims Q over his monitor, like a poor man’s fortune teller.
“You’ll never do that. You can’t even get past my Janitors let alone my Forest Rangers. My King’s tucked away safely.”
“I’m going to shove my Queen and my Bishop in there and ruin your pawn selection!”
“Hey! If you do that, what am I going to watch at the weekends?”
I love puns. I love pun-slinging. I won 9-1.
I watch little TV, but it’s on in the background most of the time when I am at the computer, in the evenings. My conversations with colleagues from work based on daytime TV shows I don’t watch are short:
“I never used to watch those daytime soaps. Did watch Sunset Beach a few times though.”
“Oh, I loved Sunset Beach.”
“It was pretty shoddy, particularly the ending. Oh dear.”
“It was interesting.”
“They just had pretty actors and actresses on to lure people into a trap made of unoriginal plots.”
“Oh, I liked Cole.”
“You like coal?”
“Yeah, I like Cole.”
“Well coal is all you’re going to get for Christmas.”
“Yeah! I want a Cole doll.”
“Who said anything about a doll?” {me whaps own forehead}.
2 words: Head. Sieve.
Languages are great things. You can unofficially tweak them to your desire, to create the desired effects. For example, Chris and I used to substitute the word “you” with “chew” (as in “Chewie,” as in “Chewbacca“) in conversation:
“I’ve got something to tell chew.”
“Chew?”
“Yeah, chew.”
Lately, Key and I have tried to kick off a new trend where the word “thanks” is substituted:
“That’s great. Spanks.”
“No, no. Spank you.”
Always play with their minds.
At work, we have unisex toilets. As I was walking in there, I startled one of the female workers who was not expecting someone to appear from behind the door. That was the only person I got to scare for Halloween this year. I didn’t even have to buy a Halloween costume! Perhaps there is a market for cheap plastic masks bearing my mugly face. I can see a future where there are lots of me’s terrorising towns seasonally, without even the need for a legalised system of human cloning. I can see a future where I need the best damn lawyer in town.
To sum things up today in the unmistakable fashion of backwardness, l’ll finish with what happened yesterday: Here’s a possibly authentic deleted scene from Star Wars (Episode 4) I came across. I also checked out a funny picture of Lucy Liu that Scott posted the link for. A nice photograph indeed and I wanted to know if there was more. So, I deleted the filename in the URL to try to access the root folder’s goodies. This is the page I got.
“Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access /women/ on this server.”
I was magically transported back to my University days in the computer labs. “But I wasn’t trying to access women via the Internet. Honest, officer.” No, that didn’t really happen. ^_^
Halloween monster count: 1 Dracula, 1 Frankenstein’s monster, 1 naughty police officer, 1 lifesize cat, 1 Catwoman, 1 fairy, 1 weird kid with a green face, 1 skeleton, 2 Devils, 5 witches (2 with brooms, 1 with a portable cauldron).
Quote of the day: “Always play with their minds” - Lucas (from Empire Records).
