Tag Archives: harebrained scheme

People really live this way

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The other day, Mr. H and I hit on a brilliant plan for cheap entertainment: attending real estate open houses. It’s fall, and these things are on every corner, not unlike dead squirrels. Sure, if we see a really spanky place, we might buy it. That is the endgame of this harebrained scheme. But it’s really about the thrill of the hunt. You can’t beat whiling away a Sunday afternoon by poking your nose in other people’s closets: we saw His n’ Hers Nascar apparel.

Apparently any ol’ body can go to these open house things, which we did not realize. You have to write your name down, but no one’s checking to see if it’s even your real name. You do not have to present a photo of yourself doing the backstroke through your money bin.

And then you roam around, making disparaging remarks about wallpaper borders. The homeowners aren’t there, so what they don’t hear won’t hurt them. It is my personal and frequently-voiced opinion that wallpaper borders should be made illegal, possibly via a rider tacked on to some federal act. We saw a perfect house, but there were two borders in each room. I mentally calculated the time it would take me to steam and scrape off these beautiful harvest scenes, these sailboats and grapevines and bears clutching balloon bouquets. Not worth it! We decided that if we can’t find a suitable makeshift chamber of horrors by the end of the year, we will just buy a crappy one and burn it down for fun.

In further “people really live this way” news, I went to Costco yesterday. It seems purchasing a house requires something called a “down payment,” and this requires “saving money.” So I guess we won’t be eating Komodo dragon carpaccio at every meal anymore. Costco left me with a raging headache, 3,500 Q-tips, and a deep sense of shame and my own mortality. Why, I saw a man up-end a two-gallon jug of barbecue sauce and chug it right in the checkout lane. So this is what we’ve become. Peeping Tom bulk shoppers. Filthy-filthy-can’t-get-clean.

brain in a jar, that’s the life for me

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Whoa people, you don’t want to know what’s been coming out of my head lately. This is the sick that just won’t quit. It’s the time of the year when I start obsessing, thinking I must have HIV, oh why oh why did I ever do those things with all those sailors? Then I realize “ohhhh, I get ragingly ill every single year at this time, and every year I convince myself I have some dreadful auto-immune problem.” I have this sick schedule down. First we start off with a cold in October. Then the first two weeks of December are a total wash with some sort of strep-like thing. Finally, things cap off in January or early february with a bout of bronchitis. Sure, one year I bucked the trend and got pneumonia in November, but really that was just to get out of going to the symphony. I had an assignment to review a performance of some Mahler, and damned if I didn’t end up getting to review Being John Malkovich instead. Make up work, boo yeah. Lower culture, holla back.

Speaking of culture, I read a book. It happens. It was pretty good, even with all the Writing. Middlesex. I am sure Sofia Coppola has already optioned it. I shed a wee tear at the end. One little detail just absolutely killed me. No, I’m not going to tell you what it was. Freaking read it, then maybe we’ll talk. It’s got Detroit, it’s got incest, it’s got hermaphrodites, it’s out in paperback. What’s not to like?

That brain up there really is mine. I used to volunteer for any medical study involving an MRI in college. I love x-ray vision. I’ve been thinking a lot about what a bummer it is to be human meat. I’d totally go for being a brain in a jar, except then I couldn’t play at being attractive on weekends. Although the MRI tech did say I have lovely, perfectly formed ventricles. I have another shot that shows them. They look just like butterflies.

-xxoo