A: No

Overheard on the train today: "I wasted years trying to be social! Finally I realized I just don't like people that much." (Later in the conversation she referred to "the time I set myself on fire," explained as "Windbreakers are very flammable, you know.")

Qs upon further eavesdropping: For an antisocial person, she sure is a chatterbox. Wait.
Why do I think anti social people are not chatterboxes?
Hey, isn't this the same woman whose conversation I eavesdropped on one other time?
And she and her seatmate are both in veterinarian school or something?
Or EMT school?
I could never entirely tell. If she isn't social, maybe she shouldn't be an EMT. Maybe she is planning to take only the unconscious cases.
How did she catch herself on fire, though?
She doesn't look the type to wear a windbreaker. She has on that Maui shirt and hospital worker type pants. It's a nice look, like a surfer is going to run in and sudenly take your blood pressure. It wouldn't go with windbreakers so much...wait. I'm thinking of the cloth kind that Asian engineering professors or middle aged golf ladies used to wear.
Is there a new hip kind of highly flammable windbreaker that youngish antisocial surfer veterinarians wear?
Should I ask her?
She doesn't like people much; what if she gets red in the face at my question, and suddenly runs away up the aisle of the train?
Then her seatmate might say "Thanks a LOT. You have upset my study partner and I will not be able to study sufficiently for the pathogens test tomorrow. I hold you responsible if I flunk out of animal EMT school and instead support myself by collecting scrap metal for resale, and putting handwritten signs on telephone poles offering to sell weight loss secrets for $10."
Should I warn him that if he doesn't maintain good metal purchase records, he is subject to possible prosecution ?

pyramid schemes

there seems to be a rash of egyptian sandals running around this summer. i'm not quite sure what happened to sandals that actually work in water. or that don't give your feet blisters. they kinda look from a distance like sandal soles magically stuck to a woman's foot. in conjunction with this disturbing trend is the even more disturbing likelihood that whoever is marketing these shoes is actually an ad person for the beer industry cos EVERY WOMAN WEARING THEM IS HOT AS *#$$*@#. anyway. not like i'm looking or anything.

also, in perusing the national weather service's forecast for the week for the cascade range, i noticed another richatlously disturbing trend: HIGHS IN THE 100s. i don't understand. i thought mountains were these distant, perpetually snow covered places. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT ALL THE MOVIES SAY. i mean, look at "the lord of the rings". it can be summer on the plains, but head toward the mountains, alla sudden its FORTY BELOW AND SNOWING LIKE THE HINDENBURG. here i was hoping to escape the low nineties of the puget sound coast and my plan is thwarted. i'm headed for an *unnamed* high country lake to swim (read: sit on my tukis in the water and do absolutely nothing) and avoid people and now i hafta worry that it's gonna be a secret FBI WATER BOILING FACILITY. i mean, why else is it as hot as it is? it must be the FBI.

this reminds me of the woman who passed me while i was riding down a quiet ballard street honking her horn and giving me a mystical three fingered salute. it was like she wanted to flip me off but was too scared.

lastly, there's a dude next to me who hasta take off his glasses to see and who POUNDS THE KEYBOARD LIKE HE'S JOE FKN LOUIS. better leave.

do we have a handshake or anything? I'm just wondering.

Did somebody call me about some zombie butterflies?

I'll take care of that. I read about that... I know how to do that ....does anybody have any teeny tiny but extremely sharp cleavers or assagais or machetes or anything of that nature? Or pinking shears? Butterflies have very tiny heads so they would need to be very small pinking shears. Have you ever read the book"Stuart Little"? Or does he use regular sized objects as tools in that book? I forget. I like how the mom has a mouse instead of a human baby and doesn't even react. It doesn't bear thinking about too much.

I will be helping with a few things around here. Thanks for inviting me.



(Bro, Fillibuster Cash : I found your post. It was right under "I just deleted my entire post". It was right there. Don't worry, bro. Sometimes I do that with my glasses. "Where are my glasses where are my glasses? Then suddenly doingggggg! Maybe on my head ??!!!)

I JUST DELETED MY ENTIRE POST.

there were LOTS OF PEOPLE IN BALLARD YESTERDAY. that, in concert with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, made for me a bit janky. ballard is usually a place for bums and hipsters who push their over-ratioed fixies and/or brokendown '81 schwinn varsities who have ablsolutely no time for me, but yesterday i saw mainstream, untattooed people in shorts that WEREN'T CUTOFF, TOO-SMALL JEANS and t-shirts that WEREN'T MADE FROM THE DUMPSTER OUT BEHIND JOANN FABRIC. i din't know what to do. i tried a salmon sandwich (righteous) and a jones root beer soda (satisfying) but i couldn't settle down. as we were closing the shop, a BAND OF SIX MARAUDING HIPSTERS showed up and asked to use our bike pump. i was worried that so much ink in one place would create a black hole that would SWALLOW OUR ENTIRE BLOCK. on one hand, i guess that would've been okay; i'd be gone and could give up this PRETENSE OF ACTUALLY LIKING PEOPLE. i was so jittery i started craving a pretentious belgian ale or, failing that, a richatlously hip PBR. finally, i rode over and locked my bike on the gate behind king's hardware (no pipe fittings of any kind--where do these people come up with their pub names?) and went into the old town ale house, sat by the window and preceded to DRINK LIKE A FISH. that din't make the people go away, but at least i no longer cared.

in other news, while out hiking in the crystal lakes drainage i saw 1) people and 2) ALIENS THAT DISGUISED THEMSELVES AS BLUE BUTTERFLIES. the were stealing our water DIRECTLY FROM THE DIRT. when i attempted to roust the imposters, they formed a threatening blue cloud and began advancing on me. normally i'd dismiss this "alien" talk as paranoia, but since THEY WERE THREATENING ME INSTEAD OF SOMEONE ELSE and the only place i've seen these blue "butterflies" is in that same drainage doing precisely the same thing they were doing friday, it HAS to be true. i'm not sure how to combat these threats, since concrete obviously doesn't stop them and they can shift shapes and create MINIATURE BLUE DEATH CLOUDS, but if nothing else, we need to guard our water supply LIKE IT'S THE HINDENBURG.

real photos of aliens

This used to be my favorite kind of plant (above) but then I noticed that there are small eyeballs on the end of each stalk, and the beings are trying very hard to get out of that cement enclosure. Creepy.

Waterfalls on other planets are more geometrical than on messy Earth. Small square fish jump up this waterfall. It makes your heart beat fast (but in a predictable and uniform way) to see it.

Well, he is not really an alien; he is just a little Russian man on my way to work who always sits out on his walker thing at SEVEN AYE EM, I do not know why. This picture makes him look like he is in a little cage. I never say anything to him but I like him. He should not put his tail feathers so close to the fence, though.

you people scare me.

first off, someone totally blew my spot this morning. well, actually two people. first, my bike parking spot, located conveniently--for me--in the front window of a closed tienda, where some dude was palping a bundle of sticks and causing the air to shriek with furious tobacco, thinking that the concrete whatever was more than 30 feet from the door as washington state law demands and actually a place to park his trousers rather than MY BIKE PARKING SPOT! ach. THEN some other person was sitting in MY coffee-drinking spot, the one right by the window where i can view all the patrons and cover the exit quickly in case of any emergent need like scary people or zombie attacks and where i am closer to invisible than further into the coffee store. then BOTH had the nerve to quickly vacate said spots and head off to god-knows-where on whatever unimportant business freshly mobile people attend to and i had to ponder the ethics of whether to 1) move into said freshly vacated spots--easy for the bike cos THAT'S WHERE MY BIKE GOES!!!!--or 2) sit and pretend i'm not as neurotic as i really am and that having my spot blown doesn't really ruin my day and for reasons more correctly identified as laziness and sloth, for my coffee-drinking and my strawberry-cupcake-eating and reading "good poems" and pretending to "write good poems" i chose to stay put and hope--for hope is all the recourse i was allowed as my temporary spot had no clear sightline to the door--no one saw me and no zombies chose today for their attacks on clumsy ballard. and that was all before 9 am. sheesh. good thing i have tomorrow off so i can recover. think ima go for a hike and hope i don't meet anyone.

upcoming topics

Why I hate parties.

Why I hate dating.

Why I don't like talking on the telephone.

Why I don't know how to dance.

Why it is fun to go to movies by oneself and leave in the middle if they are boring.

Why I don't want you to buy me presents hardly ever unless I am having an emergency but probably not even then.

Why I like to look at pictures of people I know as babies, but don't want to look at pictures of their babies.

Why their babies don't want to look at pictures of me (still researching this baffling one).

Ways to get out of answering the question "how are you" if you don't want to answer it.

Plaids and florals: how to combine them for maximum effect in clothing (and under the radar on most work dresscodes!)

Go away

We will tell you when the hut/clubhouse is done and the flattened tin can roof put on it. What is that smell?