Effluvia

The Panopticon.

Beth's got Buffy spoilers today!

From Salon:

• Ugly foreigners
• Clinton is innocent

Gorey games.

Journals

• Bad Hair Days
• Plaintive Wail
• Humidity and Hebephrenia
• Randomly Ever After
• U9
• Fukushu
• Nature of life...
• DNA Sequencing

Siobhanorama!

Siobhan likes the guys who can put on eyeliner.

Strangely enough - for someone with my odd leanings, anyway - I've never been good at putting on eyeliner. While I look good wearing it (when it's applied correctly) when I put it on myself I end up looking like a retarded racoon.

But when Sonya puts it on me it looks really good. I'm just sayin'.

One Year Ago
I get a cold. And Sonya makes breakfast. Not the most intereseting entry, I tell you.

We got out of town very slowly on Friday - we had to make stops on Tchopitoulas and in the French Quarter before we left, so we didn't make it across the Causeway until after eight o'clock.

We stopped in Jackson around eleven - actually, we stopped just north of Jackson, at a combined Exxon/Krystal. There I got machine-made cappucino and lots of little square burgers, and gasoline. I pounded down the Krystals, coffee and some truck-driver pills and headed towards Memphis.

That was a quick three hour drive, man. I must have had the perfect combination of junk food, caffeine and exotic unregulated chemicals, because I was perfectly lucid and wide awake all the way to West Memphis.

Sonya was not so lucky. She struggled to stay awake all the way to Arkansas, and succeeded only in sleeping fitfully. Several times on the drive home she would say "yep," "yes," "uh-huh," like I was asking her questions and she was answering in the affirmative. She also said she saw Pascow from Pet Semetary crawling across the interstate, which must have truly been a horribly thing to see.

We got to my mother's house in West Memphis at about two in the morning. There, we found my grandmother awake and playing solitaire, as my mother had only just left to go to the hospital for the birth of my nephew's son. The birth would not take place until well after sunrise that morning.

Sonya and I slept for a few hours, then got up to get haircut from Shawn at 8:15! It was the only time he could fit us in. We were the first ones there (at 8:15 - I should think so!) so we visited with Shawn and Nikki, the receptionist. Nikki's got a second job at Hot Topic, which she seemed rather pleased with.

She gets a 40% discount - I'm thinking about getting a second job at Hot Topic.

Shawn and Scott, another stylist at the salon they work at, are preparing to to off on their own and start a new salon. Names were being considered while Sonya was in the chair and I was sitting nearby, reading YM magazine.

"Marge Simpson gets her hair cut at The Perm Bank," I suggested. This went over very well. I think it may be the name of the new place.

What else happened Saturday? Breakfast with my grandmother, we visited with Sonya's parents (I watched college football with the father in-law - when one game goes to a commercial he switched directly to another game. He never watches a commercial. You have to admire that), we went and saw Jen and James at their place (there's a new floor in the guest bedroom and James smoked 700 cigarettes - the man is under some stress, I think) and we went back to my mom's house to actually see my mom for the first time (and to get the news of the birth) and to meet the whole family for dinner. My sisters and their kids showed up and it was a lovely family night.

We got away from the family and met Jen and James and Donna and Jimmy at Side Street. We drank a little, ate a little and talked about bad college roommates. We told the story about Christie's first roommate, who had two assholes. That one was, as usual, the winner.

It wasn't a late night, since Sonya and I had barely slept the night before and Donna had to work early the next morning.

Sunday was brunch with James and Kent at Zinnie's (I miss those poached eggs) and more quality time with the families. We also went to the hospital to see the new baby.

"Looks like you're the next one," Dawne looked at Sonya and said, dropping hints none too subtly, "Jack will probably never have any kids, so it must be you."

"I don't know," I said from my side of the room, "Jack could have dozens of kids and we'd never know."

For the record, the baby - Morgan is her name - is precious.

There was another massive dinner at my mom's house, too, which James and Jen attended. The collected group ate everything in sight.

"Yes, and this is my family, the Locusts."

After dinner Jen and James followed me and Sonya to Angie's house to see her and Drew, her sixteen month-old son. Angie was good and Drew was entertaining, pushing around various push-toys and grinning at all of us. Angie smacked me upside the head when I tried to get Drew to jump up for a cookie. I guess I deserved it.

Then we (minus Angie and Drew, who had to go to bed) went to Mulligan's for a beer and to gossip about family and friends for a few hours. We were practically the only ones there. It was nice, and it was foggy and warm when we left.

Monday morning, though, was cold. Well, not really, if you're from Alaska or something like that it was probably pretty warm, but it was fifty-something degrees out (farenheit, for you Europeans out there) for the first time since April, so it was cold. Roxy didn't like it, and I didn't like it either.

I followed my mom to the German car garage in West Memphis, where she was dropping off her Mercedes. It's a '91, I think, and it costs more to maintain every year. She said she was thinking of selling it; I told her I'd help if I could. I got the oil changed in the Louisiana Badass, too - it was 6,000 miles since the last one.

Sonya and I had lunch with Christie at Buckley's before we left town - we told her we'd told the two-asshole story, she caught us up on all the Earle gossip we'd been needing.

Then we stopped by Sonya's former workplace (everyone squealed when they saw her - they really liked her there) and hit the road. Roxy (who was with us all this time, and was such a good dog staying with my mom) promptly crawled in the backseat, grabbed her Beanie baby duck my mom had given her and curled up on her blanket. She had a big weekend hanging out with my family and she slept the whole way home.

And it's nice and cool today. I went out at lunch and they were mowing the grass around the building I work in. It's always jarring, to smell the summer smell of cut grass when the air is crisp and dry, like it was today. The cold weather will only last for a few days, though, and then it should be hot and humid again in time for the tourists this weekend.

The Wife and I watched the season premiere of Buffy earlier. Dracula is cool!

And he has a nice house, too.

"It's like he lives in some Pottery Barn of the damned," I noted.