From the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Bygone Days section, 10 April 2000

100 YEARS AGO
April 10, 1900

"Professor Gentry's Dog and Pony Show will open tomorrow for two days' performances at the corner of Court and Fourth Streets."

And you know what Professor Gentry made those poor dogs and ponies do, right? That's right: live animal sex shows. That's what life in nineteenth century Memphis was all about. Bestiality, pork rinds and dying of yellow fever. It was a good time to be alive, I'm sure.

Looking back, this weekend has an almost dreamlike quality to it. I was in bed in Memphis, right, and then I'm in New York, in a cab, seeing all this stuff from the movies, and I've got a friend (who I've never actually met) showing me all these things, and for a while it was sunny and warm and then it was cloudy and cold and the pretty women were men and we danced for hours....and then it snowed and I was back home.

See why it seems strange? And it was just so perfect. We wanted to do something? We did it. Cabs, bars, food...it all just fell into our laps. Less than twenty-four hours in the biggest city in the world and everything went off without a hitch. Unbelievable.

Oh, and here's another Siobhan-ism, since this thing has basically turned into a shrine to all that is Siobhan recently: she told us that her roommate insists that she call hookers "sex workers."

That got me to thinking this morning: should a midget be called a short worker? Should Sonya be called a redheaded worker? Or, if it's more a description of what you do instead of what you are then should I be called a lazy worker?

On a related note, my thighs and hips ache from dancing Saturday night. I'm in horrid shape. Running tonight, and regularly for the next few months. I will lose the weight and do an under-thirty minute 5K and then I will celebrate at the Cure concert in Baltimore. Hoorah! I'll get my nipple pierced when I come back - don't want to have to mess with that on my celebratory trip. I don't even know if I'll go to the damned high school reunion, but if I do I'll look good.

I've been toying, this month, with the idea of taking this thing daily instead of the non-scheduled semi-daily program I've been following. After all, all the most popular kids (Beth, Kymm, Gus) are daily, or damned close to it. No doubt my readership would soar and I'd become some sort of Online Journal Overlord.

But I don't know if I've got the talent, if you know what I mean. The aforementioned Beth can take a day of gardening, dog walking and house cleaning and make it cohesive, funny and interesting. It's truly compelling reading. If I had to make an entry on the same topics it would read like this:

"I did some gardening today, then I walked the dog. Washed the dishes, too."

I have a hard time making the details of daily life into something other people would want to read. I have to do (or witness) things that I think would make for interesting writing later. When I don't update for days on end it usually means that I have nothing worth talking about. Perhaps I should change my attitude about what is noteworthy.

I will have to work, I suppose, to find more to write about in, say, driving to work.

So, on my way to work today I saw a huge, twelve-car smash-up on Sam Cooper westbound. It was horrible, of course, but also very impressive, in a NASCAR tragedy kind of way. I had heard on the radio on my way out of the house that there was also a spilled truckload of chicken parts on Sam Cooper westbound, and since I was driving on Sam Cooper eastbound I was really looking forward to seeing that. Unfortunately, it was on an exit ramp and just out of my sight.

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