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A single word I say
It's only words,
and words are all I have.
Oh, how I love you, Spongebob.
These are good times for the astonishable people.
Blah.

And that's all I have to say for now.

Oh, I forgot, Chanukkah Sameach.
Why not.

Oy vey, gai vas! Right after I paid almost $500 to repair my stick-shift mobile at Napa Auto Care Center. Mishegoss!
I think this farfrumt chap, Mr. Edwin Gabriel, missed the very otherwise noticeable fact --nose, etc.-- that yours truly is a true Jew. Ahem.
Please, fellow OKCupidians, feel free to claim the prize, and don't forget, "this money is to support his Christian activities."

NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST:

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Mr. Edwin Gabriel, I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter was returned undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you again by this same email address on the WILL. I wish to notify you that late Mr. Edwin Gabriel made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Five Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars (USD$5,100.000.00 ) to you in the codicil and last testament to his will.

This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely travelled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you good. Mr. Edwin Gabriel until his death was a member of the Helicopter Society and the Institute of Electronic & Electrical Engineers.



He was a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out. His great philanthropy earned him numerous awards during his life time. Late Mr. Edwin Gabriel died on the 16th day of February 2004 at the age of 90 years and his WILL is now ready for execution. According to him this money is to support his Christian activities (may his soul rest with the Lord) and to help the poor and needy.

Please if I reach you as I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job. I hope to hear from you in no distant date.please contact me on this email: tdlaminichambers@mailbox.co.za

Yours in His service,
Themba Dlamini Esq.

I see this crappy Facebook thing all over OKC and can't help myself: I need to post again.

Someone you barely know --barely meaning you've just shaken hands two minutes ago for the first time-- requests that you make them a pal on that "facebook" machine.

Though not what you would conventionally term "friends", having barely been "colleagues" for about 120 seconds, you know him well enough to know that he has a face, as do you, and on this basis you faccept them.

(I’m working on the subsequent basis that if stupid words about blog-related activities (or blactivities) can be coined by adding ‘bl’ to the beginning of a word, it follows that it must be possible with facebook and the letter ‘f’, yes? Yes. Or not. Whatever)

Within twenty minutes you are falerted by The Facebook. The Facebook wishes to break the news to you that your new colleague and sometime friend (firm pal of around 18 minutes standing) has just broken up with the girlfriend you had no fidea that they had in the first place. This is the type of finformation facebook knows we want to know fabout our dearest friends, and so we are finformed.

But now what do you DO? You are a friend of this findividual. You have written confirmation of the fact you are friends in the form of a small message with tick boxes saying "This person is now your friend, please confirm how you know this person" - so you must be close in some way, so what do you do?

Because those first few minutes are the hardest, fobviously, because you know that he's going through serious *feelings* over there, and you’re, like, number one friend on the scene - which makes you his number one friend PERIOD, fostensibly, so what do you do?

So what’s the correct fetiquete here? Do you go over there and say

"Hey Peter - Or do you go by Pete? Well, whatever. Anyway - listen, I'm really sorry to hear you split up with … with … hang on, I just need to look at my screen. Mary. Things must be tough for you right now, man. Well, I'm here for you, yeah?”

Or do you wait for the perfect moment, honing your first all-important words as the hours, days, weeks pass. Until it's been too long and it's just too fawkward and far from being the best-ffriend you should have been when he needed you most, you’re now favoiding his face as you are just about to bump into him again and walking three more blocks or backpedaling three rather than bump into him ever again.

You should have been more than ffriend to him, and you know it. Just when he needed you most, you should have been brother, sister, kin to him, and instead you were a chicken and faccepted fanother request from Paul, the fexgirlfriend's new boyfriend, and can't stop humming It Ain't Me, Baby, or worse, I'm in Love With a Big Blue Frog.

It was a fkin nightmare, this fetiquette, fffrankly.

That's why I had to kill it.

Rain in Miami.
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Back from the Central American country whose name I cannot reveal. The assignment went on well, except for the day when I met an American "colleague" who has been living there for a while and was to take me to the coast for a day of fun and relaxing activities, as he put it. He just did not mention that he had invited some other people to join us: his parents, who were visiting, and another woman in the form of a new GPS he recently purchased. To add fun to the little trip, my friend had a broken wrist, so I was driving... or trying to drive.

So there, so much for relaxation. Aaron was telling me to drive faster. His mom was telling me to drive slower. His dad kept questioning the route we were taking. And the GPS woman was as much a “backseat driver” as everybody else. Worse, she spoke in this annoying idiotic voice that was almost impossible to understand:

GPS: In fif-te-en fe-et, make a le-ft on Ex-it three.

Me: Did she say exit 3?

GPS: 10 fe-et…

A FM Spanish station started breaking in on the GPS frequency.

Radio: (singing) Me encuentro tan soooooooolo. Sin tus carisias, sin tus beeeeeeeesossss…

Mom: Are they singing the directions now? Lis, you speak Spanish, right, what did they say?

Me: I think it's Marc Anthony… he is singing some sort of country song, he lost his girl and car and job and all that, and feels miserable and alone. Is Boulevard Colón... Exit 3?

Friend: Three, exit three, it must be... let me check the map.

Mom: Why would she call it Exit 3 if it’s a boulevard, I can't even pronounce the name and they keep telling you to take an exit that is a boulevard? This is a weird country, really.

Me: It must be the official name of the street.

Mom: Oy, that’s crazy. In New York, a street has one name and that’s it. Why would you want two names? This Latino people do it just to annoy the Americans, I'm sure.

Dad: That’s not true. Isn’t 7th Avenue also the Avenue of the Americas?

Friend: Dad, no, it's Sixth Avenue, remember?

Mom: But that machine, that GPA wouldn’t call it that in New York. No one does. Only tourists.

Radio: Mi amor… Tengo que vivir sin mi amorrrrrrrr

Mom: Lis, what did he sing?

Lis turns to friend and mom while trying to keep her cool, trying to keep an eye on the road, and trying not to curse. Finally, she simply rolls her eyes.

Mom: OK, OK, you're driving, I know. But you have a heavy foot, that's for sure. Try to go a little slower, honey.

Me: It’s about love, Mrs Hoffman. The song. And it’s GPS, not GPA!

Dad: You see, Aaron? Love. That's exactly what you need. A loving young Jewish girl. And look at Lis, she is a bright young lady, she can even understand Spanish, how about that? Why can´t you marry someone like her!

Mom: OK, GPS, GPA, same difference. Honey, can you drive a little slower, please?

Friend: Mom... And how do you know about GPS in New York? You don’t have a GPS or a car.

Mom: I just know. The GPA… GPS in New York are much more simpler.

Friend: Lis, could you please drive a little faster? We want to get there before dinner time, right?.

Me: I’m trying to listen to this robot… Aaron, could you stop singing with the song?

Radio: Amar sin medida. Quiero amar sin medidaaaaaaaaa….

Mom: Go slow, Lis. Better to play it safe.

Friend: Mom, you never drove a car in your life. I promise you, it’s dangerous to go too slow.

GPS: W-rong di-rec-tion! Turn a-round! Turn a-round! Make a left and re-turn to Ex-it three

Me: I missed it. Sorry.

Mom: Hah, see Aaron? I told you! She needs to go slow!

Dad: Boulevar whatever the name was Exit 3. She wasn’t lying.

Friend: The GPS doesn’t lie. It gets its data from a government satellite.

Mom: Data-shmata. There’s a lot about the government you don’t know about, Lis.

GPS: In one foot, make a right turn…

Me: Over here?

Friend: That’s a Mobil station. It's not a restaurant, for sure.

GPS: W-rong di-rec-tion! Turn a-round. Turn a-round! Go back to Ex-it three…

Radio: Aquí me ven. Solo paraaaaaaaaaaaaa siempreeeeeeeee…

Dad: Next time, let’s take a cab… Or let Aaron drive.

Radio: Sin remeeeeeeeediooooooo, perdido para siemmmmmmpreeeeeeeee....

Mom: Are we there yet? I hope they serve kosher, otherwise we will need to find another place.
Dad: This song is marvelous! Who was the singer, again?

GPS: Turn left. Turn left! Go back to Ex-it three…

Makes me miss NYC.

Light travels faster than sound.

This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

I follow a very strict rule about not going into discount CD stores. Ever.

Mind you, I don't believe them to be intrinsically evil and stuff. It's just that I know they're bad for me, like peaches --I'm allergic to their skin beeg time--. So I take great pains to avoid them (CDries and peaches) at any cost because I know that the cost of not avoiding them is, well, a great deal of a cost.

Now, when I lost Beau --I don't mean I misplaced him, I just mean he's dead as in fucking dead--, I had to go over his things and figure out what to do next. With his shit, that is. I plan on having a one family of one garage-megashitload-sale when I come back from my next assignment in Central America (for security reasons I cannot reveal exactly where in Central America, but for sure one of these countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua or Panama.)



[The picture has nothing to do with the comment, in case you're wondering, I just happen to like it.]

Beau was very fond of his Toby Keith CDs. He loved his Greatest Hits Vol. 1/2 or so, and the one titled "White Trash With Money." Some lucky early bird will get them for less than a penny each, with my most heartfelt thanks. The rest of the collection isn't worth mentioning.

Anyway, as I was classifying his stuff and my stuff, I noticed that I've been missing one of my favorites, Goosebumps: Say Cheese and Die. I looked all over the place to no avail.

Worse, I received a fat check on Friday, and with fresh dough in my pocket I intended to buy a loveseat, a hose, a cat toy AND a gun, all needed for my next assignment, by the way.

Bear with me, what comes next is more painful than a root canal.

The exception to the strict rule is I only go to CDeries when I have a very necessary and specific purchase to make or if it is the day after "payday", so you can expect the worst. Because, lo and behold, yesterday was both.

Now I can explain: what happened is that I heard Say Cheese and Die on the radio, and, suddenly realizing that in the end I had not idea of where or when I misplaced my Goosebumps LP, Cassette or CD --or, for that matter, that I was ever going to see it again--, I persuaded myself that I really really needed to go and buy another one. Affirmation works so well. Plus just one sounded pretty innocent at the time.

So I drove stick-shifty Tweety to Have Another, our friendly local discount CDery.

To my dismay, they didn’t have Say Cheese and Die per se, but only a "deluxe box set featuring 59 tracks on 3 CDs or cassettes digitally mastered using only the absolute original source tapes for the best possible sound." Bummer! I almost chocked when I read that, yes, the one I wanted was included, but it also featured 46 other tracks of demos and live songs, absolutely none of which I wanted, nor probably would ever care to listen to.

But the truth is I mainly didn’t buy it because, at $60, I decided that it was too expensive. The one thing I went there to buy (please take note) was Too Expensive at $60.

So I put it back down, and spent $98 on stuff that it had never before (or since, sadly) crossed my mind to listen to before that moment.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s me banned from discount CDeries for the next few months, then. And Victoria's Secrets too, actually. And also Walgreens. As well as The Spy Store and the SuperGunnerie, which makes me feel an excruciating pain that goes beyond words.

Bad girl. BAD. BAD. BAD.