The Ninth Street News, its discreet light-blue neon sign, advertising it was open for business sold adult-oriented material, including Marlboros and other brands, those mostly after normal business hours. Everyone knew it was a porn shop, but that fact was not flaunted. The storefront was unassuming, except for the scantily-clad mannequin and the long-legged, bewigged womannequin standing in the window and the sign that prohibited those under 18 from entering.
And then, it was turned into ADULT MART, with a purple and orange signed arching out over the sidewalk, smacking everyone up side the head, as if nobody knew the true identity of Ninth Street News.
This evening, I noticed that the mannequins had been removed from the window and were replaced by a white sign with huge red letters that announced: PARDON OUR DUST WE ARE REMODELING.
What the hell can be remodeled? All I know is that there is nothing in the front windows obstructing the view of the interior, new drywall for all to see. As the dogs and I passed by, we could see two guys standing at parallel racks perusing literature or DVD's or whatever they were looking at, the rather rotund, partly-bald, mustachioed attendant wearing a white wife-beater, which did not hide his hairy chest, arms and back, attentively watching them for signs of any kind of illegal activity, which is something that we really didn't want to have to witness.
Make the sign bigger. Put up something over the windows. Please.
I'm pleased to announce to my two readers -- wait, Matt is somewhere over the Atlantic -- one reader that we can place our order for our flying cars. While others may opt to put down the $100,000 deposit to be the very first on the block to get the M400 Skycar, I'm going to wait a few weeks and get the car at substantial savings and with a smaller down payment. Moreover (how about that for a fancy transition word), I'll wait until the kinks are worked out.
All I can say is: "It's about fucking time."
There's like millions of spy satellites up in the sky. And it's not just, y'know, military-types that are like totally using that stuff over in Iraq and New Jersey.
That GPS thingy in the car is liked linked up to those spy satellites. Unless you really like read the book thingy that comes in the box, the book with like, y'know, a lot of writing and hardly any pictures to look at. Why do they do that? You know where I'm goin.' It's like spies in the sky.
So, even when people are like sound asleep in the car, they kind of know what's goin' on. Like did you know that the GPS thingy totally knows when you drive like 103 miles an hour. And it's like really hard to say, "What're you talkin' about?" cuz it says it right there.
So, when the person who like totally knows all this modern technology spy satellite stuff asks, but isn't really like, y'know, askin', "You went 103 miles per hour?"
There's only like one real good answer. "Heheh. U-u-uhhh. Musta been goin' downhill."
We decided to catch a movie a couple weeks ago on Thursday afternoon and were going to get there a little early; so, we stopped for appetizers in lieu of dinner at Hoggy's, which is a chain BBQ place, which is near the Cinemark Googolplex. There were four women and a guy at one table, and then there was my lovely wife and me at another table. This post could be about the loud-mouthed woman on the phone at the other table., but it's not. Everyone has encountered someone like her. There's no need to elaborate.
Stacey was reviewing the menu when our waiter came over. He looked to have graduated from college and was waiting on tables at Hoggy's while searching for what he thought was a real job and for the meaning of life. Little does he know that this job he has waiting on tables at Hoggy's is probably much more exciting than what is in store for him in his chosen field, but I didn't think it was my mission to clue him in on sur-reality.
The bold type on the menu said the name of the appetizer was "Steamed Shrimp Over Something-or-other." The description of the dish said that the shrimp was "sauteed" in something-or-other. So, Stacey asked the waiter: "Why is the steamed shrimp sauteed instead of steamed?"
He was totally speechless -- he said he didn't really know what she was talking about. So, she showed him the menu, and he said that he would check with the kitchen about it. He said that nobody ever asked him about that.
She ordered a salad. When it came out, she asked, "Why is it that you can't swing a cat anywhere around here without hitting a fresh-picked, homegrown tomato stand this time of year and the salad is served with these things they call tomatoes." He replied, "Heheh, I don't know the answer to that one, either."
She pointed out, "I know the place is a franchise and has to get certain stuff from certain suppliers, but there's a place just 300 feet away where they can get fresh tomatoes grown right there and picked today."
"Heheh, I'll check with the kitchen on that one, too."
"No, it's okay. Just sayin', that's all."
I heard the last quarter of the Browns game on the radio on the way back from Evansville, Indiana, where the kid who lived with us for half his teen years, Mark, got married on Saturday. We got back home, and I took the dogs out for their evening stroll. As we were walking along the river, two guys approached, both wearing orange traffic cones on their heads. As they drew closer, the one on the right had two traffic cones on his head, stacked on top of each other, one black under the orange one, and was wearing a Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt. The other guy wore only one cone with his Cleveland Browns sweatshirt. He was excited, giving me the thumbs up, yelling, "Browns WON, Dude!" I said, "Yeah, great game!" with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm. The Bengals guy, staggering a little, exclaimed, "It was amazing! What a great game!" then punctuated that with "They almost scored 200 points!"
Errrr ... yeah, I guess so. Like 51 plus 45 is so-o-o close to 200. It's like some kind of record, dude. Totally awesome. Almost as good as that cheater Bellichick could do ...
On the other end of the spectrum, a guy driving down Robert Lockwood, Jr., Blvd. stopped his car at the intersection of St. Clair at the stop sign, opened the driver's door, alighted from the car, and walked toward me and the three dogs.
"The dogs cool, man?" asked the 20-ish, shaved-headed, skinny kid with scruffy whiskers growing from his chin.
"Unless I tell 'em not to be ... yeah, they're cool," I replied.
"I have some spaghetti dinners for the homeless. Where should I go?" he asked.
"There's a place across the river ...," I started, pointing across the river.
"I was thinking about Tin City," he said.
So, I gave him directions to the plot of land under the Innerbelt bridge near Jacobs Field, where a lot of homeless had settled, living in tents and makeshift sheet metal structures. "Thanks. God bless you!" he called out, running across the street to his open car door, two cars stopped, honking horns, waiting for him to move.
And I felt blessed, having run into him.
And that was that.
It is a difficult task to represent prisoners in Guantanamo. I spoke with a lawyer who took regular trips down there, representing a couple of prisoners free of charge. There is nothing private about his meetings with his clients, which are monitored at all times and recorded. He needed to get a security clearance to see summaries of some documents that were to be used as evidence, which required a lengthy background check. He couldn't talk about much else, since he was under an order not to talk about stuff that happened there. Needless to say, there are many obstacles to doing an adequate job.
Clive Stafford Smith is one of those lawyers getting hassled by the government, reports the Brit newspaper, The Independent.
"Your client Shaker Aamer, detainee ISN 239, was recently discovered to be wearing Under Armor briefs and a Speedo bathing suit. Neither item was issued to the detainee by JTF-Guantanamo personnel, nor did they enter the camp through regular mail," wrote a lawyer representing the military. The government is investigating Smith and another lawyer for smuggling contraband.
Writing back to the military's lawyer, Mr. Smith stated: "I hope you understand my frustration at yet another unfounded accusation against lawyers who are simply trying to do their job – a job that involves legal briefs, not the other sort."
And what about the Speedo swimming trunks, Mr. Smith?
"I cannot imagine who would want to give my client Speedos or why. Mr Aamer is hardly in a position to go swimming, since the only available water is the toilet in his cell."
And why isn't the U.S. conducting proper trials of these prisoners, the vast majority of whom have never been charged with a crime, or releasing them after five years of holding them in prison at taxpayer expense?
I decided over the weekend that I would make a concerted, real effort to stop my nasty habit of biting my fingernails. I don't know what's "nasty" about it, but that's what my mother called it when I was much younger. Now, I find out that I might have an obsessive-compulsive disorder; but there is a cure on the horizon.
For $650, I can be cured of this nasty habit obsessive-compulsive disorder forever. I need only get my passport and take a trip to the Netherlands.
But the cure sounds like all I need to do is get an old mouth guard out of one of the hockey bags and wear it all day and night every day for a month. Of course, I'd rinse the mouth guard before using it. The mouth guards, as I recall, come in varied colors. I could switch colors every day.
This all sounds so simple, but I doubt that it will work as effectively as that Dutch guy, Alain-Raymond van Abbe, who claims to be a former health industry and cosmetics promoter, whatever that means, claims.
He obviously is not a nail-biter of any repute and doesn't realize the deviousness of the fingernails, which, as all seriously-demented nail-biters know, have minds of their own. They will remove that mouth guard without the brain even knowing what has happened and go about their business, as usual.
I wonder what kind of guarantee Mr. von Abbe offers. Perhaps, he has adopted the progressive penalties imposed upon those who fail in Stephen King's short story, Quitters, Inc.
Weighing the competing considerations, I think I'll save my money and try alternate methods.
Believe me, I'm not irritated at all; but I heard the first Christmas holiday song today. I guess that Thansgiving is right around the corner -- a little after Halloween this year, I think. And I suppose it is well past Labor Day, and school has started and football season is upon us.
Not wanting to mislead anyone, I will confess that I didn't hear it on any commercial or non-commercial radio. The Leon Redbone / Zooey Deschanel rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" emanated from speakers just a few feet away from me. She couldn't have picked a better song.
I was checking out the baseball standings at the major league baseball website, and I noticed one of the columns was denoted "X-W/L." The legend at the bottom of the page defined this as being the team's expected won-loss record based on runs scored, and there's a formula for calculating this thing. And I say "thing" because I don't know what it means.
It sounds suspiciously like one of the golfers in our Saturday group who announces that he played Firestone Country Club or Muirfield or some other big-time, "See-aren't-you-impressed-I-have-connections" kind of a course the past week and, when asked what he shot there, invariably says "I shoulda had an 81," or some ridiculous, low score, given his skill level.
"What did you really shoot?" he has been asked, which rarely happens anymore because he lies about that score, too. "Oh, 99," he'll relate, never reaching the depths of the three-digit score, although he has not broken 100 on many occasions on the way-less-than-big-time, I-don't-need-no-stinkin'-connections course we play on Saturday mornings, where we don't put down "shoulda-hads" on the scorecard.
So, I want to know if the guy who thought up the useless "expected won-loss record" got paid anything to do that. With which think-tank is he affiliated because I could sit around scaring up imaginary statistics if I got paid good money to do so. It's almost like those think-tanks upon which our government relies to make war on some country that is no threat to our republic, but upon which our government relies to scare the bejeebers out of the masses.
Come to think of it, wasn't what Bush, while wearing his Air National Guard a flight suit, said in that news conference on the aircraft carrier back in aught-three a "shoulda had" -- something on the order of an expected win, an expected "Mission Accomplished," in the "X-W/L" column of the Bush the Lesser presidency?
Gee whiz. Baseball. Golf. Maybe Bush shoulda played baseball or golf and learned some lessons on life instead of having been a damn cheerleader.
I was walking the dogs; and across the street, I saw them. Two of them, walking side by side, stride for stride. Two white guys. Hair trimmed neatly. Black dress shirt. Grey pants. Black shoes. Sunglasses.
Too fucking weird. Had they abandoned their bicycles? Changed outfits? Or were they the anti-guys-on-bicycles?